Footnote 5: That the carrying away of Judah, which is here supposed, is a total and future one, and not, as _Hofmann_ (_Weiss. u. Erf._ i. S. 210) asserts, one which is partial and already past (Joel iv. [iii.] 2-8; Amos i. 6, 9), appears from the analogy of the children of Israel,--from the reference to the type of the Egyptian conditions,--from a comparison of chap. v. 5, 12, xii. 1-3,--from the fact that the carrying away is placed in the view of the _whole people_ as early as in the Pentateuch, _e.g._, Deut. xxviii. 36, iv. 26, 27,--and, finally, from the fact, that the other prophets also, even from the most ancient times, manifest a clear knowledge of the catastrophe which threatened Judah also; compare, _e.g._, Amos ii. 4, 5. Moreover, in Is. xi. 11, 12, also, the return of Judah is prophesied, although no express announcement of the carrying away precedes. In like manner, in Amos ix. 11, the restoration of the fallen tabernacle of David is foretold, although no express mention is made of its fall. CHAP. II. 4-25 (2-23). "The significant couple"--_Rückert_ remarks--"disappears in the thing signified by it; Israel itself appears as the wife of whoredoms." This is the only essential difference between this and the preceding sections; and it is the less marked, because even there, in the last part of it, the symbolical action passed over into a mere figure. With this exception, this section also contains the alternation of punishment and threatening, and of promise,--the latter beginning with ver. 16 (14). The features of the image, which were less attended to in the preceding portion, but are here more carefully portrayed, are the rejection of the unfaithful wife, and her gradual restoration. _Calvin_ says: "After God has laid open their sins before men. He adds some consolation, and tempers the severity, lest they should despair. But then He returns again to threatenings, and He must do so necessarily; for though men may have been terrified by the fear of punishment, yet they do not recover, and become wise for ever." "By a new impetus as it were," says _Manger_, "he suddenly returns to expand the same argument, and sets out again from things more sad." Ver. 4. "_Contend with your mother, contend; for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband: and let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adultery from her breasts._"