Hosea 5:13

"When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither will he cure your wound."

The great sin of God's people was that, even after the most serious ills and destructive conditions developed among them, threatening to overwhelm and destroy them, they did not, even in that state of danger and emergency turn to their God, but instead, decided that they could overcome their troubles through their own arrangements and devices, such as making alliances with other nations, including Syria and Assyria. Here, in this ancient example of it, is demonstrated the perpetual, recurring conceit of evil men. No matter what conditions may be encroaching against their nations, no matter what debaucheries, violence, drunkenness and immoralities rot their society, wreck their economy, and disrupt their existence, they never think of returning to God; but instead, conceitedly suppose that they are fully able to get out of their predicament through the exercise of their own ingenuity or by imposing their own ridiculous remedies. Our own beloved America this very day is suffering from the same sores and rottenness that finally got the attention of ancient Ephraim; and there are not any of our sorrows that would not be healed by a wholesale return to the God of our fathers, and a reawakening of the moral and religious life of the nation as taught by our Christian ancestors. But what is done about it? Nothing! except political changes, passing new laws and regulations, and the imposition of more and more ridiculous nostrums by human governments. In the example provided by this verse, they resorted to war in the hope of solving their problems. Where is there a better illustration of the perennial blindness of the wretched race of men?

"Sent to Assyria ..." See comment under Hosea 5:8, above, for McKeating's comment on the historical instance of this.

"And sent to king Jareb ..." There is no knowledge whatever of who this "king Jareb" might have been; and this is exactly the kind of problem that delights Biblical commentators. There are about as many guesses as their are scholars. Harper compiled a list of opinions, giving the following explanations:[30]

The name of a place in Assyria ...

A symbolical name for Assyria ...

The name of a king of Egypt ...

A form of the old name Aribi, a place in Arabia ...

A contemptuous title "king combatant" ...

An appellative meaning, "great king" ...

An appellative meaning, "one who pleads" ...

The original name of Sargon, king of Assyria, which was dropped when he ascended the throne ...

The text is corrupt ...

It means "king of tribute ..."

The king who should be healing (by changing the text) ...

We cannot imagine any profit that might come, either from choosing one of the above, or from offering another guess of our own.

Before leaving this, we should not overlook the point, that it was not only useless, but wrong, for God's people to seek relief from any other source except their God. In that light, it could not possibly make any difference who "king Jareb" was. In fact, Dummelow thought that "king Jareb" was an expression Hosea coined to show the absurdity of their going to such a source.[31]