Return, O Israel, to Jehovah thy God, for thou hast stumbled by thine iniquity. Take with you words[656] and return unto Jehovah. Say unto Him, Remove iniquity altogether, and take good, so will we render the calves[657] of our lips; confessions, vows, these are the sacrificial offerings God delights in. Which vows are now registered:—
Asshur shall not save us;
We will not ride upon horses (from Egypt);
And we will say no more, "O our God," to the work of our hands:
For in Thee the fatherless findeth a father's pity.
Alien help, whether in the protection of Assyria or the cavalry which Pharaoh sends in return for Israel's homage; alien gods, whose idols we have ourselves made,—we abjure them all, for we remember how Thou didst promise to show a father's love to the people whom Thou didst name, for their mother's sins, Lo-Ruhamah, the Unfathered. Then God replies:—
I will heal their backsliding,
I will love them freely:
For Mine anger is turned away from them.
I will be as the dew unto Israel:
He shall blossom as the lily,
And strike his roots deep as Lebanon;
His branches shall spread,
And his beauty shall be as the olive-tree,
And his smell as Lebanon—
smell of clear mountain air with the scent of the pines upon it. The figure in the end of ver. 6 seems forced to some critics, who have proposed various emendations, such as "like the fast-rooted trees of Lebanon,"[658] but any one who has seen how the mountain himself rises from great roots, cast out across the land like those of some giant oak, will not feel it necessary to mitigate the metaphor.
The prophet now speaks:—
They shall return and dwell in His shadow.
They shall live well-watered as a garden,
Till they flourish like the vine,
And be fragrant like the wine of Lebanon.[659]
God speaks:—