EXPOSITION
This chapter deals with the punishment of apostasy. Once more the sins of the northern kingdom are enumerated and its approaching fall predicted. There is a close connection between the verses in the first section of the chapter. That connection is as follows: The first verse begins with an exclamation containing Jehovah's command to the prophet to act as his herald, putting the trumpet to his mouth and sounding the alarm about coming calamity. In the second clause of the same verse the nature of the calamity is announced. In the third and last clause of it the cause of the calamity is declared. The second verse represents Israel in their extremity crying to God for deliverance; the cry is very earnest, and proceeds from every member of the community, backed also with the assertion of their acquaintance with Jehovah. In the third verse Jehovah rejects their cry and refuses to interpose between them and the enemy, because their knowledge of him was merely historical and neither spiritual nor practical, as their dislike of what was good continued unabated. The fourth verse specifies facts in proof of Israel's renunciation of Jehovah. The fifth verse shows a just retribution, for, inasmuch as Israel disliked what was good, the object of their idolatry has disgusted Jehovah or cast them off. The sixth verse contains the doom of this silly, sinful, and disgusting idol. In the seventh verse the threat of such destruction is accounted for on a broad principle taken from agricultural life, that the harvest will correspond to the seed sown; and so Israel shall reap the fruit of their ungodliness.