Hosea 5:12

Therefore [will] I [be] unto Ephraim as a moth,.... Which eats garments, penetrates into them, feeds on them privately, secretly, without any noise, and gradually and slowly consumes them; but at

Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth - consuming a garment (Job 13:28; Psalms 39:11; Isaiah 50:9).

Therefore, or And, Heb. I will be; I am; it is concise in the Hebrew, and might be thus expressed, But, or And, as for me, I am, and will be, to the ten tribes. As a moth: moths do leisurely eat up and mar our clothes; so God was then, and had been from Jeroboam’ s death to this day, weakening the ten tribes; their seditions did eat them up. And to the house of Judah; the two tribes, who now with Ahaz did, as Ephraim, cast God off. As rottenness; shall secretly consume and rot as wood doth by worms; so God will punish both Israel and Judah, these shall be forerunners and preparatories to the final desolation of both; of the one by Assyria, and of the other by Babylon.

Hosea 5:12 Therefore [will] I [be] unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.Ver. 12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth] Their sin was the greater because they were so willing to it, and so easily drawn to idolatry, as most agreeable to their nature, and making much of their ease; which was Jeroboam’ s main argument. It may very well be that he threatened punishment to those that disobeyed his commandment: but here they should have stood out, and have bid the worst; choosing affliction rather than sin; which because they did not, therefore they should perish by their own hand and counsels; they shall be moth-eaten, as a garment that breedeth the moth, and as a tree that breedeth the worm that wasteth it. Not but that God had a special hand in their punishment; and this not permissive only, but active too: "I will be unto Ephraim," &c. For is there evil in a city and he hath not done it? The changes and periods of kingdoms are of him, Psalms 75:6-7, that men may know that the heavens do rule, Daniel 4:26; so are the alterations in men’ s bodies and estates, as Job setteth it forth, Job 4:19; Job 13:28; Job 27:18. Every one (say some chemists) hath his own balsam within him; his own bane it is sure he hath; his clay cottage is every day ready to drop on his head, 2 Corinthians 5:1. And for his estate, there are often times secret issues and drains of expense, at the which it runs out, as at a hole in the bottom of the bag, Haggai 1:6. Howbeit God’ s holy hand is in all this; "I will be unto Ephraim as a moth," &c., that is, I will waste them sensim, sine sensu. Secretly, insensitively, slowly; but surely, and inevitably: this David after Job, acknowledgeth: Psalms 39:11, "When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth," thou castest him into a corruptio totius substantive, as the physicians call the hectic: "Surely every man is vanity. Selah." Yea, he is "altogether vanity"; yea, and that in his best estate, when he is best underlaid, when settled on his best bottom, Hosea 5:5; when he is gotten upon his mount with David, and thinks to die in his nest with Job; when he counts upon much good laid up in store for many years, as that rich fool, that reckoned without his host, as we say, Psalms 30:7 Job 29:18 Luke 12:19. Tinea damnum facit, et sonitum non facit, saith Gregory. The moth maketh no noise, but doth a great deal of harm among clothes. The worm here, rendered rottenness, is minutissimus vermiculus, saith Luther here, a very small creature, but doth no small mischief, ( teredo), for it eats out the heart of the strongest wood, yea, of the strongest oaken planks at sea.

(12) Rottenness.—The Authorised version is right in this rendering (the disease caries) rather than worm (margin). Both images express concealed causes of irreparable destruction which come suddenly to view when it is too late.

Verse 12. Unto Ephraim as a moth] I will consume them by little and little, as a moth frets a garment.

12. Therefore will I be …] Rather, And as for me, I am, &c. The same two figures are of frequent occurrence; they are combined again in Job 13:28. A gradual inward corruption was destroying the two Israelitish states quite as effectually as a foreign conquest. Anarchy and civil war combined with a retrograde religion and a lax morality to bring northern Israel in particular to the verge of ruin. Elsewhere Hosea describes its condition as a living death (Hosea 13:1).

Therefore I will be unto Ephraim a moth - Literally, “and I as a moth.” This form of speaking expresses what God was doing, while Ephraim was “willingly following” sin.

9. The alarm may indeed be given, for Ephraim is doomed. Day of rebuke — Of judgment. Tribes of Israel — The northern tribes only. Among — Perhaps better, concerning, or with regard to.