What Does Hosea 5:10 Mean?
The princes of Judah are like those who shift the boundary; upon them I will pour out my overflow like waters.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound: therefore I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.THE KEY
The princes who shift another’s boundary meet an outpouring that crosses the limits they presumed to control.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to power that treats another’s limit as something it can redraw. Its consequence comes upon the princes like water poured out, overwhelming their control. The boundary they move does not make them unreachable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this dissolves is that authority can move another’s boundary without making itself answerable.
THE ROOT
מַסִּיגֵי
masigei
GROWS FROM
נסג
n-s-g
To move back or withdraw; in causative use, to shift or remove a boundary.
“shift the boundary” in this verse is masigei. The Hebrew depicts people shifting a boundary, not merely making it disappear. Proverbs 22:28 uses the same נסג (nasag) root with גְּבוּל (gevul, boundary), naming the act as a deliberate relocation of someone else’s limit.
ALSO GROWS
tassēg: Move or remove; the form used in Proverbs 22:28.
תַּסֵּג
The same root describes the act Hosea condemns: shifting a boundary.
tassig: Remove or move back; the form used in Deuteronomy 19:14.
תַּסִּיג
It applies the root to a neighbor’s boundary, making the violated limit explicit.
עֶבְרָתִי
ʿevrati
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿ-b-r
To pass across or cross over.
“overflow” in this verse is ʿevrati. The word for wrath shares the root עבר (ʿavar), whose basic motion is crossing over. The poured-out-water image lets that root echo against the boundary shifting in the verse: the princes’ trespass is met by a force that passes over them.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāvar: Pass or cross over.
עָבַר
Its motion echoes the verse’s image of wrath poured upon the boundary shifters.
ʿēver: Beyond or across; the other side.
עֵבֶר
It shares the crossing sense carried by עֶבְרָתִי (ʿevrati), the word translated “wrath.”
THE PATTERN
A boundary taken from another becomes a measure whose consequences return upon the one who moved it.
Cursed be he who moves his neighbor's boundary. And all the people shall say, Amen.Do not move the age-old boundary your fathers made.For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you.THE THREAD
Do not move the age-old boundary your fathers made.Hosea and Proverbs use the same Hebrew root נסג (nasag, move or remove) alongside גְּבוּל (gevul, boundary). The shared wording makes the princes’ act precise: they are shifting a boundary that belongs to another.
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