Hosea 9:1. Rejoice not, oh Israel, with the shouts of harvest, and the songs of the vintage, as all heathen nations have done, and have ascribed their harvests to their idols; for God was about to deny them of bread.
Hosea 9:3. Ephraim shall return to Egypt, for refuge from the Chaldeans, while others shall be led away captive as far as the oriental provinces of Assyria. Here they shall eat the bread of mourners, as in Hosea 9:4, meaning the coarsest meat of slaves, and meat forbidden by the law as unclean.
Hosea 9:6. Memphis shall bury them. Noph is the old name of this capital of Egypt. Isaiah 19:13. Wars and afflictions pursued the jews to this land of exile.
Hosea 9:7. The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad. They had mocked the Lord's prophets, as mad and insane; the idol-prophets prophesying of wine and peace are now the fools. God having made them, like the diviners of Babylon, mad. How reproachful and embittered must the existence of such prophets be, when, instead of a harvest of joy, the people were driven to eat the bread of mourners.
Hosea 9:9. They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah. When the whole tribe of Benjamin screened the profligate young men who had debauched the Levite's concubine, and perished in the war. So in a similar manner those wicked prophets drove their country to destruction.
Hosea 9:15. All their wickedness is in Gilgal, now the principal seat of their idolatry, and its abominable rites.
Hosea 9:17. They shall be wanderers among the nations, as Moses had long ago foretold. Deuteronomy 28:49-64.
REFLECTIONS.
What a chapter of darkness, what sombrous images are here; what a prophet of disasters! Yet the prophecies are mild when compared with the strokes that followed.
How deep is the depravity of the heart, and how strong the force of habit, that nothing could reclaim a nation in the high course of error and of crime. Yet the ministry of holy men shamed and lessened many of their sins; and the faithful, few in number, required pastors.
How deplorable is the state of the jews, so often sentenced to wander on the face of the whole earth; to be debarred from a heritage of land, and a fixed home. By leading a wandering life, the strong ties to morality of conduct are relaxed, because the relations of civil society are fluctuating. The ties of honour, truth, and probity are too transient to acquire the stability which subsists in a more settled state of residence. But such was their sentence from the Saviour, to be led captive to all nations and wander on the face of the whole earth, till the times of the gentiles should be fulfilled.