Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 8

The trumpet to your mouth! So God commands the prophet Isaiah, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet” (Isaiah 58:1). The prophets, as watchmen, were set by God to give notice of His coming judgments (Ezekiel 33:3; Amos 3:6). As the sound of a war-trumpet would startle a sleeping people, so God would have the prophet’s warning burst upon their sleep of sin. The ministers of the Church are called to be “watchmen.” They too are forbidden to keep a cowardly silence when “the house of the Lord” is endangered by the breach of the covenant or violation of the law. If fear of the wicked or false respect for the great silences the voice of those whose office it is to “cry aloud,” how shall such cowardice be excused?

He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord. The words “he shall come” are inserted for clarity. The prophet beholds the enemy speeding with the swiftness of an eagle, as it darts down upon its prey. “The house of the Lord” is, most strictly, the temple, as being “the place which God had chosen to place His name there.”

Next, it is used for the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, among whom the temple was; where God says, “I have forsaken Mine house, I have left Mine heritage; I have given the dearly-beloved of My soul into the hands of her enemies” (Jeremiah 12:7), and, “What hath My beloved to do in Mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?” (Jeremiah 11:15). Yet the title of “God’s house” is older than the temple, for God Himself uses it of His whole people, saying of Moses, “My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house” (Numbers 12:7). And even the ten tribes, separated as they were from the Temple-worship, and apostates from the true faith of God, were not yet counted by Him as wholly excluded from the “house of God.” For God, below, threatens that removal, as something still to come: “for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of My house” (Hosea 9:15).

The eagle, then, coming down “against or upon” the house of the Lord, is primarily Shalmaneser, who came down and carried off the ten tribes. Yet since Hosea, in these prophecies, also includes Judah, “the house of the Lord” is most probably to be taken in its fullest sense, as including the whole people of God, among whom He dwelt, and the temple where His Name was placed. The “eagle” then also includes Nebuchadnezzar, whom other prophets also call an eagle (Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 17:12; Jeremiah 48:40; Habakkuk 1:8); and (since, throughout, the principle of sin is the same and the punishment the same) it includes the Roman eagle, the ensign of their armies.

Because they have transgressed My covenant. “God, whose justice is always unquestionable, usually makes clear to people its reasonableness.” Israel had broken the covenant which God had made with their fathers, that He would be to them a God, and they to Him a people. The “covenant” they had broken chiefly by idolatry and apostasy; the “law,” by sins against their neighbor. In both ways they had rejected God; therefore God rejected them.

Israel shall cry unto Me, My God, we know Thee - Or, according to the order in the Hebrew, “To Me shall they cry, we know You, Israel,” that is, “we, Israel,” Your people, “know You.” It is the same plea which our Lord says that He will reject in the Day of Judgment. Many shall say unto Me, in that Day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy Name cast out devils, and in Thy Name done many wonderful works? (Matthew 7:22). In the same way, when our Lord came in the flesh, they said of God the Father, He is our God. But our Lord appealed to their own consciences; It is My Father who honoreth Me, of whom ye say, He is our God, but ye have not known Him (John 8:54).

So Isaiah, when speaking of his own times, prophesied of those of our Lord also: This people draweth nigh unto Me, with their mouth and honoreth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me (Matthew 15:8; Isaiah 29:13). “God says that they will urge this as a proof that they know God, and as an argument to move God to have respect for them, namely, that they are the seed of Jacob, who was called Israel because he prevailed with God, and they were called by his name.” It was as though they said, “We, Your Israel, know You.” It was all hypocrisy, the cry of mere fear, not of love. Therefore, God, using their own name of Israel which they had pleaded, answers the plea, declaring what “Israel” had become.

Israel has cast off the thing that is good - Or (since the word means "to cast off with abhorrence") Israel has cast off and abhorred Good, both Him who is Good and that which is good. The word tob includes both.

They rejected good in rejecting God, "Who is simply, supremely, wholly, universally good, and good to all, the Author and Fountain of all good, so that there is nothing simply good but God; nothing worthy of that title, except in respect of His relation to Him who is good and doing good" (Psalms 119:68).

So then whatever any man has or enjoys of good, is from his relation to Him, his nearness to Him, his congruity with Him. The drawing near to God is good to me (Psalms 73:28). All that any man has of good is from his being near to God, and his being, as far as human condition is capable, like Him. So that those who are far from Him, and put Him far from them, necessarily cast off all that is good.

The enemy shall pursue him - "Forsaking God, and forsaken by Him, they must necessarily be laid open to all evils." The enemy, that is, the Assyrian, shall pursue him. This is according to the curse, denounced against them in the law, if they should forsake the Lord, and break His covenant, and not hearken to His voice to observe to do His commandments (Deuteronomy 28:15–25).

They have set up kings, but not by ME - God Himself foretold to Jeroboam by Ahijah the prophet, that He would rend the kingdom out of the hands of Solomon, and give ten tribes to him, and would take him, and he should reign according to all that his soul desired and should be king over Israel (1 Kings 11:31, 1 Kings 11:37); and, after the ten tribes had made Jeroboam king, God said by Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam and the two tribes, You shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to his house, for this thing is from Me (1 Kings 12:22–24).

Yet although here, as everywhere, man’s self-will was overruled by God’s will, and fulfilled it, it was still self-will, both in the ten tribes and in Jeroboam. It was so in the ten tribes. For they cast off Rehoboam, simply of their own mind, because he would not lessen the taxes, as they prescribed. If he would have consented to their demands, they would have remained his subjects (1 Kings 12:4). They set up kings, but not by or through God, whom they never consulted, nor asked His will about the rules of the kingdom, or about its relation to the kingdom of Judah, or the house of David.

They referred these matters to God no more than if there had been no God, or than if He did not interfere in the affairs of man. It was self-will in Jeroboam himself, for he received the kingdom (which Ahijah told him, he desired) not from God—not asking of Him how he should undertake it, nor anointed by Him, nor in any way acknowledging Him—but from the people. And as soon as he had received it, he set up rebellion against God, in order to establish his kingdom, which he founded in sin, whereby he made Israel to sin.

In the same way, the Apostle says, against Your holy Child Jesus, whom You have, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatever Your hand and Your counsel determined before to be done (Acts 4:27, Acts 4:8). Yet they still sinned in this Deicide; and the Blood of Jesus has ever since, as they imprecated on themselves, been on the Jews and on their children, as many as did not repent.

As was the beginning of the kingdom of Israel, such was its course. They made kings, but not from God. Such were all their kings, except Jehu and his house. During the 253 years that the kingdom of Israel lasted, eighteen kings from ten different families reigned over it, and no family came to an end except by a violent death. Similar self-will and independence brought an end to the existence of the Jewish people. With the Roman Emperor being far off, the Scribes and Pharisees hoped, under him and without much control, to maintain their own authority over the people. They themselves, by their God forbid! (Luke 20:16), acknowledged that our Lord truly saw their thoughts and purpose: This is the heir; come let us kill Him, that the inheritance may be ours. They willed to reign without Christ, feared the Pagan Emperor less than the holiness of Jesus, and in the words, We have no king but Caesar, they deposed God and shut themselves out from His kingdom.

And I knew it not - “As far as it was in their power, they did it without His knowledge” (John 8:54). They did not take Him into their counsels, nor desire His awareness of it, or His approval of it. If they could, they would have had Him ignorant of it, knowing it to be against His will. And so in His turn, God knew it not, acknowledged it not, as He shall say to the ungodly, I know you not (Matthew 25:12).

Of their silver and their gold have they made them idols - God had multiplied these for them (as He said before, Hosea 2:8), and they ungratefully abused to the dishonor of the Giver what He gave them to be used for His glory.

That they may be cut off - Literally, “that he may be cut off.” The whole people is spoken of as one man, “one and all,” as we say. It is a fearful description of obstinate sin, that their very object in it seemed to be their own destruction. They acted with one will as one man, who had, in all he did, this one end—to perish: “As if on set purpose they would provoke destruction, and obstinately run themselves into it, although forewarned of it.”

Holy Scripture speaks of that as people’s end, at which all their acts aim. They see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed (Isaiah 44:9); that is, they blind themselves, as though their whole object were what they will bring upon themselves: their own shame. They prophesy a lie in My Name, that I might drive you out, and that you might perish, you, and the prophets that prophesy to you (Jeremiah 27:15). This was the ultimate end of those false prophecies.

The false prophets of Judah filled them with false hopes; the real and true end of those prophecies, that in which they ultimately resulted, was the ruin of those who uttered them and of those who listened to them. We ourselves say almost proverbially, “he goes the way to ruin himself;” not that such is the man’s own object, but that he obstinately chooses a course of conduct which, others see, must end in utter ruin. So a man chooses destruction or hell if he chooses those things which, according to God’s known law and word, end in it. Man hides the distant future from his own eyes and fixes them on the nearer objects which he has at heart.

God lifts the veil and reveals to him the further end toward which he is heading, which he is, in fact, bringing about, and which is in truth the ultimate end, for his own fleeting objects perish in their use; this end alone remains.

Your calf, O Samaria, has cast you off - Israel had cast off God, his good. In turn, the prophet says, the “calf,” which he had chosen to be his god instead of the Lord his God, “has cast” him “off.” He repeats the word by which the prophet described Israel’s sin, “Israel hath cast off and abhorred good,” in order to show the connection of his sin and its punishment.

“Your calf,” whom you made for yourself, whom you worship, whom you love, of whom you said, “Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28–31); “your” calf, in whom you trusted instead of your God, it has repaid you the dishonor you put on your God; it has “cast you off” as a thing “abhorred.”

So it is with all people’s idols, which they make for themselves, instead of God. First or last, they all fail a person, and leave him poor indeed. Beauty fades; wealth fails; honor is transferred to another; nothing abides, except God. Hence our own great poet of nature makes a fallen favorite say, “had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, He would not in my age have left me naked to my enemies.”

My anger is kindled against them - Our passions are but some distorted likeness of what exists in God without passion; our anger, of His displeasure against sin. And so God speaks to us in the manner of humans, and pictures His divine displeasure under the likeness of our human passions of anger and fury, in order to bring home to us what we wish to hide from ourselves: the severe and awful side of His Being, His Infinite Holiness, and the truth that He will indeed avenge. He tells us that He will surely punish, just as people who are extremely incensed execute their displeasure if they can.

How long will it be before they attain to innocence? - Literally, “how long will they not be able innocence?” So again it is said, “him that hath an high look and a proud heart, I cannot” (Psalms 101:5); we supply, “suffer.” “New moons and sabbaths I cannot” (Isaiah 1:13); our version adds, “away with,” that is, endure. So here probably.

As they had with abhorrence cast off God their good, so God says, “they cannot endure innocence;” but He speaks as wondering and aggrieved at their hardness of heart and their obdurate holding out against the goodness, which He desired for them. “How long will they not be able to endure innocence?” “What madness this, that when I give them place for repentance, they will not endure to return to health of soul!”