CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 4:18. Sour] A metaphor for degeneracy in principle (Isaiah 1:22); turned, as we say of milk. They had lost all their life and taste of goodness [Pusey]. Rulers] Lit. shields, protectors, and supporters of the state. Love] Avarice and luxury. No remedy against corruption when rulers are bribed.
Hosea 4:19. Bound her up] A tempest will suddenly and violently seize them, wrap them up, and carry them away (Psalms 18:11; Psalms 104:3; Isaiah 57:13). Ashamed] of idols and disappointed in hope. Disappointment is certain to those who seek out of God what can only be found in him.
HOMILETICS
THE BITTERNESS AND THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN.—Hosea 4:18-19
In these verses we have another triplet of vice. The people are guilty of intemperance and adultery. The princes and leaders are covetous, pervert justice, and cry, “Give, give.” The whole nation had become sapless and corrupt. “Drink” is here put for the effect of sweet intoxicating wine. As sourness was opposed to sweetness, so sin is opposed to holiness and idolatry to the service of God. The verses set forth the bitterness and the punishment of sin.
I. The Bitterness of Sin. “Their drink is sour,” their delights are insipid and dead. Man’s spiritual appetite is strong, and God has made abundant provision for our happiness. But men indulge in sin, are not satisfied with healthful refreshment, and “add drunkenness to thirst.” The appetite, cloyed with indulgence, turns with disgust from the sweetest dainties, while “every bitter thing is sweet” to the hungry soul (Proverbs 27:7). So in spiritual things. The sinner has no relish, and feels no need for the bread of life. He seeks to quench his thirst by intoxicating pleasure or sensual indulgence. This may make him merry, but cannot make him happy. Whatever be the relish and allurements of sin, “at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” There is poison in the cup. Like the little book which the Apostle John had to take, sin is sweet as honey in the mouth, but when committed, bitter in the belly (Revelation 10:9). “Life, they say, is sweet; I have found it bitter,” said a young artist in the closing scenes of death. Lord Chesterfield echoed the sentiment, when he said, “I have run the silly rounds of business and of pleasure, and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world and know their futility, and do not regret their loss. I appraise them at their real value, which is very low; whereas those who have not experienced them always overrate them. They only see the gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been behind the scenes. I look back on all that is passed as one of those romantic dreams which opium commonly produces, and I have no wish to repeat the nauseous dose.” This Marah is never dry. No art can sweeten, no draughts exhaust its perennial waters of bitterness. The bitterness of sin consists—
1. In its wretchedness. Byron described himself as a man whose happiness was gone and could not be restored. “If I were to live over again,” he writes, “I do not know what I would change in my life, except not to have lived at all.”
2. In its dissatisfaction. After all toil and labour “the good” is ever absent. The thing which was expected to give joy palls on the instant it is obtained, like the apples of the Dead Sea, which turn to ashes when tasted. On and on! the spirit still cries, “Give, give.”
3. In its disappointment. Solomon had tried everything, but unalloyed happiness was still beyond his grasp. He drank from broken cisterns, tasted the wormwood and the gall, and gives the verdict—“All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”
II. The Punishment of Sin. “The wind hath bound her up in her wings.” The simple meaning of this is that they would be carried away with a swift and shameful destruction. So sudden is the overthrow of the wicked, that his designs are baffled, his life upset, and he himself overwhelmed with the tempest. “He shall take them away as with a whirlwind.”
1. This destruction is sudden. The wind may sleep and be forgotten, but justice never fails. The sky is clear, men settle down, and undisturbed pursue their folly; but “when they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” In their revelries they will be surprised, and, like Belshazzar, “they shall not escape.”
2. This destruction is violent. What more violent than mighty winds tearing up the mountains and rending the rocks (Job 28:9). The wicked cannot stand before the tempest of God’s wrath and the thunder of his power. Cambyses, invading Ethiopia, sent a detachment to ravage the country. Herodotus says that “after they had left Oasis, they halted to take some repast, when a strong south wind arose and overwhelmed them beneath a mountain of sand.” Plutarch, in the Life, speaking of the design of Alexander “to visit the temple of Jupiter Ammon,” adds, “it was a long and laborious journey, and they might be surprised by a violent south wind amidst the wastes of sand, as it happened long before to the army of Cambyses. The wind raised the sand, and rolled it in such waves, that it devoured full 50,000 men.”
3. This destruction is shameful. “They shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.” Ashamed on account of their sacrifices, or of them, and should forsake them and turn to God. But in any case both they and their sacrifices would be put to shame. (a) They would be disappointed in their sacrifices. They had brought nothing but evil, and not any good. Nothing good should be sought, or can be found, away from God. (b) They would be detected on hill and in dale, in public and private worship. They could not hide their shameful ways from God. Justice would discover them. “As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed.” (c) They would be exposed in their shame. Exposed without refuge to Divine judgment. Shame and confusion of face will be the final issue of all the lofty expectations and the sinful ways of the ungodly. Shame is their present fruit, and what will be the results in eternity “of those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” “Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Avoid the guilt if you wish to escape the doom of Israel.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hosea 4:18-19. Pleasure taken into the soul is like liquor poured into a vessel so much of it as it fills it also seasons, the touch and the tincture go together. It is certain sin has no real pleasures to be stow; they are all embittered, either by the strokes of providence from without, or the accusations of conscience from within. The fine colours of the serpent do by no means make amends for the smart and poison of his sting.
Penalties are often so long delayed, that men think they shall escape them; but they are certain to follow. When the whirlwind sweeps through the forest, at its first breath that giant tree, with all its boughs, falls crashing to the ground. But it had been preparing to fall twenty years. Twenty years before it received a gash, the water commenced to settle in it at some notch, and from thence decay began to reach in towards the heart of the tree. Every year the work of death progressed, till at length it stood all rottenness, and the first gale felled it to the ground. There are men, who for twenty years shame the day and the night with debaucheries, who yet seem strong and vigorous, but in reality are full of weakness and decay. They have been preparing to fall, and the first storm will strike them down in a moment [Beecher].