Osee 11:8
How shall I deal with thee, O Ephraim, shall I protect thee, O Israel? how shall I make thee as Adama, shall I set thee as Seboim? my heart is turned within me, my repentance is stirred up.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quomodo dabo te, Ephraim ? protegam te, Israël ? Quomodo dabo te sicut Adama, ponam te ut Seboim ? Conversum est in me cor meum, pariter conturbata est pœnitudo mea.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- τί σε διαθῶμαι, Ἐφράιμ; ὑπερασπιῶ σου, Ἰσραήλ; τί σε διαθῶ; ὡς Ἀδαμὰ θήσομαί σε καὶ ὡς Σεβωείμ. μετεστράφη ἡ καρδία μου ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ, συνεταράχθη ἡ μεταμελία μου·
- Hebrew (WLC)
- אֵ֞יךְ אֶתֶּנְךָ֣ אֶפְרַ֗יִם אֲמַגֶּנְךָ֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֵ֚יךְ אֶתֶּנְךָ֣ כְאַדְמָ֔ה אֲשִֽׂימְךָ֖ כִּצְבֹאיִ֑ם נֶהְפַּ֤ךְ עָלַי֙ לִבִּ֔י יַ֖חַד נִכְמְר֥וּ נִחוּמָֽי
Haydock's commentary
Adama, &c. Adama and Seboim were two cities in the neighbourhood of Sodom, and underwent the like destruction. (Challoner)
God punishes, like a father, with regret.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Rusticus
2. How hard hearted we are and how merciful God is! who even after our many sins urges us to seek salvation. Yet not even so are we willing to turn to better things. Hear the words of the Lord: “If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s and shall afterwards desire to return to him, will he at all receive her? Will he not loathe her rather? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers: yet return again to me, saith the Lord.” In place of the last clause the true Hebrew text (which is not preserved in the Greek and Latin versions) gives the following: “thou hast forsaken me, yet return, and I will receive thee, saith the Lord.” Isaiah also speaking in the same sense uses almost the same words: “Return,” he cries, “O children of Israel, ye who think deep counsel and wicked. Return thou unto me and I will redeem thee. …
St Ambrose Concerning Repentance, Chapter V. The objection from the unchangeableness of God is answered from several passages of Scripture, wherein God promises forgiveness to sinners on their repentance. St. Ambrose also shows that mercy will be more readily accorded to such as have sinned, as it were, against their will, which he illustrates by the case of prisoners taken in war, and by language put into the mouth of the devil
21. But they say that they make these assertions in order not to seem to make God liable to change, as He would be if He forgave those with whom He was angry. What then? Shall we reject the utterances of God and follow their opinions? But God is not to be judged by the statements of others, but by His own words. What mark of His mercy have we more ready at hand than that He Himself, through the prophet Hosea, is at once merciful as though reconciled to those whom in His anger He had threatened? For He says: “O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee, or what shall I do unto thee, O Judah? Your kindness,” etc. …