Hosea 3:4

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince,.... Without any form of civil government, either regal or without any civil magistrate, either superior or

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: For the children of

Now the parable is unfolded and made plain; it shall be with Israel much like as with such a woman, they and she guilty of adultery, both punished with a divorce, both punished long with such afflicted state, both made slaves, kept hardly, and valued meanly, yet in mercy at last pardoned, reaccepted, and preferred, but this after long time of probation: how long we cannot tell, nor list to dispute whether seventy years of Babylon’ s captivity, or whether these seventy and the one hundred and thirty years of the ten tribes’ captivity before the two tribes went captives, i.e. two hundred years; or whether till Messiah’ s coming, or the general and last conversion of the Jews; long it was to be no doubt. Without a king; none of their own royal line shall sit on the throne, and rule them, but foreigners, enemies, and they that had conquered them, should be kings over them. So the kingdom ceased, as . Without a prince; the conquering kings will not out of the Jews make their chief officers to rule the Jews, but strangers shall be princes and governors over them. Without a sacrifice; either right, and according to law, (these sacrifices they had long since cast off,) or idolatrous ones, which they would choose. Without an image; they could carry none of their images with them, and the Assyrians would not let them make new ones. Without an ephod; no priest as well as no ephod. Without teraphim; idolatrous images kept in their private houses to worship and consult with, like the Roman lares and penates, household gods. In one word, such should be the state of these captives, they should have nothing of their own, either in kingdom and civil affairs, or in church and religion, but be wholly under the power and arbitrary wills of their conquering enemies.

Hosea 3:4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and [without] teraphim:Ver. 4. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, &c.] They shall be, as it is said of the Brazilians, Sine rege, sine lege, sine fide, without a king, without law, without hope, in a woeful confused estate, both for state and Church. This they had brought upon themselves by their idols set up at Dan and Bethel; that is, in the place of judgment, and in the house of God (so Dan and Bethel signify). Bethel was become Bethaven, and the place of judicature (called by Solomon the place of the Holy God, Ecclesiastes 8:10), so corrupted, that people were ready to say, as Themistocles once did, that if there were two ways showed him, the one leading to hell and the other to the tribunal, he would choose that which went to hell and forsake the other. That corruption caused this confusion. The children of Israel shall be without and withont, here are six withouts, that they might be sensible of their abuse of mercies, and see bona a tergo formosissima, good things fairest behind, their worth best appearing by their want. The Persian law commanded that at the death of their kings there should be πενθημερωνανομιαν, a suspension of laws, a lawless liberty, for the length of five days (Stob. Orat. 42), that subjects might know the necessity of government by being bereft of the benefit of it for a time; and the better prize it when they had it. The like custom they have now in Turkey at the death of the Grand Signor, which is no sooner known but every man doth what is good in his own eyes, till his successor be sent for, and set upon his throne. Israel hath neither king nor prince, ruler nor civil magistrates of their own, (the ten tribes, I mean: for Judah hath both prince and priests after the captivity, till the last desolation, since which they have) no form nor face of Church or commonwealth, no, not of a corrupt or depraved Church, meant here by image and teraphim, see 2 Kings 17:10 Judges 17:5, which much less of such a one as God had prescribed, meant by sacrifices and ephod. Prosper’ s conceit was that this people were called Iudaei Jews because they received ius Dei, their law, from God’ s mouth. And Josephus calleth their commonwealth a theocracy, or government by God. They received their order both for Church and commonwealth from heaven: which no other people ever did in the same manner; and might truly take up that of the prophet, Isaiah 33:22, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King, he will save us." But man being in honour is without understanding.

(4) The prophet suddenly passes from his personal history to that of Israel, which it symbolised. Without a king . . .—The isolation of Gomer’s position pre-figured that of Israel in the exile. Her bitter experience was a parable of Israel’s utter deprivation of all civil and religious privilege. There was to be no king, or prince, or sacred ritual of any kind. Observe that the terms of both cultus are here intermingled, suggesting the idolatrous conceptions of the pure ancient practice which Jeroboam’s calf-worship was only too likely to introduce. By “image” we are to understand upright stones, representing Baal or the sun-god. (Comp. Hosea 10:1 and Exodus 24:4.) On “ephod,” see Judges 17:5; Judges 18:14; Judges 18:17-20; on “teraphim,” Genesis 31:19-35; 1 Samuel 19:13-16; Ezekiel 21:21; Zechariah 10:2. In the last two passages the word is translated “idols,” “images,” their use as instruments of divination being condemned.

Verse 4. Many days without a king] Hitherto this prophecy has been literally fulfilled. Since the destruction of the temple by the Romans they have neither had king nor prince, nor any civil government of their own, but have lived in different nations of the earth as mere exiles. They have neither priests nor sacrifices, nor urim nor thummim; no prophet, no oracle, no communication of any kind from God. Without an image ephod - teraphim] The Septuagint read, Ουδεουσηςθυσιας, ουδεοντοςθυσιαστηριου, ουδεἱερατειας, ουδεδηλων: "Without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, and without oracles;" that is, the urim and thummim. The Vulgate, Arabic, and Syriac read nearly the same. Instead of מצבה matstsebah, an image, they have evidently read מזבח mizbeach, an altar; the letters of these words being very similar, and easily mistaken for each other. But instead of either, one, if not two, of Kennicott's MSS. has מנחה minchah, an oblation. What is called image may signify any kind of pillar, such as God forbade them to erect, Leviticus 26:1, lest it should be an incitement to idolatry. The ephod was the high priest's garment of ceremony; the teraphim were some kind of amulets, telesms, or idolatrous images; the urim and thummim belonged to the breastplate, which was attached to the ephod. Instead of teraphim some would read seraphim, changing the ת tau into ש sin; these are an order of the celestial hierarchy. In short, all the time that the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon, they seem to have been as wholly without forms of idolatrous worship as they were without the worship of God; and this may be what the prophet designs: they were totally without any kind of public worship, whether true or false. As well without images and teraphim, as they were without sacrifice and ephod, though still idolaters in their hearts. They were in a state of the most miserable darkness, which was to continue many days; and it has continued now nearly eighteen hundred years, and must continue yet longer, till they acknowledge him as their Saviour whom they crucified as a blasphemer.

4. For …] The explanation of this latter part of the prophet’s acted allegory. As he has restrained his erring wife from even the legitimate gratification of her natural instincts, so Jehovah will chastise idolatrous Israel by depriving her of her civil and religious institutions. By ‘the children of Israel’ Hosea means the Ten Tribes, as elsewhere in these chapters, shall abide] Rather, shall sit still (as Hosea 3:3). many days] The prophet has received no revelation as to the duration of the captivity of the Ten Tribes. without a king and without a prince] The abolition of ‘king and princes’ corresponds to the denial of intercourse with her lovers to Gomer. The term ‘prince’ is used partly of the magnates of the state in general, partly of the ‘elders’ or heads of families, who played such an important part in the Israelitish community (comp. Exodus 3:16; 2 Samuel 19:11; 1 Kings 8:1; 1 Kings 20:7; Jeremiah 26:17). A king and princes are mentioned together again in Hosea 7:3, Hosea 13:10 (and probably in Hosea 8:10). without a sacrifice and without an image] The withholding of this and the next pair of objects corresponds to the cessation of conjugal intercourse between Hosea and Gomer. Consequently as Hosea represents Jehovah, the ‘image’ (or rather consecrated pillar, Heb. maηηηbah) spoken of must stand in some relation to Jehovah, must in fact be of one of those pillars sacred to Jehovah, which, as many think, lasted on in Judah (much more therefore in Israel) at any rate till the time of Hezekiah: see note on Hosea 10:1. The ‘pillars’ were the distinguishing marks of holy places, and are therefore very naturally combined by Hosea with sacrifices or altars (Sept., followed by Pesh. and Vulg. reads ‘altar’ here instead of ‘sacrifice’). Comp. Dean Plumptre: No pomp of kings, no priests in gorgeous robes,No victims bleeding on the altar-fires,No golden ephod set with sparkling gems,No pillar speaking of the gate of heaven,No Teraphim with strange mysterious gleamShall give their signs oracular.(Lazarus, p. 90.)It follows from this passage of Hosea that the worship of Jehovah in northern Israel presented features altogether alien to the orthodox worship of Jehovah according to the Law, and that Hosea raises no protest against it. He refers to its suspension as a privation corresponding to and equally felt with that of king and princes. We must remember however that the kings of N. Israel were regarded by Hosea as usurpers. without an ephod] The high priest’s ephod is described in Exodus 28:6-14. It was a sleeveless coat of splendid and costly material, and with two ouches of onyx on the shoulders, bound by a rich girdle. Over it was worn the so-called choshen, a jewelled breastplate, with the Urim and Thummim. But what connexion had this coat with the sacred ‘pillar’ and the teraphim? It is as difficult to answer as the question with regard to Gideon’s ephod in Judges 8:24-27.

For the children of Israel shall abide many days - The condition described is one in which there should be no civil polity, none of the special temple-service, nor yet the idolatry, which they had