Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 7:2

"And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now have their own doings beset them about; they are before my face." — Hosea 7:2 (ASV)

And they do not consider in their hearts - Literally, they do not say to their hearts. The conscience is God’s voice to the heart from within; man’s knowledge of the law of God, and his memory of it, is man’s voice, reminding his heart and rebellious affections to abide in their obedience to God. God speaks through the heart, when by His secret inspirations He recalls it to its duty. Man speaks to his own heart, when he checks its sinful or passionate impulses by the rule of God’s law, Thou shalt not. “At first, people feel the deformity of certain sorts of wickedness. When accustomed to them, people think that God is indifferent to what no longer shocks themselves.” “They do not say to their heart” anymore, that “God remembers them.”

I remember all their wickedness - This was the root of all their wickedness, a lack of thought. They would not stop to say to themselves, that God not only saw, but remembered their wickedness, and not only this, but that He remembered it all. Many will acknowledge that God sees them. He sees all things, and so He sees them as well. This is a part of His natural attribute of omniscience. It costs them nothing to acknowledge it. But what God “remembers, that” He will repay. This belongs to God’s attributes, as the moral Governor of the world; and this, man would gladly forget. But in vain.

God does remember, and remembers in order to punish. “Now,” at the very moment when man would not recall this to his own heart, their own doings have beset them about; they are before my face. Unless or until man repents, God sees man continually, encompassed by all his past evil deeds: they surround him and accompany him wherever he goes; they attend him like a band of followers; they lie down with him and await him at his awakening; they live with him, but they do not die with him; they encircle him so that he can by no means escape them, until he comes attended by them, as witnesses against him, at the judgment seat of God. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. God remembers all their wickedness (Proverbs 5:22).

Then He will requite all; not the last sins only, but all. So when Moses interceded for his people after the sin of the calf, God says to him, go lead the people to the place, of which I have spoken to you; behold My Angel shall go before you; nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them (Exodus 32:34); and of the sins of Israel and their enemies; Is not this laid up in store with Me, and sealed up among My treasures? to Me belongeth “vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:34–35).

The sins, forgotten by man, are remembered by God, and are requited all together in the end. A slight image of the Day of Judgment, the Day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, against which the hard and impenitent heart treasures up unto itself wrath!

They are before My face - All things, past, present, and to come, are present before God. He sees all things which have been, or which are, or which shall be, or which could be, although He shall never will that they should be, in one eternal, unvarying, present. Why then should man cherish an idle hope, that God will not remember, what He is ever seeing? In vain would you think, that the manifold ways of man are too small, too intricate, too countless, to be remembered by God. God says, They are before My Face.