John Calvin Commentary Hosea 4:13-14

"They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and terebinths, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters play the harlot, and your brides commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for [the men] themselves go apart with harlots, and they sacrifice with the prostitutes; and the people that doth not understand shall be overthrown." — Hosea 4:13-14 (ASV)

The Prophet shows here more clearly what the fornication was for which he had previously condemned the people—namely, that they worshipped God under trees and on high places. This, then, is explanatory, for the Prophet defines what he previously understood by the word "fornication"; and this explanation was especially useful, indeed, necessary.

For people, we know, will not easily yield, particularly when they can offer some pretext for their sins, as is the case with the superstitious. When the Lord condemns their perverted and corrupt forms of worship, they instantly cry out, boldly contending and saying, "What! Is this to be counted fornication, when we worship God?" For whatever they do from ill-considered zeal is, they think, free from all blame.

So the Papists of this day establish it as a matter beyond dispute that all their forms of worship are approved by God. For though nothing is based on His word, yet good intention (as they say) is to them more than a sufficient excuse. Therefore, they dare proudly to clamor against God whenever He condemns their corruptions and abuses. Such presumption has doubtless prevailed from the beginning.

The Prophet, therefore, considered it necessary to show the Israelites openly and distinctly that even though they thought themselves to be worshipping God with pious zeal and good intention, they were still committing fornication. "It is fornication," he says, "when you sacrifice under trees."

"What! Has it not always been a commendable service to offer sacrifices and to burn incense to God?" Since this was the Israelites' intention, what was the reason God was so angry with them? We may suppose them to have fallen into a mistake; yet why did God not tolerate this foolish intention, when it was covered, as has been stated, with honest and specious zeal?

But God here sharply reproves the Israelites, however much they pretended great zeal, and however much they covered their superstitions with the false title of God’s worship. "It is nothing else," he says, "but fornication."

"On tops of mountains," he says, "they sacrifice, and on hills they burn incense, under the oak and the poplar and the teil-tree," and so on. It apparently seemed a praiseworthy thing for the Israelites to build altars in many places, for frequent attendance at the temples might have further stirred them up in God’s worship.

This is the plea of the Papists for filling their temples with pictures; they say, "We are reminded of God everywhere we turn our eyes, and this is very beneficial." So also it might have seemed a pious work to the Israelites to set up God’s worship on hills, on tops of mountains, and under every tall tree.

But God rejected it all; He would not be worshipped in this manner. Indeed, we see that He was greatly displeased. He says that the faith pledged to Him was thus violated; He says that the people basely committed fornication.

Though the Prophet’s doctrine is by no means plausible in the world today, so that scarcely one in ten embraces it, yet we will contend in vain with the Spirit of God. Nothing then is better than to hear our Judge; and He pronounces all false forms of worship, however much adorned by a deceptive appearance, to be adulteries and whoredoms.

From this we learn that good intention, with which the Papists so much please themselves, is the mother of all wantonness and of all filthiness. How so? Because it is a grievous offense against heaven to depart from the word of the Lord: for God had commanded sacrifices and incense to be offered to Him only at Jerusalem. The Israelites transgressed this command. But obedience to God, as it is said in 1 Samuel 15:22, is of more value with Him than all sacrifices.

The Prophet also distinctly excludes a device in which the ungodly and hypocrites take great delight: good, he says, was its shade; that is, they pleased themselves with such devices. So Paul says that there is a show of wisdom in the inventions and ordinances of men (Colossians 2:23). Therefore, when people undertake voluntary acts of worship—which the Greeks call εθελοθρησκείας, superstitions, being nothing else than will-worship—when people undertake this or that to do honor to God, there appears to them a show of wisdom, but before God it is abomination only.

At this practice the Prophet evidently hints when he says that the shade of the poplar, or of the oak, or of the teil-tree, was good; for the ungodly and the hypocrites imagined their worship to be approved by God, and that they surpassed the Jews, who worshipped God only in one place. "Our land is full of altars," they might say, "and memorials of God present themselves everywhere." But when they thought that they had gained the highest glory by their many altars, the Prophet says that the shade indeed was good, but that it only pleased wanton people, who would not acknowledge their baseness.

He afterwards adds, "Therefore your daughters shall play the wanton, and your daughters-in-law shall become adulteresses: I will not visit your daughters and daughters-in-law." Some explain this passage as though the Prophet said, "While the parents were absent, their daughters and daughters-in-law behaved wantonly." The case is the same today, for there is no greater liberty in licentiousness than what prevails during vowed pilgrimages. When anyone wishes to indulge freely in wantonness, she makes a vow to undertake a pilgrimage; an adulterer is ready at hand who offers himself as a companion.

And again, when the husband is so foolish as to run here and there, he at the same time gives his wife the opportunity of being licentious. We know further that when many women meet at unusual hours in churches, and have their private masses, there are hidden corners where they perpetrate all kinds of licentiousness.

We know, indeed, that this is very common. But the Prophet’s meaning is different, for God here denounces the punishment of which Paul speaks in Romans 1 when he says, "As men have transferred the glory of God to dead things, so God also gave them up to a reprobate mind," that they might discern nothing, and abandon themselves to everything shameful, and even prostitute their own bodies.

Let us then know that when just and due honor is not rendered to God, this vengeance rightly follows: that people become covered with infamy. Why so? Because nothing is more just than that God should vindicate His own glory when people corrupt and debase it. For why then should any honor remain to them? And why, on the contrary, should God not sink them at once into some extreme degradation? Let us then know that this is a just punishment, when adulteries prevail, and when uncontrolled lusts promiscuously follow.

Therefore, he who does not worship God will have at home an adulterous wife, and his daughters as filthy harlots, boldly behaving wantonly, and he will also have adulterous daughters-in-law. It is not that the Prophet speaks only of what would take place, but he shows that such would be the vengeance God would take: "Your daughters therefore shall play the wanton, and your daughters-in-law shall be adulteresses; and I will not punish your daughters and your daughters-in-law;" that is, "I will not correct them for their scandalous conduct, for I wish them to be exposed to infamy." For this truth must always stand firm:

Him who honors me, I will honor: and him who despises my name, I will make contemptible and ignominious,
(1 Samuel 2:30)

God then declares that He will not punish these crimes, because He intended in this way to punish the ungodly, by whom His own worship had been corrupted.

He says, "Because they with strumpets separate themselves." Some explain this verb פדר, pered, as meaning, "They divide husbands from their wives." But the Prophet undoubtedly means that they separated themselves from God, in the same manner as a wife does when she leaves her husband and gives herself to an adulterer. The Prophet then uses the word allegorically, or at least metaphorically.

A reason is given, which those who take this passage as referring literally to adulteries do not understand; and their mistake is sufficiently proved to be so by the next clause, "and with strumpets they sacrifice." The separation then of which he speaks is this: that they sacrificed with strumpets, which they could not do without violating their faith pledged to God. We now understand the Prophet’s real meaning.

"I will not punish," he says, "wantonness and adulteries in your families." Why? "Because I would have you to be made infamous, for you have first behaved wantonly."

But there is a change of person, and this should be observed. For he should have carried on his discourse throughout in the second person, and said, "Because you have separated with strumpets, and accompany harlots;" this is the way in which he should have spoken. But through an excess of indignation, as it were, he makes a change in his address. "They," he says, "have behaved wantonly," as though he considered them unworthy of being spoken to.

They have then behaved wantonly with strumpets. By "strumpets," he undoubtedly understands the corruptions by which God’s worship had been perverted, even through wantonness. "They sacrifice," he says, "with strumpets"; that is, they forsake the true God and resort to whatever pollutions they please. And this is to behave wantonly, as when a husband, leaving his wife, or when a wife, leaving her husband, abandon themselves to filthy lust.

But it is nothing strange or unusual for sins to be punished by other sins. What Paul teaches should especially be kept in mind: that God, as the avenger of His own glory, gives people up to a reprobate mind and allows them to be covered with many most disgraceful things; for He cannot tolerate them when they turn His glory to shame and His truth to a lie.

He afterwards adds, "And the people, not understanding, shall stumble." Those who take the verb לבט, labeth, as meaning "to be perverted," understand it here in the sense of being "perplexed;" nor is this sense inappropriate. "The people then shall not understand and be perplexed;" that is, they shall not know the right way.

But the word also means "to stumble," and even more often "to fall." Since this is the more accepted meaning, I am inclined to accept it: "The people then, not understanding, shall stumble."

The Prophet here teaches that the pretense of ignorance carries no weight before God, though hypocrites usually flee to this at last. When they find themselves without any excuse, they run to this asylum: "But I thought I was doing right; I am deceived. But so be it, it is a pardonable mistake."

The Prophet here declares these excuses to be empty and deceptive, for the people who do not understand shall stumble, and that deservedly. For how did this ignorance come to be in the people of Israel, unless, as has been said before, they deliberately closed their eyes against the light?

When, therefore, people thus deliberately determine to be blind, it is no wonder that the Lord delivers them over to final destruction. But if they now flatter themselves by pretending a mistake, as I have already said, the Lord will shatter this false confidence, and does now shatter it by His word.

What then should we do? We should learn knowledge from His word, for this is our wisdom and our understanding, as Moses says in Deuteronomy 4.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God—since we are so disposed and inclined to all kinds of errors, to so many and various forms of superstitions, and since Satan also unceasingly lies in wait for us and spreads his many snares before us—that we may be so preserved in obedience to You by the teaching of Your word that we may never turn aside, either to the right hand or to the left. May we continue in that pure worship which You have prescribed, so that we may plainly testify that You are indeed our Father by continuing under the protection of Your only-begotten Son, whom You have given to be our pastor and ruler to the end. Amen.