Hosea 7:5

In the day of our king. This may mean the anniversary of his birth—his birthday celebration, or the anniversary of his accession or coronation; or it may have been used in an ambiguous sense, and to include the day of his destruction, like the tragic irony or contrast between the knowledge of the spectator and the supposed ignorance of the actor. The expression "our" is either a real acknowledgment of the kings of Israel, or rather the lip-loyalty of the traitorous princes who were compassing his ruin. The princes have made him sick with bottles of wine. The literal rendering is, have made sick the heat of him ; i . e . made him sick with heat from wine. The construction resembles Micah 6:13 , "I will make sick thy smiting;" i . e . I will make thee sick through smiting thee. The heat from wine repeats in some sort the preceding figure of a heated oven. The object of these wretches was twofold—to inflame their passion, and nerve their hands for the bloody work on which they were set; and to leave the king powerless, a helpless victim in their hands. He stretched out his hand with scorners. Whatever the real origin of this phrase may be, the meaning is plain—he joined in fellowship with those wicked princes, and took part on terms of equality with them in their brutish debauch and profane carousal. He stretched out his hand and hailed them as boon-companions.