Ephraim feeds on wind, And chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a covenant with Assyria, And oil is carried into Egypt.
We have stressed this remarkable insight of Ward's, because this is a concise statement of our attitude toward all of the countless changes which modern critical scholars attempt to make in nearly any passage of the Holy Bible.  None of them, nor all of them put together, affords any genuine improvement, serving only to obscure and confuse what the sacred writers wrote.  It is our conviction that the duty of a faithful commentator on the Word of God is that of interpreting the text as we have received it, instead of guessing what the prophet should have written, or intended to write!  The Bible makes sense as it is written, and the speculative guesses of uninspired men, who in not a few instances are evil men, afford a very poor substitute for the passages of Scriptures they presume to displace. If, as Ward stated, this chapter of Hosea (admittedly one of the most obscure in the Bible) makes sense when studied and understood, how much more is it true of the whole Bible?