Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 9

Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people - Literally, “rejoice not to exultation,” so as to bound and leap for joy .

The prophet seems to come across the people in the midst of their festivity and mirth, and arrests them, abruptly stopping it, telling them that they had no cause for joy.

Hosea witnessed Israel’s prosperity under Jeroboam II; the land had peace under Menahem after the departure of Pul. Pekah was even strong, so that, in his alliance with Rezin, he was an object of terror to Judah (Isaiah 7:0), until Tiglath-Pileser came against him.

At some of these times, Israel seems to have given itself to exuberant mirth, whether at harvest-time or on any other ground, enjoying the present, secure for the future.

On this rejoicing Hosea breaks in with his stern, “Rejoice not.” In His presence is fulness of joy (Psalms 16:11), true, solid, lasting joy. How then could Israel joy, who had gone a whoring from his God? Other nations might joy, for they had no imminent judgment to fear.

Their sins had been sins of ignorance; none had sinned like Israel. They had not even changed their gods, which were no gods (Jeremiah 2:11). If other people did not thank God for His gifts and thanked their idols, they had not been taught otherwise. Israel had been taught. And so, his sin was sin against light.

Thus God says by Amos, You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities (Amos 3:2).

“It was ever the sin of Israel to wish to joy as other nations. So they said to Samuel, make us a king to judge us, like all the nations. And when Samuel “told the people the word of God, they have rejected Me that I should not reign over them,” they still said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we may be like all the nations (1 Samuel 8:5, 1 Samuel 8:10, 1 Samuel 8:7, 1 Samuel 8:19–20).”

This was the joy of the nations: to have another king than God. With this joy Israel wished to exult when it asked for Saul as king, when it followed Jeroboam, and when it denied Christ before the presence of Pilate, saying, we have no king but Caesar.

But the people who received the law and professed the worship of God could not exult as other people who had not the knowledge of God, nor expect that, like them, after forsaking God, it should be allowed to enjoy temporal prosperity like theirs.

He says, rejoice not like the nations, namely, because it is not allowed you. Why? For you have gone a whoring from your God.

The punishment of the adulteress, who departs by unfaithfulness from her husband, is different from that of the harlot, who had never plighted her faith nor had ever been bound by the bond of marriage.

You obtained God for your Husband and forsook Him for another—indeed, for many others—in the desert, in Samaria, even in Jerusalem, for the golden calves, for Baal, and the other monstrous gods, and lastly, when, denying Christ, you preferred Barabbas.

Rejoice not then, with the joy of the nations; for the curses of the law, written against you, do not allow you. Cursed shall you be in the city, cursed in the field; cursed your basket and your store; cursed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your land, the increase of your kine and the flocks of your sheep; cursed you in your coming in, and cursed you in your going out (Deuteronomy 28:16–19). Other nations enjoyed the fruit of their own labors; you took the labors of others as a hire, to observe His laws (Psalms 105:45).

You have loved a reward - (Literally, “the hire” (Hosea 2:12; Hosea 8:9; Ezekiel 21:31, 34; Micah 1:7) of a harlot) on every grain-floor.

Israel had no heart, except for temporal prosperity. This he loved, wherever he found it. And so, on every grain-floor, on which the fruits of the earth were gathered for the threshing, he received it from his idols as the “hire,” for which he praised them “for the good things which he had received from a better Giver.”

“Perverse love! You ought to love God and use His rewards. You loved the reward, and despised God. So then you went whoring from your God, because you turned away the love with which you ought to love God, to love the hire: and this not sparingly, nor in just any way, but on every barnfloor, with avarice so boundless and so deep, that all the barn-floors could not satisfy you.”

The first-fruits and the freewill offering they retained, turned them away from the service of God, and offered them to their idols.

The floor and winepress shall not feed them - God turns away completely from the adulterous people and tells others how justly they will first be dealt with for this. “Because she loved My reward, and despised Myself, the reward itself shall be taken away from her.”

When the blessings of God have been abused for sin, He, in mercy and judgment, takes them away. He cut them off to show that He alone, who now withheld them, had previously given them. When they thought themselves most secure, when the grain was stored on the floor and the grapes were in the press, then God would deprive them of these blessings.

And the new wine shall fail in her, or, it shall fail her - Literally, it means “shall lie to her.” Perhaps he would say that as Israel had lied to his God and had spoken lies against Him (Hosea 7:13), so, in retribution, the fruits of the earth would disappoint her.

Holding out hopes that never materialized, they would, so to speak, lie to her. In the bitterness of her disappointment, this would represent to her her own failure to her God. The prophet teaches through the workings of nature and gives, as it were, a tongue to them.

They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof - Yet He had chosen the land of Canaan, there to place His people; there, above others, to work His miracles; there to reveal Himself; there to send His Son to take our flesh. He had put Israel in possession of it, to hold it under Him on condition of obedience. On the contrary, God had denounced to them again and again: “if your heart turn away, so that you will not hear, but shall be drawn away, you shall not prolong your days upon the land, where you pass over Jordan to possess it” (Deuteronomy 30:17–18).

The fifth commandment, “the first commandment with promise” (Ephesians 5:2), still implies the same condition, “that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” God expressly stipulates that the land is His: “The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is Mine, for you are strangers and sojourners with Me” (Leviticus 25:23). It was then an aggravation of their sin that they had sinned in God’s land. It was to sin in His special presence. To offer its first-fruits to idols was to disown God as its Lord and to own His adversary. In removing them, then, from His land, God removed them from occasions of sin.

But Ephraim shall return to Egypt - He had broken the covenant, on which God had promised that they should not return there (see above the note at Hosea 8:13). They had resorted to Egypt against the will of God. Against their own will, they should be sent back there, in banishment and distress, as in former times, and in separation from their God.

And they shall eat unclean things in Assyria - So in Ezekiel, “The children of Israel shall eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, where I will drive them” (Ezekiel 4:13). “Not to eat things common or unclean” was one of the marks by which God had distinguished them as His people. While God owned them as His people, He would protect them against such necessity. The histories of Daniel, of Eleazar and the Maccabees (Daniel 1:8; Daniel 2:0; 2 Maccabees 6, 7) show how sorely pious Jews felt the compulsion to eat things unclean.

Yet this Israel had doubtless done in his own land, if not in other ways, at least in eating things offered to idols. Now then, through necessity—indeed, they were to be forced—for their sustenance to eat things unclean, such as were, to them, all things killed with the blood in them, that is, as almost all things are killed now. Those who had willfully transgressed God’s law would now be forced to live in the habitual breach of that law, in a matter which placed them on a level with the pagan.

People who have no scruple about breaking God’s moral law feel keenly the removal of any distinction that places them above others. They had been as pagan; they were to be in the condition of pagan.

They shall not offer wine-offerings to the Lord - The “wine” or “drink-offering” was added to all their burnt-offerings, and so to all their public sacrifices. The burnt-offering (and with it the meal and the wine-offering) was “the” daily morning and evening sacrifice (Exodus 29:38–41; Numbers 28:3–8), and the sacrifice of the Sabbath (Numbers 28:9). It was offered, together with the sin-offering, on the first of the month, the Passover, the feast of the first-fruits, of trumpets, of tabernacles, and the Day of Atonement, besides the special sacrifices of that day (Numbers 28:11, 28:15-16, 28:19, 28:22, 28:26, 28:7, 28:30; Numbers 29:11, 29:1-2, 29:5, 29:7-8, 29:12-38).

It also entered into private life (Leviticus 1; Numbers 15:3, 15:10). The drink-offering also accompanied the peace-offering (Numbers 15:8, 15:10). As the burnt-offering, on which the offerer laid his hand (Leviticus 1:4), and which was wholly consumed by the sacred fire that at first fell from heaven, expressed the entire self-devotion of the offerer—that he owed himself wholly to his God—and as the peace-offering was the expression of thankfulness from one who was at peace with God, so the outpouring of the wine signified the joy that accompanies that entire self-oblation, that thankfulness in self-oblation of a soul accepted by God. In denying, then, that Israel should offer wine-offerings, the prophet says that all the joy of their service of God, even all their public service, should cease. As he had before said, that they should be for many days without sacrifice (Hosea 3:4), so now, he says, in fact, that they should live without the prescribed means of pleading to God the atonement to come. Therefore, he adds,

Neither shall they be pleasing to the Lord - For they should no longer have the means prescribed for reconciliation with God. Such is the state of Israel now. God appointed one way of reconciliation with Himself: the Sacrifice of Christ. Sacrifice pictured this, and pleaded it to Him, from the fall until Christ Himself appeared, once in the end of the world, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Hebrews 9:26). Soon after, when time had been given to the Jews to learn to acknowledge Him, all bloody sacrifices ceased.

Since then the Jews have lived without that means of reconciliation, which God appointed. It availed, not in itself, but as being appointed by God to foreshadow and plead that one sacrifice. So He who, by our poverty and emptiness, awakens in us the longing for Himself, would through the anomalous condition to which He has, by the orderings of His divine providence, brought His former people, call forth in them that sense of need which would bring them to Christ.

In their half-obedience, they remain under the ceremonial law which He gave them, although He called them, and still calls them, to exchange the shadow for the substance in Christ. But because they cannot fulfill the requirements of the law, even in its outward form, the law which they acknowledge bears witness to them that they are not living according to the mind of God.

Their sacrifices shall be to them as the bread of mourners - He had said that they should not sacrifice to God when no longer in the Lord’s land. He adds that, if they should attempt it, their sacrifices, so far from being a means of acceptance, would be defiled and a source of defilement to them. All that was in the same tent or house with a dead body was unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:14).

The bread which they ate then was defiled. If one unclean by a dead body touched bread or stew or any meat, it was unclean (Haggai 2:12–13). In offering the tithes, a man was commanded to declare, I have not eaten of it in my mourning (Deuteronomy 26:14). In this way, God would impress upon the soul the awfulness of death, and man’s sinfulness, of which death is the punishment. He does not say that they would offer sacrifices, but that their sacrifices, if offered as God did not command, would defile, not atone.

It is in human nature to neglect to serve God when He wills it, and then to attempt to serve Him when He forbids it. Thus Israel, frightened by the report of the spies (Numbers 14), would not go up to the promised land when God commanded it. When God had sentenced them not to go up but to die in the wilderness, then they attempted it. Sacrifice, according to God’s law, could only be offered in the promised land. In their captivity, then, it would be a new sin.

For their bread for their soul - Or “is for their soul,” that is, “for themselves;” it is for whatever use they can make of it for this life’s needs, to support life. Nothing of it would be admitted into the house of the Lord, as offered to Him or accepted by Him.

What will you do in the solemn day? — Man is content to remain far from God, so that God does not show him that He has withdrawn Himself from him. Man would gladly have the power of drawing near to God in time of calamity, or when he himself chooses. He would gladly have God at his command, as it were, not be at the command of God. God cuts off this hope altogether. He singles out the great festivals, which commemorated His great deeds for His people, as though they had no more share in those mercies. The more solemn the day, the more total man’s exclusion, the more manifest God’s withdrawal.

To one shut out from His service, the days of deepest religious joy became the days of deepest sorrow. Mirth is turned into heaviness. To be deprived of the ordinary daily sacrifice was a source of continual sorrow; how much more, in the days of their gladness (Numbers 10:10), in which they were commanded to rejoice before the Lord, and in which they seemed to have a nearer and more familiar access to God. True, having separated themselves from the temple, they had no right to celebrate these feasts, which were to be held in the place which God had chosen to place His name there. Man, however, clings to the shadow of God’s service when he has parted with the substance. And so God had foretold them that He would make all their mirth to cease (Hosea 2:11).