Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 7:14

"And they have not cried unto me with their heart, but they howl upon their beds: they assemble themselves for grain and new wine; they rebel against me." — Hosea 7:14 (ASV)

And they have not cried to him with their heart, when they howled upon their beds – Or, in the present time, "they cry not to Me when they howl." They did "cry," and, it may be, they "cried" even "to God." At least, the prophet does not deny that they cried to God at all; only, he says, that they did "not cry to" Him "with their heart." Their cries were wrung from them by their temporal distresses and ended in them, not in God. There was no sincerity in their hearts, no change in their actions. Their cry was a mere howling. The secret complaint of the heart is a loud cry in the ears of God.

The impetuous "cry" of impatient and unconverted suffering is a mere brutish "howling." Their heart was set entirely on their earthly needs; it did not thank God for giving them good things, nor cry to Him truly when He withheld them.

But, it may be, that the prophet also means to contrast the acts of the ungodly, private and public, amid distress, with those of the godly. The godly man implores God in public and in private. The prayer on the "bed" expresses the private prayer of the soul to God when, the world being shut out, it is alone with Him. In place of this, there was the "howling," as people toss fretfully and angrily on their beds and roar for pain; but, instead of complaining "to" God, they complain "of" Him and are angry, not with themselves, but with God.

In place of public prayer and humiliation, there was a mere tumultuous assembly, in which they clamored "for grain and wine" and "rebelled against God. They assemble themselves;" (literally, "they gather themselves tumultuously together).

They "rebel against Me;" (literally, "they turn aside against Me"). They did not only (as it is expressed elsewhere) "turn aside 'from' God." "They turn aside against Me," He says, flying, so to speak, in the very face of God. This "tumultuous assembly" was either some stormy civil debate about how to obtain the grain and wine which God withheld, or a tumultuous clamoring to their idols and false gods, like that of the priests of Baal when arrayed against Elijah on Mount Carmel; by which they moved further from God’s law and rebelled with a high hand against Him.

What is it to "cry to the Lord," but to long for the Lord? But if anyone multiplies prayers, crying and weeping however much he may, yet not with any intent to gain God Himself, but to obtain some earthly or passing thing, he cannot truly be said to "cry to the Lord," that is, to cry in such a way that his cry should come to the hearing of the Lord. This is a cry like Esau’s, who sought no other fruit from his father’s blessing except to be rich and powerful in this world.

Therefore, when He says, "They cried not to Me in their heart, etc.," He means, they were not devoted to Me, their heart was not right with Me; they sought not Myself, but things of Mine. They howled, desiring only things for the belly, and seeking not to have Me. Thus they belong not to "the generation of those who seek the Lord, who seek the face of the God of Jacob" (Psalms 24:6), but to "the generation of Esau."