Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 13:2

"And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves." — Hosea 13:2 (ASV)

And now they sin more and more – Sin draws on sin. This seems to be a third stage in sin:

1. Under Jeroboam, was the worship of the calves.
2. Then, under Ahab, the worship of Baal.
3. Thirdly, the multiplying of other idols (see 2 Kings 17:9–10), penetrating and pervading the private life, even of their less wealthy people.

The calves were of gold; now they made them molten images of their silver, perhaps plated with silver. In Egypt, the mother of idolatry, it was common to gild idols made of wood, stone, and bronze. The idolatry, then, had become more habitual, daily, and universal.

These idols were made of their silver; they themselves had had them molten out of it. Avaricious as they were (see the note above 2 Kings 12:7–8), they lavished their silver to make them their gods. According to their own understanding, they had had them formed. They employed ingenuity and invention to multiply their idols.

They despised the wisdom and commands of God who forbade it. The rules for making and coloring the idols were as detailed as those that God gave for His own worship. Idolatry had its own vast system, making the visible world its god and picturing its operations, in contrast to the worship of God its Creator. But it was all their own understanding: the conception of the idol lay in its maker’s mind. It was his own creation. He devised what his idol should represent, how it should represent what his mind imagined; he debated with himself, rejected, chose, changed his choice, modified what he had decided upon—all according to his own understanding. Their own understanding devised it; the labor of the craftsmen completed it.

All of it the work of the craftsmen – What man could do for it, he did. But man could not breathe into his idols the breath of life; there was then no spirit, nor life, nor any emanation from any higher nature, nor any deity residing in them. From first to last it was all man’s work; and man’s own wisdom was its condemnation. The thing made must be inferior to its maker. God made man, inferior to Himself, but lord of the earth and all things in it; man made his idol of the things of earth, which God gave him. It too then was inferior to its maker, man. He then worshiped in it the conception of his own mind, the work of his own hands.

They say of them – Strictly, of them (that is, of these things, such things as these), they say, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves. The prophet gives the substance or the words of Jeroboam’s edict, when he said, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem, behold your gods, O Israel. “Whoever would sacrifice, let him do homage to the calves.” He would have calf-worship to be the only worship of God. Error, if it is strong enough, ever persecutes the truth, unless it can corrupt it. Idol-worship was striving to extirpate the worship of God, which condemned it. Under Ahab and Jezebel, it seemed to have succeeded.

Elijah complains to God in His own immediate presence: the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, thrown down Your altars, and slain Your prophets with the sword; and I, even I, only am left, and they seek my life, to take it away (1 Kings 19:10, 1 Kings 19:14). Kissing was an act of homage in the East, done upon the hand or the foot, the knees or shoulder. It was a token of divine honor, whether to an idol (1 Kings 19:18 and here) or to God (Psalms 2:12). It was performed either by actually kissing the image or, when the object could not be approached (as the moon), by kissing the hand (Job 31:26–27) and so sending, as it were, the kiss to it. In the Psalm, it stands as a symbol of worship, to be shown toward the Incarnate Son, when God should make Him King upon His holy hill of Zion.