Hosea 4:12

My people ask counsel at their stocks,.... Or "at his wood" (a), or stick; his wooden image, as the Targum; their wooden gods, their idols made of wood, mere stocks and blocks, without life or sense,

My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.

My people; whom I chose, brought out of Egypt, and settled in this land, wire are not yet cast off, though they deserve it, who call themselves my people. Ask counsel; inquire about future things, and what shall befall them. I threaten from heaven, they believe not me, but flatter themselves it will be better than my prophets say it will, and they inquire of their idolatrous priests concerning their fate. At their stocks; wooden statues or idols with which their priests consult, and make them give answer suiting to the hope of these people. Their staff declareth unto them: this was another kind of forbidden consulting with the devil; an art much in use in those times and places. You read of this . These were parts of their sottish idolatry. So they thought, they believed what their false prophets reported from the staff or stock. Unparalleled folly! not to believe God speaking from heaven, but at the same time believe a stock or staff, that knows not in whose hand it is, or what use it is put to. The spirit of whoredoms; a heart addicted to and insnared with whoredoms, spiritual and corporal. Hath caused them to err; hath blinded, misled, and deceived them. So 44:14,18. And they have gone a whoring from under their God; so they have left their God, refusing to be under his guidance, endeavouring to evade his corrections, and to fortify themselves, rebel-like, against his armies raised to chastise them, trusting herein to idols.

Hosea 4:12 My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused [them] to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.Ver. 12. My people ask counsel at their stocks] That is, at their images, which are here called stocks in contempt, as Hezekiah called the brazen serpent (when it was idolized by the people) Nehushtan, or, a piece of brass; and as Julius Palmer, martyr, called the rood in Paul’ s a jackanapes; and as the poet, in contempt of his own god Priapus, brings him in saying “ Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum. ” So the prophet cries shame upon the house of Israel for saying to a stock, Thou art my father, and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth, Jeremiah 2:27 Isaiah 44:11. But to such senseless practices men fall many times when they grow sensual; see 2 Thessalonians 2:10 Revelation 17:5. Spiritual whoredom and bodily go usually together. Rivet tells us here of a nobleman that went out of the church from hearing mass into the very next house, where he kept a whore; and said to the bystanders, a lupanari ad missam unum tantum esse passum, that there is but one step from the mass to a whore house. And their staff] That is, saith Kimchi, their false prophets, upon whom they lean, and by whom they are led, as a blind man by his staff. But I rather think it is meant of rhabdomancy, a kind of odd way of divining by rods and staves, as Nebuchadnezzar is brought in doing, Ezekiel 21:22, and was common in those eastern parts. Or else hereby are meant the soothsayers’ and magicians’ rods, as Exodus 7:12 Hebrews 11:21. It is said that Jacob worshipped leaning upon the top of his staff, and thereby lifting up his body to do reverence to God, where the Vulgate text, omitting the preposition, hath committed a manifest error, in saying that Jacob worshipped the top of his rod or staff; as if there had been some picture there engraven. The Hebrew is, towards the bed’ s heads. And it is certain that Jacob worshipped none but God; and bowed himself either towards the bed’ s head, or leaning upon his staff, to testify his humility, faith, and hope, which adoration how far it was from the worshipping of images (which the Papists urge from this place), who seeth not? For the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err] That unclean spirit, Zechariah 13:2, the devil (who is ειδωλοχαρης, as Synesius saith, a delighter in idols), drives them satanico impetu, to commit whoredom, both spiritual and corporal, with strength of affection. Now, if that spirit of error, 1 John 4:6, and of giddiness, Isaiah 19:14, cause men to err, and carry them with a vehement impetus to idol worship (which indeed is devil worship), what wonder?

(12) Their stocks.—Blocks of wood fashioned into idols (Heb., his wood, the collective singular being maintained). Their staff.—Cyril regarded this as referring to divinations by means of rods (ῥαβδομαντεία), which were placed upright, and after the repetition of incantations, allowed to fall, the forecast of the future being interpreted from the manner in which they fell. But perhaps the “staff” may refer, like the “stocks,” to the idol itself. The Canaanite goddess Asherah was worshipped under this form.

Verse 12. At their stocks] They consult their wooden gods. And their staff declareth] They use divination by rods; see the note on Ezekiel 21:21, where this sort of divination (rabdomancy) is explained.

12. My people ask counsel at their stocks] Lit., ‘My people—he asketh counsel at his wood.’ Jehovah alone can give oracular ‘counsel’; not the teraphim, nor yet the bull-images of Jehovah. The latter did, indeed, seem to the Israelites to bring Jehovah near to their consciousness, but it was not the true Jehovah, who could not be represented by images (Hosea 8:6) and hated the rites of the Israelitish worship (Hosea 9:15); Hosea therefore calls them ‘wood’; comp. Habakkuk 2:19; Jeremiah 2:27; Jeremiah 10:8. There is a touch of melancholy in ‘my people’; comp. Isaiah 3:12. their staff declareth unto them] ‘Declareth’, with reference to secret things, as Isaiah 43:9; Isaiah 44:7. The ‘staff’ is probably the diviner’s wand; so in Ezekiel 21:21 the king of Babylon combines consultation of the teraphim with divination by arrows, which is merely another form of rhabdomanteia (Sept. substitutes ‘wands’, ῥάβδον, for ‘arrows’). Wands were one of the recognized instruments of soothsaying, in both East and West; see Pococke, Specimen Historiae Arabum, p. 327; Azraki, The Chronicles of the city of Mecca, Arabic and German by Wόstenfeld, 1. 73; Herodotus iv. 67; Tacitus, Germ. 10. Pococke however thinks ‘staff’ is synonymous with ‘stocks’, and that a staff is meant which had an idol carved at the top. the spirit of whoredoms] i.e. an impulse prompting them to whoredom (in the literal sense, to avoid tautology); comp. ‘spirit of perverseness’ (Isaiah 19:14), ‘spirit of uncleanness’ (Zechariah 13:2), ‘spirit of jealousy’ (Numbers 5:14).

My people ask counsel at - (literally, “on”) their stocks They ask habitually ; and that, in dependence “on their stocks.” The word “wood” is used of the idol made of it, to bring before them the

12. Stocks — Literally, wood, or tree. May refer (1), as in Habakkuk 2:19; Jeremiah 2:27; Jeremiah 10:8, to idolatrous images; or (2) to images thought to represent Jehovah, such as the calves at