Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 2:8

"For she did not know that I gave her the grain, and the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baal." — Hosea 2:8 (ASV)

For she did not know - The prophet, having in summary (Hosea 2:5–7) related her fall, her chastisement, and her recovery, begins anew, enlarging both on the impending inflictions and the future mercy. She “did not know” because she would not; she would not retain God in her knowledge (Romans 1:28). “Knowledge,” in Holy Scripture, is not of the understanding, but of the heart and the will.

That I gave her corn ... - The I is emphatic (אנכי (ci)). “She did not know that it was I who gave her.” God gave them the corn, and wine, and oil, first, because He gave them the land itself. They held it from Him as their Lord. As He says, The land is Mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with Me (Leviticus 25:23). He also gave them these things in the course of His ordinary providence, by which He also gave them the gold and silver, which they gained by trading. Silver He had so multiplied to her in the days of Solomon that it was in Jerusalem as stones, nothing accounted of (1 Kings 10:27, 1 Kings 10:21), and gold, through the favor He gave him (1 Kings 9:14; 1 Kings 10:10, 1 Kings 10:14), was in abundance beyond measure.

Which they prepared for Baal - Rather, as in the English Margin, which they made into Baal (Ezekiel 16:17–19). “Of that gold and silver, which God had so multiplied, Israel, revolting from the house of David and Solomon, made, first the calves of gold, and then Baal.” From God’s own gifts they made their gods. They took God’s gifts as if from their gods and made them into gods for themselves. “Baal,” Lord, the same as Bel, was an object of idolatry among the Phoenicians and Tyrians. Its worship was brought into Israel by Jezebel, daughter of a king of Sidon.

Jehu destroyed it for a time because its adherents were adherents of the house of Ahab. The worship was partly cruel, like that of Moloch, and partly abominable. It had this aggravation beyond that of the calves: Jezebel aimed at the extirpation of the worship of God, setting up a rival temple with its 450 prophets and 400 of the kindred idolatry of Ashtaroth, and slaying all the prophets of God.

It seems to us strange folly. They attributed to gods, who represented the functions of nature, the power to give what God alone gives. How is it different when people now say, “nature does this, or that,” or speak of “the operations of nature,” or the laws of “nature,” and ignore God who appoints those laws and worketh hitherto (John 5:17) “those operations?”

They attributed to planets (as astrologers have at all times) influence over the affairs of people and worshiped a god, Baal-Gad (or Jupiter), who presided over them. In what way do those act differently who displace God’s providence with fortune, fate, or destiny, and say “fortune willed,” “fortune denied him,” “it was his fate, his destiny,” and, even when God most signally interposes, shrink from naming Him, as if to speak of God’s providence were something superstitious? What is this but to ascribe to Baal, under a new name, the works and gifts of God? And more widely yet.

Since “men have as many strange gods as they have sins,” what else do they do—those who seek pleasure, gain, greatness, or praise in forbidden ways or from forbidden sources—than make their pleasure, gain, or ambition their god, and offer their time and understanding, their ingenuity and intellect, indeed, their whole lives and their whole selves—their souls and bodies, all the gifts of God—in sacrifice to the idol which they have made?

Furthermore, since whoever believes about God otherwise than He has revealed Himself does, in fact, believe in another god, not in the One True God, what else does all heresy do but form for itself an idol out of God’s choicest gift of nature—the human mind—and worship not indeed the works of human hands, but the creature of one's own understanding?