Hosea 4:19 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

I beg the Reader to observe, for I think it is very observable, and very blessed it is in the observance, what sweet minglings of grace is here amidst the solemn and awful account the Lord gives of his people. Witness the tender watchings over Judah, and the Lord's charge not to follow Israel. As also, the gracious promise of the Lord's feeding them, as a lamb in a large place. I would not determine that it is so: but methinks there is here no small reference to the person and work of the Lord Jesus. I cannot help remarking also, what the Lord saith of Israel's backsliding, in that it is likened to a backsliding heifer. Now it is well known, that the heifer when sliding on slippery ground, is still with her head upward to the place where she aims to go, and hath not turned her back through falling down. So the Lord's people in their backslidings have not relinquished the Lord, though they fall, and make no progress in the divine life. In themselves they are nothing, yea, worse than nothing. But in the Lord they have an interest, however unconscious to their own hearts. Sweet is that scripture to this amount, Hosea 14:1 throughout. I cannot but think also, that the other expressions here made use of are more in mercy than judgment. Let Ephraim alone: he is joined to idols! Some have thought that this is spoken of in the most awful manner: as if by letting him alone, his everlasting ruin would follow: Revelation 22:11. And so it would indeed, if the sentence was uttered by the Lord in this way, for none could ever recover himself from the idols of his own heart, if the Lord's grace did not first enter that heart. And had this been the case with our whole nature after the fall, for what purpose did the Son of God come? I rather think the sentence is spoken in great grace and mercy. Ephraim is joined to his idols: let him alone. For what? To see and feel the wretchedness of such an union; until when like the prodigal, he comes to himself by my making his idols bitter to him, and hedging up his way with thorns, and my secretly inclining his heart to consider my love and his baseness, he is brought back with the cry of grace in his heart, God be merciful to me a sinner! See a sweet representation similar to this, and given by the Lord himself, Jeremiah 31:18-20. I do not presume to determine this point. But I venture to think it more in agreement with the whole tenor of scripture. If I err, the Lord pardon. If my views are from God the Holy Ghost's teaching, the Lord's hand be acknowledged in it, and may he make it profitable both to Writer and Reader.