Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 13:11

"I have given thee a king in mine anger, and have taken him away in my wrath." — Hosea 13:11 (ASV)

I gave you a king in My anger (Hosea 13:11). As one has said: “God, when He is asked for anything amiss, shows displeasure when He gives it, and has mercy when He does not give it.”

“The devil was heard (in asking to enter into the swine); the Apostle was not heard (when he prayed that the messenger of Satan might depart from him). God heard him whom He purposed to condemn, and He did not hear him whom He willed to heal.”

Another states: “God, when gracious, denies what we love when we love wrongly; when angry, He gives to the lover what he loves wrongly.”

The Apostle says plainly, “God gave them over to their own hearts’ desire” (Romans 1:24). He then gave them what they loved, but in giving it, He condemned them.

God did appoint Jeroboam, although not in the way Israel received him. Jeroboam and Israel took, as if from themselves, what God had appointed; and by taking it in this manner, they marred God’s gift.

Taking it to themselves and from themselves, they maintained it for themselves through human policy and sin. As was the beginning, so was the whole course of their kings.

The beginning was rebellion; murder, internal strife, and anarchy were the often-repeated outcomes. God was against them and their kings, but He let them have their way. In His displeasure with them, He allowed them their choice; in displeasure with their evil kings, He took them away.

Some He struck in their own persons, some in their posterity. As often as He gave them kings, He also removed them, until, with Hoshea, He took the kingdom away forever. This also explains how what God “gave in anger” could also be “taken away in anger.” Civil authority was not wrong in itself, so its cessation would not necessarily be a mercy.

Israel was in a worse condition because of its separate monarchy; but, apart from the calf-worship, the monarchy itself was not inherently sin. Changing one king for another did not improve the situation.

Individual kings were taken away in anger against themselves, and their removal brought fresh misery and bloodshed.

Nations, Churches, and individuals may put themselves in an evil position, and God may have allowed it in His anger. Yet, it may be their wisdom and humility to remain in it until God changes it, lest He should “take” it away, not in forgiveness, but in “anger.”

One writer notes: “David they neither asked for, nor did the Lord give him in His anger; but the Lord first chose him in mercy, gave him in grace, and in His supreme good pleasure He strengthened and preserved him.”

Another advises: “Let no one who suffers under a wicked ruler accuse him from whom he suffers, for it was from his own wrongdoings that he became subject to such a ruler.

Let him then accuse his own deeds, rather than the injustice of the ruler, for it is written, ‘I gave you a king in My anger’ (Hosea 13:11). Why then despise having as rulers those whose rule we receive from the anger of God?”

Furthermore: “When a reprobate people is allowed to have a reprobate pastor, that pastor is given neither for his own sake nor for that of the people, since he so governs, and they so obey, that neither the teacher nor the taught are found fit to attain eternal bliss. Of whom the Lord says by Hosea, ‘I gave you a king in My anger’ (Hosea 13:11). For in the anger of God is a king given, when the bad have a worse person appointed as their ruler. Such a pastor is then given, when he undertakes the rule of such a people, both being condemned alike to everlasting punishment.”