John Calvin Commentary Hosea 5:2

"And the revolters are gone deep in making slaughter; but I am a rebuker of them all." — Hosea 5:2 (ASV)

The verb שחט, shecheth, means to kill or to sacrifice, and this passage is usually explained in terms of sacrifices; an opinion I do not reject. But though the Prophet spoke of sacrifices, he undoubtedly, in contempt, called sacrificing killing. Just as one might call the temple a “butcher shop” and the killing of victims “slaughtering,” so also the Prophet says, In sacrificing and killing, they, having turned aside, have become deeply fixed. That is, by turning aside to their own sacrificing, they have completely hardened their hearts, so that their depravity is incurable.

For by saying that they had “gone deep,” the meaning is that they were so addicted to their own superstitions that they could not be restored to a sound mind, however often they were admonished by the Prophets. Yet this verb has another meaning in Scripture, namely, that people flatter themselves with their own plans and think that by weaving together their own arguments, they can deceive God. This metaphor the Prophets employ with regard to profane despisers of God, whom they call לצים, latism, mockers. For these, while they deceive other people, think that they have nothing to do with God. We see the same thing today: courtiers and similarly proud people flatter themselves with their own deceptions and complacently laugh at our simplicity because they think that wisdom was born with them and that it is enclosed, as it were, within their brains. But I do not know whether this idea is suitable to this passage. I prefer the simpler meaning I have already stated: that the Israelites were so obstinate in their superstitions that they perversely despised all advice and all admonitions; indeed, that they petulantly resisted all instruction.

But each word must be noted: turning aside in sacrificing, he says, they became deep. By saying that they had turned aside in sacrificing, he undoubtedly makes a distinction between false and strange forms of worship and the true worship of God, prescribed in the Law. The frequency of sacrificing could not, indeed, have been condemned in itself for either the Israelites or the Jews; but they turned aside, that is, they departed from what the Law prescribes.

Hence, the more zealously they engaged in sacrificing and the more victims they offered to God, the more they provoked God’s vengeance against themselves. We then see that the Prophet points out here, as if with a finger, the sin he reproved in the people of Israel: namely, that they did not sacrifice according to God’s command and the ritual of the Law, but turned aside and followed their own devices.

Therefore, in contempt and scorn, he calls their sacrificing “killing” or “throat-cutting”: “They are,” he says, “executioners,” or, “they are butchers. What is it to me that they bring their victims with great pomp and display? That they use so many ceremonies? I repudiate,” the Lord says, “all of this. It is profane butchering; these slaughterings have nothing in common with the worship I approve.”

For our sacrifices, then, to please God, they must be according to the rule of His word. For, as has already been said, obedience is better than all sacrifices (1 Samuel 15:22). But when people resort to false or invented forms of worship, then nothing is holy or acceptable to God, but an abominable filth. Furthermore, the Prophet, as I have said, not only accuses the people of having turned aside to perverted forms of worship but also of having become obstinately entrenched in them. They have become “deep,” he says, in their superstitions. Just as he said before that they were firmly attached to their idols, so that they could not be torn away from them, so he also now says that they were deeply rooted in their iniquity.

It follows, And I have been, or will be, a correction to them all. Some think that the Prophet, speaking for God, threatens the Israelites, that God declares that He Himself would become the avenger because the people had so stubbornly followed wicked superstitions: “I sit as a judge in heaven, nor will I allow you to fall away with impunity, since you have become so hardened in your wickedness.” But those who think that their sin was further increased by the fact that God, through His Prophets, had not ceased to recall the Israelites to a sound mind, since they might not have been wholly irreclaimable, are more correct. I have been a correction to them; that is, “They cannot excuse themselves by saying that they had fallen through error and ignorance, for there has been a willful obstinacy in them, as I have not ceased to show them the right way by My Prophets. I have, then, been a correction to them; but I could not bend them, so indomitable has been that stubbornness, or rather madness, with which they were inflamed towards their idols.” It is now clear which of the two views I consider most correct.

But I will offer a third view: God may be thought to be complaining here that He had been an object of dislike to the Israelites, as if He said, “When I sent My Prophets, they could not bear to be admonished, because My word was too bitter for them.” Reproofs are not easily endured by people. We indeed know that those who are ill at ease with themselves are nevertheless unwilling to hear any reproof; everyone who deceives himself wishes to be deceived by others. Since, then, the ears of people are so tender and delicate that they will patiently receive no reproof, this meaning seems not inappropriate: I have been to them all a correction, that is, “My doctrine has been rejected by them because it contained too much harshness.” But the other explanation, which I mentioned as the second, has been more widely accepted. I was, however, unwilling to omit what seems to me no less suitable.

We may now choose or accept either of these two interpretations: either that the Lord here takes away from the Israelites the excuse of error, because He had continued to reprove their vices by His Prophets, or that He expostulates with the Israelites for having rejected His word on the ground that it was too rigid and severe. Yet this main point will still remain the same: that the people of Israel were not only apostates, having fallen away from the lawful worship of God into their own superstitions, but were also contumacious and refractory in their wickedness, so that they would receive no instruction, no beneficial advice. Let us proceed.