Ephrajim · preposition + proper noun, a man's name
moth
כָעָ֖שׁkha.'Ash
H6211
a moth · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
house
לְבֵ֥יתle.Veit
H1004
a house (in the greatest variation of applications · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
Judah
יְהוּדָֽהye.hu.Dah
H3063
Jehudah (or Judah) · proper noun, a place name
rottenness
וְכָרָקָ֖בve.kha.ra.Kav
H7538
decay (by caries) · conjunction + preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 51:8 For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvati…
Job 13:28 And he, as a rotten thing, consumeth, as a garment that is moth eaten.
Jonah 4:7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
Proverbs 12:4 A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.
Isaiah 50:9 Behold, the Lord GOD will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.
Mark 9:43-48 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fi…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Hosea 5:8–end
Here is, I. A loud alarm sounded, giving notice of judgments coming (Hos 5:8): Blow you the cornet in Gibeah and in Ramah, two cities near together in the confines of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, Gibeah a frontier-town of the kingdom of Judah, Ramah of Israel; so that the warning is hereby sent into both kingdoms. "Cry aloud at Beth-aven, or Bethel, which place seems to be already seized upon by the enemy, and therefore the trumpet is not sounded there, but you hear the outcries of those that shout for mastery, mixed with theirs that are overcome." Let them cry aloud, "After thee, O Benjamin! comes the enemy. The tribe of Ephraim is already vanquished, and the enemy will be upon thy…
as a moth--consuming a garment (Job 13:28; Psa 39:11; Isa 50:9).
Judah . . . rottenness--Ephraim, or the ten tribes, are as a garment eaten by the moth; Judah as the body itself consumed by rottenness (Pro 12:4). Perhaps alluding to the superiority of the latter in having the house of David, and the temple, the religious center of the nation [GROTIUS]. As in Hos 5:13-14, the violence of the calamity is prefigured by the "wound" which "a lion" inflicts, so here its long protracted duration, and the certainty and completeness of the destruction from small unforeseen beginnings, by the images of a slowly but surely consuming moth and rottenness.
Adam Clarke on Hosea 5:12
Unto Ephraim as a moth - I will consume them by little and little, as a moth frets a garment.
John Gill on Hosea 5:12
Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth,.... Which eats garments, penetrates into them, feeds on them privately, secretly, without any noise, and gradually and slowly consumes them; but at last utterly, that they are of no use and profit: this may signify the various things which befell the ten tribes in the reigns of Zachariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah, which secretly and gradually weakened them; and the utter consumption of them in the times of Hoshea by Shalmaneser:
and to the house of Judah as rottenness; as rottenness in the bones, Proverbs 12:4; which can never be got out or cured; or as a worm that eats into wood, as Jarchi interprets it; and gets into the very heart…
The Church Fathers
Just as the moth consumes clothing and decay or dry-rot consumes wooden things (which both occur over a long time), in the same manner God, giving a place of penitence over a long time to the ten tribes and then afterward to the two tribes—summoning to salvation those who treasure for themselves wrath for the day of wrath—becomes like a moth or rot.
"And I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like rottenness to the house of Judah." LXX: "And I am like a tribulation to Ephraim, and like a stimulus to the house of Judah." In the Hebrew language "moth" is called "Recob" for "rot and decay"; one of which consumes clothes and the other wood: for which the LXX translated as "turbulence", which is "disorder" or "turbulence", and "stimulus". And it should be noted that the moth pertains to Ephraim, and the rottenness to the house of Judah. Therefore, how does a clothes moth consume clothing, and decay or rot consume wood; which both take a long time: In the same way, God gave a place for repentance to the ten tribes, and later to the two tribes for a long time, calling them to salvation, storing up His wrath for the day of wrath, like a moth or decay, not because God is a moth or decay, disturbance or affliction, but because to those who suffer punishment all these things seem so. Therefore, first consumed was Ephraim and Israel, then followed was the house of Judah: not Judah himself, but his house; otherwise, it was reserved for the genealogy of Judah, among whom He had been placed: And He was the expectation of the nations. However, the heretics, who are understood to be Ephraim, and also Judas, namely, those who remain with the Church, and who are contained in the errors or vices of heretics, will be subject to the same judgment.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Moth — Heb. ‘ash, from a root meaning “to fall away,” as moth-eaten garments fall to pieces (Job 4:19; 13:28; Isa. 50:9; 51:8; Hos. 5:12). Gr. ses, thus rendered in Matt. 6:19, 20; Luke 12:33. Allusion is…
Moth · General references — General references
Moth, The · Illustrative: Of God in the execution of his judgments — Illustrative: Of God in the execution of his judgments
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Hosea 5:12
12. Therefore will I be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.
12. Et ego tanquam tinea ipsi Ephraim, et tanquam putredo (vel, caries; quanquam alii vertunt, Teredinem, qui est etiam vermiculus, qui nascitur in lignis) domui Jehudah.
God now denounces punishment in common on the two kingdoms; but he speaks not as before, he says not that his fury would be like a deluge, to overwhelm and drown the people. What then? He compares himself to little worms which gnaw wood and consume cloths; or he compares himself to rottenness; for, as we have said, the second word is to be so taken, as rqv, rekob, is properly rottenness, and is derived from rqv, rekab, to…
"And I am like the moth to Ephraim, and like the worm to the house of Judah." The moth and worm are figures employed to represent destructive powers; the moth destroying clothes (Isa 50:9; Isa 51:8; Psa 39:12), the worm injuring both wood and flesh. They are both connected again in Job 13:28, as things which destroy slowly but surely, to represent, as Calvin says, lenta Dei judicia. God becomes a destructive power to the sinner through the thorn of conscience, and the chastisements which are intended to effect his reformation, but which lead inevitably to his ruin when he hardens himself against them. The preaching of the law by the prophets sharpened the thorn in the conscience of Israel an…
as a moth . . . rotten wood: Sin can destroy the very fabric and foundation of a people while leaving them unaware that the destruction has taken place.
Rashi on Hosea 5:12
and like decay A worm which eats the wood and pulverizes it.
