Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 5

Hear you this, O you priests - God, with the solemn threefold summons, arraigns anew all classes in Israel before Him, not now to repentance but to judgment. Neither the religious privileges of the priests, nor the multitude of the people, nor the civil dignity of the king, should exempt any from God’s judgment.

The priests are probably the true but corrupted priests of God, who had fallen away to the idolatries with which they were surrounded and, by their apostasy, had strengthened them. The king, here first mentioned by Hosea, was probably the unhappy Zechariah, a weak, pliant, self-indulgent, drunken scoffer, who, after eleven years of anarchy, succeeded his father, only to be murdered.

For judgment is toward you - Literally, “the judgment.” The kings and the priests had until now been the judges; now they were summoned before Him, who is the Judge of judges and the King of kings.

To teach the law was part of the priest’s office; to enforce it belonged to the king. The guilt of both was enhanced because, having been so entrusted with it, they had corrupted it.

They had the greatest sin, as they were the seducers of the people, and therefore have the severest sentence. The prophet, for the time being, dropping the mention of the people, pronounces the judgment on these seducers.

Because you have been a snare on Mizpah - Mizpah, the scene of the solemn covenant of Jacob with Laban and of his signal protection by God, lay in the mountainous part of Gilead on the east of Jordan. Tabor was the well-known mountain, which rises from the midst of the plain of Jezreel or Esdraelon, one thousand feet high, in the form of a sugar-loaf.

Jerome relates that birds were still snared on Mount Tabor. But something more seems intended than the mere likeness of birds caught in a fowler's snare. This was a common sight; therefore, if this were all that was meant, there would have been no reason to mention these two historical spots.

The prophet has selected places on both sides of Jordan, which were probably centers of corruption or special scenes of wickedness.

Mizpah, being a sacred place in the history of the patriarch Jacob (Genesis 31:23–49), was probably, like Gilgal and other sacred places, desecrated by idolatry. Tabor was the scene of God’s deliverance of Israel by Barak (Judges 4:0). There, by encouraging idolatries, they became hunters, not pastors, of souls (Ezekiel 13:18; Ezekiel 13:20). There is an old Jewish tradition that those lying in wait were set in these two places to intercept and murder those Israelites who would go up to worship at Jerusalem. And this tradition is supported by the mention of slaughter in the next verse.

And the revolters are profound in making slaughter - Literally, “They made the slaughter deep,” as Isaiah says, “they deeply corrupted themselves” (Isaiah 31:6); and our old writers say, “He smote deep.” They also doubtless intended to “make it deep,” to hide it so deep that God would never know it, as the Psalmist says of the ungodly, “that the inward self and heart of the workers of iniquity is deep.” Upon this, it follows that God would “suddenly wound them,” just as the prophet here adds that God rebuked them.

Actual and profuse murder has already been mentioned (Hosea 4:2) as one of the common sins of Israel, and it is also later charged against the priests (Hosea 6:9).

Though I have been a rebuker - Literally, “a rebuke,” as the Psalmist says, “I am prayer” (Psalms 109:4), that is, “I am all prayer.” The Psalmist’s whole being was turned into prayer. So here, all the attributes of God—His mercies, love, justice—were concentrated into one, and that one was rebuke. Rebuke was the one form in which they were all seen.

It is an aggravation of crime to commit it in the place of judgment or in the presence of the judge. Israel was immersed in his sin and did not heed, although God rebuked him continually by His voice in the law, forbidding all idolatry, and was now all the while, both in word and deed, rebuking him.

I know Ephraim - There is much emphasis on the “I.” It is like our, “I have known,” or “I, I, have known.” God had known him all along, if we may so speak.

However deep they may have laid their plans of blood, however they would or do hide them from man, and think that no eye sees them, and say, “Who sees me? and who knows me?” I, to whose eyes all things are naked and opened (Hebrews 4:13), have all along known them, and nothing of them has been hidden from Me.

For, He adds, even now, now when, under a fair outward show, they are veiling the depth of their sin, now, when they think that their way is hidden in darkness, I know their doings, that they are defiling themselves.

Sin never wanted specious excuse. Now too unbelievers are mostly fond of precisely those characters in Holy Scripture, whom God condemns.

Jeroboam doubtless was accounted a patriot, vindicating his country from oppressive taxation, which Rehoboam insolently threatened. Jerusalem, as lying in the Southernmost tribe, was represented, as ill-selected for the place of the assembly of the tribes. Bethel, on the contrary, was hallowed by visions; it had been the abode, for a time, of the ark.

It lay in the tribe of Ephraim, which they might think to have been unjustly deprived of its privilege. Dan was a provision for the Northern tribes. Such was the exterior. God says in answer, “I know Ephraim.” Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world (Acts 15:18).

Although (in some way unknown to us) not interfering with our free will, known unto God are our thoughts and words and deeds, before they are framed, while they are framed, while they are being spoken and done. Known to Him is all which we do, and all which, under any circumstances, we should do.

This He knows with a knowledge, before the things were: “All His creatures, corporeal or spiritual, He does not therefore know, because they are; but they therefore are, because He knows them. For He was not ignorant, what He was about to create; nor did He know them, after He had created them, in any other way than before. For no accession to His knowledge came from them; but, they existing when and as was fitting, that knowledge remained as it was.”

How strange then to think of hiding from God a secret sin, when He knew, before He created you, that He created you liable to this very temptation, and to be assisted amidst it with just that grace which you are resisting!

God had known Israel, but it was not with the knowledge of love, of which He says, The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous (Psalms 1:6), and, if any man love God, the same is known of Him (1 Corinthians 8:3), but with the knowledge of condemnation, by which He, the Searcher of hearts, knows the sin which He judges.

They will not frame their doings ... — They were possessed by an evil spirit, impelling and driving them to sin. The spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them—that is, in their very inward self, their center, so to speak; in their souls, where the will, the reason, and the judgment reside. And so long as they did not, by the strength of God, dislodge him, they would and could not frame their acts so as to repent and turn to God. For a mightier impulse mastered them and drove them into sin, as the evil spirit drove the swine into the deep.

The rendering of the margin, although less agreeable to the Hebrew, also gives a striking sense: Their doings will not suffer them to turn unto their God. This is not so much that their habits of sin had gained an absolute mastery over them, so as to render repentance impossible, but rather, that it was impossible for them to turn inwardly while they did not turn outwardly. Their evil doings, so long as they persevered in doing them, took away all heart by which to turn to God with a solid conversion.

And yet He was their God; this made their sin the more grievous. He, whom they would not turn to, still owned them and was still ready to receive them as their God. For the prophet continues, and they have not known the Lord.

Him, their God, they did not know. For the spirit which possessed them hindered them from thought, from memory, from conception of spiritual things. They did not turn to God for these reasons:

1. because the evil spirit held them, and so long as they allowed his hold, they were filled with carnal thoughts which kept them back from God.
2. they did not know God; so that, not knowing how good and how great a good He is in Himself, and how good He is to us, they had not even the desire to turn to Him, for love of Himself, indeed even for love of themselves. They did not see that they lost a loving God.

And the pride of Israel - Pride was from the first the leading sin of Ephraim. Together with Manasseh (with whom they made, in some respects, one whole, as “the children of Joseph,”Joshua 16:4; Joshua 17:14), they were nearly equal in number to Judah. When numbered in the wilderness, Judah had 74,600 fighting men; Ephraim and Manasseh together had 72,700. They speak of themselves as a great people, since the Lord has blessed me until now (Joshua 17:14).

God having chosen from them the leader under whom He brought Israel into the land of promise, they resented, in the following time of the Judges, any deliverance of the land in which they were not called to take part. They rebuked Gideon (Judges 8:1 and following) and suffered very severely for insolence (Judges 12:1 and following) to Jephthah and the Gileadites. When Gideon, who had refused to be king, was dead, Abimelech, his son by a concubine from Ephraim, induced the Ephraimites to make him king over Israel, as being their bone and their flesh (Judges 8:31; Judges 9:1–3, 22).

Lying among the tribes to the north of Judah, they appear, in antagonism to Judah, to have gathered around them the other tribes and to have taken, with them, the name of Israel, in contrast with Judah (2 Samuel 2:9–10; 2 Samuel 3:17). Shiloh, where the ark was until taken by the Philistines, belonged to them. Samuel, the last judge, was raised up from them (1 Samuel 1:1). Their political dignity was not aggrieved when God gave Saul, from “little Benjamin,” as king over His people. They could afford to own a king from the least tribe. Their present political eminence was endangered when God chose David from their great rival, the tribe of Judah; their hope for the future was cut off by His promise to the posterity of David.

They accordingly upheld, for seven years (2 Samuel 5:5), the house of Saul, knowing that they were acting against the will of God (2 Samuel 3:9). Their religious importance was aggrieved by the removal of the ark to Zion, instead of its being restored to Shiloh (Psalms 78:60, 67-69).

Absalom won them by flattery (2 Samuel 15:2, 5, 10, 12-13); and the rebellion against David was a struggle of Israel against Judah (2 Samuel 16:15; 2 Samuel 17:15; 2 Samuel 18:6). When Absalom was dead, they had scarcely aided in bringing David back when they fell away again, because their advice had not been sought first in bringing him back (2 Samuel 19:41–43; 2 Samuel 20:1–2).

Rehoboam was already king over Judah (1 Kings 11:43) when he came to Shechem to be made king over Israel (1 Kings 12:1). Then the ten tribes sent for Jeroboam from Ephraim (1 Kings 11:26) to make him their spokesman and, in the end, their king.

The rival worship of Bethel provided not only for the indolence but also for the pride of his tribe. He made a state-worship at Bethel, in opposition to the worship ordained by God at Jerusalem. Just before the time of Hosea, the political strength of Ephraim was so much superior to that of Judah that Jehoash, in his pride, compared himself to the cedar of Lebanon, and Amaziah king of Judah to the thistle (2 Kings 14:9). Isaiah speaks of “jealousy” (Isaiah 11:13) or “envy” as the characteristic sin of Israel, which perpetuated that division, which, he foretold, should be healed in Christ. Yet, although such was the power and pride of Israel, God foretold that he should first go into captivity, and so it was.

This pride, as it was the origin of the schism of the ten tribes, so it was the means of its continuance. In whatever degree any one of the kings of Israel was better than the rest, still he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin. The giving up of any other sin only showed how deeply rooted this sin was, which even then they would not give up. As is the way of unregenerate man, they would not give themselves up without reserve to God, to do all His will. They could not give up this sin of Jeroboam without endangering their separate existence as Israel and owning the superiority of Judah. From this complete self-surrender to God, their pride shrank and held them back.

The pride that Israel thus showed in refusing to turn to God, and in preferring their sin to “their God,” itself, he says, witnessed against them and condemned them. In the presence of God, no other witness is needed against the sinner than his own conscience. It shall witness to his face; “openly, publicly, themselves and all others seeing, acknowledging, and approving the just judgment of God and the recompense of their sin.” Pride and carnal sin are here remarkably united.

: “The prophet having said, the spirit of fornication is in the midst of them, assigns as its ground, the pride of Israel will testify to his face; that is, the sin which, through pride of mind, lurked in secret, bore open witness through sin of the flesh. Therefore the cleanness of chastity is to be preserved by guarding humility. For if the spirit is piously humbled before God, the flesh is not raised unlawfully above the spirit. For the spirit holds the dominion over the flesh, committed to it, if it acknowledges the claims of lawful servitude to the Lord. For if, through pride, it despises its Author, it justly incurs a contest with its subject, the flesh.”

Therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in - (or by) their iniquity. Ephraim, the chief of the ten tribes, is distinguished from the whole, of which it was a part, because it was the rival of Judah, the royal tribe, from which Jeroboam had sprung, who had formed the kingdom of Israel by the schism from Judah. All Israel, even its royal tribe, where Samaria was, its capital and strength, should fall, their iniquity being the stumbling-block on which they should fall.

Judah also shall fall with them - “Judah also, being partaker with them in their idolatry and their wickedness, shall partake with them in the like punishment. Sin shall have the like effect in both.” Literally, he says, “Judah has fallen,” denoting, as do other prophets, the certainty of the future event by speaking of it as having taken place already, as it had in the Mind of God.