Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 12:7

"[He is] a trafficker, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress." — Hosea 12:7 (ASV)

He is a merchant - Or, indignantly, a merchant in whose hands are the balances of deceit! How could they love “mercy and justice,” whose trade was “deceit,” who weighed out deceit with their goods? They were false in their dealings, in their weights and measures, and, by taking advantage of the necessities of others, oppressive also.

Deceit is the sin of weakness. Oppression is the abuse of power. Wealth does not give the power to use naked violence, but wealthy covetousness in many ways grinds the poor. For instance, when wages are paid in necessities priced exorbitantly, or when artisans are required to buy at a loss at their masters’ shops, what is it but the union of deceit and oppression?

The trading world is full of oppression, scarcely veiled by deceit. He loveth to oppress. Deceit and oppression each have a devilish attractiveness to those practiced in them: deceit, by exercising cleverness, cunning, and skill in overreaching and outwitting; oppression, by indulging self-will, caprice, love of power, insolence, and similar vices.

The word “merchant,” as the prophet spoke it, was “Canaan.” Merchants were so called because the Canaanites or Phoenicians were then the great merchant-people, just as astrologers were called Chaldeans. The Phoenicians, in Homer’s time, were infamous for their exploitative practices in trade. They are called “gnawers” and “money-lovers.”

To call Israel, “Canaan,” was to deny him any title to the name of Israel, “reversing the blessing of Jacob, so that, just as it had been said of Jacob, thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel, he would in fact say, ‘Your name shall be called no more Israel, but Canaan,’ making them, through their deeds, heirs not to the blessings of Israel but to the curse of Canaan.”

Thus, Ezekiel says, Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite (Ezekiel 16:3).