es
walked in them with half their bodies covered by them; the ears of
wheat were sown by themselves. "All travellers," says _Ritter_, "agree
in their descriptions of the extraordinary beauty and fertility of the
plain."

Footnote 3: This transference was so much the more natural, as, under
the government of the house of Jehu, guilt had certainly been
frequently concentrated in the form of blood-guiltiness. Compare Is. i.
21, where the prophet, in order to mark out the reigning sin in its
highest degree, represents Jerusalem as being full of murderers.

Footnote 4: _Hitzig_ is of opinion that "the prophet cannot blame him
for the death of Joram and Jezebel, but may well do so for the murder
of Ahaziah, king of Judah, and of his brethren, and for the carnage
described in 2 Kings x. 11." But Ahaziah was not killed at Jezreel:
compare 2 Kings ix. 27; 2 Chron. xxii. 9. And "the carnage in 2 Kings
xii." likewise took place at Jezreel to a small extent only, in so far,
namely, as it concerned the princes of the house of Ahab, who still
remained in Jezreel. Compare _Thenius_ on this passage.

Footnote 5: That the carrying away of Judah, which is here supposed,
is a total and future one, and not, as _Hofmann_ (_Weiss. u. Erf._
i. S. 210) asserts, one which is partial and already past (Joel
iv. [iii.] 2-8; Amos i. 6, 9), appears from the analogy of the
children of Israel,--from the reference to the type of the Egyptian
conditions,--from a comparison of chap. v. 5, 12, xii. 1-3,--from the
fact that the carrying away is placed in the view of the _whole people_
as early as in the Pentateuch, _e.g._, Deut. xxviii. 36, iv. 26,
27,--and, finally, from the fact, that the other prophets also, even
from the most ancient times, manifest a clear knowledge of the
catastrophe which threatened Judah also; compare, _e.g._, Amos ii.
4, 5. Moreover, in Is. xi. 11, 12, also, the return of Judah is
prophesied, although no express announcement of the carrying away
precedes. In like manner, in Amos ix. 11, the restoration of the fallen
tabernacle of David is foretold, although no express mention is made of
its fall.

CHAP. II. 4-25 (2-23).

"The significant couple"--_Rueckert_ remarks--"disappears in the thing
signified by it; Israel itself appears as the wife of whoredoms." This
is the only essential difference between this and the preceding
sections; and it is the less marked, because even there, in the last
part