Oseas 7:8

8. Ephraim As elsewhere, Israel.

Hath mixed himself among the people R.V., following the Hebrew, “peoples,” that is, the surrounding nations. Israel has given up its divinely appointed seclusion and has mingled with the surrounding nations by (1) adopting their customs and (2) appealing to them for help. The two forms of apostasy were closely connected, the first being the inevitable result of the second. The people who had lost their faith in Jehovah, which would prompt reliance upon him in political matters, could not endure (compare Isaiah 7:0); their apostasy must be followed by doom (Isaiah 7:9).

A cake not turned The cake alluded to here is round and flat, baked on a hot stone; if not turned it burns on the bottom while the top remains unbaked. A threefold interpretation of the figure is possible. It is either a picture of ruin as a cake not turned is burned on the bottom, so Israel is already half ruined (Hosea 7:9 would furnish the explanation); or a picture of folly and inconsistency, like as the modern colloquial “half baked,” “an apt emblem of a character full of inconsistencies” (to this Hosea 7:11 would supply a commentary); or, in the third place, a picture of the internal condition of the people “How better describe a half-fed people, a half-cultured society, a half-lived religion, a half-hearted policy, than by a half-baked scone?” Perhaps all three thoughts were in the mind of the prophet.