Hosea 8:2 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Israel shall cry unto Me, My God, we know Thee - Or, according to the order in the Hebrew, “To Me shall they cry, we know Thee, Israel,” i. e., “we, Israel,” Thy people, “know Thee.” It is the same plea which our Lord says that He shall reject in the Day of Judgment. “Many shall say unto Me, in that Day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy Name, and in Thy Name cast out devils, and in Thy Name done many wonderful works” Matthew 7:22. In like way, when our Lord came in the flesh, they said of God the Father, He is our God. But our Lord appealed to their own consciences; “It is My Father who honoreth Me, of whom ye say, He is our God, but ye have not known Him” John 8:54. So Isaiah, when speaking of his own times, prophesied of those of our Lord also; “This people draweth nigh unto Me, with their mouth and honoreth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me” Matthew 15:8; Isaiah 29:13. “God says, that they shall urge this as a proof, that they know God, and as an argument to move God to have respect unto them, namely, that they are the seed of Jacob, who was called Israel, because he prevailed with God, and they were called by his name.” As though they said, “we, Thy Israel, know thee.” It was all hypocrisy, the cry of mere fear, not of love; from where God, using their own name of Israel which they had pleaded, answers the plea, declaring what “Israel” had become.