Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.
Parallel Translations
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Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor.
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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.
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Rejoice not, O Israel, unto exultation, like the peoples, for thou hast gone astray from thy God, thou hast loved a harlot's hire upon every corn-floor.
Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to Hosea 9:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Hosea 10:5 The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; for its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, for its glory, because it has departed from it.
- Isaiah 17:11 In the day of your planting, you hedge it in. In the morning, you make your seed blossom, but the harvest flees away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
- Jeremiah 44:17 But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then had we plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil.
- Hosea 4:12 My people consult with their wooden idol, and answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they have been unfaithful to their God.
- James 4:16 But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil.
- Isaiah 22:12-13 In that day, the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, called to weeping, to mourning, to baldness, and to dressing in sackcloth; and behold, joy and gladness, killing cattle and killing sheep, eating meat and drinking wine: “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die.”
- Lamentations 4:21 Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwells in the land of Uz. The cup will pass through to you also. You will be drunken, and will make yourself naked.
- Ezekiel 16:47-48 Yet you have not walked in their ways, nor done their abominations; but soon you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live,” says the Lord Yahweh, “Sodom your sister has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters.
- Ezekiel 20:32 “ ‘ “That which comes into your mind will not be at all, in that you say, ‘We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.’
- Ezekiel 21:10 It is sharpened that it may make a slaughter. It is polished that it may be as lightning. Should we then make mirth? The rod of my son condemns every tree.
- Hosea 2:12 I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, about which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me; and I will make them a forest,’ and the animals of the field shall eat them.
- Hosea 5:4 Their deeds won’t allow them to turn to their God; for the spirit of prostitution is within them, and they don’t know Yahweh.
- Hosea 5:7 They are unfaithful to Yahweh; for they have borne illegitimate children. Now the new moon will devour them with their fields.
- Amos 3:2 “I have only chosen you of all the families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for all of your sins.”
- Amos 6:6-7 who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the best oils; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Therefore they will now go captive with the first who go captive; and the feasting and lounging will end.
- Amos 6:13 you who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, ‘Haven’t we taken for ourselves horns by our own strength?’
- James 5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you.
- Amos 8:10 I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will make you wear sackcloth on all your bodies, and baldness on every head. I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain It is not known at what time the Prophet…
It is not known at what time the Prophet delivered this discourse, but it is enough to know that it is directed against the obstinate wickedness of the people, because they could by no means be turned to repentance, though their defection was, at the same time, manifest. He now declares that God was so angry, that no success could be hoped for. And this warning ought to be carefully noticed; for we see that hypocrites as long as God spares or indulges them, take occasion to be secure: they think that they have sure peace with God, when he bears with them even for a short time; and further, except the drawn sword appears, they are never afraid. Since, then, men sleep so securely in their vices, especially when the Lord treats them with forbearance and kindness, the Prophet here declares, that the Israelites had no reason to rejoice for their prosperity, or to flatter themselves under this cover, that the Lord had not immediately taken vengeance on them; for he says, that though all people under heaven were prosperous, yet Israel would be miserable, because he had committed fornication against his God.
We now perceive the meaning of the Prophet. Israel, he says, rejoice not thou with exultations like the people; that is, “Whatever prosperity may happen to thee, though God may seem propitious by not afflicting thee, but kindly bearing with thee, — nay, though he may bountifully nourish thee, and may seem to give thee many proofs of paternal favor, yet there is no reason for thee to felicitate thyself, for vain will be this joy, because an unhappy end awaits thee.” Thou hast committed fornication, he says, against thy God This warning was very necessary. This vice, we know, has ever prevailed among men, that they are blind to their sins as long as the Lord spares them; and experience, at the present day, most fully proves, that the same disease still cleaves to our marrow. As it is so, let this passage of the Prophet awaken us, so that we may not rejoice, though great prosperity may smile on us; but let us rather inquire, whether God has a just cause of anger against us. Though he may not openly put forth his hand, though he may not pursue us, we ought yet to anticipate his wrath; for it is the proper office of faith, not only to find out from present punishment that God is angry, but also to fear, on account of any prevailing vices, the punishment that is far distant. Let us then learn to examine ourselves, and to make a severe scrutiny, even when the Lord conceals his displeasure, and visits us not for our sins. If, then, we have committed fornication against God, all our prosperity ought to be suspected by us; for this contempt, in abusing God’s blessings, will have to be dearly bought by us.
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The comparison here made is also of great weight. As other people, says the Prophet. He means, that though God might pardon heathen nations, yet he would punish Israel, for less excusable was his apostasy and rebellion in having committed fornication against his God. That other nations wandered in their errors, was no wonder; but that Israel should have thus cast off the yoke, and then denied his God, that he should have broken and violated the fidelity of sacred marriage, — all this was quite monstrous. It is then no wonder that God here declares, by the mouth of his Prophet, that though he spared other people, he would yet inflict just punishment on Israel.
He then adds, Thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor He pursues the same metaphor, that Israel had committed fornication like an unchaste and perfidious woman. Hence he says, that they were like harlots, who are so enticed by gain, that they are not ashamed of their lewdness. He said yesterday, that the people had hired lovers; but now he says, that they were led astray by the hope of reward. These things are apparently contradictory; but their different aspect is to be noticed. Israel hired for himself lovers, when he purchased, with a large sum of money, a confederacy with the Assyrians; but, at the same time, when he worshipped false gods with the hope of gain, he was like strumpets, who prostitute their body to all kinds of filthiness, when any rewards entice them.
But a question may be here moved, Why does the Prophet say that the reward is meretricious, when a plenty of corn is sought for? for he reproaches the Israelites for no other thing, but that they wished their floors to be filled with wheat. This seems not indeed to be in itself worthy of reproof, for who of us does not desire a fruitful increase of corn and wine? Nay, since the Lord, among other blessings, promises to give abundance of provision, it is certainly lawful to ask by supplications and prayers what he promises. But the Prophet calls it a wicked reward, when what God has promised to give is sought from idols. When therefore we depart from the one true God, and devise for ourselves new gods to nourish us and supply our food and raiment, we are like strumpets, who choose by lewdness to gain support, rather than to receive it from their own husbands. This is then to be like a woman whom her husband treats bountifully, and she casts her eyes on others, and seeks a filthy reward from adulterers. Such are idolaters. For God offers himself freely to us, and testifies that he will perform the part of a father and preserver; but the greater part, despising the blessing of God, flee elsewhere, and invent for themselves false gods, as we see to be done under the Papacy: for who are the patrons (nutricios — nourishers) they implore, when either drought or any other adverse season threatens sterility and want? They have an innumerable multitude of gods to whom they flee. They are then strumpets who hunt for gain from adulterers; while, at the same time, God freely promises to be a husband to them, and to take care that nothing should be wanting. Since, then, they are not satisfied with the blessing of God alone, it is a meretricious lust, which is insatiable, and in itself filthy and disgraceful.
We now then see what the Prophet repudiates in the people of Israel, and that is, They hoped for a larger abundance of corn from their idols than from the true God, as was the case with the idolaters mentioned by Jeremiah,
‘when we served,’ they said, ‘the queen of heaven, we abounded in wine and corn,’ (Jeremiah 44:17.)
They compared God with idols, and denied that they were so well and so sumptuously provided for when they worshipped God alone. Since, then, idolaters give honour to fictitious gods, so as to think them to be more liberal to them than the true God, this is the reason that the Prophet now so severely blames Israel, when he says that they loved a meretricious reward on all the floors of wheat. It then follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain For though all other people should escape, yet thou…
For though all other people should escape, yet thou shalt be punished.
Thou hast committed idolatry in hope of reward, and to have thy barns filled, Jer. 44:17, as an harlot that had rather live by playing the whore, than to be entertained of her own husband.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Hos 9:1 Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as…
Hos 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.
Ver. 1. Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people] Not as good people, for they have reason to rejoice, and are called to it in both Testaments; joy is the just man’s portion, but thou art naught all over, thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, who will shortly meet thee as a bear robbed of her whelps, or as the jealous husband doth his adulteress. Again, not as other bad people, for they may revel (rejoice indeed they cannot) and be merry, after a sort; rejoice they may in the face, as the apostle phraseth it, and from the teeth outward; some kind of frothy and flashy mirth they may have (and let them make them merry with it, it is all they are like to have), but so mayest not thou; because thou hast had warning sufficient, and hast known thy Master’s will, but not done it; yea, thou hast done that abominable thing that other nations never yet did, Jer 2:11-12, thou hast changed thy God for those that are no gods; thou hast forsaken the fountain, and run to the cistern, &c.; which is such a prodigious wickedness, as the very heavens are astonished at, and are horribly afraid, yea, desolate; mourning, and, as it were, melting at this horrid act. Shall the heavens mourn, and wilt thou rejoice? yea, fetch a frisk, or dance a galliard for joy, as the word signifies ( גיל, in Graec. αγαλλιαν, to dance a galliard): what if other nations do so, when they have got the better of their enemies, or gathered in their harvest, Isa 9:4, or otherwise have all things go well with them? yet revolted Israel had no such cause, unless they were upon better terms with God. Say that this were the time when Joash beat Benhadad thrice over, and recovered the cities of Israel, 2Ki 13:15-19; or say it was at the time when he took Amaziah, and brought all the spoil of Jerusalem to Samaria, 2Ki 14:13; or else when Pekah slew in Judah a hundred and twenty thousand in one day, and carried captive two hundred thousand, with much spoil: these were times of great mirth and jollity, it is confessed, 2Ch 28:6-8. "But are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God" (as the prophet Oded there bespeaks them), and should not those sins be bewailed? Besides, are they not your brethren whom you have slaughtered and captivated? and can you have any joy of such a conquest, of civil wars that are - nullos habitura triumphos, about to have no victory, that are such a misery as all words (however wide) want compass to express? Hear what the prophet Amos (who was Hosea’s contemporary) saith to this, "Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought" (so he calleth their victories, present prosperity, pomp, and pride), "which say, have we not taken to us horns by our own strength? Behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel," that shall tame you, and take you a link lower (as they say), so that "your laughter shall be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness," Jas 4:9. There is ever a snare (or a cord) in the sin of the wicked, viz. to strangle their joy with; "but the righteous sing and rejoice," Pro 29:6.
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For thou hast gone a whoring from thy God] That is a foul business, and may well dampen thy joy. Sins are the snuffs that dim our candlestick, the leaven that soureth our passovers, the sanies of a plague sore that threateneth our very life. And whereas the sins of others are but rebellions against God, the sins of his professed people are treacheries; they go a whoring from their God, desuper Deo suo, vel omisso Deo suo, from under their God, or laying aside their God; casting him, as it were, into a bycorner. Hence those pathetic complaints in Jeremiah, Jer 18:13, "Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing": filthiness in a stew is nothing so odious as filthiness in a virgin. And again, Jer 32:30, "The children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil from their youth." God takes evil so heinously from them, as if they had never done him any good service all their days; or as if they were the only sinners upon earth; they were so much worse, because they ought to have been better than other nations. Now God expects our sorrows should be proportionable to our sins; Rejoice not, therefore, but (by a liptote) weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you.
Thou hast loved a reward (or a harlot’s hire, mercedem meretriciam) upon every threshingfloor] i.e. Thou hast prostituted thyself to a loose idolatry; like to a common whore that goeth a whoring up and down the threshingfloors. Hence Boaz’ fear lest it should be rumoured that Ruth had lain at his feet, and that a woman came into the floor, Rth 3:14. Or else he meaneth (saith Diodati) some particular kind of idolatry used in the time of harvest and threshing: as if they would have acknowledged their increase to come by their idols’ goodness. Such was that of the Metapontines, of whom Strabo tells the story, that when they had had a good harvest, and were grown rich thereby, they dedicated to Apollo at Delphi χρυσουν Yερος, a harvest of gold. See Trapp on "Hos 2:1" &c
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Rejoice not: this might seem a morose humour of…
Rejoice not: this might seem a morose humour of a discontented, sullen preacher: what! forbid a people to rejoice when things prosper with them? when should a people rejoice if not then? The prophet, who had a deeper reach, and took a larger prospect of things. had good cause to advise, or warn, or forbid as he doth, for he saw more cause to grieve than to rejoice, and to mourn than to be merry; the reason you will have presently.
O Israel; you of the ten tribes.
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For joy; for any thing that is counted just matter of joy; though at present you prosper either under Jeroboam the Second’s victorious arms, or under Menahem, and the safety he hath procured by a confederacy with Assyria, though at other times these might be matter of rejoicing, now in thy circumstances, O Israel, it is not meet thou shouldst show any gladness.
As other people; with feastings, public games, and triumphs, or with solemn sacrifices of thanksgiving, or with erecting statues to the memory of your great and brave commanders, or for continuing the remembrance of their achievements.
For thou hast gone a whoring from thy God; with thee, O Israel, it is as unseemly as it is for an adulterous wife to rejoice and be jovial, whilst the guilt of her adulteries, and the shame of her lewdnesses, and the displeasure of her husband, fly in her face and whisper reproofs in her ear.
Thou hast loved a reward, such as is given by adulterers to lewd women,
on every corn-floor; thou hast loved to see thy floor full, and hast thought, and said thy idols had so furnished thee, and therefore thou didst love them. Though mirth might become an honest woman, it doth not so well suit with a dishonest adulteress; the very place, the Company and occasion, do upbraid such a one rejoicing with her lewd adulterers: besides, this adulteress’s joys will be short, and end in sorrows and shame; so will thine, O Israel.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here, I. The people of Israel are charged with…
Here, I. The people of Israel are charged with spiritual adultery: O Israel! thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, Hos 9:1. Their covenant with God was a marriage-covenant, by which they were joined to him as their God, renouncing all others. But when they set up idols and worshipped them, when they fled to creatures for succour and put a confidence in them, they went a whoring from God as their God, and honoured the pretenders and rivals with the affection, adoration, and confidence, which were due to God only. Other people were idolaters, but that sin was not, in them, going a whoring from God, as it was in Israel that had been married to him. Note, The sins of those who have made a profession of religion and relation to God are more provoking to him than the sins of others. As a proof of their going a whoring from God, it is charged upon them that they loved a reward upon every corn-floor. 1. They loved to give rewards to their idols, in the offerings and first-fruits they presented to them out of every corn-floor. They took a strange pleasure in serving their idols with that which they would have grudged to consecrate to God and employ in his service. Note, It is common for those that are niggardly in the expenses of their religion to be very prodigal in spending upon their lusts. Or, 2. They loved to receive rewards from their idols; and such they reckoned the fruits of the earth to be: These are my rewards, which my lovers have given me, Hos 2:12. Note, Those are directly disposed to spiritual idolatry that love a reward in the corn-floor better than a reward in the favour of God and eternal life.
II. They are forbidden to rejoice as other people do: "Rejoice not, O Israel! for joy. Do not expect to rejoice. What peace, what joy, what hast thou to do with either, while thy whoredoms and witchcrafts are so many?" Kg2 9:19-22. Be not disposed to rejoice, for it does not become thee, but rather to be afflicted, and mourn, and weep, Jam 4:9. Judah, that keeps close to the true God, nay, and other people that never knew him nor could ever be charged with revolting from him, may be allowed to rejoice, as not having so much cause to be ashamed as Israel has, that has gone a whoring from him. Some think that they had at this time particular occasions for joy, probably upon the account of some losses recovered, or some advantages gained, or some league made with a potent ally, for which they had public rejoicings, as other people used to have upon such occasions; but God sends to them not to rejoice. Note, Joy is forbidden fruit to wicked people. They must not rejoice, because they have gone a whoring from their God; and therefore, 1. Whatever it was that they rejoiced in, it would be no security nor advantage to them, so long as they were at a distance from God and at war with him. Note, We are likely to have small joy of any of our creature-comforts if we make not God our chief joy. 2. The sense of sin and dread of wrath ought to be a damp upon their joy and a strong alloy to all their comforts. Note, Those who by departing from God have made work for repentance have thereby marred their own mirth, till they return and make their peace with God.
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III. They are threatened with destroying judgments for their spiritual whoredoms, according to what was said long before. Psa 73:27, Thou hast destroyed all those that go a whoring from thee. It is here threatened,
1. That their land shall not yield its wonted increase. Canaan, that fruitful land, shall be turned into barrenness for the wickedness of those that dwell therein. They love the reward in the corn-floor, and are so full of the joy of harvest that they have no disposition at all to mourn for their sins; and therefore God will, for their effectual humiliation, take away from them, not only their delights and dainties, but even their necessary food (Hos 9:2): The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, much less feast them; they shall either be blasted by the hand of God or plundered by the hand of man. The new wine with which they used to make merry shall fail in her. Note, When we make the world, and the things of it, our idol and portion, above what they were designed for, it is just with God to deny us even support and nourishment from them, according to that which they were designed for, to show us our folly and correct us for it. Let those miss of their food in the corn-floor that look for their reward in the corn-floor. We forfeit the good things of this world if we love them as the best things.
2. That their land shall not only cease to feed them, but cease to lodge them and to be a habitation for them; it shall spue them out, as it had done the Canaanites before them (Hos 9:3): They shall not dwell any longer in the Lord's land. The land of Canaan was in a peculiar manner the Lord's land, the land of the Shechinah (so the Chaldee), the land of the Lord of the world (so the Arabic); he whose all the earth is (Psa 24:1) took that for his demesne. The land is mine, says God, Lev 25:23. They had used it, or abused it rather, as if it had been their own, had not paid the rent, nor done the services, due to God as their landlord, and therefore God justly enters, and takes possession of it, they having forfeited their lease. "It is my land" (says God) "and I will make it appear, for they shall be turned off, as bad tenants, and be made to know that, though they thought themselves freeholders, they were but tenants at will." Note, It is for the honour of God's justice and holiness that those who go a whoring from God should not be suffered to dwell upon his land; and therefore, sooner or later, the wicked shall be chased out of the world. Or it is called the Lord's land because it was the holy land, Immanuel's land, the land that had peculiar tokens of God's favour to it, and presence in it, where God was known and his name was great, where God's prophets and oracles were; it was a kind of copy of the earthly paradise, and a type of the heavenly one. It was a great privilege to have a lot in such a land as this. It was a great sin and folly to rebel against God, and go a whoring from him, in such a land as this, to deal unjustly in a land of uprightness, Isa 26:10. And it was a sad and sore judgment to be driven out from such a land as this; it was like driving our first parents out of the garden of Eden, and almost amounted to an exclusion out of the heavenly Canaan. Note, Those cannot expect to dwell in the Lord's land that will not be subject to the Lord's laws, nor be influenced by his love. Those have forfeited the privileges of the church that conform not to the rules of it.
3. That, when they are turned out from the Lord's land, they shall have no rest nor satisfaction in any other land. When Cain was driven out from the presence of the Lord he was a fugitive and a vagabond ever after, and dwelt in the land of trembling. So Israel here. Some shall return into Egypt, the old house of bondage; thither they shall flee from the Assyrian (Hos 8:13) and they shall lose and ruin themselves where they thought to hide and help themselves. Others shall be carried captives to Assyria and there shall be forced to eat unclean things, either (1.) Such things as were not fit for men to eat, that which is rotten and putrefied, intimating that they shall be reduced to the utmost poverty, as the prodigal that would fain have filled his belly with the husks. Or, (2.) Such things as were not fit for Jews to eat, being prohibited by their law. It is probable that while they were in their own land, however disobedient in other things, they kept up the distinction of meats, and prided themselves in that; but, since they would not keep the law of God in other things, they should not be suffered to keep it in that, and it was a just punishment of their sin in eating things offered to idols. Note, When at any time we suffer in our food, and either through want or for our health are forced to eat or drink that which is unpleasing, we must acknowledge that God is righteous, because we have sinned about our food, and have indulged ourselves too much in that which is pleasing.
4. That in the land of their enemies, to which they shall be driven, they shall have no opportunity either of giving honour to God or obtaining favour with God, by offering any acceptable sacrifice to him; they should not be in a capacity of keeping up any face or show of religion among them; "and so" (as Dr. Pocock expresses it) "should be as it were quite cut off from any expression of relation to him, from all signs of grace, and means of reconciliation with him, which would be to them a token of their being rejected of God, estranged from him, and no more owned by him as his people." (1.) They shall have no sacrifices to offer, nor any altar to offer them on, nor priests to offer them; they shall not so much as offer drink-offerings to the Lord, much less any other sacrifices. (2.) If they should offer them, neither they nor their sacrifices shall be pleasing to him, for they cannot have any legal offerings, nor are their hearts humbled. (3.) Instead of their sacrifices of joy and praise, they shall eat the bread of mourners; they shall live desolate, and disconsolate, mourning for the death of their relations and their own miseries, so that if they had opportunity of sacrificing they should never be themselves in a frame fit for it; for they were forbidden to eat of the holy things in their mourning, Deu 26:14. All that eat of the bread of mourners are polluted, and incapacitated to partake of the altar. (4.) Their bread for their soul, the bread which they must either eat or starve, the bread which they shall have for the support of their lives, shall not come into the house of the Lord; they shall have no house of the Lord to bring it to, or, if they had, it is such as is not fit to be brought, nor are they rightly disposed to bring it. (5.) The return of the days of their sacred and solemn feasts would therefore be very melancholy and uncomfortable to them (Hos 9:5): What will you do in the solemn day, in the sabbath, the solemn day of every week, in the new moons, the solemn days of every month, at the return of the times for keeping the passover, pentecost, and feast of the tabernacles, the solemn days of every year, the days of the feasts of the Lord? Note, The feasts of the Lord are solemn days; and, when we are invited to those feasts, we ought to consider seriously what we shall do. But the question is here put to those who were to be deprived of the benefit and comfort of those solemn feasts, "What will you do then? You will then spend those days in sorrow and lamentation which, if it had not been your own fault, you might have been spending in joy and praise. You will then be made to know the worth of mercies by the want of them and to prize spiritual bread by being made to feel a famine of it." Note, When we enjoy the means of grace we ought to consider what we shall do if ever we should know the want of them, if either they should be taken from us or we be disabled to attend upon them.
5. That they should perish in the land of their dispersion (Hos 9:6): For, lo, they have gone out of the Lord's land, where they might have spent both their sabbath days and other days with comfort, gone because of destruction, gone to Egypt because of the destruction of their own country by the Assyrians, flattering themselves with hopes that they shall return when the storm is over; but those hopes also shall fail them; they shall find there are graves in Egypt, as their murmuring ancestors said (Exo 14:11), graves for them; for Egypt shall gather them up, as dead men are gathered up and carried forth to the grave, and Memphis (one of the chief cities of Egypt) shall bury them. Gathering and burying are put together, Jer 8:2; Job 27:19. Note, Those that think presumptuously to flee from the judgments of God are likely enough tp meet their death where they hoped to save their lives.
6. That their land, which they left behind and to which they hoped to return, should become a desolation: As for their tabernacles, where they formerly dwelt and where they kept their stores, the pleasant places for their silver, they shall be demolished and laid in ruins, to such a degree that they shall be overgrown with nettles; so that if they should survive the trouble, and return to their own land again, they would find it neither fruitful nor habitable; it would afford them neither food nor lodging. Note, Those that make their money their god reckon the places of their silver their pleasant places, as those that make the Lord their God reckon his tabernacles amiable and his ordinances their pleasant things, Isa 64:11. But, while the pleasures of communion with God are out of the reach of chance and change, the pleasant places of men's silver, which were purchased with silver, or in which they deposited their silver, or which were beautified and adorned with silver, are liable to be laid in ruins, in nettles, and therewith all the pleasure men took in them.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people,....…
Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people,.... But rather mourn and lament, since such a load of guilt lay upon them, and they had so highly provoked the Lord to anger by their sins, and punishment would quickly be inflicted on them; and though they might be now in prosperity, through Jeroboam's success against their enemies, who by his victories had enlarged their border; yet they should not rejoice at it, as other people used to do on such occasions, by illumination of houses, making fires in the streets, feasting, and the like, since this prosperity would be but short lived: or if it was on account of the league made by Menahem with the king of Assyria, this would not last long; or on account of a good harvest, they need not so much rejoice as they that rejoice in harvest, since there would quickly be a famine among them: or rather it may respect rejoicing at their idols, and in their idolatrous worship, as other people, which is forbidden; such as instituting plays to the honour of them, making feasts before them, and dancing about them; whatever others might do, who knew not the true God, had not his law before them, nor his prophets sent to them to make known his will; who had been brought up in idolatry, adhered to their gods, and never forsook them; it ill became Israel to do the like. So the words may be rendered, "rejoice not, O Israel", at an idol (q), or idols, "as other people", idolatrous ones; the word signifies "similitude" (r) or "likeness", which an idol is:
for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God; playing the harlot with many lovers; committing adultery with stocks and stones; worshipping idols, and so departing from God, the true God, they had professed to be their God, their God in covenant; who stood in the relation of a husband to them, but they proved treacherous to him, and were guilty of spiritual adultery, which is idolatry; and therefore had no cause to rejoice as other nations that never left their gods, but to take shame to themselves, and mourn over their sad departure; see Hos 1:3;
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thou hast loved a reward upon every corn floor; alluding to the hire of a harlot, prostituting herself for it on a corn floor, or any where else, and that for a measure of corn, or for bread: it may point either at their giving the times of their corn floors to their idols, instead of giving them to the Lord; or to their ascribing their plenty of corn, and all good things to their worship of them, which they called their rewards, or hires their lovers gave them, Hos 2:5; or to their erecting of altars on their corn floors; as David erected one to the true God on the threshing floor of Araunah, Sa2 24:24; and which they might do, either by way of thanksgiving for a good harvest, which they imputed to them; or in order to obtain one, but in vain, as follows. The Targum is,
"for you have erred from the worship of your God; you have loved to serve idols on all, corn floors.''
(q) "super similitudine, seu idolo" Schmidt. (r) signifies a likeness of age, stature, and complexion, in Dan. i. 10. an idol is the similitude or likeness of anything in heaven or is earth, Exod. xx. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain God threatens to deprive Israel of all their worldly…
God threatens to deprive Israel of all their worldly enjoyments, ver. 1-5. He dooms them to utter ruin, ver. 6-8. Upbraids them with the wickedness of their fathers, ver. 9, 10. And threatens to root out their posterity, ver. 11-17.
As other people - With feastings, triumphs, and sacrifices of thanksgiving. A reward - Such as is given by adulterers to lewd women; thou hast loved to see thy floor full, and hast said thy idols gave thee this plenty.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain The prophet reproves the Israelites for their sacrifices and
CHAPTER IX
The prophet reproves the Israelites for their sacrifices and
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rejoicings on their corn-floors, by which they ascribed to
idols, as the heathen did, the praise of all their plenty, 1.
For which reason they are threatened with famine and exile,
2, 3,
in a land where they should be polluted, and want the means of
worshipping the God of their fathers, or observing the
solemnities of his appointment, 4, 5.
Nay more; they shall speedily fall before the destroyer, be
buried in Egypt, and leave their own pleasant places desolate,
6-9.
God is then introduced declaring his early favour for his
people, and the delight he took in their obedience; but now
they had so deeply revolted, all their glory will take wing,
God will forsake them, and their offspring be devoted to
destruction, 10-16.
NOTES ON CHAP. IX
Verse 1. Rejoice not] Do not imitate the heathens, nor serve their idols. Do not prostitute thy soul and body in practicing their impurities. Hitherto thou hast acted as a common harlot, who goes even to the common threshing places; connects herself with the meanest, in order to get a hire even of the grain there threshed out.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Hos 9:1-2. Rejoice not, O Israel — It should…
Hos 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, כעמים, 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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people…
Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people - Literally, “rejoice not to exultation,” so as to bound and leap for joy (as in Job 3:22). The prophet seems to come across the people in the midst of their festivity and mirth, and arrests them abruptly stopping it, telling them, that had no cause for joy. Hosea witnessed of Israel’s prosperity under Jeroboam II; the land had peace under Menahem the departure of Pul; Pekah was even strong, so as, in his alliance with Rezin, to be an object of terror to Judah Isa. 7, until Tiglath-Pileser came against him. At some of these times, Israel seems to have given himself to exuberant mirth, whether at harvest-time, or on any other ground, enjoying the present, secure for the future. On this rejoicing Hosea breaks in with his stern, “rejoice not.” “In His presence is fulness of joy,” true, solid, lasting joy” Psa 16:11. How then could Israel joy, “who had gone a whoring from his God?” Other nations might joy, for they had no imminent judgment to fear.
Their sins had been sins of ignorance; none had sinned like Israel. They had not even Jer 2:11 “changed their gods, which were no gods. If” other “people” did not thank God for His gifts, and thanked their idols, they had not been taught otherwise. Israel had been taught. and so his sin was sin against light. Whence God says by Amos, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” Amo 3:2. : “It was ever the sin of Israel to wish to joy as other nations. So they said to Samuel, “make us a king to judge us, like all the nations.” And when Samuel “told the people the word of God, they have rejected Me that I should not reign over them,” they still said, “Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we may be like all the nations” 1Sa 8:5, 1Sa 8:10, 1Sa 8:7, 1Sa 8:19-20. This was the joy of the nations, to have another king than God, and with this joy Israel wished to exult, when it asked for Saul as king; when it followed Jeroboam; when it “denied” Christ “before the presence of Pilate, saying, we have no king but Caesar.” But the people who received the law, and professed the worship of God, might not exult as other people who had not the knowledge of God, that, like them, it should, after forsaking God, be allowed to enjoy temporal prosperity, like theirs.
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He says, “rejoice not like the nations,” namely, for it is not allowed thee. Why? “for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God.” The punishment of the adulteress, who departs by unfaithfulness from her husband, is other than that of the harlot, who had never plighted her faith, nor had ever been bound by the bond of marriage. Thou obtainedst God for thy Husband, and didst forsake Him for another, yea, for many others, in the desert, in Samaria, even in Jerusalem, for the golden calves, for Baal, and the other monstrous gods, and lastly, when, denying Christ, thou didst prefer Barabbas. “Rejoice not” then, with the “joy” of the “nations;” for the curses of the law, written against thee, allow thee not. “Cursed shalt thou be in the city, cursed in the field; cursed thy basket and thy store; cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land; the increase of thy kine and the flocks of thy sheep; cursed thou in thy coming in, and cursed thou in thy going out” Deu 28:16-19. Other nations enjoyed the fruit of their own labors; thou “tookest the labors” of others as a hire, “to observe His laws” Psa 105:45.
Thou hast loved a reward - (Literally, “the hire” Hos 2:12; Hos 8:9; Eze 21:31, 34; Mic 1:7 of a harlot) “on every grain-floor.” Israel had no heart, except for temporal prosperity. This he loved, wheresoever he found it; and so, “on every grain-floor,” whereon the fruits of the earth were gathered for the threshing, he received it from his idols, as the “hire,” for which he praised them “for the good tilings which he had received from a better Giver.” : “Perverse love! Thou oughtest to “love” God to use His rewards. “Thou” lovedst “the reward,” despisedst God. So then thou “wentest whoring from thy God,” because thou didst turn away the love, wherewith thou oughtest to love God, to love the hire: and this not sparingly, nor any how, but “on every barnfloor,” with avarice so boundless and so deep, that all the barn-floors could not satisfy thee.” The first-fruits, and the free-willoffering, they retained, turned them away from the service of God, and offered them to their idols.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Reward, or "present." The kings took the tithe, 1…
Reward, or "present." The kings took the tithe, 1 Kings viii. 15. Other infidel nations rejoice in their wealth. Israel ought not to do so; and, in punishment of idolatry, it shall be despoiled. After Jeroboam II, all went to ruin.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain B. The carrying away into Assyria. Decrease of the…
B. The carrying away into Assyria. Decrease of the People
Hos_9:1-17
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1 Rejoice not,1 Israel,
Unto exultation, like the heathen,
For thou hast committed whoredom, departing from thy God,
Thou hast loved the reward of whoredom,
On all corn-floors.
2 The threshing-floor and the (oil-) press will not nourish them,2
And the new wine will deceive them.
3 They will not remain in the land of Jehovah,
But Ephraim will return to Egypt,
And in Assyria he will eat (things) unclean.
4 They will not pour out wine for Jehovah,
For their offerings will not please Him;
Like bread of mourning (their food will be) to them,
All who eat it will defile themselves:
For their bread is only for themselves,
It does not come into the house of Jehovah.
5 What will ye do on the day of the assembly,
And on the day of the feast of Jehovah?
6 For, behold, they have gone away because of the desolation:
Egypt will gather them,
Memphis will bury them.
Their precious3 things of silver,
Thistles will inherit them;
Thorns (will be) in their tents.
7 The days of punishment have come,
The days of retribution,
Israel will discover:
The prophet is foolish,
The man of the spirit is crazed—
Because of the greatness of thy guilt,
And because the enmity is so great.4
8 Ephraim is a searcher (after revelations) with my God:
(As to) the Prophet, the snare of the fowler
Is upon all his paths:
There is enmity in the house of his God.
9 They have wrought deep corruption5 as in the days of Gibeah,
He will remember their guilt,
He will visit (upon them) their sins.
10 I found Israel as grapes in the6 desert,
Like the early fruit on the fig tree in its first (bearing) I found your fathers,
Yet they went after Baal-Peor,
And consecrated themselves to shame,
And became an abomination, like their paramour.
11 Ephraim—his glory will fly away as a bird;
No bearing, no pregnancy, no conception.
12 Even if they rear up their sons,
I will bereave them of men,
For, indeed, woe is to them,
When I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, like as I saw Tyre,
(Is) planted by the sea,
Yet must Ephraim lead out his sons to the murderer.
14 Give to them, O Lord:—what wilt Thou give?
Give a barren womb and dry breasts.
15 All their evil is in Gilgal—
For there have I hated them;
For the evil of their deeds
Will I drive them out of my house,
Will not love them any more;
All their princes are apostates.
16 Ephraim is smitten,
Their root is withered,
They will not bear fruit;
And even if they should bear,
I will slay the darlings of their womb.
17 My God will abhor them,
Because they did not hear Him,
And they will be fugitives among the nations.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Hos_9:1-2. אֶל־גְּיל intensifies the notion of rejoicing=unto exultation (comp. Job_3:22). According to what follows it is rejoicing over a bountiful harvest. It was this that Israel expected and for which they would rejoice. But such joy was to be taken from them. כָּעַמִּים Keil: “Israel, after the heathen fashion, attributed the blessing of harvest to the gods, and rejoices in it as in a gift of the gods, after the manner of the heathen.” That this is the meaning is evident from what follows, in which I discover not so much the ground why Israel should not rejoice, as an explanation of the כָּעַמִּים, especially in the second member: thou hast loved. The lover’s reward is the reward which the paramour gives to his mistress, or here the idol to its servant, the people. The addition: upon all corn-floors, shows what is regarded as that reward: it is that which is laid upon these floors, the fruits of harvest, which Israel considers to be the gift of the idols, as their reward for serving them (comp. Hos_2:7-14). Press: probably =oil-press, as new wine is specified afterwards; comp. also Hos_2:10-23; corn, wine, and oil are therefore mentioned together.
Hos_9:3 shows how this will be brought about; it is not owing to the failure of the harvest, but to a captivity: thus they will lose their harvest which had grown. Return to Egypt, etc.: Keil is here undoubtedly correct when he says: “The expulsion is described as a return to Egypt, as in Hos_8:13; but Assyria is mentioned immediately afterwards as the real land of banishment. That this threat is not to be understood as implying that they will be carried away to Egypt as well as to Assyria, but that Egypt is referred to here and in Hos_9:6, just as in Hos_8:13 simply as a type of the land of captivity, so that Assyria is represented as a new Egypt, may be clearly seen from the very words of our verse, in which the eating of unclean bread in Assyria is mentioned as the immediate consequence of a return to Egypt, whereas neither here nor in Hos_9:6 is there any allusion to a carrying away to Assyria at all; but, on the contrary, in Hos_9:6, Egypt only is introduced as the place where they are to find their grave. This becomes still more evident from the fact that Hosea speaks throughout of Assyria as the rod of God’s wrath for his apostate people (comp. Hos_5:13; Hos_10:6; Hos_10:14). Finally, it is clearly stated in Hos_11:5 that Israel will not return to Egypt, but that Assyria will be their king. By the allusions to Egypt, therefore, the carrying away into Assyria is simply represented as a state of bondage and oppression similar to Israel’s residence in Egypt, or merely the threatening of Deu_28:68, transferred to Ephraim.” They will eat (what is) defiled: partly because the legal prohibitions with relation to particular kinds of food could be observed only with difficulty in a foreign country, and especially because with the cessation of the sacrificial rites in general, the offering of the first-fruits must cease also, and all food not sanctified by the offering of the first fruits was unclean to Israel. This is completed in Hos_9:4.
Hos_9:4. וְלֹא יֶעֶרְבוּ לֹו: will not be well pleasing to Him; therefore their sacrifices must be taken as the subject in spite of the accents. The meaning is: the sacrifices would not please Him, and therefore none are brought. Israel could not sacrifice to God in exile when He had withdrawn from them his gracious presence. Like bread of mourning to them (will be their food). Bread that was partaken of where a dead body lay was considered unclean, because the dead defiled for seven days the house, and all that came in contact with them; therefore: all who eat it will defile themselves. Their bread will be לְנַפְשָׁם=for the support of life, and therefore it must be eaten by them, but it does not come into the house of God to be consecrated.
Hos_9:5. Festal days are no longer possible. To attempt to distinguish between מֹועֵד and חַג (the former = the three annual pilgrim feasts, the latter = the other feasts, or, specially, the great harvest-feast, that of Tabernacles), is arbitrary. The expressions are probably synonymous. The notion is only emphasized by the second expression. מועד regards the feasts outwardly, as gatherings; חג rather denoting the rejoicing, or festal character of those occasions.
Hos_9:6. They have gone away: the prophet sees them in the Spirit as already in banishment. מִֹשּד, literally: out of desolation. On Egypt see at Hos_9:3. [Keil: “Egypt is mentioned as the place of banishment, in the same sense as in Hos_9:3. There they will all find their graves. מֹף or נֹף, as in Isa_19:13; Jer_2:16; Jer_44:1; Eze_30:13-16, probably contracted from מְנֹף, answers rather to the Coptic Membe, Memphe, than to the old Egyptian, Men-nefr, i.e., mansio bona, the profane name of the city of Memphis, the ancient capital of Lower Egypt, the ruins of which are to be seen on the west bank of the Nile, to the south of Old Cairo.” Memphis was a celebrated burying-place of the Egyptians. The Anglo-American Commentators generally assume a literal allusion to Egypt.—M.] מַחְמַד לְכסְפָּם = the costliness of their silver [see Gram. note], probably = their houses filled and decked with silver, comp. the parallel אָהָלֵיהֶם. The growth of thorns and thistles is an image of utter desolation (comp. Isa_34:13).
Hos_9:7-8. The Prophet is foolish. This is in sense dependent upon יֵדְעוּ. False prophets are meant, who flattered the people, promising them only good. These will be shown to be fools. Even the false prophet is a man of the spirit, but it is an evil spirit that possesses him (רוּחַ שֶׁקֶר1Ki_22:22). On account of the greatness of thy guilt, this will happen, namely, that mentioned at the beginning of the verse. מַשְׂטֵמָה, ambush, enmity, namely, against God and his prophets, as is explained in Hos_9:8. Keil: a searcher is Ephraim with my God. צֹפֶה is used of the “looking out” of the prophet while waiting for a divine revelation. The meaning is: Israel searches out divine revelations along with “my God,” i.e., the God of the prophet. He trusts in his own prophets, not in those inspired by Jehovah. Others find in צפה the notion of lying in wait. God would then be the object of the lying in wait of an enemy. He would be so in the person of the prophets, for whom, according to the following hemistich, snares were set (Ewald, Umbreit, Meier). But the prep. עִם would not suit. The notion: lying in wait for God, is also strange. In the second hemistich נָבִיא could be the false prophet. The snare of the fowler is upon all his paths would = he brings the people to ruin by all his actions. A snare is in the house of his God, would then be=in the house of the god of the false prophet. But it is better to understand the verse of the enmity which the true prophet must everywhere meet=As to the prophet, the snare, etc. “In the house of his God=in the temple.
Hos_9:9. הֶעֱמיקוּ שִׁחֲתוּ, literally, they have made deep, they have wrought corruption = they have wrought deep corruption as in the days of Gibeah, when the shameful deed was done (recorded in Judges 19 ff.) to the Levite’s concubine, which resulted in the almost complete extermination of the Tribe of Benjamin. Such conduct must be visited with punishment. Comp. Hos_8:13.
Hos_9:10. Israel sinned grievously not only in Gibeah but earlier also, when God yet took such delight in him. His disposition now is shown to be that which he ever had. So much the more deserved is the punishment. Like grapes, etc.=As men prize grapes, etc., so did I prize thee. In the desert applies both to the grapes and to the finding, since grapes can be found in the desert, only when one is in the desert. An allusion to Deu_32:10. In its beginning, that is, when it begins to bear. Baal-Peor is here local, according to Keil, since אֶל is wanting; therefore: to the place of Baal-Peor; elsewhere: to the house of Baal-Peor. וַיִּנָּזְרוּ, the same word, used designedly, as that employed to express consecration to Jehovah. They became Nazarites to Baal-Peor, to shame. The worship of Baal-Peor is alluded to. [See Num_25:1-5.] The worship of Baal was then Israel’s crowning offense, and the old Baal-Peor worship is now renewed.
Hos_9:11-12. They shall increase no longer. The unchaste worship of Baal may be referred to, whose natural punishment is the decrease of the population.
Hos_9:13. Difficult. Keil: Ephraim is the object of רָאִיתִי, and precedes on account of the emphasis laid upon it=I have selected Ephraim for a Tyre=I would make it as glorious as Tyre. [Comp. Gen_22:8 for a similar use of רָאָה.—M.] To describe its glory more particularly, we have the addition: planted in a meadow, a place favorable to growth. Wünsche: Ephraim is the subject to be connected with “planted”=Ephraim is planted in a meadow. The intervening clause he translates: like as I look upon Tyre; and the meaning is: Ephraim blooms like the lordly Tyre, wherever men may look. But this is clearly unnatural. The meaning would rather be: Ephraim is as when I look upon Tyre, i.e., when I look on Ephraim, it is as when I look on Tyre. Others (Ewald) by changing the reading to ׃לְצוּרָה in shape, as to form, outward appearance. Others take צוֹר in the sense of the Arabic: a palm = Ephraim, as I beheld (it), is a palm. [The opinion approved above is apparently that entertained by the translators in E. V. It is that approved by most expositors, and is the most obvious sense suggested by the words.—M.]
Hos_9:14. According to many expositors, this is an intercession of the prophet: May the Lord not let the mothers bring forth, rather than that the sons should be destined to death. But an intercession would scarcely suit in such a severe announcement of judgment. Therefore others consider it a prayer that other punishment may be inflicted. An important element in the punishment is the unfruitfulness of marriages. The thought of ver 11 would then be essentially resumed.
Hos_9:15. It cannot now be shown how all their evil was in Gilgal. Comp. for the rest, Hos_4:15. [Henderson: “Gilgal, being one of the chief places of idolatrous worship, the wickedness of the nation might be said to be concentrated in it.” This is the usual explanation.—M.] From my house = out of my congregation (Hos_8:1).
Hos_9:16. The prophet beholds the future as already present (comp. Hos_9:11); only that here the image of a tree which can no longer put forth its shoots, is first employed. In the last member, however: and even if they should bear, no figure is employed.
Hos_9:17 completes the whole, by giving the ground of the punishment, and stating that punishment clearly to be banishment among the nations, when the people should be fugitives.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The judgment stands here altogether in the foreground, and the punishment which the people are to expect is that they will be carried away into Assyria. That event is here indicated as “a return to Egypt,” not literally, but rather symbolically (Hos_9:3). The captivity is regarded not so much as an outward fact, but according to its internal aspect, as the direct negation of that which God had done to Israel in leading them out of Egypt. Several features in the Exodus made it of special significance to Israel. One was the great and undeniable mercy of God. Viewing it more closely, it was a merciful liberation of Israel from bondage, from complete subjection to a foreign power. It was thus the condition and the beginning of Israel’s existence as an independent nation. But not only so: God thus brought this people, under special obligations to Him. As He had owned them to be his so expressly and emphatically in Egypt, and separated them from Egypt, they became by his leading them forth justly and legitimately his inheritance. And although this specific relation of Israel towards God did not assume its normal form until the giving of the Law, yet the leading of Israel out of Egypt lay at the foundation of their exaltation to become his people. Finally, it was the condition of, and the first step towards, their introduction into that country which God had promised to give to Israel as his people, and had therefore a fundamental significance in their history. Now the Assyrian Captivity is the direct contrast to this, and is therefore represented as a “return to Egypt.” It is as signal a display of God’s displeasure and wrath as the former was of his mercy. It is the loss of freedom, a reduction to a state of bondage, and a surrender to the power of a foreign enemy. Israel is only free through his God, and remains so only so long as he serves Him; by apostasy from Him, he therefore forfeited that freedom, and therefore at last must lose it, and forego an independent existence. This surrender to the power of the heathen stands further in the strongest contrast to Israel’s relation to God as his people. They are thus really dismissed from this position by God, and abandoned by Him as his people (comp. Hos_9:15; Hos_9:17). They are in fact made a “Not-My-People.” Israel ignored the Law given at Sinai, and Jehovah ignores the deliverance from Egypt; and, lastly, the Assyrian Captivity is the loss of that country in which Israel’s position as God’s people had its material basis, as the deliverance from Egypt looked towards the possession of that country. Comp. Hos_9:3. And as the Promised Land was essentially one of divine blessing, the loss of this blessing is naturally referred to with special emphasis. If Israel has, like the heathen, ascribed such a blessing to false gods, it cannot enjoy the land presented to it as God’s people, but as it became like the heathen, it shall return again into their countries. With the loss of the “Land of Jehovah,” however, is united, as a peculiarly distressing consequence, the loss of the sacrificial service, and of the sanctification in life thereby conditioned. Israel is sent away into the land of impurity. In this the Captivity is like a return to Egypt. Already in this we hear the sigh of the banished after the Holy Land. Those against whom the objurgatory discourse is primarily directed will, it is true, feel least the impossibility of serving God. And yet even they cannot deny their Israelitish character, and least of all in a strange land. That which they now do not wish to do, or to be able to do, will hereafter be the occasion of their bitter sorrow—and thus it ever is.
2. “All nations rejoice over and enjoy a rich harvest (comp. Isa_9:2), because they see in the bountiful harvest a sign and pledge of the divine favor, demanding gratitude to the Giver. If now the heathen ascribe these gifts to their gods and thank them after their manner, they do this in the ignorance of their hearts, without being specially guilty in so doing, because they live without the light of divine revelation. If, on the contrary, Israel rejoiced in the blessings of harvest like the heathen, and ascribed them to Baal (Hos_2:7), God could not leave unpunished this denial of his gracious benefits” (Keil). It amounts to the same thing when one generation ascribes such blessings partly to their own labor and partly to “nature, and accordingly its joy is purely “natural,” altogether devoid of gratitude to the great Giver, and manifests itself necessarily in all kinds of self-indulgence.
3. When the judgment comes, the falseness of the false prophets becomes manifest. By these are, without doubt, to be understood those who, aping the position of Prophets of Jehovah, came forward as the pretended announcers of the divine will, and as the advisers of the people, especially of the rulers, but in their flattery of the people would pronounce good and justify everything, and therefore predicted prosperity and deliverance (Eze_13:10), and never uttered a word of earnest rebuke. They were trusted only too well. On the contrary, the true Prophets had to meet everywhere snares and enmity. Men know too late who are their true friends, and who their false.
4. The true prophet must, it is true, enter into God’s designs, not merely of mercy, but also of righteous judgment; must announce them, so far as they have been revealed; and he may even desire their fulfillment, in order that a limit may be set to sin, and God’s glory be spread. Yet it must he observed that when the prophets invoke judgment, they do not implore the destruction and death of the individual sinner, but only the “political” death, the destruction of a godless kingdom, because it had filled up the measure of its sins and thus became amenable to judgment, concerning which there could be no doubt in the prophet’s mind.
5. With respect to Israel’s conduct towards God, we are to observe the retrospect of former times (Hos_9:9-10, comp. Hos_10:7; Hos_11:1-2). The sins of the present are thus shorn of their individuality and shown to form part of a whole complexity of sin. These are only a mode of manifestation, a new phase, of the same spirit, which was before, and had been always, displayed. As with the displays of God’s love to Israel, so with the sins of Israel against God. Instead of an atomizing and mechanical view of this subject, we have a dynamic one, which alone is justifiable in the ethical sphere. From this conception of the evil, according to which its several manifestations of a constant fundamental tendency in the minds of a single nation, no great step is needed to reach the assumption of a constant disposition to evil in mankind generally, of hereditary sin, in which the individual with his special offenses only confirms and realizes the sinful disposition of the race.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Wurt. Summ.: Hos_9:1-2. Sincere Christians should, in the blessings of God, so rejoice in the Lord, as to acknowledge that all good is from Him alone, to whom they must therefore give thanks, and so use them as not abusing them, but employ them to God’s glory. Then will God the Lord not cease to do them good.
Hos_9:3. Starke: That is the Lord’s land where God is truly worshipped and honored.
Hos_9:4-5. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: When the measure of iniquity is full, God at last takes away the lamp of his Word from its place. Beware, then, you who have the truth, lest darkness fall upon you.
[Pusey: It is in human nature to neglect to serve God when He wills it, and then to neglect to serve Him when He forbids it. The more solemn the day and the more total man’s exclusion, the more manifest God’s withdrawal.—M.]
[Hos_9:6. Matt. Henry: Those that think pre sumptuously to outrun God’s judgments are likely enough to meet their deaths when they had hoped to save their lives.—M.]
Hos_9:7. We usually discover too late who are our true friends and who our false.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: False prophets are a token of God’s wrath burning over a church or nation.
[Pusey: The man of the world and the Christian judge of the same things by clear contrary rules, use them for quite contrary ends. The slave of pleasure counts him mad who foregoes it; the wealthy trader counts him mad who gives away profusely. In these days profusion for the love of Christ has been counted a ground for depriving a man of his property. One or the other is mad, and worldlings must count the Christian mad, or they must own themselves to be so most fearfully (Wis_5:3-6). The sinner first neglects God; then, as the will of God is brought before him, he willfully disobeys Him; then, when he finds God’s will irreconcilably at variance with his own, or when God chastens him, he hates Him, and hates Him greatly.—M.]
Hos_9:8. Let it not offend you, if, for the sake of the truth, you must suffer persecution. “Even so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.”
Hos_9:12. When God is graciously disposed to wards us, He is our Light, our Way, our Life, our Love, our Comfort, our Joy, our Shepherd, our Physician, our Bridegroom, our Father, and our. Redeemer. If He departs from us, all this is gone, like as when the sun sets and darkness covers all.
Spur: When the divine wrath has begun to burn, it rises, so to speak, by degrees. And God commonly proceeds by beginning at what is most external to us, whose loss we would not deeply feel, but ever advances further towards that which is dearer and of more moment, until at last He strikes at our very selves. If God is not gracious towards us, He is angry; He can sustain no intermediate relation.
Hos_9:15. God refuses at last to grant to unfaithful children even the privileges of his house. He at the same time disinherits them. When God ceases to love us we are lost. Hence nothing is more necessary than the prayer: Withdraw not thy love from us. Nothing is more precious than the power to say: I am persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Hos_9:16. Whole families, even whole nations die out through God’s judgments!
Footnotes:
[1]Hos_9:1.—The ancient Translators appear to have read אַל גִּיל. [This is false grammatically, as אַל is always followed by the future.—M.]
[2]Hos_9:2.—בָּהּ. The people are here regarded as a woman. [Tanchum gives the rule that “in continued discourse when a nation or people is spoken of either the fem. suffix agreeing with עֵדָה: congregation, or the masc. agreeing with עַם: people, may be used, as also that the singular may be used of them viewed as a body, and the plural when they are regarded as consisting of distinct individuals.” So Ewald as to the gender, making the suffix relate to “die treulose Gemeine.”-—M.]
[3]Hos_9:6.—מַתְמַד is in the construct state with לְ.
[4]Hos_9:7.—וְרַבָּה. The sentence continues as though a conjunction [because] preceded. The conjunction is implied in צל.
[5][Hos_9:9.—For the asyndeton here, see note on Hos_5:2. It is best to take שִׁתֲתוּ intransitively, and not understand an object, e.g. דַּרְכֵּיהֶם, which some supply.—M.]
[6]Hos_9:13.—ואֶפִרַיִם forms the apodosis which introduces a contrast to the protasis. להְוֹצִיא=must lead forth. See Ewald, 237, e. [The literal rendering is: But Ephraim (is) to lead forth, etc.—M.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain Hos_9:1, marks a new beginning. The prophet beholds the…
THE PRESENT REJOICING OF ISRAEL CONTRASTED WITH THE DESPAIR OF THE EXILE, 1-9.
Hos_9:1, marks a new beginning. The prophet beholds the rejoicing of the people at harvest time, perhaps at a joyous religious festival. Rejoicing at such a time is perfectly natural, but, judging from chapter 2, much of the celebration, though nominally in recognition of Jehovah’s goodness, was in reality in honor of the Baalim. This the prophet cannot endure. He warns the people not to be too exuberant (Hos_9:1), for the occasions of rejoicing will soon cease. On account of their apostasy Jehovah will withdraw his blessings (Hos_9:2); yea, they will be carried into exile (Hos_9:3), where, upon an unclean land, joyful religious feasts can be celebrated no longer (Hos_9:4-5); their own land will become a wilderness (Hos_9:6). After announcing the impending doom the prophet points out once more the moral and spiritual apostasy responsible for the judgment (Hos_9:7-9).
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1. Rejoice not — The occasion of the exhortation is probably the noisy celebration of a harvest festival. Harvest time has always been a season of rejoicing (Isa_9:3); for, on the one hand, a rich harvest insures prosperity, on the other, it is a sign of the divine favor, for which people desired to express their appreciation and gratitude. Why does the prophet oppose the celebration? (1) Because it is like the celebrations of other people — That is, of the surrounding nations; literally, the peoples, which, Wellhausen suggests, is here used for the first time in prophetic language in the sense of heathen. Among “the nations” these celebrations were noisy and wild, accompanied by all manner of excesses; but this revelry was out of harmony with the prophet’s lofty and spiritual conception of the religion of Jehovah. (2) 1b makes it plain that, though nominally the festival may have been held in the name of Jehovah (Hos_9:4), the chief credit for the blessings of harvest was given to the Baalim (compare Hos_2:5-8); to this also the Jehovah prophet must take exception.
For joy — Literally, unto rejoicing — too loudly. LXX. reads “exult not,” which would restore the parallelism.
Hos_9:1 b is to be connected with Hos_9:2, setting forth the cause of the judgment. The connection may be expressed, “Because thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, (because) thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor, (therefore) the (threshing) floor… shall not feed them.”
Gone a whoring [“played the harlot”] from thy God — In a spiritual sense (see on Hos_2:2-5).
Loved a reward [“hire”] — Literally, harlot’s hire (Hos_2:12).
Upon every cornfloor — There are stored the blessings of harvest, which are received as gifts from the Baalim. To recognize them as such would oblige the Israelites to worship these Canaanitish deities, but to worship these would imply faithlessness to Jehovah; and anything received from the Baalim which might induce the Israelites to play spiritual harlot to Jehovah could be called harlot’s hire. This they were fond of, else they would not have been so enthusiastic in their worship.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. for joy] Rather, too loudly (lit. ‘unto exultation’).
1. for joy] Rather, too loudly (lit. ‘unto exultation’).
as other people] Rather, as the peoples. The exuberant joy of the wild nature-worships of Palestine was abhorrent to the calm and deep moral religion of the prophets. To the heathen nations certain material blessings were the final object of the forms of worship; to the prophets and their disciples, the outward gifts of the Deity stood in a close relation to states of the character, as being the rewards of moral obedience (comp. Deu_28:1-4).
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for thou hast gone …] The blessings of the ingathering were falsely ascribed by Israel to the Baalim (see on Hos_2:13). As long as they were enjoyed, Israel felt as much pledged by them to her false gods as the harlot is bound by her ‘hire’ to her paramour. At every recurring season of harvest Israel gratefully connected these blessings with her supposed protectors, and offered first-fruits to them, or, as Hosea puts it, she loved a harlot’s hire (comp. on Hos_2:12) upon all corn-floors, alluding to the various local festivals (comp. on Hos_12:9). Observe, Hosea finds fault with the Israelites, not for neglect of a centralizing ordinance, such as Deu_16:15, but for honouring the Baalim in preference to the true spiritual God. Contrast the reference to the autumn festival in a post-exile prophecy (Zec_14:16-19).
1–9. A vivid picture of the bitterness of the calamity in prospect. It does but equal the Gibeah-like wickedness of Israel.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) For joy.—Better, to exultation. “The harlot’s hire on…
(1) For joy.—Better, to exultation. “The harlot’s hire on every corn-floor” expresses in bold imagery the prophet’s scorn for the idolatrous corruption of the people. The bounteous yield of the harvest is called the “harlot’s hire,” which lures Jehovah’s faithless bride to worship the false deity from whose hands these gifts were supposed to come. The people’s momentary prosperity is attributed to their idols. (See Hos_2:12; Jer_44:17-19.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 1-9 contain a warning against security arising from…
Vers. 1-9 contain a warning against security arising from temporary prosperity.
Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people. The occasion on which the prophet penned this section was so no idolatrous merrymaking in connection with harvest, and not any change of political situation.
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(1) The literal rendering of the first clause is, rejoice not unto exultation, or exceedingly, as the same expression is translated in Job_3:22; it is thus climactic.
(2) The old versions take el-gil as imperative, and read la; mhde eufrainon , equivalent to "nor make merry;" and the Vulgate has noli exultare; but al is constructed with the future, not with the imperative. Again, some read be instead of ke, and so render, "among the peoples," the words being addressed, not to Israel in exile, but still resident in their own land. For thou hast gone a-whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every corn-floor.
(1) According to this, which is the common rendering. the clause with ki assigns a reason for their foregoing such joy. But
(2) Ewald and others translate by "that or for that thou hast committed whoredom," understanding this clause to express the object of their joy. We prefer the former, for their faithlessness and foul idolatry were sufficient reasons to prevent Israel indulging in the joy of harvest. The blessings of the harvest were regarded by them as rewards for the worship of their idol-gods, in other words, as gifts from Baalim and Ashtaroth or other idols, and thus as ethnan , a harlot"s hire; not as tokens and pledges of the favor of Jehovah.
Vers. 1-6. Sin is the cause of sorrow and the source of sadness,
The merrymaking of wicked people is often both hollow and heartless; it is always without true ground or real cause; while the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. The people of Israel were jubilant at the time referred to. The reason of their jubilation does not distinctly appear. It may have arisen from some losses having been retrieved, or some advantages gained, or some successes achieved, or some useful alliances secured, or the ordinary joy of harvest. Whatever it was, there was no good cause for it nor continuance of it. "Joy is forbidden fruit to wicked people." Among the losses which sin entails are, as we learn from the verses before us, the following:
I THE LOSS OF JOY.
1. Religion makes men joyful as well as cheerful. "Rejoice in the Lord always," is the exhortation of an apostle, and an exhortation which he repeats. The joy of the Lord is our strength. How different with the wicked! They deprive themselves of all real joy. They may be outwardly prosperous and rejoice in that prosperity; but the wrath of God abideth on them, and a worm is at the root of their joy.
2. The professing people of God sometimes envy the seeming prosperity of the wicked; seeing the outward success of sinners, they are tempted to imitate their works and ways. They forget that in doing so their sin is more heinous than that of other people; it is aggravated by their engagement to be the Lord"s, by the vows of God which are upon them, and by the various means and motives which they enjoy for pursuing the right course. Their sin is thus greater than that of other people; they are therefore forbidden to rejoice with the ordinary joy of other people. It. was thus with Israel, when, forgetful or unmindful of their covenant relation, they went a-whoring from their God, and committed spiritual adultery by following idols.
3. Some men make a profession of religion for sake of worldly gain; they calculate the benefits, pecuniary, professional, political, or social, which they expect from religion; they estimate religion by the outward advantages which they think to derive from it; or, what is much the same, they profess that religion or attach themselves to that denomination from which they hope for the greatest gain. Thus Israel attributed to her spiritual harlotry any temporary prosperity she enjoyed; it was her idols she thanked for any season of plenty that she was favored with; she loved a reward on every corn-floor. Thus her religion was mercenary, her idolatry shameful, her prosperous state of short continuance, and her joy ill founded as evanescent.
II THE LOSS OF THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE NOT INFREQUENTLY FOLLOWS FROM A COURSE OF SIN. A career of sin has often reduced a man to a morsel of bread, or left him without bread altogether. When men are bent on the obtainment of worldly blessings, and make them their chief end, they are often denied the blessings which they covet: frequently they are disappointed of them; more frequently are they disappointed in them; even when they secure them they fail to find the satisfaction which they seek. "The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them," says the prophet; "much less feast them," quaintly but truly observes an old commentator, adding, "It shall either be blasted by the hand of God or plundered by the hand of man; the new wine with which they used to make merry shall fail in her We forfeit the good things of the world if we love them as the best things.
III THE LOSS OF HOUSE AND HOME HAS OFTEN RESULTED FROM SINFUL INDULGENCE. A time of famine necessarily becomes a time of extensive emigration. But, apart from seasons of scarcity, who. men are forced, in order to procure the means of a decent livelihood, to seek a home and a country in some distant land, it is no rare occurrence for men to find themselves expatriated through their own vices. When they beggar themselves by vicious indulgence, their last resort is a foreign land. In the case of Israel the hardship was peculiarly distressful. The land of promise was, in a special sense, the Lord"s land;" it was a good land, a gladsome land. How glowing as well as eloquent the eulogy bestowed upon it by the sacred writer when Israel was about to enter it! "The Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a Land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." Besides these blessings of a temporal kind, possessed by that land into which the Lord had led Israel, it was the Lord"s land because of the spiritual privileges enjoyed there. It was distinguished by his special favor and gracious presence; it was the home of his priests and prophets; it was the seat of his holy oracle, and in all respects a delightsome land. But Israel had forfeited their title to it. It had been leased to them by the Lord, but by their idolatries and many sins they had broken every clause in that lease; and now they must turn their back on tiffs land which the Lord had given them. They had loved idols, and now to the land of idols they must go. Into bondage in Egypt or into captivity in Assyria they are driven; the Lord"s land "shall not only cease to feed them, but cease to lodge them, and to be a habitation for them; it shall spew them out, as it had done the Canaanites before them." Their performance of outward ceremonies had not sprung from a principle of love to the Divine Law; now they are no longer in a position, even if they are disposed, to obey that Law. They had abused the abundance of good things which God had given them; now for very want they must eat unclean things as repugnant to their feelings as opposed to their ritual. They had shown an infatuated fondness for idols in their own land, the Lord"s land; now they must eat the unclean things offered to idols in a foreign land. Great had been their sinfulness, great in degree and similar in kind is their punishment.
IV LOSS OF SPIRITUAL PRIVILEGES IS ANOTHER AND A WORSE CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR SINS. One of the greatest privations is the loss of the public ordinances of religion. Though the enjoyment of them when possessed may be little valued, the withdrawal of them is severely felt. There is no famine more distressing than that of hearing the Word of the Lord. Unfaithfulness to the light men have has often caused the candlestick to be removed out of its place. So with Israel at the period to which the prophet refers. They were deprived of libation as well as oblation, and of every offering whatever. Without the material, they were also without the means of offering any acceptable sacrifice. In a heathen land they were necessarily without sanctuary and altar and priest. How sad their condition! And sadder still when they felt it to be the legitimate consequence of their sin, national, social, and individual!
V LOSS OF RELIGIOUS SOLEMNITIES IS AN AGGRAVATION OF THEIR LOSS OF RELIGIOUS ORDINANCES. The solemn day, or day of the feast of the Lord, as often as it came round, was a high day as well as a holy day; a day of joy and gladness, of thanksgiving and praise. Besides the weekly sabbath solemnity and the monthly solemnity of the new moons, there were the three great annual festivals of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Of the benefit and blessing of these solemnities, with all their instruction, edification, comfort, and encouragement, they are now deprived. No wonder the prophet asks in a tone of pity, not unmingled with pathos, "What will ye do then?" To this inquiry a practical commentator makes the following not inappropriate reply: "You will then spend those days in sorrow and lamentation, which, if it had not been your fault, you might have been spending in joy and praise. You will then be made to know the worth of mercies by the want of them, and to prize spiritual bread by being made to feel a famine of it." To this he adds the pithy remark, "When we enjoy the means of grace, we ought to consider what we shall do if ever we should know the want of them; if either they should be taken from us, or we disabled to attend upon them.
VI LOSS OF ALL THINGS ONCE HELD DEAR CONCLUDES THIS SAD SUMMARY OF THE EVIL EFFECTS OF SIN. Never was there a darker outlook, never was there a gloomier prospect! What havoc sin works! What distress it occasions! In a single verse are crowded together the destruction of their country by one heathen power, that of Assyria; their dispersion in the country of another, namely, Egypt; their death in that foreign land, and their deprivation of decent sepulture; the desolation of the dwellings they had left behind a desolation so great that nettles had sprung up in their treasuries and thorns in their tabernacles; nor was respite, or relief, or restoration to be expected. They had deluded themselves with false hopes and had resorted to carnal devices, distrustful of God, as men often do, and with like result. Instead of returning to that God against whom they had rebelled, and who might have opened to them a door of hope, they departed more and more from him, placing their dependence on the sinful, unavailing shifts of their own devising.
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN Vers. 1-9. The Assyrian captivity.
Israel had courted the favor of Assyria; but the result would be her absorption and destruction as a nation. In this and the succeeding chapter, notwithstanding acknowledged difficulties of interpretation, the distresses of the Exile are depicted with telling effect.
I THE PROPHET"S INTERDICT AGAINST ISRAEL. (Ver. 1) Hosea, as it were, appears suddenly among the people when they are preparing to hold some joyous festival, and sternly forbids it in Jehovah"s Name. He is constrained by the burden of the Lord to act the unwelcome raft of "the skeleton of the feast." He tells Israel that, in view of the dread realities of her position as a nation, this was no time for gladness. To ignore the facts would not obliterate them. To rejoice exultingly just now, merely because she had obtained a plentiful harvest, or secured some temporary relief from her political troubles, was to act with the folly of the ostrich, which thrusts her head into the sand, anal thinks that all is well because she does not see her pursuers. If it is "better" for an men "to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting," it would be especially advantageous at present for the Israelitish people to do so. For the condition of the nation was extremely insecure. The prosperity in which they were rejoicing was hollow, and it would be evanescent.
II THE GROUND OF THE INTERDICT. This is unfolded in the body of the passage. It is twofold.
1. Israel"s extreme sinfulness. (Vers. 1, 7, 9) "Other people," i.e. heathen nations, might more readily be excused for holding festivals of rapturous joy; for, not having the knowledge of God, they could not perceive how far they had transgressed his Law. But Israel had sinned against abundant light, and in spite of continual warning. How sad that the chosen nation should look upon her harvests as the gift of heathen gods as Baal"s reward for her devoted service of him! Not only so, but Israel"s wickedness was great all round. The people heartily hated both the Lord and his servants the true prophets. The whole country was now as notorious for its monstrous corruption, as Gibeah of Benjamin had been, since the time when the tragic atrocity of the Levite and his concubine had been perpetrated there. (Jud_1:19:16, et seq.) The error of the men of Benjamin in shielding the villains who wrought that foul deed had involved the town of Gibeah in destruction, and the tribe itself almost in extirpation. And so also was it to be now with the ten tribes.
2. Israel"s impending misery. The commonwealth was on the verge of destruction, and soon the people"s place in the land would know them no more. Surely it were madness to rejoice now, when they are on the very eve of being carried away into captivity. The prophet proclaims most plainly the fiat of expulsion (ver. 3). The nation that is now "Lo-ammi," "Not my people," cannot be allowed any longer to remain in "the Lord"s land." "Ephraim shall return to" the new "Egypt" of Assyria, and shall there undergo a second Egypt-like oppression. The Exile shall involve the withdrawal of all the blessings and privileges in which the people gloried; as, e.g.:
(1) Loss of harvests. (Ver. 2) Palestine was a land of inexhaustible plenty, and there Israel "did eat bread without scarceness;" but, in her effacement from the land, she shall of course lose her harvests. She shall have no happy harvest-homes in Assyria.
(2) Loss of national distinctions. (Vers. 3, 4) To "eat unclean things in Assyria" would prove a severe trial and a sore punishment. For the Jews, although they imitated the heathen in some things as, e.g., in desiring a king like the nations, and in falling into Gentile idolatries plumed themselves all the while upon the fact that the Gentiles and they did not stand religiously upon the same level; and they clung to the Mosaic distinctions of meats because it was a badge of their peculiar privileges as the chosen nation (vide Smith"s " Dictionary of the Bible," vol. 3. p. 1590).
(3) Loss of spiritual privileges. (Vers. 4, 5) In their exile the Hebrews would miss the opportunities of sacrifice to Jehovah which they had neglected while they "dwelt in the Lord"s land." Jerusalem was the one place of sacrifice; and for the captives there would be no gracious presence of God in heathendom. No temple there, no ritual, no great annual feasts, no exuberant festal joy! The feast of tabernacles, as the grand harvest-home festival, used to be kept by the tribes with lively demonstrations of national gladness; but, alas! the "Greater Hailel" would never be sung amid the miseries of Assyria.
(4) Loss of inheritance in Canaan. (Ver. 6) That land had been given to the Hebrews, and was continued in their possession, upon condition of obedience to the Divine Law. The occupancy of" the Lord"s land" was a symbol of the enjoyment of the Lord"s favor. Now, however, seeing that the people have forfeited the blessing of Jehovah, they must be expelled for ever from that goodly heritage. The ten tribes shall not return to Palestine. The people shall find their graves in the Egypt-like exile of Assyria. Thistles and nettles shall spring up in luxuriance among the ruins of their once beautiful houses. The traveler finds these nettles still, growing rankly to a height of six feet a sign of the curse that yet rests upon the land.
(5) Loss of the hopes held out by the false prophets. (Vers. 7, 8) At present there were false teachers among the people who kept saying, "Peace, peace," merely to flatter them, and to make matters pleasant for the time. But every prediction of prosperity would be falsified. The people would soon discover that these so-called prophets had been either "fools" or "snares," that is, either simpletons or sharpers. The expectations of wellbeing which these persons encouraged them to cherish would be miserably disappointed. It would presently be found that Hosea had been the real patriot, and the truest friend of his nation, although he did not prophesy good concerning it, but the worst of evils. The northern kingdom is to be wasted with misery; no wonder, then, that the prophet calls out, "Rejoice not, O Israel.
III SOME LESSONS OF THE INTERDICT FOR OURSELVES.
1. The ungodly man has no rational ground for gladness or rejoicing (ver. 1).
2. Our harvest-joy should be a joy "before God" (vers. 1, 2).
3. In emigrating to a strange laud there is often danger to one"s spiritual nature, arising from the loss of religious privileges (vers. 3, 4).
4. It is supreme folly to banish all thought of" the solemn days "of life by giving one"s self up to habits of frivolity and worldly pleasure (ver. 5).
5. We must "beware of false prophets," and "try the spirits, whether they are of God" (vers. 7, 8).
6. "The Lord"s land" is only for the Lord"s people: for such alone the Lord Jesus prepares a place in the heavenly Canaan (vers. 1-9). C.J.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 1-6. The Lord"s land for the Lord"s people.
This chapter may fall in the interval between the Assyrian invasions of B.C. 743-738, and the invasions ending in the overthrow of Pekah, B.C. 734730. (cf. 2Ki_15:29, 30 2Ch_28:16-21, and Assyrian monuments) The interval seems to have been one of revived prosperity. (2Ch_28:6-15)
I ABUSED GOODNESS. (Vers. 1, 2)
1. A glimpse of prosperity. Israel had been rejoiced with a bounteous harvest. Land and people had previously suffered sore from the Assyrian. For a moment judgment pauses. It would be interesting if we could connect this gleam of prosperity with the momentary gleam of better feeling in the nation, as recorded in 2Ch 28. God tries all methods with the sinner. He varies judgment with mercy. He pauses, as it were, to give space for repentance. He tries, having humbled by application, again to melt by goodness. (Rom_2:4)
2. Goodness abused. Israel knew not the meaning of this grace. The momentary softening led to no good results. The people, reassured by the heaped-up corn-floor and the full wine-press, fell into the old error of attributing their prosperity to the idols, (Hos_2:5) and renewed their assiduity in their service. Our joy in the use of God"s good gifts becomes sinful when,
(1) excluding God, we boastfully attribute them to our own labor, or to "nature"; (Deu_8:17)
(2) our joy in them is purely natural, without recognition of, or gratitude towards, the great Giver;
(3) we abuse them by gluttony or drunkenness. In any case, with doom hanging over his head, the sinner"s joy is a species of madness.
3. The disappointed expectation. "The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them," etc. One swallow does not make a summer, and the sinner errs if he supposes that one returning glimpse of prosperity means the reversal or collapse of God"s threatenings. God punishes the abuse of his gifts:
(1) By their removal. "When they thought themselves most secure, when the corn was stored on the floor, and the grapes were in the presses, then God would deprive them of them" (Pusey).
(2) By denying his blessing with them. "I will curse your blessings". (Mal_2:2)
(3) By their failure to satisfy. The good which the sinner seeks in a godless enjoyment of natural things, he is doomed not to find. They "lie" unto him. They constantly cheat his hopes.
II DECREED EXPULSION. (Ver. 3) The glimpse of prosperity did not mean much. The sinner, notwithstanding passing appearances to the contrary, abides under wrath. (Joh_3:36) The decree of judgment stands unrepealed. "They shall not dwell in the Lord"s land," etc.
1. The Lords land only for the holy. Canaan was chosen by God as the seat of his majesty, the place of his abode. His presence sanctified it. Israel possessed it as his people. They held it on condition of obedience. Their first work in it was to purge it of the impurities which had formerly desecrated it. (Deu_7:1-6) Now that Israel themselves had become unholy, they must, in turn, be expelled from the land. God could not allow them to remain in it. The "holy land" is for a holy people. So it is said of heaven that into it "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth". (Rev_21:27)
2. The Lord resuming his own from the wicked. The land was the Lord"s, and, when Israel proved incorrigible, the Lord took his own from them, They had not owned him in the possession of what he gave, and he now resumed his gift. The sinner, who depends on God for life, and breath, and all things," would fain keep the gifts, while declining all recognition of the Giver. This God refuses to permit. The day is coming when he will strip the sinner of all he has. The Lord has given, and the Lord will take away.
3. Egypt-bondage. "Ephraim shall return to Egypt." The people were to sink back into the state of oppression, misery, and mixture with the heathen in which they were when God took pity on them in Egypt. The Exodus gave them a national existence, a calling, and a land. They were now to become a "no people" to God, and be sent back, as it were, to Egypt again. Rejection by God means the loss of distinctive being, of life-aim, of sphere, of liberty, and subjection to the hard tyranny of sin, Satan, and the world.
III UNCLEANNESS IN ASSYRIA. (Vers. 3-5.) They shall eat unclean things in Assyria," etc. Israel"s condition in exile would be marked by:
1. Privation of privilege. They would be cut off from the sanctuary ("house of the Lord"), and prevented from observing their feasts, and bringing their usual offerings. (cf. Hos_3:4) Their worship, as it stood, was not acceptable to God. They, however, attached importance to their sanctuaries, altars, wine offerings, sacrifices, etc. And it would be part of their punishment that they would be deprived of them.
2. Legal uncleanness. The prophet speaks here also from the standpoint of the people. Their outward life, even in Canaan, had no right sanctification in it. Now, however, their food, sacrifices, etc., would become even formally unclean. Uncleanness would arise
(1) from inability in a heathen country properly to observe the laws of food;
(2) from the fact that the heathen country was itself polluted, and communicated its uncleanness to food and offerings; (cf. Amo_7:17)
(3) from the food not being properly sanctified by the presentation of the firstfruits (ver. 4). Israel, in short, would lose even their outward distinctness as a sacred people, and would sink to the level of the profaneness of the nations around, lit seems better, in ver. 4, to read, their sacrifices shall not be pleasing to him; (their bread shall be) as bread of mourners unto them." Separation from God renders existence as a whole unclean. The principle is, first, the consecration of the person, then the consecration of the life. If we are not consecrated to God, nothing we think, say, or do can be spiritually acceptable Prayers, good works, eating and drinking, all remain unclean. We eat unclean things in Assyria in the spiritual Egypt. The taint of death pollutes body, soul, and spirit.
3. An end of joy. (Ver. 5; cf. Hos_2:11)
IV DESOLATE HABITATIONS. (Ver. 6)
1. Exile as burial. "Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis a noted place of burial shall bury them." The allusion is still to Assyria figured as a second Egypt. The tribes would be lost in it as in a grave. Hence recovery is described as resurrection. (Hos_6:2) Sin is death. Those shah-cloned to sin are as the dead in graves.
2. Deserted dwellings. "Their pleasant places for their silver or, "valuables of silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their habitation." The present state of the Holy Land is the best commentary on this prediction. Sin leaves behind it rank desolation. Look at man"s own soul! What desolation there! Nettles, thorns, a temple in ruins. J.O.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 1-6. The Lord"s land for the Lord"s people.
This chapter may fall in the interval between the Assyrian invasions of B.C. 743-738, and the invasions ending in the overthrow of Pekah, B.C. 734-730. (cf. 2Ki_15:29, 30 2Ch_28:16-21, and Assyrian monuments) The interval seems to have been one of revived prosperity. (2Ch_28:6-15)
I ABUSED GOODNESS. (Vers. 1, 2)
1. A glimpse of prosperity. Israel had been rejoiced with a bounteous harvest. Land and people had previously suffered sore from the Assyrian. For a moment judgment pauses. It would be interesting if we could connect this gleam of prosperity with the momentary gleam of better feeling in the nation, as recorded in 2Ch 28. God tries all methods with the sinner. He varies judgment with mercy. He pauses, as it were, to give space for repentance. He tries, having humbled by application, again to melt by goodness. (Rom_2:4)
2. Goodness abused. Israel knew not the meaning of this grace. The momentary softening led to no good results. The people, reassured by the heaped-up corn-floor and the full wine-press, fell into the old error of attributing their prosperity to the idols, (Hos_2:5) and renewed their assiduity in their service. Our joy in the use of God"s good gifts becomes sinful when,
(1) excluding God, we boastfully attribute them to our own labor, or to "nature"; (Deu_8:17)
(2) our joy in them is purely natural, without recognition of, or gratitude towards, the great Giver;
(3) we abuse them by gluttony or drunkenness. In any case, with doom hanging over his head, the sinner"s joy is a species of madness.
3. The disappointed expectation. "The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them," etc. One swallow does not make a summer, and the sinner errs if he supposes that one returning glimpse of prosperity means the reversal or collapse of God"s threatenings. God punishes the abuse of his gifts:
(1) By their removal. "When they thought themselves most secure, when the corn was stored on the floor, and the grapes were in the presses, then God would deprive them of them" (Pusey).
(2) By denying his blessing with them. "I will curse your blessings". (Mal_2:2)
(3) By their failure to satisfy. The good which the sinner seeks in a godless enjoyment of natural things, he is doomed not to find. They "lie" unto him. They constantly cheat his hopes.
II DECREED EXPULSION. (Ver. 3) The glimpse of prosperity did not mean much. The sinner, notwithstanding passing appearances to the contrary, abides under wrath. (Joh_3:36) The decree of judgment stands unrepealed. "They shall not dwell in the Lord"s land," etc.
1. The Lord"s land only for the holy. Canaan was chosen by God as the seat of his majesty, the place of his abode. His presence sanctified it. Israel possessed it as his people. They held it on condition of obedience. Their first work in it was to purge it of the impurities which had formerly desecrated it. (Deu_7:1-6) Now that Israel themselves had become unholy, they must, in turn, be expelled from the land. God could not allow them to remain in it. The "holy land" is for a holy people. So it is said of heaven that into it "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth". (Rev_21:27)
2. The Lord resuming his own from the wicked. The land was the Lord"s, and, when Israel proved incorrigible, the Lord took his own from them, They had not owned him in the possession of what he gave, and he now resumed his gift. The sinner, who depends on God for life, and breath, and all things," would fain keep the gifts, while declining all recognition of the Giver. This God refuses to permit. The day is coming when he will strip the sinner of all he has. The Lord has given, and the Lord will take away.
3. Egypt-bondage. "Ephraim shall return to Egypt." The people were to sink back into the state of oppression, misery, and mixture with the heathen in which they were when God took pity on them in Egypt. The Exodus gave them a national existence, a calling, and a land. They were now to become a "no people" to God, and be sent back, as it were, to Egypt again. Rejection by God means the loss of distinctive being, of life-aim, of sphere, of liberty, and subjection to the hard tyranny of sin, Satan, and the world.
III UNCLEANNESS IN ASSYRIA. (Vers. 3-5) They shall eat unclean things in Assyria," etc. Israel"s condition in exile would be marked by:
1. Privation of privilege. They would be cut off from the sanctuary ("house of the Lord"), and prevented from observing their feasts, and bringing their usual offerings. (cf. Hos_3:4) Their worship, as it stood, was not acceptable to God. They, however, attached importance to their sanctuaries, altars, wine offerings, sacrifices, etc. And it would be part of their punishment that they would be deprived of them.
2. Legal uncleanness. The prophet speaks here also from the standpoint of the people. Their outward life, even in Canaan, had no right sanctification in it. Now, however, their food, sacrifices, etc., would become even formally unclean. Uncleanness would arise
(1) from inability in a heathen country properly to observe the laws of food;
(2) from the fact that the heathen country was itself polluted, and communicated its uncleanness to food and offerings; (cf. Amo_7:17)
(3) from the food not being properly sanctified by the presentation of the firstfruits (ver. 4). Israel, in short, would lose even their outward distinctness as a sacred people, and would sink to the level of the profaneness of the nations around, lit seems better, in ver. 4, to read, their sacrifices shall not be pleasing to him; (their bread shall be) as bread of mourners unto them." Separation from God renders existence as a whole unclean. The principle is, first, the consecration of the person, then the consecration of the life. If we are not consecrated to God, nothing we think, say, or do can be spiritually acceptable Prayers, good works, eating and drinking, all remain unclean. We eat unclean things in Assyria in the spiritual Egypt. The taint of death pollutes body, soul, and spirit.
3. An end of joy. (Ver. 5; cf. Hos_2:11)
IV DESOLATE HABITATIONS. (Ver. 6)
1. Exile as burial. "Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis a noted place of burial shall bury them." The allusion is still to Assyria figured as a second Egypt. The tribes would be lost in it as in a grave. Hence recovery is described as resurrection. (Hos_6:2) Sin is death. Those shah-cloned to sin are as the dead in graves.
2. Deserted dwellings. "Their pleasant places for their silver or, "valuables of silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their habitation." The present state of the Holy Land is the best commentary on this prediction. Sin leaves behind it rank desolation. Look at man"s own soul! What desolation there! Nettles, thorns, a temple in ruins. J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Rejoice not, O Israel, for Joy, as other people.
Hos_9:1-2
Rejoice not, O Israel, for Joy, as other people.
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Unreliable joy
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. Gods people ought to be a rejoicing people.
1. Christs 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
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 Gods hands who, whatever they pretended to, were but snares to the people and causes of Gods 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 Gods anger, and rejection; and exile, and with cutting them off root and branch. Such despisers of Gods Word should be rejected, and made to wander in exile. (George Hutcheson.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile…
3. THE EFFECTS OF EXILE
Hos_9:1-9
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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 Baalim 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 harlots 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 Israels 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 Sauls 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 fowlers 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 Israels 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.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain CRITICAL NOTES.] Israel had fallen away from God, would…
CRITICAL NOTES.] Israel had fallen away from God, would not enjoy the produce of the field, but would be taken captive into Assyria, and be unable to keep the feasts.
Hos_9:1. Rejoice] Lit. to exultation (Job_3:22). Their rejoicings are out of place; festivity and mirth are reproved. The blessings of harvest were attributed unto the gods of the heathen, and would be taken away. Reward] Lit. hire. In reward for idolatry thou hast desired temporal prosperity, corn on every threshing-floor.
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Hos_9:2. Feed] Crops were abundant, but they would be no better for their plenty.
Hos_9:3. Land] which God sware to give their fathers (Deu_30:20). Egypt] A state of bondage and oppression in Assyria. Unclean] A sore trial, seen in the case of Daniel (ch. Hos_1:8). Eleazar and the Maccabees (2Ma_6:7). They had wilfully transgressed the law, and would be forced to live in its habitual breach; had lived as heathen, and must be in the condition of heathen.
Hos_9:4. Wine] i.e. drink-offerings, connected with burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, betokened joy in sacrifice. Hence public service would cease; they would no longer have the means for reconciliation, for pleasing God; and if they should attempt to sacrifice, so far from being acceptable, their sacrifices would defile them as the bread of mourning; food which contracted pollution by being in the place of death. The dead defiled for seven days the house and all that was in it (Num_19:14). In offering tithes a man had to declare that he had not touched the bread (Deu_26:14). Sacrifice could only be offered in God’s land: in captivity it would be a fresh sin to Israel. Their soul] i.e. for themselves, for the support of animal life, and not for worship.
Hos_9:6. Gather them] in one common grave—none shall escape. Memphis] called Noph (Isa_19:13; Jer_2:16; Eze_30:13); at this time the capital of Egypt; the seat of idolatry, the house of the celebrated Apis, the original of Jeroboam’s calf; a favourite burial-place of the Egyptians. “It embraced a circuit of about nineteen miles, with magnificent buildings; it declined after the building of Alexandria; its very ruins gradually perished, after Cairo rose in its neighbourhood” [Pusey]. Pleasant places] Heb. the desire. Silver should be desired, but not found, or nettles should possess their pleasant houses. In either sense thorns indicate utter desolation (Isa_34:13).
Hos_9:7. Visitation] Vengeance now at hand. Fool] False prophets who predicted prosperity will be convicted of folly. The event will test them. Mad] A man of the spirit, lit. maddened; pretending to inspiration (Lam_2:14; Eze_13:3; Mic_3:11). Those who mock the true prophets shall themselves become fools. Multitude] Manifold iniquity. Hatred] Great enmity to good men and God. The punishment in proportion to the sin.
Hos_9:8. The watchman] Looking out, waiting for Divine revelation (Heb_2:1). The true prophet always consults God. Ephraim or Israel was designed to be the watchman of God, to witness among the nations for him; but was led by false prophets, whose words were “a snare of the fowler.” In] Lit. upon all his ways, i.e. wherever the people went they were beset with false prophets, who hated intensely the house of God.
Hos_9:9. Deeply] Lit. gone deep, they are corrupted; deeply immersed themselves in wickedness. Days] when Benjamin espoused the children of Belial (Jdg_19:22; Gen_19:4).
HOMILETICS
THE SINNER’S LIFE A JOYLESS LIFE.—Hos_9:1-4
Israel is forbidden to rejoice like other nations. They had forsaken God, and sinned wilfully against light and warning. Their prosperity was attributed to wrong sources. The judgment of God was threatened against them. Other people might enjoy the results of their labours, but they would be deprived of the fruits of the earth and the services of religion. Thus God breaks into the mirth and festivity of the sinner. There is no cause of joy in his present condition or future prospects.
I. His present condition affords no joy. “Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy.” All men seek to be happy. The wicked even have a kind of joy, a superficial, short-lived pleasure. But true joy is the good man’s portion. “I have enjoyed almost a fearful amount of happiness,” exclaimed Dr Arnold in reviewing the past.
1. The sinner forsakes God, the fountain of joy. “Thou hast gone a whoring from thy God.” All true joy springs from him, and is enjoyed only in him, in living for him. What joy so pure as “the joy of the Lord”? Carnal joy is a mere flash, which leaves the mind in deeper darkness and greater misery. Joy in God is like the light of the sun, healthy and lasting. It may be overclouded with mists and storms, but breaks out in greater splendour and sweetness. In God’s presence only “is fulness of joy” (Psa_16:11); pleasures which satisfy; enough to fill every soul with “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Joy is forbidden, withheld from the wicked. The sense of sin robs them of peace (Isa_48:22); their present possessions are no security nor advantage to them. Living in distance from God and at enmity with him, gloomy feelings damp their joy and act as an alloy to their comforts. “In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare; but the righteous doth sing and rejoice.”
2. The sinner fails in his efforts to secure joy. “The floor and the winefat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her.” Israel doted on prosperity which could not sustain them. The fruits of the earth would fail, and all their efforts would end in bitter disappointment. The sinner turns away from God, and becomes restless and dissatisfied. He loves to hire himself to sin and degradation. He tries first one thing and then another, but all plans and policies utterly “fail them.” Men have recourse to every mean shift, submit to the lowest drudgery, and suffer the greatest hardship in pursuit of sin. Like the prodigal, they become wanderers, spendthrifts, and slaves. But the solemn pause comes. They are arrested, alarmed, and astonished. Their pleasures forsake them, and hopes vanish like vain shadows. God curses the blessings and frustrates the efforts of the sinner. “Doomed to disappointment as usual,” many continually exclaim. “The wicked man travelleth with pain all his days.”
II. His future prospects afford no joy. Israel was to be deprived of inheritance, carried into bondage, robbed of sacrifices and public service. All their religious efforts would be rejected and turned into defilement and mourning. It was a sad prospect to be driven from the house of God and a land of plenty! What brighter future has the sinner before him as long as he remains from God?
1. The sinner’s future will be one of bondage. “Ephraim shall return to Egypt.” They knew how hardly Egypt had dealt with their fathers, and how treacherously with them. They had been warned not to go, but were determined to go. Against their own will God would send them into banishment and distress. The sinner will be held in bondage by lusts which he indulges; driven by former habits into greater misery; and find what he thought a place of refuge to be a place of exile. Captivity and exile were additions to the scarcity of home. Future miseries will succeed present distress to the unbeliever. He cannot expect freedom and joy in the service of sin and Satan. The prospect will be no better than the retrospect, and the future worse than the present. “I know that it shall be well unto them that fear God, which fear before him. But it shall not be well with the wicked” (Ecc_8:12-13).
2. The sinner’s future will be one of bitterness and sorrow. It was hard when Israel had to “eat unclean things,” things forbidden by their law, when they were forced to eat or starve, when their bread was polluted and their sacrifices “as the bread of mourners.” Sin brings bitterness now and hereafter. (a) Bitterness in the spirit of the sinner. (b) Bitterness in his forlorn condition. From affluence and privileges he comes to poverty and want. His experience and his prospects are bitter, bitterness and sorrow past, present, and future. “Let us live on the past,” exclaimed Napoleon, but the retrospect was a course of selfish aggrandizement. In thoughts of the future he sickened and pined for death. “I am no longer the Great Napoleon. How fallen I am!” “Thy way and thy doings have procured these things unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart.”
3. The sinner’s future will be one of exclusion from God’s inheritance. “They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land.” God had chosen Canaan to be the residence of his glory and the possession of his people. But as sin drove man from Paradise, so idolatry drove the Jews out of Canaan. They were disinherited, deprived of God’s favour and protection. This is a warning to all who live in the bosom of the Church and under the sound of the gospel. Many professors forfeit present enjoyment and sin away precious privileges. Sinners cannot enter the kingdom of God on earth, and will be excluded from heaven at last. We cannot dwell with God unless we are subject to his authority and obedient to his will. “If thine heart turn away so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hos_9:1. Israel ever wished to joy as other nations. When they cried for a king, they forsook God and sought to exult in their own ways. But the greater the privileges, the greater the guilt in despising them. Other nations were idolaters, but Israel’s sin was “whoring from thy God.”
There is always a snare in the ways of sin, always a song in the service of God [Bridge].
Hos_9:2. Not feed them. Punishment attendeth sin at the heels. They had abused their plenty and ascribed it to their idols; therefore shall they be cut short either in their store, as Hag_1:6; Hag_1:10; Hag_2:16, or in their strength, as Hos_4:10; Hos_8:7. One way or other their hopes shall be frustrated, the creature shall lie to them and not answer their expectation [Trapp].
Shall fail. Lit. “shall lie to her.” Israel had lied to God (Hos_7:13). So the fruits of the earth would disappoint and requite her. Men reap as they sow. The punishment as the crime. “When the blessings of God have been abused by sin he in mercy takes them away. He cuts them off, in order to show that he alone, who now withheld them, had before given them. When they thought themselves most secure, when the corn was stored on the floor, and the grapes were in the press, then God would deprive them of them.”
Hos_9:3. Not dwell in the land.
1. The Assyrian captivity was a mark of God’s displeasure, the loss of liberty and surrender to a foreign enemy. Men are only free through God, and only remain free as long as they serve him. By apostasy nations lose their independent existence and individuals their freedom and enjoyment.
2. This captivity a great contrast to Israel’s former condition as God’s people. They ignored the law, and God abandons them. They are “not my people.”
3. This captivity was the loss of their possession. No possessions are secure to those who forsake God.
4. With the loss of the land there is peculiar distress, the loss of sacrifice, and the sanctification of life connected with it. Thus men are exiled in lands of impurity, fall into bondage, and deprived of the means of serving God. That which they are now able to do, or wish to do, is not acceptable to God, and will occasion bitter sorrow. “The seeds of our punishment are sown when we sin.” They shall eat unclean things. Learn—
1. Sin brings want. Like the prodigal, they were necessitated to eat unclean things, the husks of swine, because they had nothing else.
2. Sin brings disgrace. Perhaps the Assyrians despised them, forced them to eat meats forbidden by the law, in scorn to their religion and the profession of it. Those who willingly slight the word will never be honoured to bear witness to it, or if tested for its principles, will renounce their profession of it. A French Protestant Bishop in the sixteenth century, regarded as a pillar of the Reformation, recanted and brought disgrace upon himself and others. His apostasy staggered many Christians, and was a misfortune to his country. When we forsake God we are left to the mercy of the ungodly.
3. Sin leads to conformity to the world. Israel voluntarily might conform to heathen customs, as they were not humbled by any affliction. Driven from the land, deprived of their own ritual, they adopted the religion of Assyria, and God left them, gave them up to their own course. They would then appear outwardly what they were inwardly. Men who have only outward profession will soon cast off that when tempted or thrown into the world. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” &c.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 9
Hos_9:1-4. Joy. The joy of the ungodly is superficial, but for a moment, and not to be compared with the rejoicing of the godly. It is like water taken from the surface, instead of the deep well, and will end quickly and abruptly. “He that makes this mirth and he that likes it—both are fools, and their pleasantness will soon have an end” [Pemble].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Exile is at Hand
Exile is at Hand
This prophecy appears to have been written in a time of rejoicing over a good harvest and vintage. Israel need not rejoice, says the prophet, with the wild joy of the heathen. Their praises to the local Baals are insults to Jehovah, whom they have denied. Their rejoicing will end in disaster, culminating in captivity either in Egypt or Assyria.
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1, 2. People] RV 'peoples,' i.e. the heathen nations around. The allusion is probably to the orgies of the heathen festival. The sins of. the people called rather for sorrow and contrition.
Reward] RV 'hire,' the bounteous crops being regarded as due to the favour of the idols in return for Israel's worship. As a punishment the corn and wine would fail.
3. See on Hos_8:13. Egypt and Assyria were the nations which assailed them on either side. By one of them they would be taken captive. 'Unclean food' (RV), in contrast to the fertile products of their own land: cp. 2Ki_18:27-31; Eze_4:12, Eze_4:13.
4. Bread of mourners] Instead of being joyous festivals they would be like funeral feasts. For their bread, etc.] RV 'for their bread shall be for their appetite: it shall not come,' etc. A further step in their misery. They would only have enough bread to satisfy the pangs of hunger, and have none left to offer to God. The reference here appears to be to the horrors of a siege.
5. The feast days come, but no one is ready or able to observe them. Their only concern is to escape destruction.
6. Egypt.. up] Their efforts to escape are useless. They would be captured and brought to Egypt, with only death and burial to look forward to: see on Hos_8:13. The pleasant.. silver] RV 'their pleasant things of silver.' While they die in captivity, all their treasures are laid waste and overgrown with weeds: cp. Isa_34:13. Tabernacles] RV 'tents.'
7. Israel shall know.. it] The people have refused to believe the prophet's threats; they would realise the truth very soon, when the calamities came upon them. The prophet is a fool] The meaning is doubtful. Some interpret thus: 'Into such excesses have they fallen that their prophets have gone mad, so that they utter no clear message, but only the incoherent muttering of frenzy.' In this case the prophet would refer to the false prophets. Or it may mean that their iniquity and enmity had hitherto made them ignorant of the real character of the true prophet, who appeared to them a mad fool. The spiritual man] lit. 'the man of the spirit,' an unusual synonym for prophet.
8. The watchman] 'Watchman' is similarly used metaphorically of a prophet in Isa_21:6, Isa_21:11. The meaning is very uncertain.
Was with my God] perhaps, 'is with my God,' i.e. is in the keeping of my God. A snare of a fowler.. ways] Wherever he goes he is in danger of being trapped. Hatred in.. God] The enmity of the people dogs him in his most sacred duties.
9. Gibeah] The reference is to the glaring sin of the Gibeonites described in Judges 19 : cp. Hos_10:9.
10. Grapes in the wilderness] the last place to find grapes. But God had found these poor tribes in the wilderness, and made them His people. Time] RV 'season.' The first ripe fruit is eaten with peculiar relish, all the more so if it be the first crop of the figs: cp. Isa_28:4. Israel was the first nation which God had chosen. Baal-peor] see Numbers 25. God's love even at the beginning did not hinder them from acts of idolatry and gross impurity. Separated.. shame] RV 'consecrated themselves unto the shameful thing,' i.e. the idol and the licentiousness which its worship involved.
11-13. The prophet threatens them with barrenness as the punishment for immorality: cp. Hos_4:10. Even if children should be born, they would fall by the sword of the enemy.
13. As I saw Tyrus] i.e. like Tyre. Pleasant place] perhaps fold, as in Jer_23:3, the reference being to security rather than natural beauty.
14. The prophet here appeals to God's justice to carry out the punishment foretold. The prophet has his moods; at one time an earnest hope for the nation's repentance, at another a disgust at their hopeless irreligion and immoralities. Even here the language implies a struggle of different feelings. He seems to begin with a prayer and to end with something like a curse.
15. Gilgal] cp. Hos_4:15. Gilgal was the home of idolatry and its accompanying iniquity. There Israel called forth the wrath of God. Mine house] These words show that the worship at Gilgal was at least in theory paid to Jehovah.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Warning Against False Security
Warning Against False Security
v. 1. Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people, rather, "unto exultation," like the heathen, with a joy which, after the fashion of the heathen, attributed a bountiful harvest to the idols; for thou hast gone a-whoring from thy God, in the idolatry which the Lord had so earnestly rebuked; thou hast loved a reward upon every corn-floor, namely, the lover’s reward which Israel expected from the idols for the homage shown them, which they hoped to get on the threshing-floor in the form of an abundant yield. Over against this the Lord says,
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v. 2. The floor, the corn-floor or threshing-floor, and the wine-press, these two representatives of the products of the country, shall not feed them, and the new wine, the must as pressed out of the grapes, shall fail in her, so that they would be sorely disappointed in their hopes of a rich harvest.
v. 3. They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land; but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, which is here once more representative of the land of bondage, the name standing for any kind of captivity, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria, which to them was the real land of the exile. Their food in the land of their captivity would be unclean because it would no longer be sanctified by the sacrifice of the first-fruits during the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.
v. 4. They shall not offer wine-offerings to the Lord, in the drink-offerings, as representative of all unbloody sacrifices, neither shall (they) be pleasing unto Him their sacrifices, for the bloody offerings which they might consider bringing to Him would not be pleasing in His sight; (the food which they eat). shall be unto them as the bread of mourners, Cf Deu 26:14, because the food eaten upon such an occasion was regarded as unclean, since all objects in a house where there was a dead person were unclean, Num 19:14; all that eat thereof shall be polluted, being Levitically defiled by their meal, for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the Lord, that is, the food which they needed to support their life could not come into the house of God to be consecrated.
v. 5. What will ye do in the solemn day and in the day of the feast of the Lord? Since the Temple and its cult would be missing in the land of their exile, festal days with their solemn joy would not be possible.
v. 6. For, lo, they are gone because of destruction, the prophet already seeing them in banishment. Egypt, the land of bondage, shall gather them up, 8:13; Memphis, the capital of the land of their captivity, shall bury them; the pleasant places for their silver, their houses and palaces filled and decked with silver, nettles shall possess them, the place where they stood being overgrown with weeds; thorns shall be in their tabernacles, the places of their habitation.
v. 7. The days of visitation are come, with the Lord’s punishment descending upon the apostate people, the days of recompense are come, with the Lord repaying the sins of Israel in His holy vengeance; Israel shall know it, at last be fully aware of it; the prophet is a fool, will become foolish with the immensity of the tragedy coming upon the people, the spiritual man, he who is inspired by the Spirit of the Lord, is mad, will almost be driven to insanity by the conditions then obtaining, for the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred; Hosea here pictures the terrible condition which would drive him and other prophets almost mad, since they saw the inevitable destruction coming nearer and yet were unable to prevent it, because Israel would not listen to the admonitions intended to bring about their repentance.
v. 8. The watchman of Ephraim was with my God, literally, "A seer (or searcher) is Ephraim with my God," beside the true God; that is, instead of relying upon the revelations received by Hosea, the children of Israel were on the lookout for other revelations, from sources more acceptable to them. But the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, he is surrounded by snares wherever he turns, and hatred in the house of his God, while he is performing the duties of his office.
v. 9. They have deeply corrupted themselves, becoming guilty of the most horrible abominations, as in the days of Gibeah, when the moral sense of the Israelites was very low, Judges 19; therefore He will remember their iniquity, He will visit their sins. By such powerful appeals the Lord tried to work repentance in the hearts of His people, so that they would acknowledge their wickedness and return to Him with a godly sorrow.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
Hosea the prophet is speaking.
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But the threshing floor and the winepress will not feed them
This describes the threshing floor and the winepress as if they were humans that can feed someone. This means that the harvest will not provide enough grain for threshing to meet the needs of the people, and that it will not provide the grapes for pressing to make enough wine. (See: Personification and Metonymy)
the threshing floor
These were wide areas used not only for the threshing of grain, but also for community and religious ceremonies. Temple prostitutes came in order to help the men celebrate the harvest festival to idols.
the new wine will fail them
There will not be enough grape juice to make wine with.
translationWords
joy
Israel
joy
faithful
forsake
God
prostitute
thresh
winepress
wine
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 9:1 do not rejoice: This is probably a reference…
9:1 do not rejoice: This is probably a reference to the Festival of Shelters, when Israel celebrated the final harvest of the year. This festival was ordained by God (Deut 16:13-15), but the Israelites had turned it into a wild pagan festival, behaving as other nations did. • hiring yourselves out like prostitutes (literally you have loved a prostitute’s pay): The Israelites ignorantly believed that their grain and wine were payment for their worship of the Canaanite fertility god.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.