Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 13:3

"Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the dew that passeth early away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the threshing-floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney." — Hosea 13:3 (ASV)

Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud - There is often a fair show of prosperity, apart from God; but it is short-lived. “The third generation,” says the pagan proverb, “never enjoys the ill-gotten gain.” The highest prosperity of an ungodly state is often the next to its fall. Israel never flourished so much as under Jeroboam II.

Bright and glistening with light is “the early dew;” in an hour it is gone, as if it had never been. Glowing and gilded by the sun is “the morning cloud;” while you admire its beauty, its hues have vanished.

“The chaff” lay in one heap “on the floor” with the wheat. Its owner casts the mingled chaff and wheat against the strong wind; in a moment, the chaff is “driven by the wind out of the floor.” While every grain falls to the ground, the chaff—light, dry, worthless, unsubstantial—is hurried along, unresisting, the sport of the invisible wind, and itself is soon seen no more.

The “smoke,” one seemingly solid, full, lofty column, ascends, swells, billows, and vanishes.

In form, the smoke is as solid when about to be dispersed and seen no more, as when it first issued “out of the chimney.” “It is raised aloft, and by that very uplifting swells into a vast globe; but the larger that globe is, the emptier. For from that unsolid, unbased, inflated greatness it vanishes in air, so that its very greatness injures it. The more it is uplifted, extended, and diffused on all sides into a larger compass, so much the poorer it becomes, and fails, and disappears.”

Such was the prosperity of Ephraim: a mere show, destined to vanish forever. In the image of “the chaff,” the prophet substitutes the “whirlwind” for the wind by which people in the East used to winnow, in order to picture the violence with which they would be whirled away from their own land.

While these four emblems, in common, picture what is fleeting, two of them—the “early dew” and the “morning cloud”—are emblems of what is in itself good but passing. The other two—the chaff and the smoke—are emblems of what is worthless. The dew and the cloud were temporary mercies from God that would cease for them, “good in themselves, but to their evil, soon to pass away.” If the dew has not, in its brief space, refreshed the vegetation, no trace of it is left. It gives way to the burning sun. If grace has not done its work in the soul, its day is gone.

Such dew were the many prophets granted to Israel; such was Hosea himself, most brilliant, but soon to pass away. The chaff was the people themselves, to be carried out of the Lord’s land; the smoke represented “its pride and its errors, whose disappearance was to leave the air pure for the household of God.”:

“So it is written: As the smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, so the ungodly shall perish before the presence of God (Psalms 68:2); and in Proverbs: As the whirlwind passes, so is the wicked no more; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation (Proverbs 10:25).

Although they live and flourish regarding the life of the body, yet spiritually they die, indeed, and are brought to nothing, for by sin mankind became nothing.

Virtue makes a person upright and stable; vice makes one empty and unstable. Thus Isaiah says, the wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest (Isaiah 57:20); and Job says, If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away; then you shall be steadfast (Job 11:14–15).”