16They return, but not upward;[2]
they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.
i am going thru the book of hosea right now. it is a hard and fascinating book. so many times you read about isreal crying out to God from captivity and God rescuing them. then they fall back into their idolitry and i sit there and think how stupid these people are. God treats them so kindly, and yet they turn their backs on him right as soon as they get their way. but then i remember how many times a day i do the same thing to the Lord. but that is not my question here.
in this verse it refers to their derision in the land of egypt. this is several years after the years of captivity. is this refering to egypt in a figurative way? i know that israel gets captured by babylon, so maybe that is what God is refering to?
also throughout the book if you read in the ESV bible the pronouns of isreal are masculine. isn't isreal always refered to in the feminine? judah is refered to in this book as feminine. i was thinking that in the beginning of the book it talks about how God will reject israel and have mercy on judah. maybe judah is taking the place of israel as the bride of Christ here in this book because israel has rejected God??? any thoughts?
ps- sorry for spelling errors.
Posted by hill at August 2, 2004 02:25 PMnot ignoring you, hill.
i just don't know.
thinking.
sorry.
:(
an apelles question, perhaps?
I've only looked into this a bit, but it seems to say that because of how the princes will die by the sword (and the rest of the fulfilment of the prophecy), Egypt will be laughing at them (derision in the land of Egypt).
Whether people are fleeing to Egypt to find safety or not, I don't know.
Like I said. Just starting out.
I'll look into the pronoun twist, but I'm not sure I'm qualified.
One thing though, Israel does appear to be feminine in ch 2 when she is the bride. Just from looking through the book, I can see other places where Judah is "he" then "she." So I think it is flip flopping.
I'll keep looking.
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