I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel: there [is] the whoredom of Ephraim, Israel is defiled.
Ver. 10. I have seen an horrible thing in the house of Israel] Now a very den of thieves, as Hosea 6:9, a pantheon of all sorts of idols, a chamber of imagery, an Egyptian temple, gay and goodly without, but within an ox or calf, with "women weeping for Tammuz," Ezekiel 8:12; Ezekiel 8:14, that is, for Osiris, king of Egypt, whose image (under the shape of an ox) his wife, Isis, had advanced to be idolatrously there adored. This kind of abomination Jeroboam had learned in Egypt (whither he fled from Solomon, his master), and brought into the house of Israel. And whereas those idolaters said, "The Lord seeth us not, the Lord hath forsaken the earth," Ezekiel 8:12; "I have seen it," saith God, and been sore troubled at it, and even frightened; so as a man is quando horripilatur, when his hairs stand on end; as when the devil appeareth to him like a hairy satyr. See Leviticus 17:7. See Trapp on " Lev 17:7 " Certain it is that God hateth sin (but especially idolatry, that abominable thing, as he calleth it, Jer 44:4) worse than he hateth the devil himself; for he hateth the devil for sin's sake, and not sin for the devil's sake. Idolatry must needs be so much the more odious to him, because therein the devil sets up himself in the place of God; and requires men (as once he did Christ himself) to fall down and worship him. See Deuteronomy 32:17 1 Corinthians 10:20 Revelation 9:20. So he dealeth by the poor Indians of this day, compelling them to worship him with bodily worship, and tormenting them, if they do not, worse (if worse may be) than the cruel Spaniards; who suppose they show the wretches favour, when they do not, for their pleasure, whip them with cords, and day by day drop their naked bodies with burning bacon. The Hebrew word here used hath some letters more than ordinary in it, to increase the signification, and to show what a very horrible thing idolatry is (שׁעריריה). Hebrew Text Note It is spurca pollutio, as Jeremiah 23:14, and worse. See Jeremiah 2:11,12; Jeremiah 18:13, and know that God doth not use to aggravate things beyond truth, as men do, witness Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 3:14, "Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?" Or is it of set purpose? Num de industria? so Buxtorf rendereth it. Is it for the nonce, to provoke me? Or Nunquid desolatio? so Arias Montanus; as if he should say, What! you to oppose the command of a king? If this be suffered, what desolation must needs follow! But this is not God's way; he lays no more words upon a thing than the matter amounteth to. If he call idolatry filth, fornication, abomination, a horrible thing, such as a man would start or stand aghast at, we may be sure it is so. The Septuagint here render it φρικωδη, things to be trembled at, or shrieked at. In Barbary it is death for the Xeriff's wife, when she seeth a man, though but through a casement, not suddenly to shriek out. God is a jealous God, and allows not his to look toward an idol. If they do he will soon see it, and visit for it. "I have seen," &c.
There is the whoredom of Ephraim] Thus God looketh upon it as filthiness and nastiness which the people beheld as fineness and neatness. And the same do all (that have the mind of God, and senses exercised to discern between good and evil) judge of all the Popish pomp and palterment, wherewith they bewitch the deluded common people, as the serpent Scytale doth the fleeing passenger, whom when she cannot overtake, yet with her beautiful colours she doth so astonish and amaze him, that he hath no power to pass away till stung to death.