I Am Yahweh Your God from Egypt
1 When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling. He exalted himself in Israel, but when he became guilty through Baal, he died. 2 Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, ‘They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.’ 3 Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the dew that passes away early, like the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing floor, and like the smoke out of the chimney. 4 “Yet I am Yahweh your God from the land of Egypt; and you shall acknowledge no god but me, and besides me there is no savior. 5 I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. 6 According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted. Therefore they have forgotten me. 7 Therefore I am like a lion to them. Like a leopard, I will lurk by the path. 8 I will meet them like a bear that is bereaved of her cubs, and will tear the covering of their heart. There I will devour them like a lioness. The wild animal will tear them.
Four images of vanishing are followed by the confession the book wanted, and then by four predators.
Verse 1 gives a life in one line: Ephraim spoke and there was trembling, he exalted himself — but when he became guilty through Baal, he died.
Verse 3 stacks four images of things that do not last: the morning mist, the dew that passes away early — repeating the verdict on their love in chapter 6 Hosea 6:4 — the chaff driven with the whirlwind, and the smoke out of the chimney. Each is visible and each is already leaving.
Then verse 4, and it is the sentence the whole book has been trying to produce: I am Yahweh your God from the land of Egypt; and you shall acknowledge no god but me, and besides me there is no savior.
That is the first commandment in the mouth of the God who gave it, and the last clause states the exclusivity as a fact about supply rather than a demand for loyalty. There is no other savior — not do not use one.
Verses 5 and 6 give the history that should have secured it and the mechanism that lost it. I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought — the knowledge word again, God's this time. Then: according to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted. Therefore they have forgotten me.
That is the book's theory of prosperity in one verse. Not that wealth is wicked, but that being filled produces height, and height produces forgetting. Chapter 8 said the same of palaces Hosea 8:14.
And verses 7 and 8 answer with four animals: a lion, a leopard lurking by the path, a bear bereaved of her cubs, a lioness. The bear is the worst of them, and it is the only one whose motive is grief.
settled What this mark means