Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 4:15

"Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend; and come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As Jehovah liveth." — Hosea 4:15 (ASV)

Let not Judah offend - The sentence of Israel had been pronounced; she had been declared incorrigible. The prophet turns from her now to Judah. Israel had abandoned God’s worship, rejected or corrupted His priests, and given herself to the worship of the calves; it is no wonder into what further excess of riot she ran! But Judah, who had the law and the temple and the service of God, let her not, (he would say,) involve herself in Israel’s sin. If Israel, in willful blindness, had plunged herself into ruin, let Judah not involve herself in Israel's sin and ruin. He turns (as elsewhere) incidentally to Judah.

Come you not to Gilgal - Gilgal lay between Jericho and the Jordan. There, one and a quarter miles from the Jordan, first in all the promised land, the people encamped.

There Joshua placed the monument of the miraculous passage of the Jordan; there he renewed the circumcision of the people, which had been suspended in the wilderness, and the feast of the Passover. There the people returned after all the victories by which God gave them possession of the land of promise (Joshua 4:19–20; Joshua 5:9–10; Joshua 9:6; Joshua 10:6–9, 43; Joshua 14:6).

There Samuel habitually sacrificed, and there, “before the Lord,” that is, in His special covenanted presence, he publicly made Saul king (1 Samuel 10:8; 1 Samuel 11:14–15; 1 Samuel 13:4–9; 1 Samuel 15:21, 33). It was part of the policy of Jeroboam to make use of all these associations as a counterbalance against Jerusalem and the temple, from which he had separated his people.

In opposition to this idolatry, Elisha for a time, established there one of the schools of the prophets (2 Kings 4:38).

Neither go you up to Bethaven - “Bethaven,” literally, “house of vanity,” was a city east of “Bethel” (Joshua 7:2), “the house of God.”

But since Jeroboam had set up the worship of the calves at Bethel, Bethel had ceased to be “the house of God” and had become “a house or temple of vanity.” Therefore, the prophet no longer gave it its own name, which was associated with the history of the faith of the patriarchs, but called it what it had become.

In Bethel God had twice appeared to Jacob: when he left the land of promise to go to Laban (Genesis 28:10, 19), and when he returned (Genesis 35:1, 9).

There also the ark of God was for a time during the days of the judges, having been removed from Shiloh (Judges 20:26–27); Bethel lay near to Shiloh, on the south (Judges 21:19). Jeroboam also profaned Bethel by setting up the calf there.

To these places then, since they were now places of the idolatry of Israel, Judah is forbidden to go, and then to swear, the Lord liveth. For to swear by the Lord in a place of idolatry would be to associate the living God with idols (Zephaniah 1:5), which God expressly forbade.