[476] ii. 13.

[477] ii. 5, 13.

[478] ii. 5.

[479] See above, p. [235].

[480] The participle Qal, used by God of Himself in His proclamations of grace or of punishment, has in this passage (cf. ver. 16) and elsewhere (especially in Deuteronomy) the force of an immediate future.

[481] So LXX.; Mass. Text, thy.

[482] The reading גְּדֵרָהּ is more probable than גְּדֵרָה.

[483] Or they made it into a Ba'al image. So Ew., Hitz., Nowack. But Wellhausen omits the clause.

[484] Wellhausen thinks that up to ver. 14 only physical calamities are meant, but the הצלתו of ver. 11, as well as others of the terms used, imply not the blighting of crops before their season, but the carrying of them away in their season, when they had fully ripened, by invaders. The cessation of all worship points to the removal of the people from their land, which is also implied, of course, by the promise that they shall be sown again in ver. 23.

[485] Cf. Isa. xl. 1: which to the same exiled Israel is the fulfilment of the promise made by Hosea. See Isaiah XL.-LXVI. (Expositor's Bible), pp. 75 ff.