Hosea 8:4-8

The causes of the Divine judgments are more particularly specified.

The first sin which brought down the Divine displeasure was their civil apostasy, as it has been called, or change of civil government.

I. NATURE OF THE FIRST SIN BY WHICH ISRAEL INCURRED DIVINE WRATH . By this we are not to understand, with some, the election of Saul, because this political offence, if we may rightly so term it, included the twelve tribes in common, whereas it is the ten tribes of the northern kingdom with which the prophet here deals; neither are we, according to others, to confine the sin with which Israel is here charged to certain usurpers who, by treachery, or conspiracy, or assassination, forced their way to the throne, for this was long after the disruption, and was the sin of a few individuals rather than of the whole people, though undoubtedly the whole people suffered by the transgression of these particular persons. It is to the separation of Israel from the Davidic dynasty and the southern kingdom in the days of Jeroboam that the prophet refers.

II. THE SAME THING DONE AND NOT DONE BY GOD . An objection is sometimes urged against the severity with which Israel is reproved for the disruption of the kingdom of David, seeing that God had predestined and promised it.

1. It is true, indeed, that God had predicted the rending of the kingdom of Solomon; it is true he had promised ten tribes to Jeroboam by Ahijah the Shilonite; it is true also that he had even predetermined the whole. How, then, can it be maid to have taken place without God's consent? Or why should Israel be so sharply rebuked for the sin? God had determined to punish Solomon by rending ten tribes from the kingdom of his son and successor, though he himself was allowed to retain the government of the whole till the end of his days, and by handing them over to Jeroboam. The part enacted by the people was not with the Divine knowledge, that is, the Divine consent, approval They did not consult God about the matter, or the manner of it, or the time of it; they did not wait for his command to do it; they did not seek his approbation in doing it; they were no way concerned about executing the Divine purpose—nothing was further from their thoughts. They revolted from the house of David not in order to obey God; of this, as far as the history shows, they never thought. What they did was done from a spirit of sedition; what they aimed at was a relief from oppressive taxation. They had no regard to the Divine mind in the whole movement. They were bent on carrying out their own cherished project, and yet unwittingly, unintentionally, they were carrying out the purpose and promise of God, though without any reference to the mind and will of God.

2. The following illustration of this difficult subject is given by Calvin. "God," he says, "designed to prove the patience of his servant Job. The robbers who took away his property, were they excusable? By no means. For what was their object, but to enrich themselves by injustice and plunder? Since, then, they purchased their advantage at the expense of another, and unjustly robbed a man who had never injured them, they were destitute of every excuse. The Lord, however, did in the mean time execute by them what he had appointed, and what he had already permitted Satan to do. He intended that his servant should be plundered; and Satan, who influenced the robbers, could not himself move a finger except by the permission of God—nay, except it was commanded him. At the same time, the Lord had nothing in common or in connection with the wicked, because his purpose was far apart from their depraved lust. So also it must be said of what is said here by the prophet."

III. THE SECOND CAUSE OF DIVINE JUDGMENT . The second sin and cause of judgment was their religious apostasy in the worship of the calves.

1. The first sin, as so often happens, led to the second. The idolatry of the calves was intended by Jeroboam to help and uphold his usurped sovereignty. Not only had the national religion fallen into decay, but it had degenerated into superstitious will-worship. Next to the subversion of the Davidic kingdom came the perversion of the legitimate priesthood.

2. The sin of their apostasy was aggravated by their abuse of the wealth which God had given them. All they had they owed to God, and were in duty bound to employ it for his honor; instead of doing so, they dishonored him by making idols of their silver and gold. Men are sometimes found to be more lavish of their gold and silver in support of a false religion than in maintaining the pure worship of the true God. Israel might pretend that their calves of gold were only representations of Jehovah; but Jehovah refuses to be so represented, forbidding men to make any graven image of metal, or stone, or wood, standing out prominently and in high relief, or any likeness el anything on a fiat surface as a picture, for the purpose of doing it homage by worship or serving it by sacrifice. If, then, men neglect the Divine prohibitions or precepts, they must remember that God will not be mocked by their professions or pretences, but will estimate them by their practice in the light of his Law.

3. Israel was destroying himself by this sinful idolatry. "That he may be cut off;" such is the literal sense, as though it meant the whole nation as one man—one and all. Such was the tendency of their conduct, though it was not their intention; such was the inevitable end of their course, though they were not aware of it. "So a man chooses destruction or hell, if he chooses those things which, according to God's known Law and Word, end in it. Man hides from his own eyes the distant future, and fixes them on the nearer objects which he has at heart." Some take the clause to mean that the gold and silver so sadly misused and sinfully perverted would be cut off; it appears rather to refer to the persons who were the possessors thereof; in any case their money would perish, either passing out of their possession or along with the possessors.

IV. THEIR SIN AND CONSEQUENT SUFFERING ARE INSISTED ON . The striking amplification of the same subject seems designed to impress on the people's mind that they themselves, and no other, had wrought their ruin, and that they need not try to transfer the fault to others, or charge God foolishly. Nor is it necessary to suppose that a calf had been set up at Samaria, or that one of those at Dan and Bethel had been removed thither. Samaria was the metropolis of the northern kingdom, and as such took a leading part in the calf-worship and contributed largely and liberally to its support. Of the different renderings of the first clause of verse 5, all tending pretty much in the same direction, we may safely adhere to that of the Authorized Version as affording a good sense. Israel, we read in verse 3, "had cast off" God and goodness; now the calf which they had set up as their god had cast them off, left them in the lurch, or caused their removal to another and a foreign land; thus their sin and its punishment are linked together by the same word, "cast off" ( רנה ). The thing is represented in the past because sure of accomplishment; they had renounced God, and now the thing which they substituted for God had abandoned them. So shall it ever be; whatever object men make an idol of, and set it up in their heart instead of God, giving it that place in their affections which belongs to God alone, will one day assuredly cast them off, desert them in their sorest need, and leave them in distress. Is wealth our idol? Do we make gold our god, and fine gold our confidence? That calf of gold will cast us off; for fiches make themselves wings and fly away, as has been the sorrowful experience of thousands! Is fame the god we follow? Is popular applause the idol we worship? Are worldly greatness and its accompanying glory the idols, the objects, of our idolatry, and dear to us as the calves at Dan and Bethel were to Israel? This calf of vain-glory will surely cast us off; for fame is a bubble that bursts before it goes far along the stream of time; popularity is often false, always fickle as the breeze. The words of Wolsey prove with wondrous power how the calf of worldly glory casts off its worshippers.

"Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!

This is the state of man: Today he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:

The third day comes a frost, a killing freest;

And,—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening,—nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This ninny summers in a sea of glory;

But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride

At length broke under me; and now has left me,

Weary, and old with service, to the mercy

Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"

Do the pleasures of sin engross our affections, and are they the idol on which our heart dotes? Our idol will cast us off. The pleasures of sin are short-lived; they last but for a season, and that season is at most and best a short one; nor do they satisfy while they last. Is beauty the object of our idolatry? This calf, so greatly admired and much beloved, in a little while casts off and disappoints its many worshippers. For beauty is a fair but fleeting flower; it fades and fails. "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away." The heir to or actual owner of a large estate, with its broad acres and princely mansion, sets his heart on his splendid possessions; his magnificent property becomes his idol, but his calf casts him off. If only heir, he may never enter on the actual possession, and so he is disappointed of it; if already owner, he may in many ways be disappointed in it, or he may be deprived of it by force, or fraud, or casualty, or death; in either case the calf casts off the idolatrous worshipper. The hereditary estate, secure it as men will by deeds and settlements, shall change proprietorship and be taken away; there is no real fixity of tenure here on earth. The baronial residence shall in time become a ruin grey, round which the ivy twines.

2. But why does the calf of Samaria, or, generally speaking, men's idol, prove so unsatisfactory, blighting men's hopes and blasting their expectations, so that they are left a prey to disappointment, disgust, distress, or even despair? Just because God's anger is kindled against it. God is a jealous God, and will not give his glory to another, or his praise to graven images. Whatever course of sin men pursue becomes like a conductor of electricity, and brings down the scathing lightning of the Divine wrath upon their guilty heads.

3. But the anger of God is not only kindled against them; it is aggravated and intensified by their obduracy of heart and persistent course of evil. "How long," asks God, "will it be ere they attain to innocency?" that is to say, how long will they persevere in their present evil ways, neither purging themselves from the sin of idolatry and putting away their idols, nor striving to attain to purity of life and uprightness of character? The omniscient One himself in asking this question seems surprised—with reverence be it spoken—at their suicidal obstinacy, as if bent on their own destruction and rushing on their own ruin. He waits to be merciful, but they repel the overtures of his grace; he stretches out his hand to receive and welcome them, but they refuse to return. No wonder our blessed Lord, during the days of his flesh, is reported in a certain place to have " marveled because of men's unbelief."

4. We are further shown in the following verse the justness of God's indignation against those stupid calf-worshippers. This worship was no institution of God.; it was Israel's invention. They could not lay the blame of it on others. Sinners sometimes feel a miserable satisfaction or even palliation in endeavoring to make others the scapegoat of their own iniquities. This is an old story. Adam laid the fault of his eating the forbidden fruit on Eve; Eve in turn transferred it to the serpent. No doubt a load is lightened when it is laid on the shoulders of several persons instead of a single individual. Not so with Israel in this case. No prophetic intimation induced Israel to adopt the calf-idolatry, neither could they find fault with their neighbors for seducing them into it. It was their own device, and had its origin with their king and themselves. How sad that Israel should make themselves so vile!—that Israel, forgetful of their high lineage; that Israel, unmindful of their great progenitor, whose title of nobility was "prince with God;" that Israel, whom God had taken into covenant to be his peculiar people, and who at the foot of Sinai avouched the Lord to be their God, should prove so unspeakably sottish as to worship a man-made God, having "changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass"! But those calves of Dan and Bethel, or this calf of Samaria, in its collective sense comprehending all and considered by them as a "sort of tutelary deity of the ten tribes," was as contemptible in its end as at its beginning. Made by man's hand, it was to be unmade by the same; fashioned by man, it was doomed to be broken into fragments by man, and, like Aaron's calf at Sinai, broken into pieces and ground to powder.

V. A MORAL SEED - TIME AND ITS HARVEST . The account of Israel's punishment is continued in two striking similitudes, one of which presents the positive side and the other the negative. The positive side is that of a man sowing the wind and. reaping the whirlwind, as if a person took immense pains, toiling and laboring like a husbandman when he sows his seed; but the seed sown is wind, a thing of naught and unsubstantial-mere empty sound, and nothing more or better; then when harvest comes, as might in such circumstances be expected, there is grievous disappointment, and not only disappointment, but destruction, utter destruction, represented by a fearful whirlwind (the double termination intensifying the meaning). "If it may be supposed," says Pococke, "that a man should sow the wind and. cover it with earth, or keep it there for a while penned up, what could he expect but that it should be enforced by its being shut up, and the accession of what might increase its strength to break forth again in greater quantities with greater violence?" Israel expended gold and silver on their idols, and were assiduously laborious in their worship; but instead of reaping any benefit from them, or increasing their prosperity by them so as to equal the idolatrous nations around, they labored in vain and wearied themselves for very vanity. Nor was that all; they reaped ruin, being swept away by the whirlwind of Divine wrath. The negative side exhibits three degrees of development, or three stages of progress. They sow, and, as the husbandman expects a crop, so they look for a harvest of peace, plenty, and prosperity. But lo! the seed they sow never comes up, it has neither blade nor stalk; or if it should spring up, produce a stalk or standing corn and develop an ear, it never reaches maturity—the ear does not fill, there is no ripe corn in the ear, and so the bud yields no meal; or suppose it to advance yet further, and to ripen and yield meal, it becomes a spoil to the enemy, for strangers swallow it up. How many every year, every month, every week, ay, every day, are sowing in this way foolishly and even fatally, being doomed to reap, not only disappointment, but destruction! The apostle tells us that they who sow to the flesh shall reap corruption. It is observable that in the passage referred to ( Galatians 6:8 ) there is a distinction: the seed ( ὅγὰρ ἐὰν σπείρη ) and. the soil, or the field ( εἰς τὴν σάρκα ), and that which is sown in it. The field is the flesh, or sensuality in general: in that field some sow the seed of licentiousness, and they reap rottenness; some sow intemperance, and they reap corruption.

VI. THE SAD SEQUEL OF ISRAEL 'S SIN . The figure now resolves itself into a fact—a threefold fact—namely, Israel's consumption, captivity, and contempt.

1. They are swallowed up as a victim is swallowed by a beast of prey, and consumed from being a nation. And yet this consumption is not annihilation, nor extinction, as we learn from the remainder of the verse. It is rather impoverishment—their substance devoured by strangers, and the produce of their land eaten up. The expression may be paralleled by the Homeric—

"Priam and all his house and all his host

Alive devour; then, haply, thou wilt rest."

More appropriate still is the Scripture parallel, "Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as. they eat bread."

2. Their dispersion and captivity m Gentile lands were soon and certainly to come to pass. Driven from their own country, and deprived of those ordinances which, when they might have enjoyed and profited by them, were abused and despised, they shall ere long find themselves strangers in a foreign land and among heathen people; for "now shall they be among the Gentiles."

3. In addition to captivity, they are doomed to contempt, like vessels put to the vilest use, and into which the filthiest things are poured. They have been vessels of dishonor, despised broken vessels, in which there is no pleasure. And has it not been so with Israel for nearly, or perhaps we might say for more than, two thousand years? Notwithstanding the eminence to which individuals of that race have risen in the different professions and in various walks of life, they have as a people, in the lands of their dispersion, been subject to outrage, treated with contumely, scorned and spoiled and peeled.

4. Though these calamities were peculiar to Israel in a special manner, yet less or more they have been common to sinners at all times and in all lands. Those that corrupt religion or contemn its privileges are not infrequently deprived of them; gospel-despisers are deprived of the gospel; those that dishonor God are dishonored by their fellow-men, for " them that honor me ," says God, "I will honor; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed."