Hosea 5:2 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And the revolters are profound, &c.— Have gone deep in slaughter: I will call them all to discipline. Calmet. The Hebrew word שׂטים setiim, which we translate the revolters, signifies scouts on horseback, attendants on the chace, whose business it was to scour the country all around, and drive the wild beasts into the toils. The priests and rulers are accused as the seducers of the people to apostacy and idolatry, not merely by their own ill example but with premeditated design, under the image of hunters deliberately spreading their nets and snares upon the mountains. And their agents and emissaries, in this nefarious project, are represented under the image of scouts on horseback in this destructive chace. The toils and nets are whatever in the external form of idolatry was calculated to captivate the minds of men: magnificent temples, stately altars, images richly adorned, the gaiety of festivals, the pomp, and, in many instances, even the horror of the public rites. All which was supported by the government at a vast expence. The imagery therefore in this passage represents a spiritual chace. The wild beasts are men, not influenced and re-retained by the true principles of religion: the principal hunters, the kings of Israel and the apostate priests, who, from motives of self-interest, and a mistaken and wicked policy, encouraged idolatry, and supported its institutions: the scouts on horseback, the subordinate agents in the business: the slaughter, spiritual slaughter of the souls of men.