of Gilead on the East of Jordan. Mizpah, being a sacred place in the history of the patriarch Jacob (), was probably, like Gilgal and other sacred places, desecrated by idolatry. "Tabor": a mountain in Galilee, between the tribal territories of Issachar and Zebulun, from Nazareth, regarded the same as the Mountain of the Transfiguration in the midst of the plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon, one thousand feet high, in the form of a sugarloaf. Jerome wrote that birds were still snared on this mountain. Tabor was the scene of God's deliverance of Israel by Barak (Judges 4). There, by encouraging idolatries, they became hunters, not pastors, of souls (, ). Verse 13 When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound. "went Ephraim to the Assyrian": First, Menahem () applied to Pul; again, Hoshea to Shalmaneser (). "king Jareb": can be rendered as "a king who should plead" or "an avenging king", "hostile king", which may refer to the same Assyrian Monarch courted by both Israel and Judah,leading to the destruction of Israel and the weakening of Judah. Ahaz king of Judah did ask Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria to come and save him ("I am thy servant and thy son; come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me"; 2 Kings 16:7-8), yet "the Lord brought Judah low; and Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria came unto him and distressed him, but strengthened him not" (2 Chronicles 28:19-20). Ahaz emptied his own treasures, and pillaged the house of God, in order to buy the help of the Assyrian, and he taught him an evil lesson against himself, of his wealth and his weakness. God had said that, if they were faithful, "five shall chase an hundred, and an hundred put ten thousand to flight" (Leviticus 26:8). God had pronounced him cursed, who trusted in man, and made flesh his arm, and whose heart departed from the Lord" (Jeremiah 17:5), like the king of Judah. See also Assyria Benjamin Beth-aven Ephraim Gibeah Israel Judah Mizpah Ramah Tabor Related Bible parts: Hosea 4, Hosea 6, James 4 Notes References Sources External links Jewish Hosea 5 Hebrew with Parallel English