Rejoice not, O Israel, for Joy, as other people. Hosea 9:1, 2 Unreliable joy A. Clayton Thiselton. All are not Israel who are of Israel. The merely nominal Christian is not to rejoice as the true Christian should. I. MERELY NOMINAL PROFESSORS HAVE GREAT CAUSE TO MOURN. These words suggest a vast number of Israelites preparing for the songs of those that triumph, the shout of those that feast. To them the prophet says, "Rejoice not." 1. The first reason why Israel should not rejoice is that they had turned aside from the Lord. In leaving the Lord we leave all true happiness behind. 2. Because they were at ease in Zion. 3. Because they were heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath. 4. Because they were without hope in the world. 5. Because they were under sentence of condemnation. To every merely nominal Christian God sends this message, "Rejoice not for joy, as other people." II. GOD'S PEOPLE OUGHT TO BE A REJOICING PEOPLE. 1. Christ's atonement should make them happy. 2. The Triune God has made with them a covenant, ordered in all things and sure. 3. The joy of the Lord is their strength. 4. The rest of God shall be theirs. 5. The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The Lord reigneth, then your lot in this world will be controlled by the King of kings. Then your sorrows, disappointments, crosses, losses, and all the events of your life are controlled by His sceptre. Then the affairs of the home, and the joys and friendships of life are in the bands of the infinitely wise and good, and you may well rejoice. ( A. Clayton Thiselton. ) The miseries of sin George Hutcheson. The doctrine of this chapter relates to a time wherein Israel flourished much by reason of outward plenty, victories, and confederacies with their neighbours; and therefore did harden and please themselves in their sins, whatever the prophets said to the contrary. Therefore the whole chapter contains a large description of the miseries that were to come upon them for their sins, which may be branched out in four parts. 1. There is a description of the desolation to come upon them, to silence their presumptuous and carnal joy; wherein he declareth they had no cause to be insolent, thinking to prosper in sin as other nations, seeing their sin (idolatry) was more heinous than the sins of other people. 2. This desolation is declared to be near, whereby, the Lord would discover the folly of their false prophets, and their sin in procuring such at God's hands who. whatever they pretended to, were but snares to the people and causes of God's anger. 3. They are charged with the sins, of their fathers, whom they imitated, hereby provoking God to call them to an account, particularly with ingrate forsaking of God, for which they are threatened that God would cut them off without hope of prosperity and abandon them, 4. Their superstition and idolatry, wherein their princes had chief hand, is again laid to their charge; for which they are threatened with God's anger, and rejection; and exile, and with cutting them off root and branch. Such despisers of God's Word should be rejected, and made to wander in exile. ( George Hutcheson. ) They shall not dwell in. the Lord's land. Hosea 9:3 The Lord's land Jeremiah Burroughs. Before, God was to them as a father taking maintenance away from them, leaving them to suffer want: but here His anger increases, and He puts them out of His house; as a nation out of His land. God would make them know that it was His land, that they were but tenants at will, and enjoyed the land upon conditions of obedience. It is a good meditation for us to dwell upon, that we are God's stewards; the Lord is the great landlord of all the world. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." The land of Canaan was "Jehovah's land" in some special senses. 1. It was a land that God had "espied" as a special place for His people. 2. It was the land of promise. 3. It was a land given by oath ( Genesis 24:7 ). 4. It was a land which the Lord brought His people into by "a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm." 5. It was a land divided by lot. The possession that any man had was ordered by God Himself by lot. 6. It was a land wherein God dwelt Himself, a land that God called His own rest. It was the land wherein were the ordinances and worship of God, and His honour dwelt there, and so it had a peculiar blessing upon it above every land on the face of the whole earth. 7. It was a land over which God's eye was in a more special manner. 8. This land was typical of the rest of the Church in heaven. Then it would be a great judgment of God to drive men out of this land for their sin. To be cast out of those mercies which God by an extraordinary providence has brought to us is a sore and grievous evil. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) And they shall eat unclean things in Assyria The sting of Divine judgment Joseph Parker, D. D. Here we have the degradation of sin. To be ceremonially clean or pure was the joy and pride of Israel. The Jews would not eat things that were common or unclean, and by this mark they were distinguished from other people. Whilst Israel lived even in nominal piety, how superficial soever it might be, God gave him protection against degradation; but when Israel turned away adulterously from God, and sought satisfaction at forbidden fountains and altars, then the Lord brought upon Israel the misery of this degradation and shame. Israel was forced to eat things that were unclean, things that were killed with the blood in them, things that revolted the sense of the nation, and went dead against all the prejudices of education. Thus a badge was taken from the shoulder of Israel, a distinction was removed from the chosen people; they could have borne reproaches on the ground of moral disobedience with comparative indifference, but to have social boundaries and distinctions broken down was a judgment which Israel keenly felt. But the Lord will seize the sinner at some point, for He cannot be baffled in judgment or thwarted in the application of His righteousness. The Lord's judgments are ordered according to our apostasy; God will strike most where we feel most; He will follow our pride and our vanity, and smite them so as to bring upon them our keenest shame. God will not content Himself with some general judgment; He will specifically scrutinise and either reward or punish according to the result of His inquest. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) What will ye do in the solemn day, and in the day of the feast of the Lord? Hosea 9:5 Feasting after unaccepted sacrifice Robert Tuck, B. A. Calvin thinks the allusion is to the time of exile, when the people would be deprived of all their sacrifices. But the better point is that the sacrifices of Ephraim being 1. unauthorised, and 2. unaccompanied with righteousness, could not be accepted;consequently they could have no joy in their lesser or greater festal times, because all the joy of such times depended on their reconciliation and acceptance with God. What joy can there be in any of the joy times of life when we boar in our hearts the sad conviction of our wilful and persistent estrangement from God? And men do carry that secret conviction even when, to their fellows, they seem to be bold and self-satisfied. There is no sunshine on human life when God's smile is hidden. Illustrate from the anxiety of Job concerning his children. They were feasting, but he did not feel sure that it was feasting after sacrifice, enjoying themselves with the smile of God's favour resting on them. So he offered sacrifices to ensure the acceptance which they had missed. In the ordinary ritual of the Jews a feast followed sacrifice, as in the case of Samuel. This was the case with simple sacrifice and with the special sacrifices of solemn days. No joy could be in the feast if the sacrifice had failed to gain acceptance. It is the supreme rule for all the joy times of human life. They never can be to us what they ought to be, unless we enter on them with the full sense of acceptance with God. It must, always be, "sacrifice before feast." ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ) The solemn days of life Homilist. The day here referred to is one of the great Jewish feasts, either Passover, Pentecost, or Tabernacles. What will you children of Abraham do when you are deprived of the privilege of attending these solemn assemblies? There are solemn days awaiting all of us — I. THE DAY OF PERSONAL AFFLICTION. II. THE DAY OF SOCIAL BEREAVEMENT. III. THE DAY OF DEATH. This awaits every man. What will ye do in this day, when heart and flesh shall fail? IV. THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. ( Homilist. ) The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come. Hosea 9:7 Days of recompence W. Robertson Smith, LL. D. The passionate anguish that breathes in these words gives its colour to the whole book of Hosea's prophecies. His language, and the movements of his thoughts, are far removed from the simplicity and self-control which characterise the prophecy of Amos. Indignation and sorrow, tenderness and severity, faith in the sovereignty of Jehovah's love and a despairing sense of Israel's infidelity, are woven together in a sequence which has no logical plan, but is determined by the battle and alternate victory of contending emotions; and the swift transitions, the fragmentary, unbalanced utterance, the half. developed allusions, that make his prophecy so difficult to the commentator, express the agony of this inward conflict. Hosea, above all other prophets, is a man of deep affections, of a gentle, poetic nature. His heart is too true and tender to snap the bonds of kindred and country, or mingle aught of personal bitterness with the severity of Jehovah's words. Alone in the midst of a nation that knows not Jehovah, without disciple or friend, without the solace of domestic affection — for even his home was full of shame and sorrow — he yet clings to Israel with inextinguishable love. The doom which he proclaims against his people is the doom of all that is dearest to him on earth; his heart is ready to break with sorrow, his very reason totters under the awful vision of judgment, his whole prophecy is a long cry of anguish, as again and again he renews his appeal to the heedless nation that is running headlong to destruction. But it is all in vain. The weary years roll out, the signs of Israel's dissolution thicken, and still his words find no audience. Like a silly dove fluttering in the toils, Ephraim turns now to Assyria, now to Egypt, "but they return not to Jehovah their God, and seek not Him for all this." Still the prophet stands alone in his recognition of the true cause of the multiplied distresses of his nation, and still it is his task to preach repentance to deaf ears, to declare a judgment in which only himself believes. ( W. Robertson Smith, LL. D. ) The prophet is a fool, and the spiritual man is mad Charge against religious ministers Homilist. What the prophet means is this. When the predicted retribution had come, Israel would learn that the prosperity which some of the prophets had predicted ( Ezekiel 13:10 ) proved them infatuated fools. This charge against religious ministers is — SOMETIMES TOO TRUE. 1. There are men of weak minds; utterly incapable of taking a harmonious view of truth, or even forming a clear and complete conception of any great principle. 2. There are men of irrational theologies. They propound theological dogmas which are utterly incongruous with human reason, and therefore un-Biblical and un-Divine. 3. There are men of silly rituals. II. OFTEN A SCOFFING CALUMNY. The ideal preacher is the wisest and most philosophical man of his age. 1. He aims at the highest end. 2. He works in the right direction. 3. He employs the best means. The best is not legislation, art, poetry, rhetoric, but love. This is the Cross, the power of God unto salvation. ( Homilist. ) Spiritual madness Joseph Parker, D. D. Literally, the man of the lying spirit, the man who: was determined to deceive the nations: that prophet is declared to be a fool, and that spiritual man is mad. In other scriptures another spiritual man is also said to be mad. Christ was so charged. Paul was declared to be mad, The apostles had to vindicate themselves against daily charges of insanity. Why so? Simply because they were spiritual men. There is a madness without which there is no greatness. Talent is never mad, genius is seldom sane; respectability is always decorous, enthusiasm sometimes makes a new map of the world every day, lining it and pencilling it according to an eccentricity not to be brought within rules and mechanical proprieties. Enthusiasm is another name for the kind of madness which is described in the Scriptures. It is not the professing Christian who is mad. He may be too sagacious; he may be too shrewd; he may be but a calculator. Men of mechanical piety never helped the cause of the Son of God. We should have more progress if we had more madness; we should make a great impression if we had more enthusiasm. The spiritual man is necessarily mad in the estimation of the worldly man. The spiritual man is mad, because he says that mind is greater than what we know by the name of matter. The religious or spiritual man is mad because he trusts to a spirit. The spiritual man sees the invisible, and is not to be laughed out of his spiritual ecstasy. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) A converted woman accounted as mad Rev. John Robertson says: "During the revivals of 1859, a woman living in an Aberdeenshire village with her mother and sister was converted, and was full of enthusiasm. She went from door to door pleading with the people to let the Lord Jesus into their hearts. The mother and sister had a consultation together, and they came to the sad conclusion that Mary was mad. The village doctor, and with him the doctor of a neighbouring village, was called in. They consulted, and they came to the same conclusion, and thereupon signed the schedule for her admission to a lunatic asylum, simply because she besought one and all of those whom she loved to come to Jesus. On the night preceding the day upon which she was to be sent to the asylum the sister and the mother had strange thoughts, and when they met in the morning the mother said to her daughter, "Do you know, I have just been wondering all night whether it is Mary that is mad, or we." "Well, do you know, mother," replied the daughter, "I have just been wondering the same thing." They thought deeply, and searched their hearts, until they came to the conclusion that it was not Mary, but they themselves who were mad. Brownley North says that he took tea with the whole family, and with the relations on both sides of the house, about twenty-three in all, who, through Mary's pleading, had been led to Christ." As in the days of Gibeah. Hosea 9:9 The lessons of an old story Jeremiah Burroughs. ( Judges 19 ., 20.): — 1. When men to whom we seek for protection deal falsely with us, their wickedness is great in the eyes of God. 2. We may meet with worse usage from those who profess religion than from those who profess it not. 3. God may regard those as unholy and unclean who make a fair show of religion. 4. For men to stand up impudently and boldly in the defence of wickedness committed is abomin able in the eyes of God. 5. To join with others in defence of evil is worse than to stand out ourselves in evil. 6. Those who defend evil may for awhile prosper, but they must at last perish. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Corrupting forms of wickedness George Hutcheson. From the sad and dreadful story of Gibeah learn — 1. Contempt of true prophets, and delighting in deceivers and their delusions, will draw men upon abominable wickedness. 2. As men once giving way to gross sins will soon involve themselves so that they cannot recover themselves, so it is a dreadful condition to be entangled in sin without hope of recovery, and for men to be active in hardening themselves. 3. As there is no wicked course or measure of sin, wherein men have fallen, but the Church, departing from God, may fall upon it again, so the sins of progenitors will be put upon the account of the present generation who imitate them, and this will draw to a great account. ( George Hutcheson. ) They went to Baal-peer, and separated themselves unto that shame. Hosea 9:10 Sin and separation Homilist. The shame here alluded to was idolatry. I. ALL SIN IS SHAME. 1. It is shame in its commission. People seldom do iniquity in the full blaze of day. They would rather not be seen in its commission. It is shameful to be a sinner; to possess reason and to play the part of an idiot; to have liberty and to act the part of a slave; to be admitted to the arms of a benefactor and then to stab him in return. 2. It is a shame in its consequence. It produces shame. "Thou shalt be confounded," says God, "because of your shame." "The wicked shall rise to shame and everlasting contempt." II. SIN IS SEPARATION. Before a man can join the army of sin he must leave the service of God. Hence he separates himself. From what? 1. From the love, protection, guidance, and companionship of his God. What blessings to turn his back upon! 2. From the principles of truth, righteousness, and grace. He becomes another character. All that can exalt him is left behind. 3. From the prospect of future bliss. ( Homilist. ) All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them. Hosea 9:15 Punishment proportional to privilege W. G. Barrett. Translated into modern life, the prophet's plea would read thus. "All their wickedness is in the house of God; all their wickedness is after coming from the table of the Lord, or after receiving some faithful letter, or after their own painful convictions and sorrowful confession, or after their repeated resolutions and vows. This helps us to realise how a Jew would feel who heard the prophet make this reproach. 1. At Gilgal the covenant of circumcision was renewed for the second time since they came out of Egypt. What circumcision was to the Jew, religious instruction is to us: circumcision was God's seal to the Jews that He would cleanse them from taint of Egyptian idolatry. 2. At Gilgal they celebrated the passover for the first time after they came out of Egypt. The Lord's supper is our passover. 3. It was at Gilgal that God Himself appeared in a most remarkable manner to assure the people of Israel that He would be their deliverer. The captains of the Lord's host came. Observe Joshua's momentary surprise, courage, reverence.Notice the communication. 1. Beginning life in humble circumstances may be a Gilgal to us. 2. So may a season of affliction be. Or 3. The loss of a dear friend. But the wickedness of Gilgal may be taken away. ( W. G. Barrett. ) My God will cast them away... and they shall be wanderers among the nations. Hosea 9:17 Divine severities for a nation Jeremiah Burroughs. 1. It is a judgment to have an unsettled spirit. A spirit wandering up and down, unable to settle to anything, sometimes in this place, sometimes in that, sometimes in this way, and sometimes in another, this is a judgment of God. The wandering of men's appetites and desires works them a great deal of vexation. 2. Those who are cast away out of God's house can have no rest; they go about like the unclean spirit, seeking rest, but can find none. The Church of God and His ordinances are God's rest. But you will say. May not men be wanderers; that is, may they not be cast out of their habitations and countries, and wander up and down, and yet not be cast off from God? There is no evil in wandering if we carry a good conscience with us. But there it is, "They shall be wanderers among the nations." It was a great judgment of God for Israel to be scattered among the nations, for they were a people that were separated from the nations, and not to be reckoned among the nations; they were God's "peculiar treasure." This curse is upon the Jews to this very day, — how are they wanderers among the nations! ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Wanderers among the nations The lost ten tribes E. B. Pusey, D. D. The words of the prophet imply an abiding condition. He does not say, "They shall wander," but "They shall be wanderers." Such was to be their lot; such has been their lot ever since; and such was not the ordinary lot of those large populations whom Eastern conquerors transported from their own land. The transported population had a settled abode allotted to it, whether in the capital or the provinces. Sometimes new cities or villages were built for the settlers. Israel at first was so located. Perhaps on account of the frequent rebellions of their kings the ten tribes were placed amid a wild, warlike population, "in the cities of the Medes." When the interior of Asia was less known, people thought that they were still to be found there. The Jews fabled, that the ten tribes lay behind some mighty and fabulous river, Sambatyon, or were fenced in by mountains. Christians thought that they might be found in some yet unexplored part of Asia. Undeceived as to this, they still asked whether the Afghans or Yezides, or the natives of North America were the ten tribes, or whether they were the Nestorians of Kurdistan. So natural did it seem that they, like other nations so transported, should remain as a body near or at the places where they had been located by their conquerors. The prophet says otherwise. He says, their abiding condition shall be, "they shall be wanderers among the nations"; wanderers among them, but no part of them. Before the final dispersion of the Jews at the destruction of Jerusalem "the Jewish race," Josephus says, "was in great numbers throughout the whole world, interspersed with the nations." Those assembled at the Day of Pentecost had come from all parts of Asia Minor, but also from Parthia, Media, Persia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, maritime Lybia, Crete, and Italy. Wherever the apostles went in Asia or Greece they found Jews, in numbers sufficient to raise persecution against them. The Jews, scoffing, asked whether our Lord would go to the dispersion among the Greeks. The Jews of Egypt were probably the descendants of those who went thither after the murder Of Gedaliah. The Jews of the North, as well as those of China, India, Russia, were probably descendants of the ten tribes. From one end of Asia to the other, and onward through the Crimea, Greece, and Italy, the Jews, by their presence, bare witness to the fulfilment of the prophecy. Not like the wandering Indian tribe, who spread over Europe, living apart in their native wildness, but, settled among the inhabitants of each city, they were still distinct, although with no polity of their own, a distinct, settled, yet foreign and subordinate race. "Still remains unreversed this irrevocable sentence as to the temporal state and face of an earthly kingdom, that they remain still 'wanderers,' or dispersed among other nations, and have never been restored, nor are in any likelihood of ever being restored to their own land, so as to call it their own. If ever any of them hath returned thither, it hath been but as strangers." ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ).

Benson Commentary Hosea 9:1 Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor. Hosea 9:1-2 . Rejoice not, O Israel — It should seem that this prophecy was delivered at a time when the situation of public affairs was promising; perhaps after some signal success, which had given occasion to public rejoicings. As other people — Hebrew, ????? , as, or like, the nations, that is, the heathen nations, or the peoples, as Bishop Horsley renders it, paraphrasing the words thus: “Those national successes, which might be just cause of rejoicing to other people, are none to thee; for thou liest under the heavy sentence of God’s wrath, for thy disloyalty to him; and all thy bright prospects will vanish, and terminate in thy destruction. The Gentiles were not guilty in an equal degree with the Israelites; for, although they sinned, it was not against the light of revelation, in contempt of the warnings of inspired prophets, or in breach of any express covenant.” For thou hast gone a whoring from thy God — Hast been alienated from the love and service of God, and hast broken covenant with him by serving other gods, and thereby hast exposed thyself to his just displeasure. Thou hast loved a reward — Or hire, (such as was given by adulterers to lewd women,) upon every corn-floor — Thou hast loved to see thy floor full, and hast attributed thy plenty to thy idols, and rejoiced before them at the ingathering of thy corn. Bishop Horsley renders the clause, Thou hast set thy heart upon the fee of prostitution, namely, says he, “the fruits of the earth; which they ascribed to the heavenly bodies, and other physical agents which they worshipped.” The floor — The corn which is gathered into the floor; and the wine-press — The wine that is pressed out into it; shall not feed them — Shall not nourish and strengthen the idolaters. And the new wine shall fail in her — Samaria and all Israel expect a full vintage; but they expect it from their idols, and therefore shall be disappointed. Archbishop Newcome renders it, The choice wine shall deceive them, or, shall lie unto them, as the word may be rendered. We find similar expressions in Horace, as fundus mendax, the lying farm, and spem mentita seges, the crop-deceiving hope. Hosea 9:2 The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. Hosea 9:3 They shall not dwell in the LORD'S land; but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria. Hosea 9:3 . They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land, but Ephraim shall return into Egypt — God will turn them out of that inheritance he gave to their fathers, and they shall be carried into captivity or become exiles a second time in Egypt. When Shalmaneser made the ten tribes captive, such as were able to escape the conqueror fled into Egypt, having implored the aid of that country against the Assyrians. And they shall eat unclean things in Assyria — They have transgressed my law, in eating unclean things in their own land; and the time shall come when they shall be forced by their imperious masters the Assyrians to eat unclean things, whether they will or not. They will have no choice left them, but, as slaves, will be forced to eat what is given them. Hosea 9:4 They shall not offer wine offerings to the LORD, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD. Hosea 9:4 . They shall not offer wine-offerings to the Lord — They have omitted to make wine-offerings to the Lord when they had it in their power, and when it was their duty to do it; and in the time of their captivity they will be willing to do it, but shall not have it in their power. Wine- offerings were appointed to be offered with the morning and evening sacrifice; the sacrifice representing Christ, and pardon by him, and the wine-offering the Spirit of grace. The daily repetition of the sacrifice continued their pardon and peace. All this, it is here threatened, should be withheld from these captives. Neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices shall be, &c. — The words in this sentence are somewhat transposed in our translation. They stand otherwise in most other versions, namely, Neither shall their sacrifices be pleasing unto him, but as the bread of mourners among them — That is, their sacrifices shall be no more pleasing to God than if they were the bread of mourners, or that which is prepared for those who are mourning for the dead, of which no part was ever offered, or so much as brought into the temple. Mourners for the dead were, during their time of mourning, unqualified to attend upon God’s service; and any thing they had eaten of was accounted unfit to be offered to God: see note on Deuteronomy 26:14 . All that eat thereof — Namely, of the sacrifices here spoken of; shall be polluted — Rendered impure. For their bread for their soul — The offerings they make for the expiation of their sin, or for an atonement for their souls, (see Leviticus 17:11 ,) shall not come into the house of the Lord — Shall not be fit to be brought into the temple. Hosea 9:5 What will ye do in the solemn day, and in the day of the feast of the LORD? Hosea 9:5-6 . What will ye do in the solemn day — What will you do in your captivity, when any of your solemn or festival days come? When you shall find yourselves far from your own country, without temple, without prophets, without priests, without sacrifices, without solemn assemblies; what will be your sentiments? You will doubtless be willing to abstain from labour on those days, as you were wont to do; but your masters will not permit that, but force you to your wonted employments. Though the Israelites of the ten tribes were schismatics, and did not go up to the temple at Jerusalem, they omitted not to celebrate, in their own manner, the feasts of the Lord in their own country; and as these solemnities were always accompanied with festivity and rejoicing, it must have been a great mortification to them to be no longer able to celebrate them in the land of their captivity: see Calmet. For lo, they are gone because of destruction — Some are already withdrawn, because of the desolation that cometh. A great many of the ten tribes fled into Egypt, when they saw their country laid waste by the Assyrians. The prophet here threatens these, that they should have no better a fate than their brethren who were carried away into Assyria; but should die in Egypt, and never see their native country any more. Egypt shall gather them up — Or, gather them, as the word is translated Ezekiel 29:5 . It signifies the same in both places, as if it had been said they should be buried there. The pleasant places, &c., nettles shall possess them — Their fine houses, which they have purchased at vast prices, shall be ruined, and lie in rubbish till they be overrun with nettles. This signified a vast desolation. These two verses are thus translated by Bishop Horsley: “What will ye do for the season of solemn assembly, and for the festival of Jehovah? Behold, all are gone! Total devastation! Egypt shall gather them. Memphis shall bury them. Their valuables of silver! The nettle shall dispossess them, and the thistle, in their dwellings.” Hosea 9:6 For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their tabernacles. Hosea 9:7 The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it : the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred. Hosea 9:7 . The days of visitation are come — The days of punishment, or retribution, are at hand. This resembles the well-known line of Virgil: — Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniæ. — — — ÆN. lib. 2. 50:324. The fatal day, th’ appointed hour is come, The time of Troy’s irrevocable doom. Israel shall know it — The Hebrew is only, Israel shall know, namely, that I have spoken the truth; that is, in denouncing misery and calamity against them, as the Chaldee supplies the ellipsis. God’s judgments upon the ten tribes shall be so evident, that the most incredulous shall not be able to deny it. Others interpret this clause in connection with the following words, thus: Israel shall know that the prophet was foolish, that the man of the spirit was mad, namely, who encouraged the Israelites to continue in their sins, by promising them peace and prosperity notwithstanding their corrupt manners. Bishop Horsley’s translation of the passage is peculiarly spirited and sublime: The days of visitation are come! The days of retribution are come! Israel shall know it. Stupid is the prophet! The man of the spirit is gone mad! “Stupid,” he remarks, “if he himself discerneth not the signs of the times. Gone mad, if, aware of the impending judgment, he flatters the people with delusive hopes; and by that conduct makes himself an instrument in bringing on that public ruin, in which he himself must be involved.” For the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred — Namely, which thou deservest. Or probably the sense is, as Bishop Horsley’s version gives it, In proportion to the greatness of thine iniquity, great also is the vengeance. Hosea 9:8 The watchman of Ephraim was with my God: but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God. Hosea 9:8-9 . The watchman of Ephraim was with my God — Or, as some read. it, on the authority of divers MSS., ????? , his God, or, as the LXX. read it, with God. “The watchman is here evidently a title by which some faithful prophet is distinguished from the temporizers and seducers. But who in particular is this watchman, thus honourably distinguished, and how is he with his God? I think,” says Bishop Horsley, “the allusion is to Elijah, and his miraculous translation. ‘Elijah, that faithful watchman, that resolute opposer of idolatry in the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, is now with God, receiving the reward of his fidelity in the enjoyment of the beatific vision. But the prevaricating prophets, which now are, are the victims of judicial delusion.’“ They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah — They have not only sinned lightly, or trivially, but have sunk into the deepest wickedness, and have become as bad altogether as the men of Gibeah were in former times: see Jdg 19:15 , &c. Therefore he will remember their iniquity, &c. — God, who hateth such workers of iniquity, will not pardon their crimes, but severely punish them. Hosea 9:9 They have deeply corrupted themselves , as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins. Hosea 9:10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved. Hosea 9:10 . I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness — The sense is, as the traveller, passing through the deserts of Arabia, is greatly delighted if he happen to find in his way vines bearing grapes, so was Israel anciently delighted in by God. This relates particularly to their first entering into covenant with God, and their promises of ready obedience: see Exodus 19:8 ; Exodus 24:3 ; Deuteronomy 5:27-29 . I saw your fathers — Whom I brought out of Egypt; as the first ripe in the fig-tree at her first time — As figs of the first season, and the earliest of that growth, which are the most valued and desired. But they went to Baal-peor — To the temple and worship of the god of the Moabites; and separated themselves unto that shame — That obscenity, so Horsley; that is, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol; such as its worshippers ought to have been ashamed of, and as finally would cause shame to them. The word ?????? , they were separated, alludes to the order of the Nazarites, who were in a peculiar sense set apart for God’s service; and, in like manner, these separated, or dedicated, themselves to the service of that filthy idol, Baal-peor, that shame, or shameful thing, as it is expressed Jeremiah 11:13 . And their abominations were according as they loved — They set up and worshipped other idols, according to their own fancies. Houbigant reads this clause, Abominations became as their love: and Bishop Horsley, As my love of them, so were their abominations; and he remarks, “the love gratuitous, the abominations without inducement, but from mere depravity; the love the most tender, the abominations enormous.” Hosea 9:11 As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception. Hosea 9:11-13 . As for Ephraim, or, Ephraim! their glory shall fly away like a bird — What they make their boast of so much shall depart from them. The fruitfulness of their women seems to be the thing here spoken of. From the birth — Their children shall die soon after they are born; from the womb — They shall be untimely births, or abortions; and from the conception — They shall not even be conceived as they were wont to be. Dr. Wheeler renders this clause, They shall not bring forth, nor bear in the womb, nor conceive. Though they bring up, &c. — If some of them happen to bring up their children to a state of youth, or manhood, yet will I bereave them — Yet still shall they be deprived of them, for they shall be slain in war, or carried away captive. Yea, wo also to them when I depart from them — They shall suffer still greater and greater miseries when I wholly withdraw my protection from them, Deuteronomy 31:17 ; 2 Kings 17:18-23 . Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place — The situation of Ephraim, and particularly of the royal city, Samaria, is as pleasant as that of Tyre: see Ezekiel 27:3 . But Ephraim shall bring forth, &c., to the murderer — Shall be obliged to deliver up his children to his enemies. Instead of Tyre, some interpreters render the word ??? , a rock, which it generally signifies, and translate the passage, Ephraim, which, when I looked upon him, was as a rock planted in a pleasant place, shall bring forth, &c. So Houbigant, and to the same sense Newcome and Horsley. Hosea 9:12 Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left : yea, woe also to them when I depart from them! Hosea 9:13 Ephraim, as I saw Tyrus, is planted in a pleasant place: but Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer. Hosea 9:14 Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Hosea 9:14 . Give them, O Lord: what wilt thou give? — The prophet here speaks as one greatly agitated, and at a loss what to say upon what he had just heard; but at last concludes with beseeching God rather to let the women be barren, or miscarry; or, if they brought forth children, have no milk in their breasts to give them, that they might die soon after their birth, rather than that they should grow up to be slain by their enemies before their parents’ eyes, or carried into captivity; or, as it is expressed in the foregoing verse, that their parents should be driven to the hard necessity of bringing them forth for the murderer. Some interpret the verse thus: Give them a miscarrying womb, &c., “as a punishment for having inhumanly exposed their infants to death, by sacrificing them to their false gods; or, for having exposed them to the cruelty of the Assyrians, who destroyed them in war. The present passage is strikingly emphatical. But it is to be considered rather as a prediction of what was to happen as a punishment of their crimes, than as an imprecation.” Hosea 9:15 All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters. Hosea 9:15-17 . All their wickedness is in Gilgal — Gilgal is notorious, and has been so of old, for the wickedness of its inhabitants. There I hated them — There of old (or therefore ) they were an abomination to me. “The first great offence of the Israelites, after their entrance into the Holy Land, was committed while they were encamped in Gilgal; namely, the sacrilegious peculation of Achan, (Joshua 7.,) and to this, it seems, these words allude. There, says God, of old, was my quarrel with them.” It must be observed further here, that “Gilgal was the place where the armies of Israel, upon their entering Canaan, first encamped; where Joshua set up the twelve stones, taken by God’s command out of the midst of Jordan, in memorial of the miraculous passage through the river. There the first passover was kept, and the fruits of the promised land first enjoyed. There the captain of the Lord’s host appeared to Joshua. There the rite of circumcision, which had been omitted during the forty years of the wandering of the people in the wilderness, was renewed. And, in the days of the prophet Samuel, Gilgal appears to have been an approved place of worship and burnt-offering. But, in later times, it appears from Hosea, and his cotemporary, Amos, that it became a place of great resort for idolatrous purposes. And these are the wickednesses in Gilgal, of which the prophet here speaks.” — Horsley. I will drive them out of my house — That is, I will no longer consider them as my family, my children, and my servants. All their princes are revolters — All their chief men, their rulers and magistrates, have revolted from me and my commands; either by worshipping false gods, or by likening me to images of their own forming, and by worshipping me under the emblems of them. Ephraim is smitten, &c. — Or rather, shall be smitten, namely, with barrenness; for that is the punishment which is here chiefly mentioned. Bishop Horsley renders the clause, Ephraim is blighted; their root is dried up, they shall produce no fruit: or, according to the construction and rendering of the Syriac, Ephraim is smitten at the root, he is dried up; so that he shall bear no fruit; which is also, in substance, the version of the LXX. Yea, though they bring forth — And if any should bring forth; yet will I slay the beloved fruit, &c. — I will soon take away the children, whose birth afforded them great joy and satisfaction, and in whom they placed their delight. My God will cast them away — The prophet here calls Jehovah his God; as much as to say he would no longer be the God of the Israelites in general, and no more own them for his people, but leave them to wander and be dispersed among the other nations. They were afterward called by the name of the ???????? , or dispersed among the Gentiles. Hosea 9:16 Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. Hosea 9:17 My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Hosea 9:1 Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor. 3. THE EFFECTS OF EXILE Hosea 9:1-9 Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy and the sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed, every taste offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of having deserted Jehovah, they cannot pretend to enjoy the feasts of the Ba’alim in the same hearty way as the heathen with whom they mix. But, whether or no, the time is near when nature-feasts and all other religious ceremonies-all that makes life glad and regular and solemn-shall be impossible. "Rejoice not, O Israel, to" the pitch of "rapture like the heathen, for thou hast played the harlot from thy God; a harlot’s hire hast thou loved on all threshing-floors. Threshing-floor and wine-vat shall ignore them, and the new wine shall play them false. They shall not abide in the land of Jehovah, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat what is unclean. They shall not pour libations to Jehovah, nor prepare for Him their sacrifices. Like the bread of sorrows shall their bread be; all that eat of it shall be defiled": yea, "their bread shall be" only "for their appetite; they shall not bring" it "to the temple of Jehovah." He cannot be worshipped off His own land. They will have to live like animals, divorced from religion, unable to hold communion with their God. "What shall ye do for days of festival, or for a day of pilgrimage to Jehovah? For lo," they "shall be gone forth from destruction," the shock and invasion of their land, only "that Egypt may gather them in, Memphis give them sepulcher, nettles inherit their jewels of silver, thorns "come up" in their tents." The threat of exile still wavers between Assyria and Egypt. And in Egypt Memphis is chosen as the destined grave of Israel; for even then her Pyramids and mausoleums were ancient and renowned, her vaults and sepulchers were countless and spacious. But what need is there to seek the future for Israel’s doom, when already this is being fulfilled by the corruption of her spiritual leaders? "The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital. Israel" already "experiences them! A fool is the prophet, raving mad the man of the spirit." The old ecstasy of Saul’s day has become delirium and fanaticism. Why? "For the mass of thy guilt and the multiplied treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with My God." There is probably a play on the name, for with the meaning a "watchman" for God it is elsewhere used as an honorable title of the prophets. "The prophet is a fowler’s snare upon all his ways. Treachery-they have made it profound in the "very" house of their God. They have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity is remembered; visitation is made on their sin." These, then, were the symptoms of the profound political decay which followed on Israel’s immorality. The national spirit and unity of the people had disappeared. Society-half of it was raw, half of it was baked to a cinder. The nation, broken into fractions, produced no man to lead, no king with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed; monarchs were made and murdered. There was no prestige abroad, nothing but contempt among the Gentiles for a people whom they had exhausted. Judgment was inevitable by exile-nay, it had come already in the corruption of the spiritual leaders of the nation. Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still. Hosea 9:10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baalpeor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved. 11; Hosea 2:1-23 ; Hosea 3:1-5 THE SIN AGAINST LOVE Hosea 1:1-11 ; Hosea 2:1-23 ; Hosea 3:1-5 ; Hosea 4:11 ff.; Hosea 9:10 ff.; Hosea 11:8 f. The Love of God is a terrible thing-that is the last lesson of the Book of Hosea. "My God will cast them away." { Hosea 10:1-15 } "My God"-let us remember the right which Hosea had to use these words. Of all the prophets he was the first to break into the full aspect of the Divine Mercy to learn and to proclaim that God is Love. But he was worthy to do so, by the patient love of his own heart towards another who for years had outraged all his trust and tenderness. He had loved, believed and been betrayed; pardoned and waited and yearned, and sorrowed and pardoned again. It is in this long-suffering that his breast beats upon the breast of God with the cry "My God." As He had loved Gomer, so had God loved Israel, past hope, against hate, through ages of ingratitude and apostasy. Quivering with his own pain, Hosea has exhausted all human care and affection for figures to express the Divine tenderness, and he declares God’s love to be deeper than all the passion of men, and broader than all their patience: "How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How can I let thee go, Israel? I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger. For I am God, and not man." And yet, like poor human affection, this Love of God, too, confesses its failure-"My God shall cast them away." It is God’s sentence of relinquishment upon those who sin against His Love, but the poor human lips which deliver it quiver with an agony of their own, and here, as more explicitly in twenty other passages of the book, declare it to be equally, the doom of those who outrage the love of their fellow men and women. We have heard it said: "The lives of men are never the same after they have loved; if they are not better, they must be worse." "Be afraid of the love that loves you: it is either your heaven or your hell." "All the discipline of men springs from their love-if they take it not so, then all their sorrow must spring from the same source." "There is a depth of sorrow, which can only be known to a soul that has loved the most perfect thing and beholds itself fallen." These things are true of the Love, both of our brother and of our God. And the eternal interest of the life of Hosea is that he learned how, for strength and weakness, for better or for worse, our human and our Divine loves are inseparably joined. I. Most men learn that love is inseparable from pain where Hosea learned it-at home. There it is that we are all reminded that when love is strongest she feels her weakness most. For the anguish which love must bear, as it were from the foundation of the world, is the contradiction at her heart between the largeness of her wishes and the littleness of her power to realize them. A mother feels it, bending over the bed of her child, when its body is racked with pain or its breath spent with coughing. So great is the feeling of her love that it ought to do something, that she will actually feel herself cruel because nothing can be done. Let the sick-bed become the beach of death, and she must feel the helplessness and the anguish still more as the dear life is now plucked from her and now tossed back by the mocking waves, and then drawn slowly out to sea upon the ebb from which there is no returning. But the pain which disease and death thus cause to love is nothing to the agony that sin inflicts when he takes the game into his unclean hands. We know what pain love brings, if our love be a fair face and a fresh body in which Death brands his sores while we stand by, as if with arms bound. But what if our love be a childlike heart, and a frank expression and honest eyes, and a clean and clever mind. Our powerlessness is just as great and infinitely more tormented when sin comes by and casts his shadow over these. Ah, that is Love’s greatest torment when her children, who have run from her to the bosom of sin, look back and their eyes are changed! That is the greatest torment of Love-to pour herself without avail into one of those careless natures which seem capacious and receptive, yet never fill with love, for there is a crack and a leak at the bottom of them. The fields where Love suffers her sorest defeats are not the sick-bed and not death’s margin, not the cold lips and sealed eyes kissed without response; but the changed eyes of children, and the breaking of the "full-orbed face," and the darkening look of growing sons and daughters, and the home the first time the unclean laugh breaks across it. To watch, though unable to soothe, a dear body racked with pain, is peace beside the awful vigil of watching a soul shrink and blacken with vice, and your love unable to redeem it. Such a clinical study Hosea endured for years. The prophet of God, we are told, brought a dead child to life by taking him in his arms and kissing him. But Hosea with all his love could not make Gomer a true, whole wife again. Love had no power on this woman-no power even at the merciful call to make all things new. Hosea, who had once placed all hope in tenderness, had to admit that Love’s moral power is not absolute. Love may retire defeated from the highest issues of life. Sin may conquer Love. Yet it is in this his triumph that Sin must feel the ultimate revenge. When a man has conquered this weak thing, and beaten her down beneath his feet, God speaks the sentence of abandonment. There is enough of the whipped dog in all of us to make us dread penalty when we come into conflict with the strong things of life. But it takes us all our days to learn that there is far more condemnation to them who offend the weak things of life, and particularly the weakest of all, its love. It was on sins against the weak that Christ passed His sternest judgments: "Woe unto him that offends one of these little ones; it were better for him that he had never been born." God’s little ones are not only little children, but all things which, like little children, have only love for their strength. They are pure and loving men and women-men with no weapon but their love, women with no shield but their trust. They are the innocent affections of our own hearts-the memories of our childhood, the ideals of our youth, the prayers of our parents, the faith in us of our friends. These are the little ones of whom Christ spake, that he who sins against them had better never have been born. Often may the dear solicitudes of home, a father’s counsels, a mother’s prayers, seem foolish things against the challenges of a world calling us to play the man and do as it does; often may the vows and enthusiasms of boyhood seem impertinent against the temptations which are so necessary to manhood: yet let us be true to the weak, for if we betray them, we betray our own souls. We may sin against law and maim or mutilate ourselves, but to sin against love is to be cast out of life altogether. He who violates the purity of the love with which God has filled his heart, he who abuses the love God has sent to meet him in his opening manhood, he who slights any of the affections, whether they be of man or woman, of young or of old, which God lays upon us as the most powerful redemptive forces of our life, next to that of His dear Son-he sinneth against his own soul, and it is of such that Hosea spake: "My God will cast them away." We talk of breaking law: we can only break ourselves against it. But if we sin against Love, we do destroy her: we take from her the power to redeem and sanctify us. Though in their youth men think Love a quick and careless thing-a servant always at their side, a winged messenger easy of dispatch-let them know that every time they send her on an evil errand she returns with heavier feet and broken wings. When they make her a pander they kill her outright. When she is no more they waken to that which Gomer came to know, that love abused is love lost, and love lost means Hell. II This, however, is only the margin from which Hosea beholds an abandonment still deeper. All that has been said of human love and the penalty of outraging it is equally true of the Divine love and the sin against that. The love of God has the same weakness which we have seen in the love of man. It, too, may fail to redeem; it, too, has stood defeated on some of the highest moral battle-fields of life. God Himself has suffered anguish and rejection from sinful men. "Herein," says a theologian, "is the mystery of this love that God can never by His Almighty Power compel that which is the very highest gift in the life of His creatures-love to Himself, but that He receives it as the free gift of His creatures, and that He is only able to allow men to give it to Him in a free act of their own will." So Hosea also has told us how God does not compel, but allure or "woo," the sinful back to Himself. And it is the deepest anguish of the prophet’s heart, that this free grace of God may fail through man’s apathy or insincerity. The anguish appears in those frequent antitheses in which his torn heart reflects herself in the style of his discourse. "I have redeemed them-yet they have spoken lies against Me. { Hosea 7:13 } I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness-they went to Ba’al-Peor. { Hosea 9:10 } When Israel was a child, then I loved him but they sacrificed to Ba’alim. { Hosea 11:1-2 } I taught Ephraim to walk, but they knew not that I healed them. { Hosea 9:4 } How can I give thee up, Ephraim? how can I let thee go, O Israel? Ephraim compasseth Me with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit." { Hosea 11:8 ; Hosea 12:1 } We fear to apply all that we know of the weakness of human love to the love of God. Yet though He be God and not man, it was as man He commended His love to us. He came nearest us, not in the thunders of Sinai, but in Him Who presented Himself to the world with the caresses of a little child; who met men with no angelic majesty or heavenly aureole, but whom when we saw we found nothing that we should desire Him, His visage was so marred more than any man, and his form than the sons of men; Who came to His own and His own received Him not; Who, having loved His own that were in the world, loved them up to the end, and yet at the end was by them deserted and betrayed, -it is of Him that Hosea prophetically says: "I drew them with cords of a man and with bands of love." We are not bound to God by any unbreakable chain. The strands which draw us upwards to God, to holiness and everlasting life, have the weakness of those which bind us to the earthly souls we love. It is possible for us to break them. We love Christ, not because He has compelled us by any magic, irresistible influence to do so; but, as John in his great simplicity says, "We love Him because He first loved us." Now this is surely the terror of God’s love-that it can be resisted; that even as it is manifest in Jesus Christ we men have the power, not only to remain as so many do, outside its scope, feeling it to be far-off and vague, but having tasted it to fall away from it, having realized it to refuse it, having allowed it to begin its moral purposes in our lives to baffle and nullify these; to make the glory of Heaven absolutely ineffectual in our own characters; and to give our Savior the anguish of rejection. Give Him the anguish, yet pass upon ourselves the doom! For, as I read the New Testament, the one unpardonable sin is the sin against our Blessed Redeemer’s Love as it is brought home to the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit. Every other sin is forgiven to men but to crucify afresh Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. The most terrible of His judgments is "the wail of a heart wounded because its love has been despised": "Jerusalem, Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens, and ye would not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate!" Men say they cannot believe in hell, because they cannot conceive how God may sentence men to misery for the breaking of laws they were born without power to keep. And one would agree with the inference if God had done any such thing. But for them which are under the law and the sentence of death, Christ died once for all that He might redeem them. Yet this does not make a hell less believable. When we see how Almighty was that Love of God in Christ Jesus, lifting our whole race and sending them forward with a freedom and a power of growth nothing else in history has won for them; when we prove again how weak it is, so that it is possible for millions of characters that have felt it to refuse its eternal influence for the sake of some base and transient passion; nay, when I myself know this power and this weakness of Christ’s love, so that one day being loyal I am raised beyond the reach of fear and of doubt, beyond the desire of sin and the habit of evil, and the next day finds me capable of putting it aside in preference for some slight enjoyment or ambition-then I know the peril and the terror of this love, that it may be to a man either Heaven or Hell. Believe then in hell, because you believe in the Love of God-not in a hell to which God condemns men of His will and pleasure, but a hell into which men cast themselves from the very face of His love in Jesus Christ. The place has been painted as a place of fires. But when we contemplate that men come to it with the holiest flames in their nature quenched, we shall justly feel that it is rather a dreary waste of ash and cinder, strewn with snow-some ribbed and frosty Arctic zone, silent in death, for there is no life there, and there is no life there because there is no Love, and no Love because men, in rejecting or abusing her, have slain their own power ever again to feel her presence. 4. "THE CORRUPTION THAT IS THROUGH LUST" Hosea 9:10-17 CF. Hosea 4:11-14 Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a paganism-without the pagan conscience-and exalting licentiousness to the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has attempted their experiment, with far more sincerity than they themselves can put into it, and how invariably the result has been recorded by history to be weariness, decay, and death. On this occasion we have the story told to us by one who to the experience of the statesman adds the vision of the poet. The generation to which Hosea belonged practiced a periodical unchastity under the alleged sanctions of nature and religion. And, although their prophet told them that-like our own apostates from Christianity-they could never do so with the abandon of the pagans, for they carried within them the conscience and the memory of a higher faith, it appears that even the fathers of Israel resorted openly and without shame to the licentious rites of the sanctuaries. In an earlier passage of his book Hosea insists that all this must impair the people’s intellect. "Harlotry takes away the brains." { Hosea 4:12 } He has shown also how it confuses the family, and has exposed the old delusion that men may be impure and keep their womankind chaste. { Hosea 4:13-14 } But now he diagnoses another of the inevitable results of this sin. After tracing the sin and the theory of life which permitted it, to their historical beginnings at the entry of the people into Canaan, he describes how the long practice of it, no matter how pretentious its sanctions, inevitably leads not only to exterminating strifes, but to the decay of the vigor of the nation, to barrenness and a diminishing population. "Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit on a fig-tree in her first season I saw your fathers." So had the lusty nation appeared to God in its youth; in that dry wilderness all the sap and promise of spring were in its eyes, because it was still pure. But "they-they came to Ba’al-Peor"-the first of the shrines of Canaan which they touched-"and dedicated themselves to the shame, and became as abominable as the object of their love. "Ephraim"-the "Fruitful" name is emphasized-"their glory is flown away like a bird. No more birth, no more motherhood, no more conception! Blasted is Ephraim, withered the root of them, fruit they produce not: yea, even when they beget children I slay the darlings of their womb. Yea, though they bring up their sons I bereave them," till they are "poor in men. Yea, woe upon themselves" also, when I look away from them! Ephraim"-again the "Fruitful" name is dragged to the front-"for prey, as I have seen, are his sons destined. Ephraim" - he "must lead his sons to the slaughter." And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: "Give them, O Lord-what wilt Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that are dry!" "All their mischief is in Gilgal"-again the Divine voice strikes the connection between the national worship and the national sin-"yea, there do I hate them: for the evil of their doings from My house I will drive them. I will love them no more: all their nobles are rebels." And again the prophet responds: "My God will cast them away, for they have not hearkened to Him, and they shall be vagabonds among the nations." Some of the warnings which Hosea enforces with regard to this sin have been instinctively felt by mankind since the beginnings of civilization, and are found expressed among the proverbs of nearly all the languages. But I am unaware of any earlier moralist in any literature who traced the effects of national licentiousness in a diminishing population, or who exposed the persistent delusion of libertine men that they themselves may resort to vice, yet keep their womankind chaste. Hosea, so far as we know, was the first to do this. History in many periods has confirmed the justice of his observations, and by one strong voice after another enforced his terrible warnings. The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt; the languor of the Greek cities; the "deep weariness and sated lust" which in Imperial Rome "made human life a hell"; the decay which overtook Italy after the renascence of Paganism without the Pagan virtues; the strife and anarchy that have rent every court where, as in the case of Henri Quatre, the king set the example of libertinage; the incompetence, the poltroonery, the treachery, that have corrupted every camp where, as in French Metz in 1870, soldiers and officers gave way so openly to vice; the checks suffered by modern civilization in face of barbarism because its pioneers mingled in vice with the savage races they were subduing; the number of great statesmen falling by their passions, and in their fall frustrating the hopes of nations; the great families worn out by indulgence; the homes broken up by infidelities; the tainting of the blood of a new generation by the poisonous practices of the old, -have not all these things been in every age, and do they not still happen near enough to ourselves to give us a great fear of the sin which causes them all? Alas! how stow men are to listen and to lay to heart! Is it possible that we can gild by the names of frivolity and piquancy habits the wages of which are death? Is it possible that we can enjoy comedies which make such things their jest? We have among us many who find their business in the theatre, or in some of the periodical literature of our time, in writing and speaking and exhibiting as closely as they dare to limits of public decency. When will they learn that it is not upon the easy edge of mere conventions that they are capering, but upon the brink of those eternal laws whose further side is death and hell-that it is not the tolerance of their fellow men they are testing, but the patience of God Himself? As for those loud few who claim license in the name of art and literature, let us not shrink from them as if they were strong or their high words true. They are not strong, they are only reckless; their claims are lies. All history, the poets and the prophets, whether Christian or Pagan, are against them. They are traitors alike to art, to love, and to every other high interest of mankind. It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes great license in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only by the ambition to expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself affirms. This is true. Some of the ablest and most popular writers of our time have pictured the facts, which Hosea describes, with so vivid a realism that we cannot but judge them to be inspired to confirm his ancient warnings, and to excite a disgust of vice in a generation which otherwise treats vice so lightly. But if so, their ministry is exceeding narrow, and it is by their side that we best estimate the greatness of the ancient prophet. Their transcript of human life may be true to the facts it selects, but we find in it no trace of facts which are greater and more essential to humanity. They have nothing to tell us of forgiveness and repentance, and yet these are as real as the things they describe. Their pessimism is unrelieved. They see the "corruption that is in the world through lust"; they forget that there is an escape from it. { 2 Peter 1:1-21 } It is Hosea’s greatness that, while he felt the vices of his day with all needed thoroughness and realism, he yet never allowed them to be inevitable or ultimate, but preached repentance and pardon, with the possibility of holiness even for his depraved generation. It is the littleness of the art of our day that these great facts are forgotten by her, though once she was their interpreter to men. When she remembers them the greatness of her past will return. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.