Hosea 9

Notes

Ver. 1. Do not vainly imagine, ye Israelites, that your prosperity will be as secure and lasting as that of other nations, for your iniquities are greater: you have treacherously revolted from Jehovah, your God, to idols; and reckoning your enjoyments their gifts, ye have honoured them with the tithes and first-fruits belonging to Jehovah. 2. Therefore blasting or mildew, or the ravages of the enemy, shall rob you of your abused blessings, and leave you pining for want. 3. No longer shall ye continue in Canaan; but part of you, as fugitives and vagabonds, shall retire into Egypt, and the rest be carried captive into Assyria, to live in slavery and idolatry. 4. Nor shall ye be qualified nor have any opportunity to present any offerings to God that will be accepted; for ye shall have no access to bring your meat offerings or sacrifices for your sins into my temple. 5. Under your cruel oppression, ye shall have neither time nor liberty to keep any of your solemn feasts. 6. And while such of you as flee into Egypt, or the countries adjacent, are cut off by sword, famine, and pestilence, your stately and expensive houses shall be turned into heaps of rubbish. 7. Quickly ye shall see and feel those dreadful but richly-deserved judgments. Ye who mocked the prophets of God as fools and madmen, shall find that your false prophets were such, when ye are abandoned of God for your inexpressible wickedness and great hatred of him and his worship, and even of one another. 8. Once ye had prophets who were zealous for me, and faithfully declared my messages; but now, whatever they pretend, your false prophets do, by their doctrine and example, insnare you into sin and punishment, being haters of and hated by God, as they seduce and deter men from his worship and service; nay, are detested in the very temple of their idols. 9. Like the miscreants of Gibeah, ye are generally arrived at the highest pitch of lewdness, cruelty, and contempt of me, therefore will I speedily punish you in an exemplary manner. 10. Once I delighted in your fathers in the wilderness, blessed and watched over them as my chosen people; but they ungratefully apostatized to the shameful worship of Baal-peor, drawn into the snare by whorish women; and ever since ye and your fathers have multiplied and worshipped idols, as your lusts and fancies directed you. 11, 12. Your present blossoms of prosperity shall quickly leave you; and partly by miscarriages, early deaths, ravage, and murders of the enemy, your multitudes, of which ye boast, shall be almost utterly destroyed; and dreadful and lasting shall be your miseries when I withdraw my protection. 13. Your country seems as well replenished and fortified as Tyre itself; but your children shall be destroyed by the Assyrians. 14. Ye had therefore better have no children than bring them up for the slaughter. 15. Gilgal where I so remarkably blessed your fathers, and where my tabernacle once stood, is become notorious for idolatry and other wickedness. Therefore I hate them, and will expel them from my land and church, and will for many ages pursue them with the tokens of my vengeance. Their princes are revolters from my worship, and break through all the rules of justice and honesty. 16, 17. I will therefore utterly destroy them, root and branch; and for their obstinate rebellion cast them away into a miserable captivity and dispersion among the heathens.

Ver. 4. For their bread, &c. Their bread-offerings, either on the table of shewbread, or meat-offering, Le. 2. 4; 6. 16, presented in typical expiation of the sins of their souls, God will not accept. C.

Ver. 7. There seems no reason for interpreting either this or ver. 8 of false prophets. Is it not rather to be understood thus:—Such is your iniquity, you pronounce God's prophet a fool; such your hatred of God (Ro. 8. 7), you pronounce the spiritual man mad? C.

Ver. 8. The prophet is a snare, &c. 'The prophet is (esteemed) a snare in all his ways, and (an object of) hatred in the house of his God;' that is, the true prophet of the true God; for had he been a false prophet of a false god, he would have flattered the people, and they would have praised him. C.

Reflections.—It is absurd to rejoice when sin reigns in us, guilt burdens our consciences, and God's wrath hangs over our heads. If we idolize our created enjoyments, or bestow them upon the service of the devil, it is but just that God should deprive us of them. It is but just that apostates from God's service should be expelled from his land; that they who despise his ordinances should be deprived of them. And if sin turn populous countries into desolations, the sinful inhabitants may expect destruction, flee where they will. The appointed season of God's judgments will bring to light and punish their abominations. Nor have any a more awful influence in ripening nations for ruin than villanous clergymen. If sinners will imitate their fathers in wickedness, they may expect to draw on themselves the most fearful destruction. If they separate themselves to wickedness, God will separate them to punishment. If they follow their lusts, God will withdraw his protection, and usher in a flood of calamities. If they educate their children in sin, God will destroy them in wrath. The crosses which children often occasion more than counterbalance the comfort of them. And no misery is greater than to be deserted, hated and rejected by God. But thrice happy are they, in the worst of times, who have God for their God and their all.