Hosea 4:12

"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 played the harlot, departing from their God."

"This verse exhibits the private life of the people as depraved by sin and folly";[30] and Hosea 4:13, following, displays their public lives as corrupted by lewdness, gluttony, and debauchery as shamelessly practiced in the vulgar worship of the old Canaanite gods of fertility.

"Ask counsel at their stock, and their staff declareth ..." This foolish method of procuring advice or making decisions is called "rhabdomancy," a class name for several procedures, one of which was described by Keil thus:

"Two rods were held upright, and then allowed to fall while incantations were uttered; and the oracle was inferred from the way in which they fell, whether backwards or forward, to the right or to the left."[31]

How blind to the loving providence of God are those who could seriously resort to such pagan devices as those mentioned here. The immoralities of their idolatrous worship had closed the windows of their minds, and they groped in darkness. Significantly, it was "the spirit of whoredom" that had caused them to err. This "spirit" pictures "the wildest possible indulgence of passions ... they are actuated by an impulse that leads to harlotry."[32] It is not the mere physical result of this behavior, however, which is stressed here. The root cause of all their wickedness lay in the fact of their "departing from their God."