Hosea 8:8

Israel is swallowed up,.... Not only their substance, but their persons also, the whole nation of them, their whole estate, civil and ecclesiastic: it notes the utter destruction of them by the

Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure. Israel is swallowed up - not merely Israel's possessions, but Israel herself.

In the former verse the prophet foretells the lost labour of such pains and seed as Ephraim bestowed; now he addeth somewhat more dreadful, the harvest is ruin and destruction to the seedsman, he is swallowed up; and this is the effect of the whirlwind, : ordinarily whirlwinds scatter the fruit, but here is one swallows up both labour and labourer. Swallowed up, very soon and irreparably, as a man that is swallowed alive by a mighty, overgrown shark. Now; ere long, within three or four years at most, as I noted on . Shall they be among the Gentiles; carried out of their own country by Shalmaneser, and dispersed at the pleasure of the conqueror into Chalah, Habor, &c. As a vessel wherein is no pleasure; as worthless and useless, cast out of doors; or if of any use, yet in basest and most contemptible: so shall these captives be among the nations whom they must serve; or Israel, impoverished by chargeable confederates, is now looked upon with contempt by them all, and cast off.

Hosea 8:8 Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein [is] no pleasure.Ver. 8. Israel is swallowed up] Not their meal only, as Hosea 8:7, but themselves also are devoured by those workers of iniquity, that eat up God’ s people as they eat bread, Psalms 14:4. Persecutors are men-eaters, more cruel than those American cannibals, that devour men piecemeal; they make but a breakfast of God’ s people, as Sennacherib meant to do of Jerusalem, and the powder-papists of England. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us. But blessed be God, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth," Psalms 124:2-3; Psalms 124:6. Let us keep us out of the claws and clutches of that old manslayer, who night and day walketh about (in a circular motion) that he may take us at advantage, seeking whom he may swallow down his wide gullet, 1 Peter 5:8, καταπιη, which he hath even made red with the blood of souls; and is therefore happily called the great red dragon, Revelation 12:3, that hath seven heads to plot, and ten horns to push men into the sin of idolatry, and thereby into hell. So long as Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase, all that devoured him found that they offended; for evil came upon them, Jeremiah 2:3, they could no more digest him than the whale did Jonah; a cup of trembling or of poison he was to all the people round about, Zechariah 12:2 : see the note there. But "when he offended in Baal he died"; when he "chose new gods, then was war in the gates," Judges 5:8; when they made leagues with idolaters, then were they even swallowed up by them; as were likewise the Greek and Latin Churches by the Eastern and Western Antichrist, those crooked Leviathans, those dragons in the sea, as the Egyptian and Assyrian are called, Isaiah 27:1. Now shall they be among the Gentiles] Whose favour and friendship they have basely sought, and dearly bought. It was threatened in the former chapter, Hosea 7:16, that "they should be a derision in the land of Egypt." To have Egyptians deride us, and that for sin, is a heavy judgment. So here, to be disdained and vilified by such, as an old broken vessel, fit for none but unclean uses. As a vessel wherein is no pleasure] No delight or complacence; vas despectum, reieculum, abiectum, a vessel that is for the carrying up and down of excrements: so shall Israel be employed by Gentiles in base and contemptible offices, as they were by the Babylonians, Jeremiah 51:34; yea, Jehoiakim himself (though a king) was no better used, Jeremiah 22:18, and Moab, that haughty nation, Jeremiah 48:38.

(8) Vessel wherein is no pleasure—i.e., worthless (comp. Jeremiah 48:38; Psalms 31:13; 2 Timothy 2:20); a vessel devoted to vilest uses, or smashed up as worthless.

Verse 8. Now shall they be among the Gentiles] They shall be carried into captivity, and there be as a vessel wherein there is no pleasure; one soiled, unclean, infectious, to be despised, abhorred, not used. The allusion is to a rotten, corrupted skin-bottle; a bottle made of goat, deer, or calf hide, still commonly used in Asia and Africa. Some of them are splendidly ornamented. This is the case with one now before me made of a goat's skin well dressed, variously painted, and ornamented with leather fringes, tassels, c. In such a bottle there might be pleasure but the Israelites are compared to such a bottle, rough, ill-dressed, not ornamented, old, musty, and putrid. This shows the force of the comparison.

8–14. The judgment is already begun; Israel has drawn it upon himself, by dallying with Assyria, by religious abuses, and by a vain confidence in fortified cities.

Israel is swallowed up - Not only shall all which they have, be swallowed up by the enemy, but themselves also; and this, not at any distant time, but “now.” “Now,” at a time all but present, “they

6. From Israel was it also [“is even this”] — What? Evidently the calf of Hos 8:5. In its establishment Jehovah had no part; it is the work of Israel; therefore the former has cast it off.