Chapter 13 of Sefer Hoshea is a direct continuation of the previous chapter. At the end of chapter 12, we encountered the verse, "Ephraim has provoked most bitter anger; therefore his blood shall be left upon him, and his reproach shall his master return to him," and we explained that this refers to the fact that the People of Israel themselves killed the house of Yarov'am and the house of Achav for worshipping the Ba'al - and then went and worshipped the Ba'al themselves. "And his reproach shall his master return to him" - the murdered king, as it were, lodges a complaint against them: You killed me, and then went and did the very same thing? It turns out you shed innocent blood. The chapter before us continues this very same indictment.
כְּדַבֵּר אֶפְרַיִם רְתֵת נָשָׂא הוּא בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֶּאְשַׁם בַּבַּעַל וַיָּמֹת׃ - When Ephraim spoke trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he incurred guilt through Ba'al, he died.
The Malbim explains that this verse is also part of "his reproach shall his master return to him" - the slain king continues to answer them. Here, "Ephraim" refers to the king, since royalty in Shomron stemmed from the tribe of Ephraim. When Ephraim spoke to establish the worship of the calves, he did not do so out of conviction, but rather out of "trembling" - from fear and dread. And what was he afraid of? "He was exalted in Israel" - he feared for his leadership and his throne.
This is the crux of the matter: the kingdom had split between Yehudah and Binyamin on one side, and the Ten Tribes on the other. The Beit HaMikdash was located in the territory of Yehudah and Binyamin. If the people were to make the pilgrimage to celebrate the festivals, they would see Yarov'am standing and Rechav'am son of Shlomo sitting - as only the kings of the House of David were permitted to sit in the Temple Courtyard (Azarah). They would say: He is the true king, and this one is merely an impostor. Furthermore, the king of Yehudah might draw the hearts of the people back to himself and reclaim the monarchy. Therefore, Yarov'am said: We have no need for the Beit HaMikdash; we have a new form of worship - calves. Thus, "when Ephraim spoke trembling" - it was out of fear for his royal status that he commanded idol worship.
Yet even though he did this out of trembling and fear, what was his end? "He incurred guilt through Ba'al, and he died" - it cost him dearly. The Holy One, blessed be He, decreed that no name or remnant should remain of the house of Yarov'am; it stood as his guilt, and the people put him to death.
Rashi interprets the verse in an entirely different direction: this refers to the rebuke that Yarov'am ben Nevat delivered to King Shlomo concerning the construction of the Millo. When he spoke against him, he voiced harsh words with trembling - for Shlomo was a great king, and it was no small matter to speak against him, let alone to rebuke him. "When Ephraim spoke trembling" - when Yarov'am, hailing from the tribe of Ephraim, spoke trembling with sharp words against Shlomo, "he exalted himself in Israel" - in that merit he was elevated to kingship, as everyone saw him as a man of power and stature who was capable of standing up and rebuking King Shlomo. "He incurred guilt through Ba'al, and he died" - yet ultimately he himself turned to worship idols; as a result, he lost the kingdom and died, and the house of Yarov'am and the house of Achav were cut off.
The Radak offers a third interpretation: Initially, before Ephraim sinned, dread of him fell upon all the surrounding nations. They were regarded as an important and powerful nation, and anyone who spoke of Ephraim would be seized by trembling, shaking with fear. This aligns with what was said of Ephraim, that he was exalted and great among the tribes of Israel, and "his seed shall fill the nations." "He was exalted in Israel" - he raised his head high in Israel. Yet despite all this, "he incurred guilt through Ba'al, and he died" - when he became guilty through the Ba'al, he fell before his enemies and was considered as if dead.
From here we may derive a general principle of biblical commentary, which we will see often in this chapter: when a verse is clear and self-explanatory, there is little need for extensive commentary, as the plain meaning lies right on the surface. But when a verse is cryptic - and "when Ephraim spoke trembling" is an obscure phrase - interpretations abound, each following an entirely different path. Rashi applies it to Yarov'am speaking against Shlomo; the Radak applies it to those who spoke of Ephraim and trembled before his majesty; and the Malbim applies it to Yarov'am making the calves out of fear that he would lose his kingship. There are other explanations as well, but our primary focus is the study of Rashi, Radak, and the Malbim.
וְעַתָּה יוֹסִפוּ לַחֲטֹא וַיַּעֲשׂוּ לָהֶם מַסֵּכָה מִכַּסְפָּם כִּתְבוּנָם עֲצַבִּים מַעֲשֵׂה חָרָשִׁים כֻּלֹּה לָהֶם הֵם אֹמְרִים זֹבְחֵי אָדָם עֲגָלִים יִשָּׁקוּן׃ - And now they sin more and more, and have made for themselves molten images of their silver, idols according to their understanding, all of it the work of craftsmen; of them they say, "Let those who sacrifice men kiss the calves."
The Malbim continues in the voice of the murdered king: After you murdered me on account of this matter, how can you continue to sin? Indeed, your sin now is greater than the king's sin during his lifetime. For when the king was alive, he was the one who coerced you to serve idols; he gave the order. But now you do it of your own accord. Until now, the idolatry was driven by the king - and now "they make for themselves"; they do it themselves. Until now, the molten image was not from their money, but from the king's money - and now "of their silver." Until now, it was not from their understanding and intellect - and now "according to their understanding," according to their own conception. Thus, their sin is far greater, for back then they worshipped idols out of fear of the king, whereas today they have become independent in it.
"Idols, all of it the work of craftsmen" - the statue was crafted with the skill of an artisan and designer to the point that it seemingly has a mouth to speak, and the idols themselves rebuke the people who come to kiss them: "Those who slaughter human beings kiss calves!" - you who slaughtered a human being, who murdered the king because he served idols, who killed Yerovam and Achav because they clung to the Baal - you yourselves come to kiss the calves? If so, it becomes clear retroactively that your murder was not out of zeal for Hashem, but a vile murder, and you slaughtered a man for nothing. This is the murdered king's claim against his killers: How could you murder me for this, when you yourselves corrupted your ways far more afterward?
Rashi explains "And now" - the house of Yehu, who saw with their own eyes how Yerovam spoke against Shlomo and became a prince, and then worshipped idols and lost everything - yet even so, they continued to sin. Rashi explains "according to their understanding [kitvunam]" as according to their pattern [ketavnitam], meaning that they had a specific model and form according to which they fashioned the molten idol (unlike the interpretation of "according to their intellect" that we saw in the Malbim). And on "those who slaughter human beings kiss calves," Rashi cites the Gemara in Sanhedrin: The priests of Molech would say to Israel that they should sacrifice their children to idolatry, and whoever merited to sacrifice his son would merit kissing the calf, since he offered it a precious gift. Whoever slaughtered a human being merited to kiss the calf, and whoever did not, did not attain this privilege.
The Radak explains "And now they continue to sin" - now, when Yerovam reigned, they continued to sin. Why? Because during the days of the Judges, although they served the Baalim, it was a cyclical fluctuation: a Judge arose and brought them back in repentance, and the land was tranquil for forty years, and the cycle repeated itself. Whereas now, they completely uprooted the service of Hashem altogether: they forbade going up to Yerushalayim, forbade going up to the Beit HaMikdash, and made calves for themselves as a substitute, saying, "These are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt." Until now, the sin was back and forth, but now they became permanently entrenched in sin.
The Radak further asks: Why does it say "of their silver," when the calf was made of gold? Rather, the meaning is that each and every one gave of his money to purchase gold and make the calf. "According to their understanding" - either as they contemplated what form to make it in and agreed upon it, or according to Targum Yonatan: according to their pattern, as in Rashi's commentary. "All of it the work of craftsmen" - there is nothing spiritual in it; it is entirely the work of a carpenter or goldsmith, completely physical and crude, as it is written, "there is no spirit at all within it." "To them they say" - for them, the priests of Baal say to those who come to sacrifice: Who wishes to sacrifice to the calf? "Kiss calves" - the worship of the calf is not complete until one kisses it; it is not enough to sacrifice to it, but one must also kiss it, as it is written, "and every mouth that has not kissed him"; we see that their practice was to kiss the idol.
It is well known that the Maggid of Kelm was invited to deliver a discourse at Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, about ten years before the Holocaust, and spoke there about Germany. He said to them: Know that in that place, people will yet slaughter human beings like calves - without any pangs of conscience, just as a person takes a calf or a chicken to the slaughterhouse. They said to him: Honored Rabbi, what are you saying? Germany is an enlightened, educated country, the cradle of culture! He told them: I know one thing - I know a pasuk. And the pasuk says, "Those who slaughter human beings kiss calves." A person capable of reaching such a distortion, of kissing a calf, will have no problem slaughtering a human being. The moral distortion is so great that one who is capable of elevating a calf to the status of a human being and kissing it is capable of degrading a human being to the status of a calf and slaughtering him. And when they were astonished at him, he said that he had seen a German woman take her dog and kiss it, and remarked: A country in which such a thing is common - its people will also be capable of slaughtering human beings.
And as is well known, one of the Nazi leaders had a dog that he named "Mensch" - meaning "human being" - and he would set that dog upon Jews. He was capable of taking an animal and elevating it to the level of a human being, and therefore he had no qualms about degrading a Jew to the level of an animal, and even lower than the dog, delivering Jews to the dog to be devoured. When a person is distorted in his perception, he can reach terrible and severe distortions.
We have elaborated on this matter in the past, and it is not the main topic here, but it can be seen in our day as well. Seemingly, one could have judged leftist movements favorably and said that they are full of compassion, unable to tolerate even the suffering of a Palestinian, seeing them as merciful toward every living creature. Yet during the Disengagement, they opened centers to take in dogs abandoned by settlers who had nowhere to take them, and when asked: "There are human beings here with no one to take them in!" they replied that it was their own problem for going to live there. This is precisely "those who slaughter human beings kiss calves": one who can kiss a dog and a calf and elevate it to the status of a human being - "adopt a dog" - will not adopt a settler, because in his eyes, the settler is worse than an animal species. And there was already one professor, named Arnan, who said that the Palestinians should aim their missiles at the settlements rather than at the State of Israel - their blood had already been deemed permissible in his eyes.
There are no two ways about it: when a person is distorted in his perception, and is capable of treating a non-Jew or a terrorist with compassionate humanitarian concern, it inevitably comes at the expense of observant Jews, right-wingers, Charedim, his very own brothers. Hence the harshest expressions one hears directed against Torah-observant Jews and settlers, reaching the point of Uri Avnery's statement that they should be burned along with their beards - while with Hezbollah one must negotiate and examine where we failed by not giving them enough. One sees that the matter is systematic: when one is distorted, there is no partial distortion; the distortion is total.
לָכֵן יִהְיוּ כַּעֲנַן בֹּקֶר וְכַטַּל מַשְׁכִּים הֹלֵךְ כְּמֹץ יְסֹעֵר מִגֹּרֶן וּכְעָשָׁן מֵאֲרֻבָּה׃ - Therefore they shall be like the morning cloud and like the dew that vanishes early, like chaff driven away from the threshing floor and like smoke from a chimney.
The Malbim explains that there are two stages here. First, the Holy One, blessed be He, withholds goodness and blessing from them, and they are like a morning cloud that brings rains of blessing and immediately dissipates and vanishes; and likewise, "like dew that early departs" - even if you received something in the early morning, it does not last, but by morning it has already vanished. Afterwards, He will bring actual harm upon them and exile them: "like chaff driven by a storm from the threshing floor" - chaff is the outer husk of the wheat that a stormy wind carries away from the threshing floor while the grain remains; at first the chaff, representing the wicked, will be exiled while the righteous remain. And finally, "and like smoke from a window" - just as smoke is completely carried away from the chimney and everything is burnt, so too will they be utterly exiled.
וְאָנֹכִי ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וֵאלֹהִים זוּלָתִי לֹא תֵדָע וּמוֹשִׁיעַ אַיִן בִּלְתִּי׃ - "Yet I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; you know no god besides Me, and there is no savior except Me."
Rashi explains: "Yet I am the Lord your God" - and you should not have rebelled against Me, and they are deserving of destruction. For I have been the Lord your God since I took you out of the land of Egypt, and you accepted Me as God; therefore it was fitting that "you know no god besides Me" - that you should not worship any god other than Me, for "there is no savior except Me" - whom would you go and serve? Who could save you besides Me?
The Malbim connects this to their claim seen earlier, that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not watch over them directly Himself. Their claim was: After all, during the Exodus from Egypt, Moshe Rabbeinu led us as well, "And by a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt" - meaning we were guided through an intermediary. If so, what is the problem with the calves? Now too we have set up an intermediary in place of the prophet, so that the calves receive the divine bounty. To this the Holy One, blessed be He, answers them: "I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt" - from there I took you out without an intermediary. "And you know no god besides Me" - there was no other god there, nor any second deity beside Me. "And there is no savior except Me" - there was no emissary from Me to deliver you, but I saved you Myself, without any intermediary: I and not an angel, I and not a seraph, I and not a messenger. If so, how can you claim that I redeemed you through another power?
This is the reason mentioned earlier why Moshe's name does not appear in the Pesach Haggadah - in order to emphasize to us that the redemption came solely from Him, blessed be He, so that no one should come and say it was accomplished through other powers.
אֲנִי יְדַעְתִּיךָ בַּמִּדְבָּר בְּאֶרֶץ תַּלְאֻבוֹת׃ - "I knew you in the wilderness, in a land of great drought."
In the wilderness as well, after I took you out of Egypt, "I knew you." The term "knowing" in Tanach always denotes close connection, as in "And Adam knew Eve his wife." That is to say: I accompanied you with complete divine providence to provide for all your needs in a land of thirst and drought - in a reality where you could not possibly have survived except through constant miracles: the miracle of the well, the pillar of cloud that accompanied them, and the manna.
What does "tal'uvot" mean? Rashi says that it has no parallel. Here it is worth explaining the methodology of biblical commentary: whenever we seek to understand a word in Tanach, we look for its "brother in Scripture," meaning a comparable example. If one does not know the meaning of the root *tus* (to fly swiftly), and finds elsewhere "it swoops and flies" (*vaya'af vayatos*), one understands that flight is related to swooping. This is the concordance method: searching for verses where the word or its inflection appears, and deriving its meaning here from them. The great difficulty arises with words that have no counterpart in Scripture - "it has no brother," "it has no companion," "it has no parallel" - all mean the same thing: there is no similar word in Tanach from which to deduce its meaning.
When encountering such a difficulty, commentators break the word down and trace its root. This is precisely where the commentators diverge: one argues it resembles one root, while another connects it to a different root, and sometimes a word contains elements of both roots together, giving rise to disputes over its interpretation. "Tal'uvot" is composed of two words: *tel* (a mound) and *avah* - from the concept of desire or yearning (*ta'avah*), which can be spelled with an alef or a vav, as in "The Lord will not be willing (*yoveh*) to forgive him," and "My brother-in-law refuses (*lo avah*)," and a destitute person (*evyon*) is called such because he longs (*mit'aveh*) for everything. Therefore, Rashi combines them and explains: "A mound in which one yearns for every good thing and finds none" - a place where people crave any good thing and find nothing, which is the wilderness.
Notice an additional principle as well: we always try to understand a word from the verse itself. If there are external cross-references, excellent; if not, we understand it from the context. Biblical verses often repeat an idea in different words (even though the Malbim teaches that it is never truly identical, but always adds nuance), and this still provides direction: since it says "I knew you in the wilderness" alongside "in a land of *tal'uvot*," we understand that *tal'uvot* relates to wilderness - a place where one craves food, water, clothing, and every necessity, and finds nothing there.
כְּמַרְעִיתָם וַיִּשְׂבָּעוּ שָׂבְעוּ וַיָּרָם לִבָּם עַל כֵּן שְׁכֵחוּנִי׃ - When they grazed, they were sated; they were sated, and their heart grew haughty; therefore they forgot Me.
After I brought them from the wilderness into an inhabited land, to the Holy Land, they found pasture - "When they grazed, they were sated." And out of that abundance, "Yeshurun grew fat and kicked": "They were sated, and their heart grew haughty," their heart became exalted, just as it is written, "And your heart will become haughty and you will forget Hashem your God" - "Therefore they forgot Me." Out of haughtiness of heart comes forgetfulness of Hashem.
וָאֱהִי לָהֶם כְּמוֹ שָׁחַל כְּנָמֵר עַל דֶּרֶךְ אָשׁוּר׃ - So I became to them like a lion; like a leopard lurking along the way.
אֶפְגְּשֵׁם כְּדֹב שַׁכּוּל וְאֶקְרַע סְגוֹר לִבָּם וְאֹכְלֵם שָׁם כְּלָבִיא חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה תְּבַקְּעֵם׃ - I will encounter them like a bereaved bear and tear the casing of their heart; and there I will devour them like a lion; the beast of the field will tear them apart.
The Malbim emphasizes an important point here: they forgot God's goodness and denied His favors, yet the misfortune that befell them they attribute to Him - the Holy One, blessed be He, seemed to them like a predatory beast: a lion, a leopard, a bear, a lioness. We have already mentioned this previously: when things went well for them, they attributed it to the Baal, to the calves, and to idolatry; but when things went badly, they said, "This is from Hashem."
And people act the same way today. When something good happens to someone, he says: there was siyata di-shemaya (divine assistance) - meaning, I did it, and Hashem helped a bit. But when something bad happens to him: it is all from Heaven, all from Heaven - there, he takes no part at all. "I bring about the good things and Hashem assists, while Heaven brings about the bad things." Yet the prophet says the exact opposite: "Your own wickedness will chastise you" - the evil that exacts retribution from you is the evil you yourself committed, and it is what chastises you; and "From the mouth of the Most High there do not proceed evils and good," but rather everything stems from a person's own actions.
And why is this likened specifically to these four beasts - a lion (shachal), a leopard, a bear, and a lioness (lavi)? The Malbim explains that they correspond to the four kingdoms that ravaged them. The shachal is the empire of Babylonia and Assyria, which Daniel initially saw as a lion. The leopard is the kingdom of Greece - "like a leopard lurking along the way," which came along the route to the Land of Israel and did not exile them from their land, but rather kept watch over their cities. "I will encounter them like a bereaved bear" - this is the second beast that Daniel saw, "resembling a bear," the kingdom of Media; and "I will tear the casing of their heart" occurred in the days of Haman, when they opened their hearts and repented. "And there I will devour them like a lion" - this is the exile of Edom (Rome), the fourth beast, of which it is said, "It devoured, crushed, and trampled the residue with its feet" - it devoured and crushed to dust, and what remained it trampled underfoot, leaving nothing behind.
From here comes the refutation of their claim: it seems to them that I am the one preying upon them, but they are mistaken - "The beast of the field will tear them apart." I merely hid My face from them, and the one tearing them apart is the beast of the field, and this is because they abandoned the way of Hashem. It turns out that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not bring misfortune, but only good; and if misfortune comes, it is because you abandoned Hashem and hid your face from Him, and consequently He too hides His face from you, and all the troubles come about on their own as a result of the evil you have done. To come and claim that this is from Me is a distortion of reality.
The Malbim further teaches us that there is a progression here. At first - "like a leopard lurking along the way" (ashur): it lies in wait along the path, gazing from afar. "Ashur" here is not the name of the nation Assyria, for Rashi already pointed out that when Assyria is mentioned as a nation, there is a dagesh in the letter shin, whereas here there is no dagesh; therefore its meaning derives from the root of gazing - "I shall behold," as in "I see him, but not now; I behold him (ashurennu), but not near," and as in "daughters stepped over the wall (shur)," which is the high wall from which one gazes into the distance. That is, like a leopard standing and looking upon the road, observing and lying in ambush to trap the passerby. The next stage - "I will encounter them like a bereaved bear," which actively confronts them. Afterward - "and there I will devour them like a lion," devouring them right there in their cities. And finally - "the beast of the field will tear them apart," as it distributes the prey to the remaining animals.
And what is a "bereaved bear" (dov shakol)? Rashi explains shakol as similar in pattern to shokel, on the grammatical pattern of chanun ve-rachum, from the concept of meshakel - killing offspring, as in "There shall be no woman who loses her young (meshakeilah) or is barren in your land." According to this, it does not mean that the bear itself is bereaved, but rather that the bear will kill their children. The Radak, on the other hand, interprets it according to its plain sense, in the way we use the term today: a bear whose cubs have been lost is the most dangerous, bitter of soul, and if it encounters a person or animal, it will destroy them swiftly.
The Radak asks: Why specifically a bereaved bear, rather than a bereaved leopard or a bereaved lion? Because it is said of a bear that when she gives birth, the offspring emerges looking like lumps of flesh, completely enclosed in a very thick placenta. The mother bear licks the placenta and nibbles away at it little by little, careful not to harm the newborn cub, laboring over this immensely until she removes all the outer layer and the cub emerges. Because she exerted so much effort to bring it to life, her anguish is far greater when it is killed. Therefore, the prophet specifically chose the image of a bereaved bear.
שִׁחֶתְךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל כִּי בִי בְעֶזְרֶךָ׃ - “You have destroyed yourself, O Israel, for in Me was your help.”
The Malbim explains: The fact that you are ravaged by the beasts of the field - like a lion, like a leopard, like a bereaved bear, like a lioness, and “the beast of the field shall tear them” - does not originate from Me. You claim that Hashem is bringing calamity upon us, but Hashem answers them: I did not cause this; “you have destroyed yourself, O Israel” - you corrupted your own ways, and that is what destroys you and brings these evils upon you.
And what is the meaning of “for in Me is your help”? The Holy One, blessed be He, says: As for what appears to you as destruction coming from Me - understand where that perception comes from: it is only because until now I was your help, bestowing continuous goodness upon you. Therefore, the moment I withdraw My goodness, all the troubles immediately set in, and you say, “Hashem has brought calamity upon me.” But the truth is that I did not bring evil upon you; rather, until now I actively did good for you, and at a certain point I ceased doing so. It emerges that the evil comes because of you, and everything you enjoyed until now was good because I actively intervened to benefit you; once I no longer intend to do so, the destruction comes through your own fault.
In this chapter, the prophet continues the slain king's indictment against his assassins: Yarovam erected the golden calves out of trembling fear for his monarchy and died for it, whereas the people, who murdered their kings in the name of zealotry for Hashem, continued to sin further of their own accord, of their own silver, and according to their own understanding - thereby turning the regicide into wanton bloodshed: “Those who sacrifice men kiss calves.” From there, the prophet recounts Hashem’s kindnesses - the Exodus from Egypt without any intermediary, divine providence in the land of drought, and the satiety in the good land that bred haughtiness and forgetfulness - establishing the truth clearly: the predatory beasts are the four kingdoms, and the Holy One, blessed be He, merely hides His face. “You have destroyed yourself, O Israel, for in Me was your help” - all good comes solely from Him, blessed be He, while evil is nothing other than the fruit of man’s own deeds.