Hosea 13

Notes

While you Israelites retained any fear of the true God, and awful regard to his messages, ye prospered, and were revered. But since ye abandoned yourselves to the grossest idolatries, ye have been in a declining condition. Ver. 2. And yet ye are still racking your minds, and exhausting your wealth, to make and serve new idols; and your rulers are making new laws as to their worship. 3. Therefore shall ye, as utterly despicable and worthless, be quickly, easily, and universally ruined, murdered, and carried captive by the Assyrians. 4. And however ungratefully ye have disowned me, the gracious God and Saviour of your fathers, ye shall find at last that none else can avail you as a God to protect and deliver you. 5. In the wilderness, where was nothing but dangers and wants, I carefully supplied your fathers with everything necessary and comfortable, and adopted them for my peculiar people. 6. But they had scarcely entered Canaan, and enjoyed its plentiful product, when they attended to nothing but the gratification of their proud and sensual lusts. 7, 8. Therefore will come to you the furious, irresistible, unavoidable, sudden, barbarous, and ruinous ravages of the Assyrian troops. 9. By your sins ye have brought all this misery on yourselves: but in and by me, your almighty God and Saviour, and no other, can ye have protection, support, or deliverance. 10, 11. What avail now your kings and other magistrates, of whom ye were once so fond, as if better governors than me? Both the giving and the removing of your kings have been generally the fruits of my displeasure with you, and contributed to ruin you. 12. And your iniquities have all been kept in reserve by me, to be brought forth and punished in due season. 13. Dreadful distress and anguish shall therefore suddenly come upon you. And yet, alas! stupid and thoughtless, ye take no more pains than a still-born child, by an earnest repentance, to extricate yourselves from the troubles which you feel, or have reason to fear. 14. In tender sympathy I will therefore prevent your utter destruction, and will seek to fully restore you from the lowest depths of misery. Nay, by my own death, I will save multitudes of mankind from all their misery of every form, if they will only accept Christ by faith. 15, 16. But, before this take place, the Assyrians shall invade your populous and wealthy country, shall lay it desolate, seize on your wealth, destroy your wicked capital, and, in the most barbarous and inhuman manner, murder the inhabitants.

Reflections.—Humility, especially towards God, is the infallible road to honour and happiness; but forsaking God, and following idols, the certain path to death and destruction. When men have once set off in a course of sin, they generally wax worse and worse. And as holiness is the honour and stability of persons and societies, sin is the shame, and will be the ruin, of any people. No solid or lasting comfort is anywhere to be found but in God himself: and his help, in the time of need, is doubly kind and useful, and never to be forgotten. But, alas! his mercies are often fearfully abused, to the terrible and irresistible ruin of the impenitent! Obstinacy in sin is the grossest self-murder: but in Jehovah our God, our Saviour, our King, the very worst may find abundant relief. And sad would be our case if he were not better to us than we are to ourselves. Unprofitable is everything that we get without his blessing. And exact is the account he keeps of our sins against the time of his judgments. With great care he chastens his people that they may not be destroyed. And sinners do but foolishly rush forward into dreadful and everlasting ruin by delaying their repentance. But O how astonishing is the freedom and fulness of salvation! May our hearts for ever glow with gratitude, and our lips for ever utter praise, to that kind Redeemer who so loved us, and gave himself to death and the grave for us?