The Pulpit Commentary — Hosea — Section 237

EXPOSITION. CHAPTER VIII. off. The sixth verse contains the doom of this silly, sinful, and disgusting idol. This chapter deals with the punishment In the seventh verse the threat of snoh of apostasy. Once more the sins of the destruction is accounted for on a broad northern kiugdom Bl'e enumerated and its principle taken from agricultural life, that approaching fall predicted. There is a close the harvest will correspond to the seed connection between the verses in the first sown : and so I&ael shall reap the fruit of section of the chapter. That connection is their ungodliness. llll follows : The first verse begins with an Ver. 1.-The exclamation in this verse, exclamation containing JehovaL's command A trumpet to thy month, supersedes the to the prophet to a.et as his herald, pntting necessity of supplying a verb. The alarm the trumpet to his month and sounding of WBl' or of hostile invasion is to be sounded the alarm about coming calamity. In the by the prophet at tile command of Jehovah. second clause of the so.me verse the nature The (l) trumpet is at once to be employed for the purpose. Tile rendering of both of the calamity is announced. In the tLird the Targnm and Syrie.c (2) expresses tile and last clause of it the cause of the same idea, though under a different form : calamity is declared. The second verse the former has, "Cry with thy throat, as rnpresents l&ael in their extremity crying if it were a trumpet: " and the latter, "Let thy mouth be as a trumpet." According to to God for deliverance: the cry is very this view, the Prophet Hosea expresses here earnest, and proceeds from every member of very briefly what Isaiah has done more the community, backed also with the asser- fully in the words, " Cry aloud [Hebrew, tion of their a.cquaintance with Jehovah. • with the throat'], spa.re not, lift up thy In the third verse Jehovah rejects their cry voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob and refuses to interpose between them and their sins." (3) The LXX. here deviates tLe enemy, because their knowledge of him considerably from the Massoretio Hebrew we.s merely historical and neither spiritual text, translating fls ,c&Juro11 ('JR'IJ) ,,_;,.,;;,,,, nor pra.ctical, as their dislike of what was ,l,s -,,;;, of the meaning of which Jerome good continued uuaLatcd. Thefolll'th verse acknowledges his ignorance, tllough he specifies facts in proof of Israel's renuncie.- attempts to explain it, Cyril connects the tion of J eLovah. The fiftll verse shows a words with the concluding part of the pre- ceding chapter, thll8: "This their setting e.i just retribution, for, iuasmucb as Israel nought (of me) in the land of Egypt shall disliked what was good, the object of their r.ome into their own bosom. As the land, as idollltry bu disgu1ted Jehovah or cast them the eagle against the house of the Lord; " on. vm. 1-14.) THE BOOK OF HOSEA.