threatening or punitive sense here; and the suffix cannot refer to בּגּוים, but only to the subject contained in yithnu, viz., the Ephraimites. The Lord will bring them together, sc. among the nations, i.e., bring them all thither. קבּץ is used in a similar sense in Hos 9:6. The more precise definition is added in the next clause, in the difficult expression ויּחלּוּ מעט, in which ויּחלּוּ may be taken most safely in the sense of “beginning,” as in Jdg 20:31; 2Ch 29:17, and Eze 9:6, in all of which this form occurs, and מעט as an adject. verb., connected with החל like the adjective כּהות in 1Sa 3:2 : “They begin to be, or become, less (i.e., fewer), on account of the burden of the king of princes,” i.e., under the oppression which they will suffer from the king of Assyria, not by war taxes or deportation, but when carried away into exile. מלך שׂרים = מלך מלכים is a term applied to the great Assyrian king, who boasted, according to Isa 10:8, that his princes were all kings.
Verses 11-12
This threat is accounted for in Hos 8:11., by an allusion to the sins of Israel. Hos 8:11. “For Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, the altars have become to him for sinning. Hos 8:12. I wrote to him the fulnesses of my law; they were counted as a strange thing.” Israel was to have only one altar, and that in the place where the Lord would reveal His name (Deu 12:5.). But instead of that, Ephraim had built a number of altars in different places, to multiply the sin of idolatry, and thereby heap more and more guilt upon itself. לחטא is used, in the first clause, for the act of sin; and in the second, for the consequences of that act. And this was not done from ignorance of the divine will, but from neglect of the divine commandments. אכתּוב is a historical present, indicating that what had occurred was continuing still. These words refer unquestionably to the great number of the laws written in the Mosaic thorah. רבו, according to the chethib רבּו, with ת dropped, equivalent to רבבה, as in 1Ch 29:7, ten thousand, myriads. The Masoretes, who supposed the number to be used in an arithmetical sense, altered it, as conjecturally unsuitable, into רבּי, multitudes, although רב does not occur anywhere else in the plural. The expression “the myriads of my law” is hyperbolical, to indicate the almost innumerable multitude of the different commandments contained in the law. It was also in a misapprehension of the nature of the hyperbole that the
