Poisoned Justice and Imagined Strength Meet an Oppressor

Shall horses run upon the rock?

Two absurd questions introduce poisoned justice. Horses do not run on rock; oxen do not plow there, unless one divides the consonants to ask whether one plows the sea. Either way the farming is impossible. Yet Israel has turned judgment into gall and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock.

Distorted justice is not a technical inefficiency. It is as senseless as farming stone, and it is poisonous. The image does not demean agricultural workers whose labor fails under harsh conditions.

Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought

They rejoice in Lo-debar and say, Have we not taken Karnaim by our own strength? Place-names likely allude to Transjordan gains under Jeroboam II; Lo-debar can suggest "nothing," Karnaim "horns" or strength. Boast in empty gain meets the LORD raising a nation against them from Hamath to the river of the wilderness.

The oppressor is unnamed; Assyria is historically plausible. Lo-debar, Karnaim, Hamath, and the wilderness river do not code modern borders, armies, or timelines. The raised nation does not authorize invasion or celebration of civilian suffering. Claimed strength cannot save a land whose justice has become poison.