How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? - o: "God is infinitely just and infinitely merciful. The two attributes are so united in Him, yea, so one in Him who is always one, and in whose counsels "there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning," that the one doth not ever thwart the proceeding of the other. Yet, in order to shew that our ills are from our own ill-deserts, not from any pleasure of His in inflicting ill, and that what mercy He sheweth, is from His own goodness, not from any in us, God is represented in this empassioned expression as in doubt, and (so to say) divided between justice and mercy, the one pleading against the other. At the last, God so determines, that both should have their share in the issue, and that Israel should be both justly punished and mercifully spared and relieved."

God pronounces on the evil deserts of Israel, even while He mitigates His sentence. The depth of the sinner's guilt reflects the more vividly the depth of God's mercy. In saying, "how shall I make thee as Admah?" how "shall I set thee as Zeboim?" He says, in fact, that they were, for their sins, worthy to be utterly destroyed, with no trace, no memorial, save that eternal desolation like the five "cities of the plain," of which were Sodom and Gomorrah, which God "hath set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire" Jde 1:7. Such was their desert. But God says, with inexpressible tenderness, "Mine heart is turned within Me" literally, "upon Me or against Me," so as to be a burden to Him; as we say of the heart, that it is "heavy." God deigneth to speak as if His love was heavy, or a weight upon Him, while He thought of the punishment which their sins deserved.

My heart is turned - o: "As soon as I had spoken evil against thee, mercy prevailed, tenderness touched Me; the tenderness of the Father overcame the austerity of the Judge."

My repentings are kindled together, - or My strong compassions are kindled. i. e., with the heat and glow of love; as the disciples say, "Did not our hearts burn within us?" Luke 24:32, and as it is said of Joseph "his bowels did yearn Genesis 43:30 (literally, were hot) toward his brother;" and of the true mother before Solomon, "her bowels yearned 1 Kings 3:26 (English margin, were hot) upon her son."

"Admah" and "Zeboim" were cities in the same plain with Sodom and Gomorrah, and each had their petty king Genesis 14:2. In the history of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, they are not named, but are included in the general title "those cities and all the plain" (Genesis 19:25). The more then would Hosea's hearers think of that place in Moses where he does mention them, and where he threatens them with the like end; "when the stranger shall see, that the whole land thereof is brimstone and salt and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, which the Lord overthrew in His anger and His wrath" Deuteronomy 29:22-23. Such was the end, at which all their sins aimed; such the end, which God had held out to them; but His "strong compassions were kindled."

How shall I give thee up - See the notes on Hosea 6:4, where we have similar words from similar feeling.

Mine heart is turned within me - Justice demands thy punishment; Mercy pleads for thy life. As thou changest, Justice resolves to destroy, or Mercy to save. My heart is oppressed, and I am weary with repenting - with so frequently changing my purpose. All this, though spoken after the manner of men, shows how merciful, compassionate, and loath to punish the God of heaven is. What sinner or saint upon earth has not been a subject of these gracious operations?

How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee,

Israel?.... That is, as usually interpreted, into the hand of the enemy, or unto wrath, ruin, and destruction; for, notwithstanding all the sins of this people before observed, and the punishment threatened to be inflicted on them, the Lord is pleased here, and in the following verses, to give some intimations of his goodness, grace, and mercy to them; not to the whole body of them, for they as such were given and delivered up to the enemy, and carried captive, and dispersed among the nations, and were never recovered to this day; but to a remnant among them, according to the election of grace, that should spring from them, for the sake of which they were not all cut off by the sword; but were reserved as a seed for later times, the times of the Messiah, which the prophecy in this and the following words has respect unto; not only the first times of the Gospel, when some of the dispersed of Israel were met with by it, and converted under it; but the last times of it; times yet to come, when all Israel shall be saved; and may be applied to the elect of God, in all ages, and of all nations, The words are generally understood as a debate in the divine mind, struggling within itself between justice and mercy; justice requiring the delivery of these persons unto it, and mercy being reluctant thereunto, pleading on their behalf; and which at last gets the victory, and rejoices against judgment. There is a truth in all this; justice seems to demand that sinners, as such, who have injured and affronted him, be given up to, him, and suffer the curse of the law, according to their deserts, and be delivered unto death, even eternal death, as well as to temporal punishments; and which might be expected would be the case, by the instances and examples of the angels that sinned, and of the men of the old world, and of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah; but mercy cannot bear it, pleads against; it, and asks how can it be done, since these are my children, my dear child, on, pleasant ones, as Ephraim was, my chosen and my covenant ones, and, besides, for whom provision is made in Christ for the satisfactions of justice? But the sense is rather this, "how might" or "could I give thee up; Ephraim? how might" or "could I deliver thee, Israel" (e)? that is, with what severity might I deal with thee? and how justly and righteously could I do it? since thy sins are so many, and so great;

how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? two cities that were utterly destroyed by fire from heaven, along with Sodom and Gomorrah, Deuteronomy 29:23; how justly could I have made thee, and put thee in, the same condition and circumstances, as those two cities, and the inhabitants of them, who were so severely punished for their sins, and were never restored again? signifying, that inasmuch as they were guilty of the same or like heinous sins, was he utterly to destroy them, and cut them off from the face of the earth, he should not exceed the due bounds of justice. To this sense Schmidt interprets the words. The design of which is to show the greatness of Ephraim's sins, as deserving the uttermost wrath and vengeance of God, and to magnify the riches of God's grace in their salvation, as next expressed; and it is true of all God's elect, who, considered as sinners in Adam, and by their own transgressions, both before and after conversion, deserved to be treated according to the rigour of justice; but God is merciful to them, according to his choice of them, covenant with them, and provision he has made in Christ, and upon the foot of his satisfaction;

mine heart is turned within me; not changed; for there is no shadow of turning with the Lord, neither in his mind and purposes, which he never turns from, nor can be turned back; nor in his affections for them; as his heart is never turned from love to hatred, so neither from hatred to love; or his love would not be from everlasting, as it is, and he rest in it as he does; but this expresses the strong motion of mercy in him towards his people, springing from his sovereign will and pleasure, and what is elsewhere signified by the troubling, soundings, and yearnings of his bowels towards them; see Jeremiah 31:20; with which compare Lamentations 1:20;

my repentings are kindled together; not that repentance properly belongs to God, who is neither man, nor the Son of Man, that he should repent of anything, Numbers 23:19; he repents not of his love to his people, nor of his choice of them, nor of his covenant with them, nor of his special gifts and grace bestowed on them; but he sometimes does what men do when they repent, he changes his outward conduct and behaviour in the dispensations of his providence, and acts the reverse of what he had done, or seemed to be about to do; as, with respect to the old world, the making of Saul king, and the case of the Ninevites, Genesis 6:6; so here, though he could, and seemed as if he would, go forth in a way of strict justice, yet changes his course, and steers another way, without any change of his will. The phrase expresses the warmth and ardour of his affections to his people; how his heart burned with love to them, his bowels and inward parts were inflamed with it; from whence proceeded what is called repentance among men, as in the case of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 20:9. The Targum is,

"the word of my covenant met me; my mercies (or bowels of mercies) were rolled together.''

(e) "quam juste et misere desolatum te dabo? dare jure deberem et possem?" Schmidt. So Luther and Tarnovius.

They deserved to be utterly destroyed for this, and would have been if the compassion of God had not prevented it. With this turn a transition is made in Hosea 11:8 from threatening to promise. Hosea 11:8. "How could I give thee up, O Ephraim! surrender thee, O Israel! how could I give thee up like Admah, make thee like Zeboim! My heart has changed within me, my compassion is excited all at once. Hosea 11:9. I will not execute the burning heat of my wrath, I will not destroy Ephraim again: for I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee: and come not into burning wrath." "How thoroughly could I give thee up!" sc. if I were to punish thy rebellion as it deserved. Nâthan, to surrender to the power of the enemy, like miggēn in Genesis 14:20. And not that alone, but I could utterly destroy thee, like Admah and Zeboim, the two cities of the valley of Siddim, which were destroyed by fire from heaven along with Sodom and Gomorrha. Compare Deuteronomy 29:22, where Admah and Zeboim are expressly mentioned along with the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha, which stand alone in Genesis 19:24. With evident reference to this passage, in which Moses threatens idolatrous Israel with the same punishment, Hosea simply mentions the last two as quite sufficient for his purpose, whereas Sodom and Gomorrha are generally mentioned in other passages (Jeremiah 49:18; cf. Matthew 10:15; Luke 10:12). The promise that God will show compassion is appended here, without any adversative particle. My heart has turned, changed in me (על, lit., upon or with me, as in the similar phrases in 1 Samuel 25:36; Jeremiah 8:18). יחד נכמרוּ, in a body have my feelings of compassion gathered themselves together, i.e., my whole compassion is excited. Compare Genesis 43:30 and 1 Kings 3:26, where, instead of the abstract nichūmı̄m, we find the more definite rachămı̄m, the bowels as the seat of the emotions. עשׂה חרון אף, to carry out wrath, to execute it as judgment (as in 1 Samuel 28:18). In the expression לא אשׁוּב לשׁחת, I will not return to destroy, שׁוּב may be explained from the previous נהפּך לבּי. After the heart of God has changed, it will not return to wrath, to destroy Ephraim; for Jehovah is God, who does not alter His purposes like a man (cf. 1 Samuel 15:29; Numbers 23:19; Malachi 3:6), and He shows Himself in Israel as the Holy One, i.e., the absolutely pure and perfect one, in whom there is no alternation of light and darkness, and therefore no variableness in His decrees (see at Exodus 19:6; Isaiah 6:3). The difficult expression בּעיר cannot mean "into a city," although it is so rendered by the ancient versions, the Rabbins, and many Christian expositors; for we cannot attach any meaning to the words "I do not come into a city" at all in harmony with the context. עיר signifies here aestus irae, the heat of wrath, from עוּר, effervescere, just as in Jeremiah 15:8 it signifies the heat of alarm and anxiety, aestus animi.

{f} How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as {g} Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, {h} my repentings are kindled together.

(f) God considers with himself, and that with a certain grief, how to punish them.

(g) Which were two of the cities that were destroyed with Sodom; De 29:23.

(h) Meaning that his love with which he first loved them positioned him between doubt and assurance in terms of what to do: and in this appears his Fatherly affection, that his mercy toward his own will overcome his judgments, as he declares in the next verse.

11:8 Give thee up - To utter destruction. Admah and Zeboim were two of the four cities which were destroyed with fire from heaven. My repentings - Not that God is ever fluctuating or unresolved; but these are expressions after the manner of men, to shew what severity Israel had deserved, and yet how divine grace would be glorified in sparing them.

Margin repentings

See Scofield Note: "Zech 8:14".

8. as Admah . Zeboim-among the cities, including Sodom and Gomorrah, irretrievably overthrown (De 29:23).

heart is turned within me-with the deepest compassion, so as not to execute My threat (La 1:20; compare Ge 43:30; 1Ki 3:26). So the phrase is used of a new turn given to the feeling (Ps 105:25).

repentings-God speaks according to human modes of thought (Nu 23:19). God's seeming change is in accordance with His secret everlasting purpose of love to His people, to magnify His grace after their desperate rebellion.

11:8-12 God is slow to anger, and is loth to abandon a people to utter ruin, who have been called by his name. When God was to give a sacrifice for sin, and a Saviour for sinners, he spared not his own Son, that he might spare us. This is the language of the day of his patience; but when men sin that away, then the great day of his wrath comes. Man's compassions are nothing in comparison with the tender mercies of our God, whose thoughts and ways, in receiving returning sinners, are as much above ours as heaven is above the earth. God knows how to pardon poor sinners. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and therein declares his righteousness, now Christ has purchased the pardon, and he has promised it. Holy trembling at the word of Christ will draw us to him, not drive us from him, the children tremble, and flee to him. And all that come at the gospel call, shall have a place and a name in the gospel church. The religious service of Israel were mere hypocrisy, but in Judah regard was had to God's laws, and the people followed their pious forefathers. Let us be faithful: those who thus honour God, he will honour, but such us despise Him shall be lightly esteemed.