When I had fed them to the full. — The reading of the Hebrew text gives, though I had bound them by oath, sc., by the covenant, as of marriage; and this, as heightening the enormity of the sin that follows, gives a better sense than the English version, which follows the marginal reading of the Hebrew. The latter finds its parallel in Deuteronomy 32:15; Hosea 13:6. There is probably an implied reference to the covenant to which the people had sworn in the time of Josiah.
Houses. — Literally, house. The singular is, perhaps, used because the prophet thinks primarily of the idol’s temple as the scene of the adulteress’s guilt, which here, as elsewhere, is the symbol of national apostasy.