John Calvin Commentary Hosea 5:3

"I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me; for now, O Ephraim, thou hast played the harlot, Israel is defiled." — Hosea 5:3 (ASV)

God shows here that He is not pacified by the vain excuses which hypocrites offer, and by which they think that God's own judgment can be averted. We see what great dullness there is in many when God reproves them and brings their vices to light; for they defend themselves with vain and frivolous excuses and think that they thus restrain God, so that He dares not press them any further. In this way, hypocrites evade every truth. But God here testifies that people are greatly deceived when they thus judge, by their own perception, the heavenly tribunal to which they are summoned. I, He says, know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from Me.

An implied contrast is to be understood, as if He said that they were ignorant of themselves; for they covered their vices, as I have said, with frivolous excuses. God testifies that His eyes were not dazzled by such fine pretenses. "However much, then, Ephraim and Israel may excuse themselves, they will not escape My judgment. Vain and absurd are these evasions which they use; I indeed am not ignorant."

Let us then learn not to misrepresent God's judgment with our own ideas. When He reproves us by His word, let us not deceive ourselves with our own imaginations, for those who harden themselves in such a state of false security gain nothing. God sees more keenly than humans. Let us then beware of spreading a veil over our sins, for God’s eyes penetrate through all such excuses.

The fact that He names Ephraim particularly was not done, we know, without reason. From that tribe came the first Jeroboam; it was therefore as a mark of honor that the name of Ephraim was given to the ten tribes. But the Prophet names Ephraim here, who thought themselves superior to the other tribes, by way of reproach: I know them, and Israel is not hid from Me.

He afterwards expresses what He knew of the people, which was that Ephraim was wanton, and that Israel was polluted. It is as if He said, "Contend as you please, but you will do so unprofitably. I have indeed My ears stunned by your lies; but after you have brought forward everything, after you have diligently pleaded your own cause, and have omitted nothing that might serve as an excuse, the fact will still be that you are wanton and polluted."

In short, the Prophet confirms in this second phrase what I have previously stated: that people, when they flatter themselves, deceive themselves, for God meanwhile condemns them and permits no disguise of this kind.

Israel and Ephraim, then, gloried in their superstitions, as if they held God bound to them. "This is wantonness," He says, "This is pollution." The Prophet indeed here cuts off any basis for all those self-deceptions which people use as reasons when they defend false forms of worship; for God proclaims from on high that all who turn aside from His word are polluted.