Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 5:1

"Hear this, O ye priests, and hearken, O house of Israel, and give ear, O house of the king; for unto you pertaineth the judgment; for ye have been a snare at Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor." — Hosea 5:1 (ASV)

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.