What Does Hosea 5:5 Mean?
And the swelling of Israel answers to his face; Israel and Ephraim will stumble in their crookedness; Judah also will stumble with them.
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
And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them.THE KEY
Pride is already its own testimony: it exposes the unstable footing beneath the one who exalts it.
THE MEANING
Your pride is already a witness against you: what you exalt exposes the footing beneath it. The crookedness you carry makes you stumble, and your instability can draw those bound up with you into the same fall.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that pride is a private source of strength; here it becomes visible evidence of instability, with consequences shared by those attached to it.
THE ROOT
יִכָּשְׁלוּ
yikkāšəlû
GROWS FROM
כשל
kāshal
To stumble, totter, lose footing, or fail.
“stumble” in this verse is yikkāšəlû. The Hebrew verb lets “fall” carry the feel of stumbling and losing footing. The group’s collapse is instability exposed through its own crookedness, rather than an abstract sentence.
ALSO GROWS
kāshal: To stumble, totter, or fail.
כָּשַׁל
This is the root verb itself: Israel and Ephraim’s “fall” is a loss of footing.
mikhshōl: A stumbling block or obstacle.
מִכְשׁוֹל
The same root names both the stumble and what trips someone, making the loss of footing part of the word’s own family.
וְעָנָה
wəʿānâ
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿānâ
To answer or respond; in this verse, to testify.
The verb can mean both “answer” and “testify”: Israel’s pride answers for him and serves as evidence on its own. The exposure comes from what is already present, before anyone else speaks.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānâ: To answer or respond.
עָנָה
This is the same verb without the prefixed conjunction; it shows testimony as an answer.
maʿăneh: An answer or response.
מַעֲנֶה
This noun shares the root consonants and carries the idea of an answer, echoing how pride itself responds as evidence.
THE PATTERN
Pride exposes its own instability, and its stumble can spread through the people joined to it.
The bows of the mighty are shattered, and the ones who stumble are belted with strength.Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.For everyone who lifts himself will be brought low; and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.THE THREAD
Turn back, Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crookedness.The same root כשל appears in both verses: the shared stumble here becomes a direct address to Israel’s falling in Hosea 14:1. That repeated root binds the fall to crookedness within the life, with “return” beside it as the verse’s next movement.
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