_And Ephraim is a broken-in heifer, that loveth to thresh._[586] _But I have come on her fair neck. I will yoke Ephraim; Judah must plough; Jacob must harrow for himself._ It is all very well for the unmuzzled beast[587] to love the threshing, but harder and unrewarded labours of ploughing and harrowing have to come before the floor be heaped with sheaves. Israel must not expect religious festival without religious discipline. _Sow for yourselves righteousness; then shall ye reap the fruit of God's leal love._[588] _Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek Jehovah, till He come and shower salvation_[589] _upon you._[590] _Ye have ploughed wickedness; disaster have ye reaped: ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood; for thou didst trust in thy chariots,_[591] _in the multitude of thy warriors. For the tumult_ of war _shall arise among thy tribes,_[592] _and all thy fenced cities shall be ruined, as Salman beat to ruin Beth-Arbel_[593] _in the day of war: the mother shall be broken on the children_--presumably the land shall fall with the falling of her cities. _Thus shall I do to you, O house of Israel,_[594] _because of the evil of your evil: soon shall the king of Israel be undone--undone._ The political decay of Israel, then, so deeply figured in all these chapters, must end in utter collapse. Let us sum up the gradual features of this decay: the substance of the people scattered abroad; the national spirit dissipated; the national prestige humbled; the kings mere puppets; the prophets corrupted; the national vigour sapped by impurity; the idolatry conscious of its impotence. FOOTNOTES: [537] See below, Chap. XXII. [538] See Chap. XXI. [539] Numb. xxiii. 9 _b_; Josh. ii. 8. [540] Deut. xxxiii. 27. [541] Deut. xxxiii. 18, 19. [542] יִתְבֹּלֵל from בלל. In Phœn. בלל seems to have been used as in Israel of the sacrificial mingling of oil and flour (cf. Robertson Smith, _Religion of Semites_, I. 203); in Arabic _ball_ is to weaken a strong liquid with water, while _balbal_ is to be confused, disordered. The Syriac _balal_ is to mix. Some have taken Hosea's יתבלל as if from בליל (Isa. xxx. 24; Job vi. 5), usually understood as a mixed crop of wheat and inferior vegetables for fodder; but there is reason to believe בליל means rather fresh corn. The derivation from בלה to grow old, does not seem probable. [543] xii. 8. [544] ix. 9 f. [545] See above, p. 261, and below, p. 337. [546] But the reading is very doubtful. [547] For יתגררו read יתגדדו. [548] Wellhausen's objection to the first clause, that one does not set a trumpet to one's _gums_, which חֵךְ literally means, is beside the mark. חֵךְ is more than once used of the mouth as a whole (Job viii. 7; Prov. v. 3). The second clause gives the reason of the trumpet, the alarum trumpet, in the first. Read נשר כי (so also Wellhausen).