Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 8:4

"They have set up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off." — Hosea 8:4 (ASV)

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.