Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 4:15

"Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend; and come not ye unto Gilgal, neither go ye up to Beth-aven, nor swear, As Jehovah liveth." — Hosea 4:15 (ASV)

Israel ... Judah. —The prophet warns Judah of Israel’s peril, and perhaps hints at the apostasy of some of her kings, as Ahaziah, Joram, and Ahaz. He returns to the symbolic use of the word “whoredom”; and Judah is exhorted not to participate in the idolatries of Gilgal or the calves of Bethel.

There are three different places named Gilgal mentioned in Joshua (Joshua 4:19; Joshua 12:3; Joshua 15:7), and a fourth seems to be mentioned in Deuteronomy 9:30; 2 Kings 2:1. The Gilgal here referred to is the first of these, which Joshua for a considerable time had made his headquarters.

In the days of Samuel, it acquired some importance as a place for sacrificial worship and the dispensation of justice. Bethel had a grand history. But Hosea and Amos call it by the altered name Beth-aven (house of vanity, or idols), instead of Bethel (house of God). The Septuagint in the Alexandrine manuscript reads On instead of Aven in the Hebrew, On being the name for Heliopolis, the seat of sun-cultus, from where Jeroboam may have derived his calf-worship. (See Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, Art. “On.”) But the Vatican manuscript has ἀδικίας, in accordance with the Masoretic tradition (similarly Aquila and Symmachus).