HOLY BIBLE: Hosea 10 (original) (raw)

[1] This verse is more easily understood if we suppose (as is most likely) that the Israelites were not clear in their own minds whether the hill-shrines, etc. were devoted to the worship of the true God or not.

[2] Literally, ‘For now they will be saying, We have no king, because we do not fear God; what will the king do to (or, for) us? For now they speak perjured words in making a treaty; therefore judgement springs up in their furrows like hemlock’. It is hard to feel certain about the meaning or bearing of the passage.

[3] ‘Calf’; so the Septuagint Greek. The Hebrew text, like the Latin version, gives ‘heifers’, followed by a masculine singular pronoun in the rest of the sentence.

[4] Cf. 9.9 above. Here, as there, some think the reference is to Jg. 20; but it may easily be to some incident not elsewhere recorded.

[5] The last part of this verse is usually translated, ‘Juda shall plough, and Jacob shall break the clods for himself’. But the expression ‘for himself’ seems curiously inappropriate.

[6] The verb used in the Hebrew text may mean either ‘rain down’ or ‘teach’.

[7] ‘Shameful furrows’; it can hardly be a coincidence that the Hebrew verb used can mean either ‘ploughing’ or ‘carving images’.

[8] According to the Hebrew text ‘as Salman (quite differently spelt) destroyed Beth-arbel’, an event not elsewhere alluded to.

Knox Translation Copyright © 2013 Westminster Diocese
Nihil Obstat. Father Anton Cowan, Censor.
Imprimatur. +Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster. 8th January 2012.
Re-typeset and published in 2012 by Baronius Press Ltd