Hosea 10

16. Yet will I slay. The scope of these words is to set forth the diminution of Israel, as to their glory, number, strength, and power, by a firm decree from God. This is according to the curse, anciently denounced against them in the law, that, if they should become disobedient they should “be left few in number” (Lev. 26:22; Deut. 4:27; 28:62). Pococke.

17. They shall be wanderers among the nations. And so they became, and so they continue to this day, “wandering among the nations,” so as scarce to be found out, having no settled place of their own, nowhere that they can be called a people, or are as such acknowledged. Pocock.

10:1 ISRAEL is a luxuriant vine, which putteth forth his fruit: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath multiplied his altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly pillars. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty: he shall smite their altars, he shall spoil their pillars. Surely now shall they say, We have no king: for we fear not the LORD; and the king, what can he do for us? They speak vain words, swearing falsely in making covenants: therefore judgement springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field. The inhabitants of Samaria shall be in terror for the calves of Bethaven: for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof that rejoiced over it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from it. It also shall be carried unto Assyria for a present to king Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel. As for Samaria, her king is cut off, as foam upon the water. The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us. O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood; that the battle against the children of iniquity should not overtake them in Gibeah. When it is my desire, I will chastise them; and the peoples shall be gathered against them, when they are bound to their two transgressions. And Ephraim is an heifer that is taught, that loveth to tread out the corn; but I have passed over upon her fair neck: I will set a rider on Ephraim; Judah shall plow, Jacob shall break his clods. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap according to mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: for thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men. Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth arbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces with her children. So shall Beth-el do unto you because of your great wickedness: at daybreak shall the king of Israel be utterly cut off.

11:1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto the Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. Yet I taught Ephraim to go; I took them on my arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love; and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat before them. He shall not return into the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall fall upon his cities, and shall consume his bars, and devour them, because of their own counsels. And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they call them to him that is on high, none at all will exalt him. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city. They shall walk after the LORD, who shall roar like a lion: for he shall

11 roar, and the children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria: and I will make them to dwell in their houses, saith the LORD. 12 Ephraim compasseth me about with falsehood, and the house of Israel with deceit: but 12: 1 Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the Holy One. Ephraim feedeth on the wind, and followeth after the east wind: he continually multiplieth lies and desolation; and 2 they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt. The LORD hath also a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways; according to his 3 doings will he recompense him. In the womb he took his brother by the heel; and in his 4 manhood he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him at Bethel, and there he spake with 5, 6 us; even the LORD, the God of hosts; the LORD is his memorial. Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgement, and wait on thy God continually. 7, 8 He is a trafficker, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress. And Ephraim said, Surely I am become rich, I have found me wealth: in all my labours they 9 shall find in me none iniquity that were sin. But I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt; I will yet again make thee to dwell in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast. 10 I have also spoken unto the prophets, and I have multiplied visions; and by the ministry 11 of the prophets have I used similitudes. Is Gilead iniquity? they are altogether vanity; in Gilgal they sacrifice bullocks: yea, their altars are as heaps in the furrows of the field. 12 And Jacob fled into the field of Aram, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept 13 sheep. And by a prophet the LORD brought Israel up out of Egypt, and by a prophet was 14 he preserved. Ephraim hath provoked to anger most bitterly: therefore shall his blood be left upon him, and his reproach shall his Lord return unto him.

Chap. 10. The same general subject continues; the sin of Ephraim and its just punishment (verses 1-11); a call to repentance and a new life (verse 12); judgments still more near and dire (verses 13-15).

1. The very point made is the abundant wealth of Israel, perverted the more to idolatry and sin. The more God gives them, the more they give to idols; the richer their land and its products, the richer shrines and altars go up for Baal. So sinful men everywhere are wont to pervert the earthly gifts of God, till more gifts only make them more wicked and more ungrateful to the Giver; and so more mercy in this line becomes only their greater curse. H. C.

4. Sin is bound by an iron link to penalty. “Therefore,” says Hosea, God’s judgment springs up, like a bitter plant (the precise name of which is unknown) in the furrows, where the farmer did not know that its seeds lay. They little dreamed what they were sowing when they scattered abroad their lives, but this is the fruit of that. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;” and whatever other crop we may hope to gather from our sins, we shall gather that bitter one, which we did not expect. The inevitable connection of sin and judgment, the bitterness of its results, the unexpectedness of them, are all here, and to be laid to heart by us. A. M.

5. Beth-aven, house of idols (literally, of nothings, nonentities), is instead of Bethel, house of God—the name being changed to indicate the fearful fact that the people had ceased to be a house of God, and had become a house of idols, after Jeroboam of Nebat set up his golden calf there. The sentiment of this verse is, that the people of Samaria should be put in fear because of these calves. So far from finding peace and help from their new gods, they should find only peril and alarm.

8. “The sin of Israel” is said of the calf at Bethel, as being the occasion and manifestation of her sin of idolatry. The growth of thorns and thistles in places once so much frequented and so magnificent in works of art, gives a vivid sense of utter desolation. The doom of the people would be so terrible that they would choose death rather than life, and hence would cry to the mountains, “Cover us,” and to the hills, “Fall on us!” H. C.

Our Lord refers (Luke 23: 30), as does John in the Apocalypse (Rev. 6: 16; 9: 6) to Hosea’s powerful metaphor of terror, “they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us.” Farrar.

9. There they stood. A remnant, even six hundred men, survived, from whom the tribe was again filled up. The battle in Gibeah (Judges 21) against the children of iniquity (those wicked men) did not overtake and exterminate them. Ephraim need not expect to come off so well, for of her no remnant shall survive to replace the fallen and rebuild the kingdom.

10. “It is in My purpose to chastise them, and the nations shall be gathered against them when they shall be bound for their two sins”—these sins having reference to the two golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. In the same sense the “high places of Aven” are called “the sin of Israel” (verse 8). The idea is that, to chastise them, God will bind them fast because of these sins of calf-worship, and will then gather the nations (Syrians and Assyrians) together to fall upon them. So construed, the sense is vigorous, and entirely in accordance with both the significance of the several words and the grammatical construction. H. C.

11. Like Ephraim, we like to tread out the corn, and to hear those pleasant songs and music that Gospel sermons make, where only grace is preached and nothing of our duty as to works of self-denial. But as for such, God will tread upon their fair neck, and yoke them with Christ’s yoke; for then they have a work to do, even a work of self-denial. Bunyan.

12. The prophet turns here to exhort both Israel and Judah to repentance and to works of righteousness. Here, as is very common in Hebrew, the second of two successive imperatives should be rendered in the future as a promise. “Sow for yourselves, for righteousness; thus shall ye reap according to your piety.” The “reaping in mercy” must be promise, not command. “For righteousness” is the literal rendering, meaning, sow what will naturally produce the fruits of righteousness. The word rendered “mercy” must refer to man, not to God, and is therefore piety. The Hebrew phrase means—according to the measure of your piety. “Break up your fallow ground;” make all due preparation for the harvest of blessings you need and should seek. H. C.

Reap in mercy. This is a promise, that if they did “sow in righteousness,” they should “reap in mercy”—that is, they should experience that measure of mercy whereby God, above their desert, rewards those who sincerely endeavor to do His commandments. Dr. Pocock.—The whole verse may be thus paraphrased: Give yourselves to all holy and conscientious endeavors; sow to yourselves in holiness and righteousness, and reap mercy and lovingkindness from the Lord; break up the fallow grounds of your hearts by a true and serious repentance; for it is time for you to turn to the Lord, and to seek to recover His favor; so far as that He may rain upon you the showers of His grace and mercy, whereby ye may appear righteous in His sight. Bp. Hall.

Let them break up the fallow ground; let them cleanse their hearts from all corrupt affections and lusts, which are as weeds and thorns, and let them be humbled for their sins, and be full of sorrow and shame at the remembrance of them, and prepare to receive the Divine precepts, as the ground that is ploughed is to receive the seed that it may take root. (See Jer. 4:3). Let them sow to themselves in righteousness; let them return to the practice of good worlds, according to the law of God which is the rule of righteousness; let them abound in works of piety toward God, and of justice and charity toward one another, and herein let them sow to the Spirit, as the apostle speaks (Gal. 6:7, 8). Every action is seed sown. Let them sow in righteousness; let them sow what they should sow, do what they should do, and they themselves shall have the benefit of it. Let them seek the Lord; let them look up to Him for His grace, and beg of Him to bless the seed sown. The husbandman must plough and sow with an eye to God, asking of Him rain in the season thereof. H.

Do not fancy that Christian righteousness is different from ordinary “goodness,” except as being broader and deeper, more thoroughgoing, more imperative. Divergencies there are, for our law is more than a republication of the law written on men’s hearts. Though the one agrees with the other, yet the area which they cover is not the same. The precepts of the one, like some rock-hewn inscriptions by forgotten kings, are weathered and indistinct, often illegible, often misread, often neglected. The other is written in living characters in a perfect life. It includes all that the former attempts to enjoin, and much more besides. It breathes a deeper meaning and a tenderer beauty into the words which express human conceptions of virtue, but it does take up these into itself. A. M.

The depravity of the world is just its forgetfulness, impatience, contempt of its God; the godless excellences, the unsanctified noblenesses of man, are the truest, the most awful proofs of the fact. That the murderer, the adulterer, the thief, should disclaim subjection to his God is sed, but scarcely surprising; the depth, the universality of the rebellion is seen in the independence of our very virtues upon God; in the vast sphere of human excellence into which God never once enters; in the amiability that loves all but God; in the self-devotion that never surrendered one gratification for the sake of God; in the indomitable energy that never wrought one persevering work for God; in the enduring patience that faints under no weight of toil except the labor of adoring and praising God. This it is which really demonstrates the alienation of the world from its Maker, that its best affections should thus be affections to all but Him; that He should have to behold the fairest things He has formed—kindness and gratitude and love—embracing every object but Himself; the loveliest feelings He has implanted taking root, and growing and blossoming through the world, to bear fruit for all but Him! W. A. B.

“Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you.” This command comes down in the midst of a perfect shower of rural images; and it connects, in a remarkable manner, the ploughing, and all the kind of work upon the heart and mind, indicated in that part of husbandry, with the work of seeking God, the work of effectually praying. It is time to seek the Lord; but it is useless to seek Him, indeed there is no true seeking of Him, unless therewith you go to work upon your own soil, your own heart, and break up the fallow ground. It is time to sow; but it is useless to sow, unless first you dig and plough, and break up the hard soil and the thorns with it. The work of praying itself is a kind of sowing; it is a sowing with God’s promises; and to this work especially the prophet refers, announcing directly, in answer to the question, How shall we gain God’s blessing? a work to be done on our part, along with prayer, if we would render prayer effectual. The intimate and essential connection between praying and working is nowhere in the Word of God more strikingly exhibited. G. B. C.

There is no growth in holiness possible without the constant accompanying process of excision and crucifixion of the old. If you want to grow purer and liker Christ, you must slay yourselves. You cannot gird on “righteousness” above the old self, as some beggar might buckle to himself royal velvet with its ermine over his filthy tatters. There must be a putting off in order to and accompanying the putting on. Strip yourselves of yourselves, and then you “shall not be found naked,” but clothed with the garments of salvation, as the bride with the robe which is the token of the bridegroom’s love and the pledge of her espousals to him. A. M.

There are two centres in the universe, toward which man can strive and tend as an object of being. They are God and self. A man must choose between them. It is his own self that chooses; but in the one case his own self chooses for self, and against God; and in the other case his own self chooses for God, and against self. The choice of self as an object of the striving of one’s own self is always wrong. The choice of God as an object of the striving of one’s own self is always right. Hell is the inevitable destiny of one who lives for self; heaven is the sure destiny of one who lives for God. But hell and heaven are a result of the choice of self, or of God, as an object of life; they are not in themselves the object of choice and of life. He whose whole self strives toward God, forgets self as a factor in life. He whose whole self strives toward self, forgets God as an object of desire and of life. He who would save his self shall lose his self, and he who loses sight of self through looking toward God shall be saved. S. S. T.

The words “selfish” and “selfishness” are of comparatively recent introduction into the English language. They are little more than two hundred years old, and were quite unknown to Shakespeare and the writers of his time. They first make their appearance in the writings of some of the Puritan divines toward the middle of the seventeenth century, and were remarked on, sometimes condemned as novelties, at the time of their first employment. It is a singular fact that the words should be so new, seeing that the thing is so old. Selfishness, or the undue love of self, is as old as sin, as old as the fall, or indeed as old as the devil. I called it just now the undue love of self. Perhaps I should have called it rather, the love of our wrong self. There is a self belonging to us, and that our true self, which it is our duty to love, as is plain from that precept of Christ, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”—seeing that in this precept the love of self is made the rule, measure, and law of our love to our brethren; which it could not be if it were itself a condemnable thing. Abp. Trench.

Legitimate self-love is the act or habit of a man who so loves himself that he gives himself to God. Selfishness is fallen self-love. It is self-love in excess, blind to the existence and excellence of God, and seeking its happiness in inferior objects, by aiming to subdue them to its own purposes. Every sin is but a modification of it. Avarice is but selfishness grasping and hoarding. Prodigality is but selfishness decorating and indulging itself—a man sacrificing to himself as his own god. Sensuality, and indeed all the sins of the flesh, are only selfishness setting itself above law, and gratifying itself at the expense of all restraint. And all the sins of the spirit are only the same principle impatient of contradiction, and refusing to acknowledge superiority, or to bend to any will but its own. What is egotism but selfishness speaking? Or crime, but selfishness, without its mask, in earnest and acting? J. Harris.

If you suppose the soul loving its duty, loving holiness, loving God in whom alone all these are contained; if you make what was its law to become its love, will you not have made its law become its happiness, will you not have ended the war between the two elements of its nature? will you not have reconciled the love of self with the love of goodness, and happiness with holiness? And does not this mere supposition make you comprehend that between the love of ourselves, taken in general, and the internal law of duty, there is no essential contradiction, and that there is no necessity of destroying, or even of restricting one of the two elements in order to make way for the other, seeing they are fitted and destined to form in our soul one single and common sentiment? While we say this of the love of ourselves, we do not say it of that other affection which, derived from self-love, is only the abuse and corruption of it; we mean selfishness. The distinguishing characteristic of this affection is to seek its satisfaction in the isolation of the individual. And in fact the love of ourselves, in its purity, does not hinder us from uniting with the rest of the sensible creation, whereas selfishness separates us. The former expands, the latter contracts; the former has its limits in all the beings of the world, the latter in ourselves alone; the former allows us to multiply our existence by sympathy, the latter reduces us to an individual life, which thus reduced is a death; the former is a harmony, the latter a discord in the universal concert; the former is truth, the latter falsehood: in one word, the latter is an abortion of the former. Such is selfishness, to which everything is an instrument, and nothing an end but itself. Vinet.

The man who lives absorbed in the miserable care for his own well-being is dead to all which makes life noble, sweet and real. Flagrant vice is not needed to kill the real life. Clean, respectable selfishness does the work effectually. But while all selfishness is fatal, it is self-surrender and sacrifice “for My sake and the Gospel’s,” which is life-giving. Heroism, generous self-devotion without love to Christ, is noble, but falls short of discipleship, and may even aggravate the sin of the man who exhibits it, because it shows what treasures he could lay at Christ’s feet, if he would. It is only self-denial made sweet by reference to Him that leads to life. A. M.

So we have our choice. We may live for self, take good care of our lives, not exposing them to danger, not making personal sacrifices, having a keen eye always for our own interests and advancement. Then we may reach old age hale and well preserved. People may congratulate us on our well-preserved state, and we may have considerable pride in the result of our prudence and carefulness. But there is no harvest. The life has been no blessing to the world. That is, indeed, the whole outcome of selfishness. The other way to live is altogether to forget self—not to think of or care for one’s own life, but to throw it away in obedience to God and in devotion to His service. The truth is we cannot be great blessings in this world, and at the same time take a selfish care of our own lives. That which costs us nothing is worth nothing. This principle lies a great deal deeper in the heart of all life than we are apt to think. All along the ages, whatever is good and beautiful and worthy has been the fruit of suffering and pain. Civilization has advanced through wars, revolutions and failures, through the ruin and overturning of empires and kingdoms. Every thoughtful reader of the world’s history understands this. What Christian civilization is to-day, it is as the harvest of centuries of weary struggle and toil and human failure. Every advance worth recording has been made through carnage and disaster. It seems that without shedding of blood there is not only no remission of sins, but no growth, no progress in life. J. R. M.

13. Resuming the figures of husbandry, the prophet says, “Ye have ploughed wickedness,” etc., in the same sense as Paul (Gal. 6: 7), “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;” or Solomon (Prov. 1: 31), “They shall eat of the fruit of their own way.” Ephraim had trusted, not in the Lord, but in the way of her own choice, and in the multitude of her mighty men. The Lord is now about to show her the folly of such trust. H. C.

13,14. Once more we have sin and punishment exhibited in their organic connection in verses 13 and 14. Their past had been just the opposite of sowing righteousness and reaping mercy. Wickedness ploughed in, iniquity will surely be its fruit. Sin begets sin, and is its own punishment. What fruit have we of doing wrong? “Lies”—that is, unfulfilled expectations of unrealized satisfaction. No man gets the good that he aimed at in sinning, or he gets something more that spoils it. At last the deceitfulness of sin will be found out, but we may be sure of it now. The root of all Israel’s sin was the root of ours—namely, trust in self, and consequent neglect of God. The first half of verse 13 is an exhaustive analysis of the experience of every sinful life; the second, a penetrating disclosure of the foundation of it. A. M.

Chap. 11. The strain of rebuke and of forewarning of judgment having continued with only brief interruptions from the beginning of chap. 4, till we are brought almost to the very day in which the king of Israel should be cut off, the course of thought now turns to reminiscences of love, and to the most touching expressions of pity and grief over the impending ruin of Israel.

1. Thinking of the nation as having a lifetime, analogous to that of the individual, running through infancy and youth to manhood, the Lord says, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt.” He had manifested a very special interest in the fathers of the nation, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; He had shown His care for their children during their oppressions under the Pharaohs. It was precisely by means of the call of God that Moses was trained, commissioned, and led on to become, under God, the deliverer of the people from Egyptian bondage. H. C.

Matthew (chap. 2: 15) cites the passage in reference to the fact that the Infant Jesus was taken down into Egypt and continued there till the death of Herod; his object being to obviate the prejudice which might arise in the mind of a high-caste Jew, from the circumstance of the early infancy of Jesus being passed in a polluted, heathen land. As Jehovah’s interposition in bringing Israel out of Egypt proved that the misery and pollution of their Egyptian sojourn was no bar to His love to them, so also the distress and pollution attendant upon the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt constituted no just ground of objection to Jesus being the Messiah; Jesus came forth out of Egypt the Son of God nevertheless. B. C.—Matthew apparently quotes these words, not to prove anything, but in order to point out the relation of God’s former dealings with the latter, the beginning and the close, what relates to the body and what relates to the Head. Pusey.

“I called My son out of Egypt,” as uttered by the prophet, was unquestionably meant to refer historically to the fact of the Lord’s goodness in delivering Israel from that land of bondage and oppression. But the evangelist Matthew expressly points to it as a prophecy, and tells us that the Infant Jesus was for a time sent into Egypt, and again brought out of it, that the word might be fulfilled. This arose from the typical connection between Christ and Israel. The Scripture fulfilled was prophetic, simply because the circumstance it recorded was typical. But in so considering it, the evangelist puts no peculiar strain upon its terms, nor introduces any sort of double sense into its import. He merely points to the prophetic element involved in the transaction it relates, and thereby discovers to us a bond of connection between the Old and the New in God’s dispensations, necessary to be kept in view for a correct apprehension of both. P. Fairbairn.

Each chosen one—each saint, each son, each child of God—is indeed called out of the Egypt of this world. The call, when looked at in the light of the past, is a call out of Egypt, a call into the wilderness, and a call for us to arise and set out on our journey home. H. Bonar.

2. God’s calling of His son Israel, especially by the agency of Moses, suggested His continued agencies of calling the people by later prophets, and of this He proceeds to speak: “As they”—these later prophets—“called them, so they went away from their presence.”

4. The description of God’s tender care and gentle loving ways with His people continues. “I drew” (not drove) “them—with cords of a man,” not cords of a bullock, untamed, headstrong and wild. These cords are explained fully in the words “with bands of love,” by the sweet attractions which manifested love naturally creates. The next figure also is taken from the ways of the kind husbandman: “I was to them as they that lift up the yoke which presses on their cheek;” for the rude yokes of Oriental countries are heavy and ill-adapted to the comfort of animals while eating. The description continues: “I brought food to them and caused them to eat.” The Hebrew has two verbs here, of which the literal sense is given in this translation. The tense of these verbs implies that God is willing still to feed them, as of old. This showing of God’s loving care and gentleness toward His people is at

once beautiful and strong. The facts of the case justify more even than this. H. C.