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Yet they do not call to mind
    that I remember all their wickedness.(A)
Now their crimes surround them,
    present to my sight.(B)

Israel’s Domestic Politics[a]

With their wickedness they make the king rejoice,
    the princes too, with their treacherous deeds.
They are all adulterers,[b]
    like a blazing oven,
Which the baker quits stoking,
    after the dough’s kneading until its rising.

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Footnotes

  1. 7:3–7 This passage perhaps refers to a conspiracy at the royal court. Between the death of Jeroboam II (743 B.C.) and the fall of Samaria (722/721), nearly all the kings were murdered (2 Kgs 15:10, 14, 25, 30).
  2. 7:4 Adulterers: the unfaithful nobles who kill the king. Their passion is compared to the fire of the oven. The point of the metaphor is that, like this oven whose fire is always ready to blaze up again, the conspirators are always ready for rebellion.

but they do not realize
    that I remember(A) all their evil deeds.(B)
Their sins engulf them;(C)
    they are always before me.

“They delight the king with their wickedness,
    the princes with their lies.(D)
They are all adulterers,(E)
    burning like an oven
whose fire the baker need not stir
    from the kneading of the dough till it rises.

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