Bible Strands
Hosea 11:3
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms, but they never realized that it was I who healed them.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through the prophet Hosea to Israel, identified here as Ephraim, during a prophetic rebuke that contrasts their ongoing idolatry with His past faithfulness.
The words — תִרְגַּלְתִּי (tirgal'ti) translates literally as "I taught to walk," and יָדְעוּ (yad'u) means "they knew," establishing a direct contrast between divine instruction and human ignorance.
The thread — The imagery of God carrying and guiding His people appears in Deuteronomy 1:31, where He carried Israel through the wilderness like a father carries a son, and Jeremiah 30:17, where God declares He will restore health and heal wounds.
Why it lands — The text states that God actively instructed and healed Ephraim while they remained unaware of His role, requiring readers to confront their own failure to recognize divine provision before responding to it.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
Cross-references
- Exodus 15:26 saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
- Deuteronomy 1:31 and in the wilderness, where the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way by which you traveled until you reached this place.”
- Jeremiah 30:17 But I will restore your health and heal your wounds, declares the LORD, because they call you an outcast, Zion, for whom no one cares.”
- Hosea 7:15 Although I trained and strengthened their arms, they plot evil against Me.
- Exodus 23:25 So you shall serve the LORD your God, and He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take away sickness from among you.
- Deuteronomy 8:2 Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.
- Deuteronomy 32:10 He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye.
- Isaiah 30:26 The light of the moon will be as bright as the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days—on the day that the LORD binds up the brokenness of His people and heals the wounds He has inflicted.
- Isaiah 46:3 “Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been sustained from the womb, carried along since birth.
- Hosea 2:8 For she does not acknowledge that it was I who gave her grain, new wine, and oil, who lavished on her silver and gold—which they crafted for Baal.