Lesson 13 Ch7 Ch8

THE BOOK OF HOSEA

Lesson 13, Chapters 7 and 8

Last time we met, we moved into the 4th and final segment of Hosea chapter 7 that begins with verse 13. This segment speaks of divine punishment against the political government of Israel and the destruction of Ephraim/Israel (the Northern Kingdom) as a nation.

Verse 13 begins with the word “woe”. Biblically, “woe” is nearly exclusively used to announce God’s judgment (that’s how it is used here). Why God is bringing down woe upon Israel is spoken in broad terms in the final words of verse 14: “They turn away from Me”. That broader context is best understood from an earlier chapter and verse: 4:10 – 11. There the crime of Israel against Yehoveh is defined as Israel having abandoned Him in order to cultivate adultery. In this instance adultery is meant in 2 ways: first, indeed the men and women of Ephraim Israel have become so confused in their religion, morality and beliefs that adultery (as well as prostitution) have become commonplace (as demonstrated with Gomer), and second, it serves to double as adulterous behavior of Israel towards God… meaning idolatry. So, here is the equation: as human sexual adultery is to religious spiritual idolatry towards God, so is general human immorality to religious spiritual apostacy towards God. And just to be clear: just as unmarried humans cannot commit sexual adultery between themselves, neither can pagans commit spiritual apostacy towards God. Only in what was a supposed-to-be faithful partnership of a married man to a woman can adultery occur, and only in what was a supposed-to-be faithful partnership with God can apostacy occur. I hope you can see this. Job speaks of this equation similarly.

CJB Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of 'Utz whose name was Iyov. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

To fear God (a spiritual relationship) is to shun evil (immoral human behavior). Fearing God and immoral human behavior (evil) are mutually exclusive in God’s economy.

Hosea 7:15 reads:

CJB Hosea 7:15 It was I who trained and strengthened their arms, yet they plot evil against me.

Probably more parents than not have either quietly thought, or perhaps openly expressed, this same thought. It was God who, in love and patience, trained up Israel. This must allude to a time when God began His training of Israel as the Angel of the Lord wrestled with Jacob, dislocating his hip, and then giving Jacob a new name: Israel. From there Jacob (Israel) fathered 12 sons (and at least 1 daughter that we know of… probably more), and those 12 sons became the 12 tribes of Israel. They were sent to Egypt where more training occurred, and then God delivered them from that increasingly oppressive situation, gave Israel their own land, and gave them the Torah (including the 10 Commandments and all the Law of Moses). The training continued as journeyed through the wilderness, then entered the Promised Land, as God taught them through both favor and discipline His character and His ways. In doing this Israel was strengthened just as a child would be. But now, centuries later, what has this resulted in? Israel has rebelled and turned away from God and plots evil against Him. How does anyone plot evil against God? By seeking after other gods… idolatry… but also by abandoning His laws and commands in exchange for manmade doctrines and rules; that is, they apostatize from Him.

CJB Hosea 7:16 They return, but not upward; they are like an unreliable bow. Their leaders will die by the sword because of their angry talk. They will become a laughingstock in the land of Egypt.

The first few words are a little ambiguous but I don’t think that hard to figure out. The KJV has rendered it: “They return, but not to the Most High”. Now, the words “Most High” are not there in the Hebrew or Greek manuscripts. So, what is happening is that the KJV translator assumed that this was referring to God (as do I), and so added in those words to try to bring clarity. What is being said prophetically is that soon Israel will come into dire straits, and then they will run to the Baals and their gentile neighbors as the solutions to their problems. They make the mistake of not turning to Yehoveh… instead they just double down on their own misguided human efforts. Israel is compared to an unreliable bow; sometimes it works like it should, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it aims straight; sometimes it doesn’t and so misses the mark.

The next phrase in verse 16 is best rendered by the NAS Bible version.

NAS Hosea 7:16 Their princes will fall by the sword Because of the insolence of their tongue. This will be their derision in the land of Egypt.

It’s not really the anger of Israel’s leadership’s words as it is their insolence in beseeching pagan gods and pagan nations rather than the God of Israel. Hosea relays to Israel that the result of this is that they are going to go running to Egypt (after Assyria has laid them low), and the Egyptian people and government may take them in but they will be seen as a laughingstock for their folly. What was once a great nation, is now humiliated and dissolved… and their God did this to them.

Let’s move on to chapter 8.

READ HOSEA CHAPTER 8 all

I see Hosea chapter 8 as one of the most hard hitting, and at the same time the most concise and comprehensive, oracles on what Israel is about to experience (and why) of the entire book. Some scholars claim that perhaps chapter 8… all of it… is a late addition and was never there in the original. Again, it’s primarily the style of writing that is questioned (plus the disbelief that prophetic prediction actually exists), and therefore it raises their suspicion that it was written by another hand. This ignores the practical reality that Hosea wrote this in segments (at the same pace, no doubt, as He received these several oracles from God), over a time frame of 35 years. Let me put that in perspective. It would be as though you began writing something in 1987, and did so in segments, not finally concluding it until 2022. Looking back at my own writings, I don’t sound the same as I did 25 years ago. Over that time, I’d like to think that I refined my style, or at least altered it a bit, and I also had many revelations from God along the way that resulted in changing my mind on a few things. Perhaps also changing the way I thought about a subject and thus choosing my words and conclusions more carefully. So, there’s no good reason to exclude chapter 8 as not authentic. That said, because the book in general has come down to us in pretty poor condition, trying to translate it as honestly and accurately as possible is most challenging.

I want to also add (as I do from time to time) a comment about translating. We must always remember that many different people in a number of different locations… including multiple nations… over a period of hundreds of years…hand copied these hundreds of thousands of words of the Old Testament. Further, mistakes to individual letters within a word happened. Some Hebrew letters look very much the same, such that they have become well known moments of error called dittography. The dalet and the reysh, the mem and the samech, and a few other combinations regularly were copied incorrectly because they can appear almost identical. A letter can accidentally be dropped or repeated. Sometimes the final letter of a word is transferred to the first letter of the next word. And then it happens that once that kind of error occurs, it can itself get re-copied and repeated, so the error becomes embedded in the later texts. Jewish language scholars long ago began to detect some of the more obvious errors and corrected them. However, there are times when even they missed them or they guessed wrong, often inserting their own doctrinal worldview.

Then we have the issue that more and more Hebrew language scholars are finally coming to acknowledge; the Bible is full of ancient expressions, some of which we’re not entirely sure of what meaning they’re trying to impart. An expression occurs when the meaning of the sum of the words of a quote is quite different than its several parts. Example: don’t let the cat out of the bag. We all know what that means (don’t divulge a secret). But what has any of that to do with cats or bags? Nothing; it’s just an expression. So, when it comes to understanding the Bible we have to be careful of how we define “literal”. Taking the term literal as meaning: “as it was intended by the author, in the original (none of which do we have) in the context of his language, time and culture” is probably the best approach rather than taking literal to mean a word-for-word translation. Hosea is full of expressions, and is a constant revolving door of new metaphors. It also intersperses history with symbolism, and employs several literary techniques unique to the language or at least to the range of Semitic languages (to which Hebrew is related). Couple that with the state of disrepair of the oldest extant manuscripts for Hosea and the challenge becomes even greater. We’ll do as best we can to extract the meaning, and I’ll alert you when there could be multiple possibilities.

Immediately in verse 1 we are confronted with the situation I just raised. The CJB is in general agreement with most standard English Bible versions. However, an alternative opening is proposed by a few modern scholars: “God waits like a young lion… Yehoveh like an eagle over the house…” In addition to the bad repair of the individual words themselves, in the old Greek manuscripts when the words are translated strictly word-for-word what it literally says is: “to their bosoms like the earth”. This makes no sense; it doesn’t correspond to any known expression, and it doesn’t seem to fit the context. So, some translators try to make more sense of it by employing metaphors and similes that have been previously used in Hosea, even if it is hard to make the text support it. Obviously the Greek version has something wrong with it that has been transmitted down to us incorrectly. Another very interesting attempt to restore verse 1 is Ginsberg’s. He says it should read: “Put a Ram’s horn to your mouth addressing the House of Israel”. His reason for this translation is actually quite ingenious. Bear with me; I won’t get into all the technical details but here’s the Reader’s Digest version that involves both an ancient Hebrew expression and a fairly clear copyist error. In the part that reads “like an eagle (or a vulture) over the house of Yehoveh”, Ginsberg sees that a copyist accidentally moved the final letter of a word to the first letter of the word that immediately followed it, such that when that letter is moved back where it belongs then the meaning becomes clearer. Further that the Hebrew phrase al bet Yehoveh (meaning, over the Temple of Yehoveh) is a misinterpretation of al bet (and then a final yod), because the insertion of the final yod was an abbreviation for the word Yisrael (Israel) that was standard for that era. I promise we won’t go over every phrase in this much detail, but I wanted to give you a real example to begin Hosea chapter 8 of what modern Hebrew language scholars are beginning to discover and realize, and how much this can help us to reach a proper interpretation. So, going with Ginsberg’s solution, then what is being meant? What does it mean to put a Ram’s horn to the mouth?

A careful study of Hosea and Isaiah reveals that one had a great influence on the other (probably Hosea over Isaiah). So, we find this similar thought in Isaiah 58.

CJB Isaiah 58:1 Shout out loud! Don't hold back! Raise your voice like a shofar! Proclaim to my people what rebels they are, to the house of Ya'akov their sins.

We are meant to understand Hosea 8:1, then, somewhat like this: “Prophet! Cry out with your mouth like it’s a Ram’s horn (a shofar), like an eagle over the House of Israel”. A shofar was regularly used to sound a warning, because it could be heard for some distance. So, the Prophet Hosea was to be very bold in spreading this series of oracles against Israel, as a grave and urgent warning. The word translated in some Bibles as eagle and others as vulture is nesher. It can mean eagle or vulture, depending on the use. Likely because the loud, ominous screeching of an eagle can startle, that is what is meant. But, it is not impossible that it could also have meant a vulture feeding on the carcasses of dead Israelites.

I will pause, now, to both explain and implore because it is so much on my heart. I’ve attempted to draw a distinct and unmistakable parallel between Hosea’s era and the current era of the world in this first dozen lessons because we need to open our eyes to understand where it certainly appears we may be in Redemption history. If we are, indeed, but an eyelash in time away from entering the End Times, then what Hosea is told to prophesy to Israel looks very much like what Revelation and some of Christ’s words in the Gospels say to the Church about what the End Times will look like, and why God has chosen to finally bring the full weight of His wrath upon us. The thing is, we ought to expect the world to look like it does… because it’s the world! Pagans (the vast majority of this planet’s inhabitants) are going to behave as pagans (no surprise there). Notice that in Hosea, however, that God is not dressing down and warning pagans (the gentile nations); rather this threatening and judgment is all being directed to His own set-apart people. It’s those who claim allegiance to Him that have the biggest problem with Him, and the most to lose (you can’t lose what you never had). Bringing this forward, then, it is most fair to apply this same message to address the Church as a religious institution and to address Believers as individuals. After all, for centuries the Church has claimed to have replaced Israel (something I deny is the case). So, does that mean that along with God’s blessings, the Church will also suffer God’s curses and wrath? Much of the Church says “no”; we only get the blessings… Israel gets to keep the curses.

Nonetheless, Christianity willingly accepts the mantle of being God’s mouthpiece on earth… even His shofar (if you would). So, in that very narrow sense we are to act as prophets. We much prefer to shout out the Good News, don’t we, rather than speak about the other side of the coin, because if we do we’re a little afraid that we’ll look like nuts. But we’re divinely called to be the prophets of God’s warnings as well. When we look at what happened to the Old Testament biblical Prophets as a reward for shouting the warnings, it’s no wonder most Believers don’t want the job. Fellow Believers, if the world (and the Church) isn’t in bad enough shape, yet, to get you to notice, and to stand up and be counted, then I doubt nothing will ever motivate you to do what God has commanded us all to do. As a community of Believers, we must take the truth… the beauty and the ugliness… to the Church FIRST just as God did with His Prophets. Just as the opening chapters of Revelation did to the representative 7 Churches of Asia.

I can say with some confidence that while the accusations God was making to Israel applied to every Israelite, there, of course, were those exceptions who remained faithful to the orthodox Hebrew faith of Yehoveh. In America, we have the cultural proverb of “if the shoe fits, wear it” meaning that if it applies to you, take heed (also implying that if it doesn’t apply to you, then forget I ever said it). Apparently no one (or perhaps only a few) in Ephraim/Israel thought this warning applied to them. Who, me (they thought)? What do you mean, God, that You won’t accept my worship? You don’t really mean that just because I also worship Baal that I also can’t properly worship You? By doing this, I’m obeying you by “loving my neighbor”. What could be wrong with love? My religious leaders had these wonderful images of You made and set-up, and scores of worship sites as well, and since they’re the experts they must be right. Besides; everyone else is doing it, and it sure seems OK to me. After all we’ve remained quite prosperous, which can only be a sign from Heaven that You approve. All I’m doing in these remarks is taking from the Book of Hosea. But how easily that can (and does) apply to our Judeo-Christian religious institutions and to so many Believers at large. Do you know anyone who thinks they are committing apostacy? Anyone who thinks that whatever it is they and their particular Church believe, could possibly be in error? Well, the mere fact of 3000 plus Christian denominations says that they can’t all be right.

Israel did what they did because they had been doing it for a long time; it had become the norm…their way of life. Generations had been raised only knowing one way; the way it currently was. So, any thought of challenging the status quo was quickly put down by the majority (that’s what happened to the biblical Prophets). You, I, all of us have a duty… not an option… to be God’s shofar not so much to the world as to our fellow Believers. Will this win you popularity contests? Will people line up to thank you? Unlikely. And, of course, you will be accused of Church-bashing, wanting Christians to give up Christ and turn to Judaism, or of just plain disturbing the peace of the Church and being unkind to your Believing brothers and sisters. Maybe you’ll be seen as a know-it-all. After all, you’re such a minority, clearly the majority must have it right and you’re wrong. Again; this is everything that God’s Prophets suffered, and were told, when taking God’s warning to their own people.

The verdict? Get up and be counted. When you hear someone speaking nonsense about morality (in whatever form), or some seriously flawed manmade doctrine, try to inject your voice. Don’t be afraid; God is with those who are doing His work, even if it might result in some discomfort. Count on Him, and not on your own persuasive power. Tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. OK; speech over.

Verse 1 concludes with what the source of Israel’s wickedness is; they rebelled against God’s covenant (here meaning the Torah), and more specifically against God’s Law (the Law of Moses). Here’s the thing: prior to Moses and Mt. Sinai, it is defensible that Israel could claim they didn’t know what God wanted of them or what pleased Him. But, at Mt. Sinai, God’s laws and commands were given in specifics and Moses ordered to write them down, and for all Israel to be taught them. Moreover, they were also warned what would happen if the commands that were now openly known to them were violated.

CJB Deuteronomy 30:15-20 15 "Look! I am presenting you today with, on the one hand, life and good; and on the other, death and evil- 16 in that I am ordering you today to love ADONAI your God, to follow his ways, and to obey his mitzvot, regulations and rulings; for if you do, you will live and increase your numbers; and ADONAI your God will bless you in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, if you refuse to listen, if you are drawn away to prostrate yourselves before other gods and serve them; 18 I am announcing to you today that you will certainly perish; you will not live long in the land you are crossing the Yarden to enter and possess. 19 "I call on heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have presented you with life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, so that you will live, you and your descendants, 20 loving ADONAI your God, paying attention to what he says and clinging to him- for that is the purpose of your life! On this depends the length of time you will live in the land ADONAI swore he would give to your ancestors Avraham, Yitz'chak and Ya'akov."

I called on you for boldness, so I must do no less. Church, do you seriously think that this doesn’t apply to you? That the Torah and the Law of Moses, it’s blessings and its curses, are only for another people… if anyone at all? According to Christ that’s not the case. I know that most of you have been taught that the Law is no longer for you to obey; but the fact is that you’ve been taught something that isn’t true. I was taught the same. Only by God’s grace did He open my mind to accept that and to seek Him as He wants to be sought. It was a very humbling experience. This untruth was an intentional perpetration for the sake of a few ambitious gentiles long ago wresting control of the growing Jesus movement away from the Jews (where it began). This new religion… a re-shaped gentiles-only religion…happily sanctioned and championed by Emperor Constantine… represented power and opportunity for the elite. By early in the 4th century every element of the true orthodox biblically grounded faith, other than for Yeshua as the Messiah, was disposed of by the now powerful Roman Church. Jesus was given a new character and purpose; the Father was retired and the Torah and the Old Testament along with Him. The Church didn’t lose its way; it was intentionally guided off course, in order to satisfy the agendas of men, just as it was for Ephraim/Israel.

I suppose this is why I have a true soft spot in my heart for ancient Israel. It is so easy to retain and rely on an incorrect belief when that’s all you know, and it’s not so easy to change. By Hosea’s time I doubt the priests knew any better; they simply taught what they had been taught. Does that let priests or the common people off the hook? Goodness no! God tells them that the truth…the Torah… was right there for them to see, study, and learn… it was given to them in writing… but they chose not to know. They preferred what men had created.

Verse 2 has Israel pleading with God. After so many decades of unfaithfulness and false worship, Israel is now experiencing an imploding economy and is under threat from the north and the south; so, they reverse course and cry out to God. They claim their devotion to Him. Most Bible historians think this prophetic utterance finally came to pass about 733 B.C., when Assyria made its major incursion of conquest. It was usual when a large nation or empire invaded a country, it would take more than one time to finally completely conquer an adversary. There were only a few months per year when the weather was favorable, and supplying an expeditionary force was complicated and subject to so many variables. So, Assyria made 2 or 3 thrusts into Ephraim/Israel before Samaria, the capital of Israel, finally fell.

Israel’s sudden change of heart was ingenuous and hypocritical. Nothing indicates that they had changed their ways; they merely intensified their worship. The NAS does a better job with this verse.

NAS Hosea 8:2 They cry out to Me, "My God, we of Israel know Thee!"

The Hebrew word translated as “know” is yada. It doesn’t mean as modern English most often uses the word “know”. That is, as being aware of something or having information about something. In ancient Hebrew it meant to be in full allegiance, or to have an intimate relationship, with someone. In marriage, in the Hebrew culture, for a man to know his wife meant to have intimate relations with her. So, Israel’s claim went beyond the hypocritical to the absurd. Israel had long ago lost their intimate relationship with Yehoveh; they were just too blind and too busy with their lives to notice what they had done.

Verse 3 begins, “Israel has rejected what is good”. In Hebrew the word tov means good. However, much like the word shalom doesn’t just mean peace or well-being but rather that the source of that peace or well-being is God; it works similarly with the word tov… good. Tov inherently leans towards a godly, moral, divinely inspired good. When we think of virtues, we think of things that are considered as good attributes by our society. However, biblically, if a virtue is defined as a good thing, then it can only be a godly thing. If it is not, then it is a virtue of human invention that in God’s eyes is no virtue at all.

Some translators say that this is to be interpreted: “Israel has rejected the Good One”. I only mention it because it is occasionally used that way, but there is no actual grammatical or textual case for it, and I’ve never heard it reasonably explained why some translate it that way.

The result of consciously rejecting the good, the tov, (God’s definition of right and morality) is that Israel’s enemy will chase them down. Clearly this is referring to Assyria.

In verse 4 Yehoveh continues His diatribe by specifying the trespasses (crimes, really) against the Covenant of Moses as regards the nation’s government, but also against the offensive religion that had been crafted. Essentially God is disavowing any sanction of the string of Israelite kings that have come and gone in rapid succession, usually through violence. There are some scholars that take this to mean that God is against the concept of Israel’s monarchy. Or that unless it is a Davidic king, no other monarch should be on the throne. This takes matters much too far and defies the overall message of the Torah and the Old Testament in general. The issue is not with the office of the monarch but rather who these men are and how they wound up on the throne. As Douglas Stuart puts it: “Yahweh alone determines who can be king either by charismatic gifts, or by direct revelation through a prophet. He gives kings to nations; they do not decide who their kings will be”.

In Torah Class lessons on others of the Bible books I have mentioned that all of Israel’s legitimate kings were considered “anointed ones” (Mashiach, Messiah), and they were also called Sons of God. The king of Israel was to be Yehoveh’s earthly agent, having an especially close relationship with Him, and was to operate specifically on Israel’s behalf. God would allow no one else the privilege to make such an important choice. But this divine choice of kings often extended to gentile nations as well (even though they were unaware of it). We get an example of this in 1Kings.

CJB 1 Kings 19:15-16 15 ADONAI said to him, "Go back by way of the Dammesek Desert. When you get there, anoint Haza'el to be king over Aram. 16 Also anoint Yehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Isra'el, and anoint Elisha the son of Shafat of Avel-M'cholah to be prophet after you.

So, kings were not to be the choice of the people. Perhaps this is the major flaw in the armor of democracy as we know it today. It is probably the best possible of all government systems currently in practice on earth, but God’s system involves His choice of an unelected, all-powerful king. I’d have to say that especially during the second half of my lifetime, our choice of government leaders hasn’t necessarily been the best. Greed, avarice, egotism and corruption of every kind eventually overtakes them all; the temptations of power are just too great. I’m sure thankful that perhaps Yeshua will soon return and we get back to the God appointed King, who rules justly, forever.

Yehoveh says that these leaders are made without His knowledge. This certainly doesn’t mean they were strangers to Him. We fall back to the word, yada, to explain. This speaks of allegiance and intimate relationship. Because God didn’t choose this king, then He held no intimate relationship with him, thus that king was doomed to failure.

In the second half of the verse, Israel’s idolatrous religion is assailed.

CJB Hosea 8:4 …With their silver and gold they make themselves idols, but these can lead only to their own destruction.

Probably the image Hosea, and most Israelites, would have in mind is those calf-gods that Jeroboam had fashioned long ago, and then set up in the main centers of worship located in Dan and in Beth-el. The Hebrew word usually translated here as idols is asabim. It might be most correct to interpret it as images rather than idols. This term is used 17 times in the Hebrew Bible and it always means images of people or animals. Jeroboam’s calf-gods, a mainstay of the religion of the Northern Kingdom, were an apostacy because it was exactly the sort of thing legislated against in the Covenant of Moses. We can read of when, exactly, these calf-gods happened in 1kings.

CJB 1 Kings 12:28-31 28 After seeking advice, the king made two calves of gold and said to the people, "You have been going up to Yerushalayim long enough! Here are your gods, Isra'el, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!" 29 He placed one in Beit-El and the other in Dan, 30 and the affair became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one [in Beit-El and] all the way to Dan [to worship the other]. 31 He also set up temples on the high places and made cohanim from among all the people, even though they were not descended from Levi.

In this we read not only of who did this terrible thing, but also why. King Jeroboam simply didn’t want His people taking their money and their offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem. Money and power were his motivation; it is little different in many religious organizations throughout the ages.

The KJV does a better job in translating the last few words of verse 4.

KJV Hosea 8:4 …of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.

Being cut-off is in Hebrew kareth. It is a term that means to be set apart (in a negative way) and isolated. An unclean person was kareth… although usually just for a few hours until they bathed and waited for the new day to begin. In this sense of it, the word kareth is much more ominous in tone. It means that God was cutting Israel off from Himself in the spiritual idea of it. However, from the mindset of a Middle Easterner of the 8th century B.C. (including Israel) it was part and parcel of what happens when being exiled from your land. Since the erroneous belief was that Yehoveh was Israel’s national god that had power only within the nation’s boundaries, then once scattered Israel was certainly cut-off from Him.

Verse 5 directly speaks of the calf-gods, and then tells Samaria that these will suffer destruction. Why Samaria if no calf-god existed there? Some scholars have postulated that perhaps one did exist there, although there is no record of such a thing. The better solution is to understand Samaria as the seat of government and religion in Ephraim/Israel and therefore as the power who orders worship of these calf-gods as Israel’s god. That is, Samaria was to Israel what London is to England, or Washington D.C. to the USA. So, whatever national policies that the people of the nation are to follow emanate from there. God says that His anger burns against those calf-gods. The final few words of this verse ask the rhetorical question:

CJB Hosea 8:5 …How long will it be until they are able to make themselves clean?

Literally this translates rather awkwardly as “until when, how long?” But the key to getting the gist of the question is the Hebrew term ad-matay that means “it is enough”. It could in modern English be rendered “Stop it!” Gruber says that the sense of it is this: “It is long enough that they (the Israelites of 8th century B.C. Samaria) behave as though they are incapable of purifying themselves from contamination by worship of these illegitimate calf images”.

We’ll end here for today and begin at verse 6, next time.