Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images.
Ver. 2. Their heart is divided] sc. from God; whose soul therefore is justly disjointed from them, Jeremiah 6:8. They professed to worship the true God, and yet they transferred the honour due to him alone upon dumb idols; they halted between two, and would needs serve two lords; but God would have none of that. "Be the gods of the heathen good fellows," saith one, "the true God is a jealous God, and will not part stakes with another." The double-minded man is not for his service; for he will be served truly, that there be no halting; and, totally, that there be no halving. Good therefore and worthy of all acceptation is the counsel of St James to such, James 4:8, "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded," or ye cloven-hearted, διψυχοι. Out with the corruption that cleaveth to your hearts; and then there will be a constance and evenness in your minds, mouths, and manners; which is absolutely necessary to such as draw nigh to God in holy duties, and the contrary abominable, Isaiah 29:13 .
Now shall they be found faulty] Sinners against their own souls, procurers of their own ruth and ruin. And this they shall so clearly be convinced of (as afflictio dat intellectum, smart makes wit), that they shall cry out, with Joseph's brethren, We are verily guilty, Genesis 42:21, and conscience awakened, shall answer as Reuben in the next verse, "Spake I not unto you, saying, Do not sin" (O do not this abominable thing): "and ye would not hear?" Did not the prophets foretell you what would be the fruit of your idolatries? did they not even slit up your hearts with the sacrificing knife of God's word (sharper than any two-edged sword), and lay all your evil thoughts naked and open, or dissected, quartered, and cleft in the backbone (as the apostle's word, τετραχηλισμενα, signifieth, Heb 4:13), but ye would not then be convinced of all, and falling down upon your face, worship God, as 1Co 14:24-25 ? Now you are found faulty, or guilty, and cry peccavi; I have sinned, or now you are, that is, shortly ye shall be, wasted and desolated, as some render it; or now shall they die (interibunt, so the Vulgate), shall they perish; how should they do otherwise whose heart, that seat of life, is cut in twain; and whom the jealous and just God will cut in twain (διχοτομησει), tearing their souls from their bodies by death, Satan's slaughter man, and appointing them their portion with hypocrites, Matthew 24:51 .
He shall break down their altars] He, that is, God, my God, Hosea 9:17, for this chapter is a continuation of that (though Gualter makes it the beginning of Hosea's seventh sermon). He, that excelleth he, that Aph-hu, 2 Kings 2:14. Even he, proved by five reasons to be one of God's attributes, by Mr Weemiss in his exposition of the moral law, Part I p. 162. Vide sis. Others render it thus: It shall break down their altars, Ipsum cor. It, that is, their heart (which indeed is the next antecedent), and happy had it been for them if their heart, divided from their wickedness, had been active in breakng down their altars in the prophet Isaiah's sense, Isaiah 27:9, as a fruit of their true repentance: "By this therefore," that is, by their affliction sanctified, "shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit" (and good fruit too) "to take away his sin; when" (in testimony of his sound repentance and self-abhorrency for former idolatry) "he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalk-stones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up." But it appears not anywhere that Israel was so well affected, though grievously afflicted; that his divided heart prompted him to any such holy practice. Rather it brought ruin upon him to the decolling of his altars and spoiling of his images (which he so doted on and delighted in), and so might well say to him, as Apollodorus the tyrant's heart did, who dreamed one night that he was flayed by the Scythians, and boiled in a caldron; and that his heart spake to him out of the kettle; It is I that have drawn thee to all this: thou mayest thank me for all, ‘ Eγω σοι τουτων αιτια ..