Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 8:7

"For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: he hath no standing grain; the blade shall yield no meal; if so be it yield, strangers shall swallow it up." — Hosea 8:7 (ASV)

Wind ... whirlwind.—The great law of Divine retribution, the punishment for sin being often a greater facility in sinning—indifference to God becoming enmity, forgetfulness of duty or truth becoming violent recoil from both. “Wind” expresses what is empty and fruitless, and the pronoun “it” refers, in accordance with the metaphor, to such unproductive seed.

It hath no stalk.—Not even incipient prosperity, as in the days of Jeroboam II. “The growth will yield no grain,” as we might express the play of words in the Hebrew.