Hosea 5:10

"The princes of Judah are like them that remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath upon them like water."

It is not necessary to suppose that when Judah counter-attacked against the invasion of the Syrian, Israeli allies, that Judah greedily seized upon the opportunity to change boundaries and landmarks, although, of course, they might very well have done this. In their ancient culture, the lowest class of crime was that of tampering with landmarks. It was equivalent to the type of idiom current in early Southwest America to the effect that any despised character could be described as capable of "stealing a nickel off a dead man's eyes." Much more is meant by this than stealthily changing a landmark. As Keil commented:

"The princes of Judah have become boundary removers, not by hostile invasions of Israel, but by removing the boundaries of right which had been determined by God, by participating in the guilt of Ephraim, by idolatry, by removing the boundary between Jehovah and Baal, that is to say, between the one true God and idols! `If one who removes his neighbor's boundary is cursed (Deuteronomy 19:14; 27:17), how much more he who removes the border of his God (Hengstenberg)." Upon such men the wrath of God would fall in its fullest measure."[26]

Ward and other scholars have questioned the appearance of Judah in this passage; and some are ready to rush in with suggestions of glosses or interpolations; but such views are founded upon a simple misunderstanding of what situation is prophesied. As noted above by McKeating, this was the period of 734 B.C.; and it was most appropriate that Judah be mentioned here, because it was Judah which had foolishly enlisted the intervention of Assyria, through which power all Israel was punished.

Another enlightening comment on how the princes of Judah removed sacred boundaries was written by Jamieson:

"Ahaz and his courtiers (the prince of Judah) set aside the ancient ordinances of God, removed the borders of the bases, and the laver, and the sea, and introduced an idolatrous altar from Damascus (2 Kings 16:10-18); he also burnt his children in the valley of Hinnon, after the abominations of the heathen (2 Chronicles 28:3)."[27]

"I will pour out my wrath upon them like water ..." Hardly any destructive or frightening force in nature was omitted from the list of metaphors, or similes, describing the wrath of God. In this short chapter, invaders, water, moths, rottenness, sickness, wounds, and ferocious wild beasts (lions) are among the figures employed.