Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 4:12

"My people ask counsel at their stock, and their staff declareth unto them; for the spirit of whoredom hath caused them to err, and they have played the harlot, [departing] from under their God." — Hosea 4:12 (ASV)

My people ask counsel at - (literally, “on”) their stocks. They ask habitually; and that, in dependence “on their stocks.” The word “wood” is used of the idol made of it, to bring before them the senselessness of their doings, in that they asked counsel of the senseless wood. Thus Jeremiah reproaches them for saying to a stock, my father (Jeremiah 2:27); and Habakkuk, Woe unto him that saith to the wood, awake (Habakkuk 2:19).

And their staff declares to them - Many sorts of this superstition existed among the Arabs and Chaldeans. They were different ways of drawing lots, without any dependence upon the true God to direct it. This was a part of their senselessness, of which the prophet had just said that their sins took away their hearts. The tenderness of the word, “My people,” aggravates both the stupidity and the ingratitude of Israel. They whom the Living God owned as His own people, they who might have asked of Him, asked of a stock or a staff.

For the spirit of whoredoms - It has been thought in ancient times that evil spirits assault mankind in a sort of order and method, different spirits bending all their energies to tempt him to different sins. And this has been founded on the words of Holy Scripture, a lying spirit, an unclean spirit, a spirit of jealousy, and our Lord said of the evil spirit whom the disciples could not cast out, This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21).

Hence, it has been thought that “some spirits take delight in uncleanness and defilement of sins; others urge on to blasphemies; others, to anger and fury; others take delight in gloom; others are soothed with vainglory and pride; and that each instills into man’s heart that vice in which he takes pleasure himself; yet that all do not urge their own perversenesses at once, but in turn, as opportunity of time or place, or man’s own susceptibility, invites them.”

Alternatively, the phrase “spirit of whoredoms” may mean the vehemence with which people were whirled along by their evil passions, whether by their passionate love of idolatry or by the fleshly sin which was so often bound up with their idolatry.

They have gone a whoring from under their God - The words “from under” continue the image of the adulteress wife, by which God had pictured the faithlessness of His people. The wife was spoken of as “under her husband” (Numbers 5:19, Numbers 5:29; Ezekiel 23:5), that is, under his authority; she withdrew herself “from under” him when she withdrew herself from his authority and gave herself to another. So Israel, being wedded to God, estranged herself from Him, withdrew herself from His obedience, cast off all reverence for Him, and prostituted herself to her idols.