Hosea 4

4:1 HEAR the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. There is nought but swearing and breaking faith, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. Yet let no man strive, neither let any man reprove; for thy people are as they that strive with the priest. And thou shalt stumble in the day, and the prophet also shall stumble with thee in the night; and I will destroy thy mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children. As they were multiplied, so they sinned against me: I will change their glory into shame. They feed on the sin of my people, and set their heart on their iniquity. And it shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish them for their ways, and will reward them their doings. And they shall eat, and not have enough; they shall commit whoredom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take heed to the LORD. Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the understanding. My people ask counsel at their stock, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredom hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God. They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters commit whoredom, and your brides commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for they themselves go apart with whores, and they sacrifice with the harlots: and the people that doth not understand shall be overthrown. Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend; and come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As the LORD liveth. For Israel hath behaved himself stubbornly, like a stubborn heifer: nor will the LORD feed them as a lamb in a large place. Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone. Their drink is become sour: they commit whoredom continually; her rulers dearly love shame. The wind hath wrapped her up in its wings; and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.

5:1 Hear this, O ye priests, and hearken, ye house of Israel, and give ear, O house of the king, for unto you pertaineth the judgement; for ye have been a snare at Mizpah, and a net

2 spread upon Tabor. And the revolters are gone deep in making slaughter; but I am a re-

3 buker of them all. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim,

4 thou hast committed whoredom, Israel is defiled. Their doings will not suffer them to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD.

5. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in

6 their iniquity; Judah also shall stumble with them. They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the LORD; but they shall not find him: he hath withdrawn himself

7 from them. They have dealt treacherously against the LORD; for they have borne strange children: now shall the new moon devour them with their fields.

8. Blow ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah: sound an alarm at Beth-aven;

9 behind thee, O Benjamin. Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of rebuke: among

10 the tribes of Israel have I made known that which shall surely be. The princes of Judah are like them that remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath upon them like water.

11. Ephraim is oppressed, he is crushed in judgement; because he was content to walk after the

12 command. Therefore am I unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness.

13. When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to Assyria, and sent to king Jareb: but he is not able to heal you, neither shall he cure you of

14 your wound. For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and there shall be none to deliver.

15. I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me earnestly.

THE rest of the prophecy (chaps. 4-14) is a sort of dirge, consisting of mingled wailings, entreaties, exhortations, threatenings, and promises, and summing up the whole of Hosea’s long teaching after Jeroboam’s days. It is the necessary consequence of the first three chapters; for they in two brief but telling allegories set plainly forth the sins, especially of idolatry, by which Israel had violated God’s marriage covenant, and been repudiated by Him, with mercy, nevertheless, for her in store, but only after long days of widowhood. Those allegories state his whole case; the poem that follows is his lamentation. In it he urges upon the people the consequences of their national sin, first showing them their guilt, both generally, and also class by class; next, in severe and gloomy terms, he sets before them their punishment; and then gradually, though irregularly, he advances to those better hopes and promises with which, too, his parables had ended. And most beautifully are these hopes expressed. R. P. S.

We have in the second part the atmosphere of the dark and distracted age that followed the decease of Jeroboam (4:1, 2; 5:1, 2, 13; 7:7, 11, etc.). Everywhere we are confronted with the lawlessness, the dissoluteness, the plotting factions, the mad dallying with the great powers, and a thousand unmistakable indications of the last years of Israel’s decline and decay. But while there can be no hesitation in assigning the whole of this section to the period in question, it is almost a hopeless task to divide it into separate utterances, and to attach these to particular stages of the downward career of the kingdom. This difficulty is due partly to the peculiar style adopted by the prophet, whose utterances flow on in one long, impassioned monologue, in which we rather dimly divine pauses than clearly discern them. Moreover, the references to contemporary incidents and current circumstances, though numerous and detailed, are too vague to help us much in our extreme ignorance of the actual course of events, which are chronicled in the most summary fashion in the historical books. Elmslie.

Chap. 4. The Lord sets forth the great sin of the people; charges it largely to the account of the priests, whose flagrant neglects of duty He exposes and denounces (verses 1-11); shows that idolatry is folly (v. 12), and begets licentiousness (verses 13, 14). He solemnly warns Judah to avoid the sin and doom of Ephraim (verses 15-19). H. C.

1. Because there is no truth, nor mercy. Integrity and mercy or compassionate sympathy make up the sum of man’s duty to man. Knowledge of God. That consciousness of what God is, both in Himself and in His relations to us (cf. note on chap. 6:3), which leads to practical conformity with His will. (So chap. 6:6. Cf. Jer. 22:16; Isa. 11:9.) Compare the triad of virtues enumerated in Micah 6:8. B. C.

That knowledge which is before and beyond all other—which is the first, and ever the greatest want of a thinking soul, and which is also the consummation of all knowledge, in time and in eternity—the knowledge of God in the grandeur of His attributes, in the mystery of His triune nature revealed in Christ, in the glory of His holiness, in the excellency of His love, in His paternal goodness, in His redeeming mercy, in His pledged and everlasting grace; this is the wisdom that Christ brings to the humblest of His disciples. What matters it to have climbed the heights of mountains, and compassed the earth, if there be no heights of glory for the soul beyond? What matters it to have sounded the sea and have gathered its treasures if the soul shall never stand upon the sea of glass before the throne? What matters it to have visited upon beams of light the outmost planet, and have measured the stars, if for the disembodied spirit there shall be no wings of love to bear it to a celestial home? What matters it to have analyzed the constitution of the soul if the great wants of that soul, as a spiritual and immortal existence, shall be forever unsatisfied? The wisdom that Christ brings, that Christ is, is the wisdom that man ever needs, but had never found. It is the wisdom of God; the being, the attributes, the character, the works, the government, the purposes, and, above all, the emotions, the desires and the promises of God toward man, all truly and fully displayed; and while it is no newly created faculty within the soul, it is that soul itself in all its faculties, quickened and purified to behold, to honor, to love, and to enjoy God as He is. This is that wisdom which is the life of the soul. “For this is life eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.” J. P. T.

2. The Hebrew of this verse is a model of brevity and force; its infinitives absolute, standing naked and as compact as possible. “Swearing, lying, murdering, stealing, committing adultery,” they are outbreaking in all. Scorning restraint, they break over all bounds. “Blood toucheth blood” in the strong sense that the streams from the first murdered man meet and mingle with the streams from the second, and scarcely can there be found a spot clean of the gore of murder. H. C.

Swearing. The Hebrew verb (alah, derived from a noun meaning “God”) denotes the use of God’s name, both for taking an oath and for execration; and as endeavors were sometimes used to cast evil spells upon others by imprecation, it is not improbable that the impious use of God’s name in cursing is here intended as well as perjury. It perhaps also includes a large use of those unnecessary oaths, which have been so strongly condemned by our Lord and by James. B. C.

Some rims are productive of temporary profit or pleasure; but profaneness is productive of nothing unless it be shame on earth and damnation in hell. It is the most gratuitous of all kinds of wickedness; a sort of peppercorn acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the devil over those who indulge it. Edwards.—The vilest, cheapest, most causeless and utterly irrational of all vices is the vice of profanity. It affords no pleasure, yields no profit, gratifies no natural appetite, commands no man’s respect, betrays an ignorant, vulgar, poverty-stricken mind, as well as an utter lack of good-breeding, and paves the way to sure and irremediable demoralization of character. New York Observer.—In hearing some men swear, the hearer is almost converted to the old doctrine of demoniac possession. What most impresses us is the utter senselessness, the pure insanity of his curses and maledictions. For it is the Almighty that this “aspiring lump of animated dirt” blasphemes. The folly of it can only be fitly described in that energetic and vivid passage in which Dr. South draws the contrast between the power of the offender and the Divine object of his puny wrath: “A man so behaving himself,” he says, “is nothing else but weakness and nakedness setting itself in battle array against Omnipotence; a handful of dust and ashes sending a challenge to all the host of heaven. For what else are words and talk against thunderbolts; and the weak, empty noise of a querulous rage against Him who can speak worlds, who could word heaven and earth out of nothing, and can, when He pleases, word them into nothing again.” E. P. Whipple.

4. Worst of all is the hopeless moral infatuation of the people. It is all in vain for one man to reprove another for sin. The people are like him who resists the judicial decisions given by the priest acting as judge, under God (De. 17: 12).

5. This abrupt change of person to direct address is for the sake of greater force. “Thou”—the people—“shalt fail,” by awful judgments from God. “The prophet” here is the false prophet who had misguided and deluded the people, and must perish with them. H. C.

6. For lack of knowledge. The “knowledge” here spoken of is not a speculative, but a practical knowledge; not only a knowledge of the letter or sense of the law, but the framing of their lives according to it. The end of His giving them His laws and commandments was that they might so know them as to keep and do them; that was reckoned their “wisdom and understanding” (De. 4 : 6) ; and the doing according to His commandments He declares to be the knowledge of Him (Jer. 22 : 16). It is very observable how the sin and the punishment run parallel and are proportioned one to the other. The crimes objected are that they “rejected knowledge,” and that they “forgot the law of their God.” The punishment proportioned to the first, that He also would “reject” them, that they should be “no priests to Him ;” to the second, that He would also “forget their children.” Pocock.

God’s forgetting their children means more than it expresses. For God to forget to protect and bless is to give up to unmingled curses. The turn given in this language is fearfully significant of retribution. The Hebrew makes God’s agency emphatic : “I, yea, I, will forget thy children.”

7. “They” refers to the priests. The “increase” might be either in numbers or in wealth and honor ; probably not either alone, but all. The more they prospered, by so much the more they sinned against God. H. C.

8. They eat up the sin of My people, and they set their heart on their iniquity. The meaning is, that it was their ordinary custom, under pretence of the right of their office, to receive from the people their sin offerings, and to feed upon them. At the same time, “they set their heart on their iniquity”—that is, they were desirous that the people should commit sin, that so the sin offerings might come in to them. Pocock.

8,9. Unsanctified subtlety often proves a great curse to a man ; and the more crafty men are to do evil the more mischief they do, and, consequently, they shall receive greater damnation. Subtle tempters are the most accursed creatures under the sun. H.—Are these strong deliverances true? According to the tenor of Scripture, they are. Then terrible must be the judgment and hot the displeasure of God against those who employ intellect, wealth, social position, and the seductive arts of fashionable life to beguile weaker companions into the indulgence of sinful pleasures. J. F. Mixon.

9. God will bring judgments upon them that shall be the destruction both of priest and people ; the famine that deprives the people of their meat shall deprive the priests of their meat offerings (Joel 1 : 9). It is part of the description of an universal desolation, that it shall be as with the people, so with the priest (Isa 24 : 2). God’s judgments, when they come with commission, will make no difference.

Sharers in sin must expect to be sharers in ruin. Thus God will punish them both for their ways, and reward them their doings. God will cause their doings to return upon them—so the word is ; when a sin is committed, the sinner thinks it is gone and he shall hear no more of it, but he shall find it called over again and made to return, either to his humiliation or to his condemnation. H.

Is it not true that the religious condition of a church, and that of its leaders, teachers, pastors, ever tend to be the same, as that of the level of water in two connected vessels ? There is such a constant interaction and reciprocal influence that uniformity results. Either a living teacher will, by God’s grace, quicken a languid church, or a languid church will, with the devil’s help, stifle the life of the teacher. Thank God that when His Church lives on a high level of devotion, it has never wanted for single souls who have towered even above that height. Alas ! for the leaders who have rayed out formalism, and have chilled down the Church to their own coldness, and stiffened it to their own deadness! A. M.

10. Resuming from verse 8 their eating the sins of the people, God now declares : They shall eat, but shall get no good of it ; this being the sense of the words rendered “not have enough ;” literally, “shall not be satisfied.” H. C.—They shall eat, and not have enough. Though they have great plenty by the abundance of offerings that are brought in, yet they shall have no satisfaction in it. Either their food shall yield no good nourishment, or their greedy appetites shall not be satisfied with it. What is unlawfully gained cannot be comfortably used ; no, nor that which is inordinately coveted ; it is just that the desires which are insatiable should always be unsatisfied ; and that those should never have enough who never know when they have enough. H.

11. The drunkard hath no sense of the difference between good and evil. His reason, his understanding, his conscience, is gone ; and therefore all sins are alike to him. Hence it is that this sin never goes alone, but has a great train of other sins always following it ; inasmuch that it cannot so properly be called one single sin, as all sins in one. Bp. Beveridge.

12. Their staff declareth unto them. As if it were, “He looks to his stick to tell him what to do.” The juxtaposition of “stock” meaning an idol, leads us to take “staff” as meaning a staff having for its top a little idol. B. C.

13. Thus far in this chapter the sins of Israel, the Ten Tribes, have been portrayed.

Here the prophet turns to admonish Judah to shun such crime and its consequent ruin. Gilgal was one of the centres of idol worship, as was also Beth-aven, house of vanity, which was probably the place long known as Bethel—house of God. The change of name represents the change from the worship of Jehovah to the worship of mere nothings, vanities. Both Gilgal and Bethel had been associated with the true worship of God; Gilgal ever since the rolling up of the heap of stones there on entering Canaan, and the circumcision of all the people there (Josh. 4 : 20 ; 5 : 9), and Samuel’s holding his circuit court there (1 Sam. 7 : 16) ; and Bethel, from that eventful night when the Lord met the youthful Jacob there (Gen. 28 : 16-19). This appropriation of God’s house (Bethel) to the devil’s worship is one of his own Satanic arts, kept up through all time. “Nor swear,” in the profane way of idol worshippers, “The Lord liveth.” It seems to have been common to blend with idolatry some of the forms of recognizing the true God. This he abhorred.

16. The figure supposes a young heifer under the yoke (for the female was put to real work in the East), but resisting, refractory, yerking her head away, and running back—a very different sort of action from that gradual down-hill sliding which is commonly associated with the English word backslide. It is unfortunate that the word backslide, taken from the Bible to describe a state of Christian experience, should by usage fall so far short of the Bible sense. It means here that Israel is persistent, stubborn, half frantic in her rebellion against God—a state of heart and life utterly far from true piety. Now—i.e., very soon, the Lord will give Israel a vast range of wilderness for her wanderings—will cast her forth from her land as a lamb might be cast forth from his secure and peaceful fold, to roam at large, homeless and unprotected. The passage predicts the captivity of the Ten Tribes to Assyria, but keeps up the figure of the refractory heifer, only changing from the heifer to the lamb as being more defenceless, and more wretched when lost and wandering alone. The heifer tears herself away; God lets her go, a wandering lamb, into a hopeless captivity.

17. Ephraim is joined to idols : let him alone.** The Hebrew word for idols implies things made with the toilsome but fruitless labor of human hands. Ephraim is joined to them in the strong sense of being closely united and adhering, so to speak, to those senseless things. “Let him alone,” cannot, in this

connection, or the declaration of God’s purpose to abandon Ephraim and withdraw His Spirit, but is God’s command to Judah to desist from all society with Ephraim and leave him to sin and suffer alone. H. C.—No means should be used to bring them to repentance; Ephraim is joined to idols, is in love with them, and addicted to them, and therefore, let him alone, as verse 4. Let no man reprove him. Let him be given up to his own heart’s lusts, and walk in his own counsels; we would have healed him, and he would not be healed, therefore forsake him. It is a sad and sore judgment for any man to be let alone in sin, for God to say concerning a sinner, “He is joined to his idols, the world and the flesh, he is incurably proud, covetous, or profane, an incurable drunkard or adulterer, let him alone; conscience, let him alone; minister, let him alone; providences, let him alone. H.

“Let me alone!” says the defiant soul to the infinite Jehovah. “Let him alone!” cries the Almighty concerning the resisting, despising sinner, addressing all the agencies and appliances by which the wandering soul is influenced to return unto Him, all the influences of grace and truth employed and exerted by the Holy Spirit in the soul’s restoration to childship and likeness to God. When the flat goes forth, all these shall be withdrawn from the stubbornly resisting sinner. B.

Let none defer the work of God to a more convenient season; no season can possibly arrive so convenient as the present; difficulties will only increase by repeated habits of neglect; they can never be so small as they are now. The chains of sin will only be riveted by wearing; until God will wait no longer for the procrastinating trifler, but say, as He said by the prophet, “Let him alone; he is joined to idols; let him alone!” This has been the ruin of millions. It is but few that deliberately reject religion; their sin and ruin lie in procrastination; they look forward to a day of repentance that never arrives! R. Hall.

Aside from the uncertainty of life, the distraction of sickness, the blindness of dotage, there is another circumstance which increases the improbability of future repentance. It is the accumulation of power which every habit of sin is acquiring, the longer it is indulged. Conscience is an easily offended monitor, and the reproof that is slighted to-day is more feebly uttered to-morrow, and the third day its whispers may be too low to wake up the lethargy of the soul. The sins which you cling to now will cling to you hereafter, and the work which early attended to would have been comparatively like the putting off of a garment, will become at length like the plucking out of a right eye or the cutting off of a right hand. God’s spirit will come less frequently to the heart that is only hardened by His influences, and which at every slighted visit is the more strengthened to resist His future solicitations. Do not expect that amid all these discouraging circumstances, after this protracted career of guilt, a Divine hand will be upon you to draw you back to the commencement of your journey; to remove at once the fixedness of your sin. The Spirit of God, when it acts at all, operates in harmony with your own agency. “It doth persuade” you, while you can listen and ponder and understand. It presents truth to the eye, and it fixes the eye upon it. The more dimmed has become the vision by sinful indulgence, the more difficult will be the conversion by the truth. Ah! is there not such a thing as a total blindness even in this life, which no Divine influence will cure. The Spirit is kind and compassionate; it takes a long while to grieve Him utterly away; but He will not strive forever. When the soul, as it were, immures itself in dungeon walls, He will find some crevice to let in the light; but when every aperture is closed, and the doors are barred and bolted with a strength that yields to no knocking, then sadly, indeed, but surely the Spirit takes His eternal flight. “There is a sin unto death.” In every man’s destination there is a limit beyond which if he go, he is lost forever. Homer.

Oh, where is this mysterious line of God’s forbearance? One may stand on one side of it at one moment and cross it the next. One may reach it after years of walking; another, while his step has lost nothing of its youthful spring. But if there be one who remembers the seasons of the Spirit’s power within his soul; if there be one who cannot compute (because their number is so large) his stifled convictions; if there be one who in view of the truth of God has thought oft and deeply upon the concerns of his soul; if there be one who, though he could not resist the evidence of the truth, brought home to him by the messenger of the truth in his Sabbath argument, has yet often resisted the truth itself, oh, surely we may say of him, that he is standing on the mysterious threshold, to cross which is to enter upon a region of hopelessness and death! And a conscience every day getting weaker because the unseen author of its remonstrances is every day lifting a fee-bler voice, shall be to him the proof of the assertion. Conscience will have its last conviction; the Son of God will knock for the last time at the door of the heart; the Spirit of truth will move for the last time over the soul. Amid all these convictions, and knockings, and strivings some one must be the last. E. Mason.

The Gospel from the first acted as a moral test to all to whom it came. It put to the proof their honesty, sincerity, earnestness. It was always first received by the good and devout—by those who had in them something in harmony with itself; or it stirred the soul, and then met such as, “moved by fear,” or “resolutely bent on eternal life,” were thus prepared to welcome the good news. If men were morally aroused, or if they were sincere seekers after truth, or really wished to do the will of God, Christianity would take them by the hand, speak to them in tender and loving tones, lead them into the light, “show them the doctrine,” and cause them to perceive and know “that it was of God.” If, on the contrary, they were sensual, indifferent, volatile—vain in their reasonings, proud, presumptuous, touching with rude and unhallowed hands sacred and Divine things—scorners, mockers, disposed to find reasons for denial or rejection—to such the Gospel would say—in the sense of spiritually revealing—nothing; it would maintain a dignified silence; would “let them alone,” and suffer them to be self-deceived. T. Binney.

19. The whirlwind affords a common figure for those providential agencies with which God overwhelms and sweeps away the wicked. (See Ps. 58:9; Prov. 1:27; Isa. 40:24; 66:15, etc.) Here a bold poetic imagination gives to the whirlwind real life, and wings in which the guilty nation is enfolded, to be borne away to its final doom—captivity. Zechariah (5:5-11) has the same figure in a slightly different dress. “They shall be confounded because of their sacrifices” to idol gods which cannot save. Their objects of confidence shall utterly fail them; the idols in which they trusted shall prove their curse. So evermore must all the hopes of the wicked perish! That on which they rely for help shall become the millstone to sink them—the fire to scorch and blast them forever! H. C.

And then they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices; ashamed of their sin in offering sacrifice to idols; ashamed of their folly in putting themselves to such an expense upon gods that have no power to help them, and thereby to make that God their enemy who has almighty power to destroy them. Those that have sacrificed their time, strength, honor and all their comforts to the world and the flesh will shortly be ashamed of it. Yea, and those that bring to God blind, and lame, and heartless sacrifices will be ashamed of them too. H.

Chap. 5. In general, the course of thought is the same in this chapter as in the fourth; rebukes for sin, threatening of near judgments, in which God’s own hand should be specially manifest. Judah is spoken of more frequently than in chap. 4, and hence, Judah being less hardened than Ephraim, the strain of remark gives more intimations of hopeful repentance.

2. The Lord assures them that their sacrifice of animals after the law of Moses, whether mixed up with idol worship and all manner of wickedness, or standing by itself, yet used as a cloak for their sin, would avail them nothing. They might go deep into it; it could be accounted only as so much the greater sin, and could by no means screen them from the judgments of God. H. C.

I have been a rebuker of them all. The prophet had been so, a reprover by office; he had many a time told them of the evil of their ways and doings, had dealt plainly with them all, and had not spared either the priests or the house of the king. God Himself had been a Rebuker of them all by their own consciences and by His providences. Sins against reproof are doubly sinful (Prov. 29:1). H.

3. True it is that men only insult God the more when they assume that they can cover up sin by the forms of religion. To assume that God cannot see through this covering is an insult to His omniscience; to assume that He can ever accept such hypocrisy is an insult to His holiness.

4. A great moral truth lies here—that when men have given themselves up heartily to sin and the spirit of sinning rules, and they do not care to know God, then they will not make any honest efforts to turn to God; they will not shape their external doings so as to facilitate the turning of their hearts from sin to holiness. The reason why they will not is given here—the spirit of sinning is in them as the ruling power of their heart and life. They have not known the Lord and do not intend to think or to learn of Him. H. C.

They would not turn to God, though He is their God, theirs in covenant, by whose name they have been called and whom they are obliged to serve. They would not return to the worship of Him from which they had turned aside. Nay, they would not frame their doings to turn to God. They would not consider their ways, nor apply their minds to think of those things that would bring them to God. It is true we cannot by our own power, without the grace of God, turn to Him; but we may by the due improvement of our own faculties and the aid of His Spirit frame our doings to turn to Him. Those that will not do that, that prepare not their hearts to seek the Lord, owe it to themselves that they are not turned, they die because they will die; and to those that will do this further grace shall not be wanting. H.

5. The pride of Israel is a true witness against him to the point here charged; for pride seals the evidence that the heart is hardened and perverse. When a sinner is proud in his sin and of his sin, he gives the strongest evidence of being fully committed and awfully hardened. Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall under the judgments of God. Judah comes in here, and henceforward through the chapter, as having shared in the guilt of Ephraim, and consequently as bound to share her doom. H. C.

They shall fall in their iniquity. This follows upon their pride testifying to their face, therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity. Pride will have a fall; it is the certain presage and forerunner of it; they that exalt themselves shall be abased. The face in which pride testifies shall be filled with confusion. They shall not only fall, but fall in their iniquity, the saddest fall of all other. Their pride kept them from repenting of their iniquity, and therefore they shall fall in it. Those that are not humbled for their sins are likely to perish forever in their sins. It is added, Judah also shall fall with them in their iniquity; as the Ten Tribes were carried captive into Assyria for their idolatry, so the two tribes, in process of time, were carried into Babylon for following their bad example; but the former fell, and were utterly cast down, the latter fell, and were raised up again. Judah had the temple and priesthood, and yet that shall not secure them, but if they sin with Israel and Ephraim, with them they shall fall. H.

6. In the day of their calamity they may summon to their help the most costly forms and services of religious worship, but all in vain. There comes a time when it is too late to cry even for mercy. The Scriptures repeatedly affirm this awful truth, as e.g., Prov. 1: 24-31. When mercy has been abused too long, and patience in God ceases to be a virtue, then retribution must take its course—else law were a farce, and the throne of justice would sink into contempt. H. C.