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Expositor's Bible Commentary Hosea 8:1 Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law. 6 1. THE CONFUSION OF THE NATION Hosea 7:8-16 ; Hosea 8:1-3 Hosea begins by summing up the public aspect of Israel in two epigrams, short but of marvelous adequacy:-{ Hosea 7:8 } "Ephraim-among the nations he mixeth himself: Ephraim has become a cake not turned." It is a great crisis for any nation to pass from the seclusion of its youth and become a factor in the main history of the world. But for Israel the crisis was trebly great. Their difference from all other tribes about them had struck the Canaanites on their first entry to the land; { Numbers 23:9 b; Joshua 2:8 } their own earliest writers had emphasized their seclusion as their strength; { Deuteronomy 33:27 } and their first prophets consistently deprecated every overture made by them either to Egypt or to Assyria. We feel the force of the prophets’ policy when we remember what happened to the Philistines. These were a people as strong and as distinctive as Israel, with whom at one time they disputed possession of the whole land. But their position as traders in the main line of traffic between Asia and Africa rendered the Philistines peculiarly open to foreign influence. They were now Egyptian vassals, now Assyrian victims; and after the invasion of Alexander the Great their cities became centers of Hellenism, while the Jews upon their secluded hills still stubbornly held unmixed their race and their religion. This contrast, so remarkably developed in later centuries, has justified the prophets of the eighth in their anxiety that Israel should not annul the advantages of her geographical seclusion by trade or treaties with the Gentiles. But it was easier for Judaea to take heed to the warning than for Ephraim. The latter lies as open and fertile as her sister province is barren and aloof. She has many gates into the world, and they open upon many markets. Nobler opportunities there could not be for a nation in the maturity of its genius and loyal to its vocation:- "Rejoice, O Zebulun, in thine outgoings: They shall call the nations to the mountain; They shall suck of the abundance of the seas And of the treasure that is stored in the sands." { Deuteronomy 33:18-19 } But in the time of his outgoings Ephraim was not sure of himself nor true to his God, the one secret and strength of the national distinctiveness. So he met the world weak and unformed, and, instead of impressing it, was by it dissipated and confused. The tides of a lavish commerce scattered abroad the faculties of the people, and swept back upon their life alien fashions and tempers, to subdue which there was neither native strength nor definiteness of national purpose. All this is what Hosea means by the first of his epigrams: "Ephraim-among the nations he lets himself be poured out," or "mixed up." The form of the verb does not elsewhere occur; but it is reflexive, and the meaning of the root is certain. "Balal" is to "pour out," or "mingle," as of oil in the sacrificial flour. Yet it is sometimes used of a mixing which is not sacred, but profane and hopeless. It is applied to the first great confusion of mankind, to which a popular etymology has traced the name Babel, as if for Balbel. Derivatives of the stem bear the additional ideas of staining and impurity. The alternative renderings which have been proposed, "lets himself be soaked" and "scatters himself" abroad like wheat among tares, are not so probable, yet hardly change the meaning. Ephraim wastes and confuses himself among the Gentiles. The nation’s character is so disguised that Hosea afterwards nicknames him Canaan { Hosea 12:8 } their religion so filled with foreign influences that he calls the people the harlot of the Ba’alim. If the first of Hosea’s epigrams satirizes Israel’s foreign relations, the second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the temper and constitution of society at home. For the metaphor of which this epigram is composed Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all classes in the East, especially under conditions requiring haste, there is in demand a round flat scone, which is baked by being laid on hot stones or attached to the wall of a heated oven. The whole art of baking consists in turning the scone over at the proper moment. If this be mismanaged it does not need a baker to tell us that one side may be burnt to a cinder, while the other remains raw. "Ephraim," says Hosea, "is an unturned cake." By this he may mean one of several things, or all of them together, for they are infectious of each other. There was, for instance, the social conditions of the people. What can better be described as an unturned scone than a community one half of whose number are too rich, and the other too poor? Or Hosea may refer to that unequal distribution of religion through life with which in other parts of his prophecy he reproaches Israel. They keep their religion, as Amos more fully tells us, for their temples, and neglect to carry its spirit into their daily business. Or he may refer to Israel’s politics, which were equally in want of thoroughness. They rushed hotly at an enterprise, but having expended so much fire in the beginning of it, they let the end drop cold and dead. Or he may wish to satirize, like Amos, Israel’s imperfect culture-the pretentious and overdone arts, stuck excrescence-wise upon the unrefined bulk of the nation, just as in many German principalities last century society took on a few French fashions in rough and exaggerated forms, while at heart still brutal and coarse. Hosea may mean any one of these things, for the figure suits all, and all spring from the same defect. Want of thoroughness and equable effort was Israel’s besetting sin, and it told on all sides of his life. 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? We who are so proud of our political bakers, we who scorn the rapid revolutions of our neighbors and complacently dwell upon our equable ovens, those slow and cautious centuries of political development which lie behind us-have we anything better than our neighbors, anything better than Israel, to show in our civilization? Hosea’s epigram fits us to the letter. After all those ages of baking, society is still with us "an unturned scone": one end of the nation with the strength burnt out of it by too much enjoyment of life, the other with not enough of warmth to be quickened into anything like adequate vitality. No man can deny that this is so; we are able to live only by shutting our hearts to the fact. Or is religion equally distributed through the lives of the religious portion of our nation? Of late years religion has spread, and spread wonderfully, but of how many Christians is it still true that they are but half-baked-living a life one side of which is reeking with the smoke of sacrifice, while the other is never warmed by one religious thought. We may have too much religion if we confine it to one day or one department of life: our worship overdone, with the sap and the freshness burnt out of it, cindery, dusty, unattractive, fit only for crumbling; our conduct cold, damp, and heavy, like dough the fire has never reached. Upon the theme of these two epigrams the other verses of this chapter are variations. Has Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples? "Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not," senselessly congratulating himself upon the increase of his trade and wealth, while he does not feel that these have sucked from him all his distinctive virtue. "Yea, grey hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knoweth it not." He makes his energy the measure of his life, as Isaiah also marked, { Hosea 9:9 f.} but sees not that it all means waste and decay. "The pride of Israel testifieth to his face, yet"-even when the pride of the nation is touched to the quick by such humiliating overtures as they make to both Assyria and Egypt-"they do not return to Jehovah their God, nor seek Him for all this." With virtue and single-hearted faith have disappeared intellect and the capacity for affairs. "Ephraim is become like a silly dove-a dove without heart," to the Hebrews the organ of the wits of a man-"they cry to Egypt, they go off to Assyria." Poor pigeon of a people, fluttering from one refuge to another! But "as they go I will throw over them My net, like a bird of the air I will bring them down. I will punish them as their congregation have heard"-this text as it stands: can only mean "in the manner I have publicly proclaimed in Israel." "Woe to them that they have strayed from Me! Damnation to them that they have rebelled against Me! While I would have redeemed them they spoke lies about Me. And they have never cried unto Me with their heart, but they keep howling from their beds for corn and new wine." No real repentance theirs, but some fear of drought and miscarriage of the harvests, a sensual and servile sorrow in which they wallow. They seek God with no heart, no true appreciation of what He is, but use the senseless means by which the heathen invoke their gods: "they cut themselves, and "so "apostatize from Me! And yet it was I who disciplined them, I strengthened their arm, but with regard to Me they kept thinking" only "evil!" So fickle and sensitive to fear, "they turn" indeed "but not upwards"; no Godward conversion theirs. In their repentance "they are like a bow which swerves" off upon some impulse of their ill-balanced natures. "Their princes must fall by the sword because of the bitterness"-we should have expected "falseness"-"of their tongue: this is their scorn in the land of Egypt!" To the allusion we have no key. With so false a people nothing can be done. Their doom is inevitable. So "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." "To thy mouth with the trumpet! The Eagle is down upon the house of Jehovah!" Where the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered together. "For"-to sum up the whole crisis-"they have transgressed My covenant, and against My law have they rebelled. To Me they cry, My God, we know Thee, we Israeli" What does it matter? "Israel hath spurned the good: the Foe must pursue him." It is the same climax of inevitable war to which Amos led up his periods; and a new subject is now introduced. THE THICK NIGHT OF ISRAEL Hosea 4:1-19 ; Hosea 5:1-15 ; Hosea 6:1-11 ; Hosea 7:1-16 ; Hosea 8:1-14 ; Hosea 9:1-17 ; Hosea 10:1-15 ; Hosea 11:1-12 ; Hosea 12:1-14 ; Hosea 13:1-16 ; Hosea 14:1-9 It was indeed a "thick night" into which this Arthur of Israel stepped from his shattered home. The mists drive across Hosea’s long agony with his people, and what we see, we see blurred and broken. There are stumbling and clashing; crowds in drift; confused rallies; gangs of assassins breaking across the highways; doors opening upon lurid interiors full of drunken riot. Voices, which other voices mock, cry for a dawn that never comes. God Himself is Laughter, Lightning, a Lion, a Gnawing Worm. Only one clear note breaks over the confusion-the trumpet summoning to war. Take courage, O great heart! Not thus shall it always be! There wait thee, before the end, of open Visions at least two-one of Memory and one of Hope, one of Childhood and one of Spring. Past this night, past the swamp and jungle of these fetid years, thou shalt see thy land in her beauty, and God shall look on the face of His Bride. Chapters 4-14 are almost indivisible. The two Visions just mentioned, chapters 11 and Hosea 14:3-9 , may be detached by virtue of contributing the only strains of gospel which rise victorious above the Lord’s controversy with His people and the troubled story of their sins. All the rest is the noise of a nation falling to pieces, the crumbling of a splendid past. And as decay has no climax and ruin no rhythm, so we may understand why it is impossible to divide with any certainty Hosea’s record of Israel’s fall. Some arrangement we must attempt, but it is more or less artificial, and to be undertaken for the sake of our own minds, that cannot grasp so great a collapse all at once. Chapter 4 has a certain unity, and is followed by a new exordium, but as it forms only the theme of which the subsequent chapters are variations, we may take it with them as far as Hosea 7:7 ; after which there is a slight transition from the moral signs of Israel’s dissolution to the political-although Hoses still combines the religious offences of idolatry with the anarchy of the land. These form the chief interest to the end of chapter 10. Then breaks the bright Vision of the Past, chapter 11, the temporary victory of the Gospel of the Prophet over his Curse. In chapters 12-14:2 we are plunged into the latter once more, and reach in Hosea 14:3 if. the second bright vision, the Vision of the Future. To each of these phases of Israel’s Thick Night-we can hardly call them Sections-we may devote a chapter of simple exposition, adding three chapters more of detailed examination of the main doctrines we shall have encountered on our way-the Knowledge of God, Repentance, and the Sin against Love. Hosea 8:4 They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. 2. ARTIFICIAL KINGS AND ARTIFICIAL GODS Hosea 8:4-13 The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had fallen is that it produces no men. Had the people had in them "the root of the matter," had there been the stalk and the fiber of a national consciousness and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man. In the similar time of her outgoings upon the world Prussia had her Frederick the Great, and Israel, too, would have produced a leader, a heaven-sent king, if the national spirit had not been squandered on foreign trade and fashions. But after the death of Jeroboam every man who rose to eminence in Israel, rose, not on the nation, but only on the fevered and transient impulse of some faction; and through the broken years one party monarch was lifted after another to the brief tenancy of a blood-stained throne. They were not from God, these monarchs; but man-made, and sooner or later man-murdered. With his sharp insight Hosea likens these artificial kings to the artificial gods, also the work of men’s hands; and till near the close of his book the idols of the sanctuary and the puppets of the throne form the twin targets of his scorn. "They have made kings, but not from Me; they have made princes, but I knew not. With their silver and their gold they have manufactured themselves idols, only that they may be cut off"-king after king, idol upon idol. "He loathes thy Calf, O Samaria," the thing of wood and gold which thou callest Jehovah. And God confirms this. "Kindled is Mine anger against them! How long will they be incapable of innocence?"-unable to clear themselves of guilt! The idol is still in his mind. "For from Israel is it also-as much as the puppet-kings"; a workman made it, and no god is it. Yea, splinters shall the Calf of Samaria become." Splinters shall everything in Israel become. "For they sow the wind, and the whirlwind shall they reap." Indeed like a storm Hosea’s own language now sweeps along; and his metaphors are torn into shreds upon it. "Stalk it hath none: the sprout brings forth no grain: if it were to bring forth, strangers would swallow it." Nay, "Israel hath let herself be swallowed up! Already are they becoming among the nations like a vessel there is no more use for." Heathen empires have sucked them dry. "They have gone up to Assyria like a runaway wild-ass. Ephraim hath hired lovers." It is again the note of their mad dissipation among the foreigners. "But if they" thus "give themselves away among the nations, I must gather them in, and" then "shall they have to cease a little from the anointing of a king and princes." This willful roaming of theirs among the foreigners shall be followed by compulsory exile, and all their unholy artificial politics shall cease. The discourse turns to the other target. For Ephraim hath multiplied altars-to sin; altars are his own-to sin. Were I to write for him by myriads My laws, as those of a stranger would they be accounted. They slay burnt-offerings for Me and eat flesh. Jehovah hath no delight in them. Now must He remember their guilt and make visitation upon their sin. They-to Egypt-shall return" Back to their ancient servitude must they go, as formerly He said He would withdraw them to the wilderness. { Hosea 2:16 } The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Set thy trumpet to thy mouth. Hosea 8:1 The Gospel trumpet A. H. Moment. 1. By sounding the Gospel trumpet the mind of God can alone be communicated to man. The voice of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must be heard from the Scriptures. To the whole Christian priesthood the command is given, "Preach the Word." 2. It is the purpose that all shall hear and obey the Gospel trumpet. The silver trumpet of the wilderness was for the entire encampment. "Preach the Gospel to every creature." 3. In setting the trumpet to the mouth, we must give no uncertain sound. In the ordinance of the silver trumpet the greatest care was taken to instruct the sons of Aaron in its proper use. What is the Gospel? Is it not this?(1) Man is a sinner, and responsible for his own salvation.(2) Jesus Christ is the only Saviour.(3) Man's part in his salvation is faith in the Lord Jesus. The faith must trust wholly in God, and produce a pure life.(4) In the Gospel trumpet is Divine power; hence hope of victory over every spiritual foe. Intemperance, infidelity, Sabbath desecration, indifferentism, sin in the heart — these are the Jerichos of our day. Where is the hope of taking these strongholds of Satan? The preaching of the Cross as the power of God. Then set this Gospel trumpet to thy mouth! ( A. H. Moment. ) As The conventional Church Homilist. These words are singularly abrupt, and indicate the suddenness of the threatened invader. By "the house of the Lord" we are to understand Israel as a section of the professed people of God. I. AS ENDANGERED. How comes the eagle? Ravenously, suddenly, and swiftly. A conventional Church is in greater danger than any secular community, because — 1. Its guilt is greater. 2. Its influence is more pernicious.Whose influence on society is the most baneful — the man who denies God, the man who ignores Him, or the man who misrepresents Him? The conventional Church gives society a mal-representation of God and His religion. II. AS WARNED. Blow a blast that shall thrill every heart in the vast congregation of Israel. Why sound the warning? 1. Because the danger is tremendous. 2. Because the danger is at hand. 3. Because the danger may be avoided.What is wanted now is a ministry of warning to conventional Churches. III. AS REPENTANT. "Israel shall cry unto Me, My God, we know Thee." Oh hasten the day when all conventional Churches shall be brought to a deep and experimental knowledge of God and His Son! when this transpires the dense cloud that has concealed the sun of Christianity shall be swept away, and the quickening beam shall fall on every heart. ( Homilist. ) God coming in judgment Joseph Parker, D. D. whatever be the local and particular references as to the eagle, the great principle remains from age to age that God comes to judgment in various forms, always definitely, and always, as we shall see, intelligibly, not only inflicting vengeance as a Sovereign whose covenants have been outraged, but condescending to explain the reasons upon which His most destructive judgments are based. Thus we read, "Because they have transgressed My covenant, and trespassed against My law": the covenant had been broken by idolatry, and the law had been violated by social sins. It is needful to mark this distinction with great particularity, because it shows the breadth of the Divine commandment. God is not speaking about a merely metaphysical law, — a law which can only be interpreted by the greatest minds, and put into operation on the sublimest occasions of life; He is speaking about a law which had indeed its lofty religious aspects, but which had also its social, practical, tender phases, in whose preservation every man, woman, and child in the kingdom ought to be interested. God has made it clear that sin is always a crime. Whoever sins against God sins against his own soul. Once let God's beneficent laws be violated, and the man does not only suffer metaphysically, or go down in some practical quantity or quality, but he actually suffers in body and estate, sometimes apparently, always really. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) My God, we know Thee. Hosea 8:2 Agnosticism J. Hiles Hitchens, D. D. An agnostic is not one who knows nothing, for some men who are embraced by this term are men of unusual mental attainments and ability. He is one who neither denies nor affirms. The term is applied to those who hold that there are matters pertaining to religion which we not only do not know, but have no means of knowing. An agnostic does not simply assert the incompleteness of human knowledge upon things Divine, but that real knowledge concerning such things is an impossibility to man. An agnostic is not an atheist. He does not deny the existence of a God. He is not a sceptic or doubter. He is positive in affirming that we neither have nor.can get any knowledge of God, or of the unseen world. Mr. Herbert Spencer's views have been thus summarised: 1. The proper object of religion is a Something which can never be known, or conceived, or understood; to which we cannot apply the terms emotion, will, intelligence; of which we cannot either affirm or deny that it is either a person, or being, or mind, or matter, or, indeed, anything else. 2. All that we can say of it is that it is an inscrutable existence, or an unknowable cause; we can neither know nor conceive what it is, nor how it came about, nor how it operates. It is notwithstanding the ultimate cause, the all-being, the creative power. 3. The essential business of a religion so understood is to keep alive the consciousness of a mystery that cannot be fathomed. 4. We are not concerned with the question what effect this religion will have as a moral agent, or whether it will make good men and women. Religion has to do with mystery, not with morals. Agnostics reverence the phenomenal and the Great Unknown above and behind it; but, holding that the senses are the only source of knowledge, they do not know, and say we never can know, that the eternal energy behind all phenomena can think, feel, will, and contrive. Agnosticism is open to three objections. I. IT IS PRESUMPTIVE. The agnostic begins by a confession of human ignorance, and then proceeds to make a universal assertion which implies the possession of universal knowledge. To assert that the unknown cause "can never be known, or conceived, or understood" is to assume that the speaker is acquainted with the constitution and calibre of all mind in all ages. To say that the inscrutable existence will never be known by man is to say we know what will be the extent of all men's knowledge in the future. We cannot measure all possible knowledge with our finite minds. He who says that God is "unknowable," takes a self-contradictory attitude, and assumes such knowledge as can be attributed only to a Divine Being. II. AGNOSTICISM IS PARALYSING. The great mainspring of human activity and basis of human happiness is faith. The three steps taken by every man who has achieved ought worthy of remembrance have been these — conception, conviction, and action. The conviction was the faith which stimulated to and sustained the action. United to faith, but distinct from it, is hope, that vigorous principle which enlists in its service both head and heart. Agnosticism bows these two fair angels out of human society. It tells us that we know only the phenomenal; we have no spiritual insight. If every man in society were a consistent agnostic there would be a speedy and inglorious termination to all scientific, social, political, and ecclesiastical enterprises. III. AGNOSTICISM IS POSITIVELY PERNICIOUS. It disposes of all true religion. For religion is the linking of a soul to a personal God. Agnosticism defines religion as "devotion to that which is believed to be best." It has no personal God. Dispensing with religion — 1. Agnosticism strikes away one of the chief supports of society. 2. Begets despair.There is nothing left for the heart of man but to settle down into a stony state of utter desolation and despair. Agnosticism encourages pessimism. But we affirm that God is known, though our knowledge is incomplete. We have sufficient knowledge to justify and demand our worship of God, our trust in, and love for, and obedience to Him. That God is known is proved by the Scriptures, by the manifestation of Christ, and by the testimony of Christian experience. ( J. Hiles Hitchens, D. D. ) The knowledge of God B. Beddome, M. A. Israel pretended to know God, but in works denied Him. They would cry and say, We know Thee; when in truth they knew Him not, and were only speaking lies in hypocrisy. I. OBSERVE THE TIME WHEN THEY WOULD MAKE THIS PROFESSION. In a season of great affliction and distress, when God would contend with them, when their enemies should be let loose upon them, and everything around them look dark and distressing. When they begin to feel God's wrath they will begin to humble themselves, and profess themselves to be His people. Troubles will often make those pray who never prayed before. But if they leave off prayer when the trouble is over, this shews that it came out of feigned lips. Conviction is often the fruit of correction, but does not always lead to conversion. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS PROFESSION WOULD BE MADE, They would not only speak, but speak vehemently, and "cry" with earnestness and confidence. But they called God their God, though they had no interest in Him, and claimed an acquaintance with Him while they were ignorant of His true character. III. THE IMPORTANCE OF A RIGHT KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 1. It is a great thing truly to know the Lord. A perfect knowledge of God is unattainable by us. But a true knowledge of God is vital and efficacious, and has a transforming influence. It is the effect of Divine illumination, so .that none have it until it is communicated from above. 2. A profession of this knowledge is of great importance. It is no light matter to be able to say on good ground, "My God, I know Thee." With the mouth confession is made unto salvation, but there must first be a believing with the heart unto righteousness. True faith will produce a good confession. Let us see that our acknowledgment of God be accompanied with corresponding affections and dispositions towards Him, going to the grounds of our religion, and tracing it up to its source and origin. IV. SOME OF THE EVIDENCES OF A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 1. All saving knowledge proceeds from God only. All the knowledge we have of Him by the unassisted efforts of reason will come to nothing. 2. Saving knowledge will produce a humble confidence in God. Humility is one of the first fruits of a good understanding. 3. A spiritual acquaintance with God will be accompanied with a conformity of soul to Him. There will be a resemblance of His holy nature, and a subjection to His holy will.(1) It is a great evil to profess to know God, and yet, in works, to deny Him.(2) Beware the contrary extreme, of withholding an open profession of the truth after we have been brought to understand and receive it.(3) The subject shows the reason why many apostatise from their profession. They have received the truth, but not in the love of it.(4) The enlightening and renewing influences of the Holy Spirit are necessary to form the Christian character. ( B. Beddome, M. A. ) The claim to know God Jeremiah Burroughs. In the Hebrew the order of the words is, "To Me they shall cry, My God, we know Thee; Israel." This order hints some observations that would hardly arise from our version. In our Bible it is only a speech of God to them. In the Hebrew they seem to remind God who they wore; as if they said, "We are Israel, who know Thee, remember we are not strangers to Thee." Observe — 1. In affliction men see their need of God. 2. Even hypocrites and the vilest wretches in the time of their distress will claim interest in God and cry to Him. 3. Knowledge and acknowledgment of God in an outward and formal way hypocrites think will commend them much to God in time of affliction. They expect favour from God because they have made some profession of Him. "We know Thee," as if they said, "Lord, we were not as others who forsook Thee; we continued Israel still; we did not turn to the heathens." It is very difficult to take away men's spirits from trusting in formality in outward worship. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him. Hosea 8:3 The chastening of them that forsake God N. Ashby. In this short sentence we have at once the sin of Israel and his punishment. Consider the various ways in which Israel may be said to have "cast off the thing that is good." I. BY THEIR MURMURINGS. So long as they trusted God's Word, they continued to walk safely. When they began to murmur, Amalek came upon them. II. BY THEIR IDOLATRIES. When God was arranging for their worship, they made and worshipped the golden calves. III. BY THEIR REBELLION. As in their response to the message of the returned spies. Referring to Israel in their later history, we may say — IV. BY THEIR REJECTION OF CHRIST. Because, when Messiah did come, He did not suit their expectations, they despised and rejected Him. And the enemy was not slow in pursuing them. Their city was destroyed, and they were scattered over the earth. This threat is not confined to Israel. It is equally applicable to nations and to individuals now. ( N. Ashby. ) Good rejected E. B. Pusey, D. D. Him who is good, That which is good. The word tob includes both. They rejected good in rejecting God, who is simply, supremely, wholly, universally good, and good to all, the Author and Fountain of all good, so that there is nothing simply good but God, nothing worthy of that title, except in respect of its relation to him who is good and doing good. ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ) The abandonment of good, and consequent pursuit of evil Homilist. I. THE ABANDONMENT OF GOOD. "Israel hath rejected what is good." The good here is the true worship of the true God. 1. True, Worship is "the good thing" for man. It is good not only because God requires it, but because it is the necessary condition of spiritual life, growth, harmony, and blessedness. 2. This "good thing" man sometimes abandons. Moral mind has the power of abandoning the highest good. 3. The abandonment of this "good thing" imperils the soul. Moral good is the only effective safeguard of the spirit; when this is given up, or "cast off," all the gates of the soul are thrown open to tormenting fiends. II. THE CONSEQUENT PURSUIT OF EVIL. "Set up kings, but not by Me." Reference is to Jeroboam and his successors. From kings of their own making came the setting up of the idolatrous calf-worship. So they went wrong in their politics and in their religion. Let a man go wrong in his relations to God, and he will go wrong in all his relations, secular and spiritual, There is nothing in connection with the human race of such transcendent importance as worship. The religious element is the strongest of all elements, and men must have a god of some sort, and their god will fashion their character and determine their destiny. ( Homilist. ) Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cut thee off; or, Thy calf, O Samaria, hath kicked thee off. Hosea 8:5 Kicking calves S. Cox, D. D. The words of the text have a quaint sound. They suggest a ludicrous figure. There is something ludicrous in the notion of a boy trying to drive a calf, and getting kicked by it. When you understand what the words mean, you will soon grow grave enough. Samaria was the centre and capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, as Jerusalem was the centre and capital of the southern kingdom of Judah. Each city was a sacred city, a centre of worship, as well as of business and government. There was a temple in each of them, and in the temple certain symbols of the Divine presence and activity. At Mount Gerizim they had only the golden calf and the emblems of its worship. At first this calf was intended to be a nature-symbol of Jehovah. But it too closely resembled the animal forms in the heathen temples — especially in Egypt — and these animal forms were very apt to breed a kind of worship which gave free play to animal lusts. At best, moreover, the calf was a "graven image," and was therefore a standing and flagrant violation of the law which God had given to Israel. Soon the Ten Tribes sunk into the idolatries of the nations around them, with their degradation of God and man. And they put no more restraint on their carnal passions and lusts than the beasts whose forms they placed in their temples. Men grow like the gods they worship, The animal part of their nature soon prevailed over the spiritual. As soon as a man suffers the beast in him to prevail, he grows worse than the beasts, and sinks below their level. What they do by the law of their nature, he does against the taw of his nature. Hosea paints a dreadful picture of the impotence and degradation into which the Israelites had sunk through their false worship. They were consequently so weakened by their strifes and divisions, their loss of manliness and patriotism, as to be unable to resist the foreign invader when he came. And so their calf had kicked them. If they did not speedily return to the God of their fathers, their calf would soon "kick them off." They would find themselves abandoned by their god, in whose foul service they had sacrificed their manhood, their unity, their strength. They would fall before the sword of the foe, or be led captive by him into a strange land. So there is a principle in Hosea's quaint words. It is this — every sin carries in itself its own retribution, and is sure to avenge itself upon us if we fall into it. Punishment is only the other half of sin. Or every calf we worship is sure to kick us, or even to kick us off. Whatever we love best and pursue most heartily, that, for the time at least, is our god, our "calf." For the moment we look to it for the happiness or the gratification we most crave, and serve and follow it with our supreme affection or desire. Look at some of these calf worshippers, and mark how their god treats them. There is the greedy boy, who puts no restraint upon his appetite. To gratify his appetite he will do things which are mean, selfish, wrong. What follows? The calf which Little Glutton worshipped has kicked him, and kicked him in his tenderest part, just where he feels it most. Take the case of a vain, foolish girl, who gives herself great airs when she goes to a new school. When she is found out, her fibs detected, or her foolish self-complacency resented and exposed, may we not say that her calf has kicked her, humbled her in the dust, so that she who wanted to be admired is despised. Her sin has wrought its own punishment. But in the mercy of God her punishment is intended to help her to recover herself. And men have made idols of their very sins — drunkenness and licentiousness. They have sacrificed their all to them. And not only our base passions, but even our best affections, our plainest duties, may be exalted into the place of God, and thus be turned into calves which will only too surely kick us, or kick us off, before they have done with us. Young men may be tempted to snatch at business success by taking some mean advantage of their fellows, so straining their integrity and defiling the clear honour of their soul, violating the allegiance they owe to principles, conscience, and God. Or men may suffer mere success in business to absorb all their energies, so that they neglect the culture of the mind, and the purest and best affections of the heart and home. In either case, if you yield to these temptations, you will have turned what was once a clear duty into an idol, into a calf such as that which of old men worshipped in Samaria. And your calf will kick you as it kicked them. Your want of integrity, your meanness and baseness will be detected and exposed. Your punishment will grow out of your sin. And young women need to be told that even love, if it be made an idol, will prove to be but a calf. If in the sacred name of love, you cast away prudence, principle, parental control, and marry a man who has not yet learned to earn his own livelihood, or whose character is dubious, or whose life is bad, you may be sure your calf will kick you for your pains. All these foolish and hurtful idolatries of ours spring from our false conceptions of God, and of what He requires of us. The true ends of life do not lie in mere worldly success, or even in gratified affection. Hosea teaches us to think of God as a wise and loving Father who is ever seeking to make us good. In this light we may see how poor and paltry are many of the aims which men pursue, and how inevitable it is that they should be frustrated of these poor aims in order that they may learn to set the true end of life before them. Our well-deserved falls and failures are parts of the process by which our Heavenly Father is teaching us to walk, and to walk with Him. ( S. Cox, D. D. ) Idols worshipped J. Thain Davidson, D. D. The gross and debasing idolatry of Israel soon brought upon them the judgments of heaven; and when in their deep distress they discovered their folly, they found that, having cast off Jehovah, they "had no god to go to." It is to this course of wickedness the text refers. The prophet addresses the people of Samaria in tones of withering irony. Two important lessons. I. THAT EVERY FALSE AND WORLDLY CONFIDENCE IS SURE IN THE END TO CHEAT AND DISAPPOINT US. Speak to those who are worshipping some other object than the one true God — drink, business. II. THE LORD HIMSELF, AND HE ALONE, WILL NEVER FAIL OR CAST OFF THOSE THAT TRUST IN HIM. Why should He taunt Israel upon the faithlessness and vanity of their earthly idols, if to trust Himself might prove equally vain? Wherefore should He remind you that the golden calves of worldly pleasure, pelf, and pride will all cast you off, if perchance He will cast you off Himself? It is a curious fact that just as foolish and worldly people generally cherish unfounded hopes, so Christian persons often indulge unfounded fears. The one never imagine that their calf, their idol, will cast them off: the other are constantly doubting and dreading that their God will forsake them. If there is anything that God makes quite plain, it is that this can never be; He never fails nor forsakes. The truth is that God draws nearer and closer to His people in their trouble. ( J. Thain Davidson, D. D. ) The world a lie The story of Jeroboam the son of Nebat affords a perpetual warning. Other things besides consumption, and lunacy, and various maladies our flesh is heir to are hereditary. Jeroboam's sin descended to his children; and was transmitted like an entail from sire to son. More than that, it struck like a malaria of a virulent disease to the very walls of his palace; it infected all his successors, and from the throne spread its deadly influence to the poorest and most distant cottages of the land. I. THE SIN OF JEROBOAM. He was hardly seated on the throne, when a political difficulty arose, — and that a very serious one. The Mosaic law required every male to go up three times each year to Jerusalem. An astute and sagacious politician, Jeroboam foresaw how this custom might be attended with dangerous results. But he was not the man to meet the difficulty aright. He did what, no doubt, the world had thought a clever thing. Setting up one calf in Bethel and another in Dan, in imitation of the cherubim in the temple, he sent forth this edict, "Let him that sacrificeth, kiss the calves," — go and worship these. Jeroboam succeeded, but his success brought down ruin on his house and government. It was followed by results which should teach our statesmen that no policy in the end shall thrive which traverses the Word of God. That can never be politically right, which is morally and religiously wrong. What the "calf" did to the monarch, it did to the people — here called Samaria. Following the steps of their king, they apostatised from God, and turned their backs on His temple. Then judgment succeeded judgment, and one trouble breaking on the back of another, the land had no rest. The commonwealth sank under the weight of its idolatry. The voice of God in providence might have been heard saying, "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off." II. WARNING FROM THE SIN AND SORROW OF SAMARIA. The sentiment of the text is illustrated — 1. By the case of those who put riches in the place of God. The thirst for gold, like the drunkard's, is insatiable. The more it is indulged, the more the flame is fed, it burns the fiercer. 2. The sentiment of the text is illustrated by the case of those who live for fame — for the favour, not of God, but of men. ( T. Guthrie , D. D. ) The sinner betrayed by his sin L. s: — Jeroboam's calf symboled not only his casting off the true faith, but also his preference for the secular and sensual culture of Egypt, instead of the simplicity and purity of life which God had prescribed for His people. For a while the rebellious people seemed to prosper. At length the thunderbolt of Divine wrath fell. The godless land was ravaged, and the people carried away captive by the Assyrians. Egypt turned a deaf ear to their appeals. This, Hosea predicted in words of withering sarcasm: "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off." (The calf was a copy of the Egyptian Mnevis.) I. THE CALF STANDS IN GENERAL FOR SIN. No sin ever, in the long-run, meets the promise it makes to the imagination. In the end the soul has to pay for its guilty pleasures out of its own pains. True of fleshly lusts. Their glow is that of a fever rising; soon they will burn. Nature does not put enough strength in the human frame to endure more than a temperate, lawful supply of the appetites. This fuel gone, the indulgence has become a necessity, and consumes the life itself. Selfishness cannot enjoy its accumulations beyond a limited amount; beyond this they feed impatience and ennui. "Pride," as Bulwer says, "is a garment all stiff brocade outside, and all grating sackcloth on the side next the skin." II. THE CALF STANDS FOR A PECULIAR CLASS OF SINS. The Samaritans did not regard their worship as degrading. The calf represented life, productiveness; a far nobler object of worship than that set up by many heathen nations. It represented especially polite sins, and those lines of conduct whose evil consists chiefly in that they are not obedience to God. For instance, such as meet our ideas of expediency, but are not according to strict conscience. Young men generally begin with such sins. Thus the standard is gradually lowered. 1. They will do nothing disreputable in religious or even secular society. 2. Nothing disreputable in club life. 3. Nothing that they (now blinded by indulgence) think will hurt them. 4. At last, their own passion has become their standard, and they are socially a wreck before they are fully aware of their danger. III. THE CALF STANDS FOR A CURRENT FORM OF UNBELIEF. The calf-worship was mixed with some features of the true worship of Israel. It had a line of priests. Its chief sites were places already sacred in the religious history of God's people. The altars were dedicated at the time of a true religious festival — the Feast of Tabernacles. A current form of infidelity is a blending of human conceits with some scriptural teaching. It uses Sabbaths, sanctuaries, ministries. It admires Jesus, and praises His precepts. But it denies supernaturalism. Not God's Word, but the human reason, is supreme. ( L. ) Cast off by the god of worldliness The great Wolsey, after he had climbed the highest round of ambition's ladder, in the evening of life bitterly exclaimed, "Would that I had served my God as faithfully as I have served my king. He would not have abandoned me in my old age." The illustrious statesman, William Pitt, the favourite of king and people, "died," says Wilberforce, his friend, "of a broken heart. On his dying bed he is stated to have said, I fear I have neglected prayer too much to make it available on a death-bed." Still more distressing was the closing scene of Sheridan's career. He who had stood on the pinnacle of glory, and gained the most flattering distinctions, writes in old age to one of his friends, "I am absolutely undone and broken-hearted." Misfortunes crowded on him, and his last moments were haunted by fears of a prison. Forsaken by his gay associates, dispirited, and world-weary, he closed his eyes in gloom and sorrow. Campbell, the author of "The Pleasures of Hope," in his old age wrote "I am alone in the world. My wife and child of my hopes are dead; my surviving child is consigned to a living tomb (a lunatic asylum); my old friends, brothers, sisters, are dead, all but one, and she too is dying; my last hopes are blighted. As for fame, it is a bubble that must soon burst." How long will it be ere they attain to innocency? Attainment hindered J. J. S. Bird, B. A. I. AN ATTAINMENT SPOKEN OF. "How long will it be ere they attain unto innocency?" "Innocency" is here put for "true and saving religion." And this is a most desirable attainment, more so than all besides. 1. It is important because without it there can be no fellowship with God. Without fellowship with God there can be no peace; without peace there can be no happiness. 2. It is important because without it man cannot live well. A guilty man lives according to his thoughts. 3. It is important because without it man cannot die well. There is nothing before a sinner but death, darkness, and despair. II. A HINDRANCE SUGGESTED. The calves were the idols set up to prevent the Israelites from worshipping Jehovah. The hindrances to attaining innocency (that is, satisfying the natural cravings of religion in worshipping God) are the idols which are set up in the human heart. These idols may be — 1. The gratification of self. Self is one of the most favoured of idols, it is worshipped by all, and the man who worships self cannot worship God. 2. The vanities of the world. The idolatry of the present day, if not so bold in its rebellion, is not so religious as in the days of old. The idolatrous Jews and heathen were essentially religious. It was death to any one to speak against the gods. It is pleasure now men worship, and a god of any sort is forgotten. 3. The blandishments of science. This is another idol men fall down before. These are the calves which keep men from God, calves set up by themselves at the instigation of Satan. No man can ever "attain unto innocency" so long as they remain. III. THE CONSEQUENCES INFERRED. A time is coming when true religion will be the only thing worth possessing. The day of sifting will arrive. God's anger will be kindled against the persistently ungodly. Then what avail will the false gods which men have served so long be to afford them shelter? The calf will cast thee off. There are two penalties, then, to the guilty. They lose both earth and heaven. They are cast off — 1. By the devil whom they serve. The world cannot offer them help. Satan's object is only to effect their ruin. 2. By the God whom they have neglected. How can He who has been scorned and forsaken be the succour of those who have despised His love and rejected His rule? ( J. J. S. Bird, B. A. ) The workman made it; therefore it is not God. Hosea 8:6 The religion of humanity A. H. M. Sime. Humanitarianism has become the creed of the earnest and thoughtful who have found for themselves the awful truth regarding their fellow-men in the depths, and with that ever pressing upon them, have forsaken all else to grapple with that evil and right that wrong. It has become the home of loving, aching hearts that have lost their God. It has also become the mere fad of many who put on charity as they do a garment when it is fashionable, and are philanthropic when philanthropy is in vogue. But let these hangers-on of humanitarianism be distinguished from humanitarians. Humanitarians proper are large-souled enthusiasts. Humanitarianism has been elevated to the dignity of a religion, and the humanitarian god has been hailed as the God of humanity. When that is so, we have to look at the work in a new light, and study anew the claims which it puts forth. And, first of all, I think we may safely say that the first duty of any one who desires to elevate a cult to the rank of a religion is to demonstrate that it is applicable to humanity in general, that it is deep enough to find a common basis in characters the most widely diverse. For that only is really religious which can be shared by all. The beauty-lover, who is convinced that in the power of perceiving and appreciating the

8:1-4 When Israel was hard pressed, they would claim protection from God, but this would be disregarded. What stead will it stand in to say, My God, I know thee, if we cannot say, My God, I love thee, serve thee, and cleave to thee only? 8:5-10 They promised themselves plenty, peace, and victory, by worshipping idols, but their expectations came to nothing. What they sow has no stalk, no blade, or, if it have, the bud shall yield no fruit, there was nothing in them. The works of darkness are unfruitful; nay, the end of those things is death. The hopes of sinners will deceive them, and their gains will be snares. In times of danger, especially in the day of judgment, all carnal devices will fail. They take a course by themselves, and like a wild ass by himself, they will be the easier and surer prey for the lion. Man is in nothing more like the wild ass's colt, than in seeking for that succour and that satisfaction in the creature, which are to be had in God only. Though men may sorrow a little, yet if it is not after a godly sort, they will be brought to sorrow everlastingly. 8:11-14 It is a great sin to corrupt the worship of God, and will be charged as sin on all who do it, how plausible soever their excuses may seem to be. The Lord had caused his law to be written for them, but they cared not to know, and would not obey it. Man seems by the temples he builds to be mindful of his Maker, yet really he has forgotten him, because he has cast off all his fear; but none ever hardened his heart against God and prospered. So long as men despise the truths and precepts of God's word, and the ordinances of his worship, all the observances and offerings, however costly, of their own devising, will be unto them for sin; for those services only are acceptable to God, which are done according to his word, and through Jesus Christ.