Hosea 10:11

‘And Ephraim is a heifer which is trained,

Which loves to tread out the grain.

But I have passed over (a harness) on her fair neck,

I will set a rider (or ‘a yoke') on Ephraim,

Judah will plough,

Jacob will break his clods.'

Ephraim had no excuse for their behaviour. Like a well trained heifer they too had been trained by YHWH to be His chosen servants. And just as the heifer loves to tread the grain (thereby threshing it) because it can eat the grain while doing it (‘you shall not muzzle the ox that treads the grain' - Deuteronomy 25:4), so Israel had enjoyed walking with YHWH and receiving the benefits that He provided.

But because they had rejected their training and were revelling in sin, YHWH had now put a harness on their ‘fair neck', and would set a yoke on them (or put a rider on them) so as to put them to the plough. Along with Judah they were sentenced to hard labour, ploughing the ground and breaking up the soil. But there is deliberately no mention of their benefiting by it. They will plough but not reap. The reaping will be for others. The introduction of Judah parallels similar examples elsewhere. Hosea was constantly faced with men from Judah who had come to the idolatrous feasts at Bethel and Gilgal to partake in the adulterous worship and brought home to him the danger that Judah was in.

The oxen would pull a heavy wooden plough strengthened with metal at the cutting edge, and would often have a rider on them to guide and spur them on. The Hebrew word actually usually means ‘rider', but there are some grounds for translating as ‘set a yoke', and the latter is a good parallel to ‘passed over' i.e. a harness. It makes little difference. The point was that YHWH was now driving on both Judah and Israel. Jacob, in parallel with Judah, probably indicates the ten tribes.

The unique (for Hosea) use of ‘Jacob' for Israel prepares for his later use of Jacob as an example in chapter 12. ‘Jacob' are not behaving like Jacob.