Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as [other] people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor.
Ver. 1. Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people] Not as good people, for they have reason to rejoice, and are called to it in both Testaments; joy is the just man's portion, but thou art naught all over, thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, who will shortly meet thee as a bear robbed of her whelps, or as the jealous husband doth his adulteress. Again, not as other bad people, for they may revel (rejoice indeed they cannot) and be merry, after a sort; rejoice they may in the face, as the apostle phraseth it, and from the teeth outward; some kind of frothy and flashy mirth they may have (and let them make them merry with it, it is all they are like to have), but so mayest not thou; because thou hast had warning sufficient, and hast known thy Master's will, but not done it; yea, thou hast done that abominable thing that other nations never yet did, Jeremiah 2:11,12, thou hast changed thy God for those that are no gods; thou hast forsaken the fountain, and run to the cistern, &c.; which is such a prodigious wickedness, as the very heavens are astonished at, and are horribly afraid, yea, desolate; mourning, and, as it were, melting at this horrid act. Shall the heavens mourn, and wilt thou rejoice? yea, fetch a frisk, or dance a galliard for joy, as the word signifies (גיל, in Graec. αγαλλιαν, to dance a galliard): what if other nations do so, when they have got the better of their enemies, or gathered in their harvest, Isaiah 9:4, or otherwise have all things go well with them? yet revolted Israel had no such cause, unless they were upon better terms with God. Say that this were the time when Joash beat Benhadad thrice over, and recovered the cities of Israel, 2 Kings 13:15,19; or say it was at the time when he took Amaziah, and brought all the spoil of Jerusalem to Samaria, 2 Kings 14:13; or else when Pekah slew in Judah a hundred and twenty thousand in one day, and carried captive two hundred thousand, with much spoil: these were times of great mirth and jollity, it is confessed, 2 Chronicles 28:6,8. "But are there not with you, even with you, sins against the Lord your God" (as the prophet Oded there bespeaks them), and should not those sins be bewailed? Besides, are they not your brethren whom you have slaughtered and captivated? and can you have any joy of such a conquest, of civil wars that are - nullos habitura triumphos, about to have no victory, that are such a misery as all words (however wide) want compass to express? Hear what the prophet Amos (who was Hosea's contemporary) saith to this, "Ye which rejoice in a thing of nought" (so he calleth their victories, present prosperity, pomp, and pride), "which say, have we not taken to us horns by our own strength? Behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel," that shall tame you, and take you a link lower (as they say), so that "your laughter shall be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness," James 4:9. There is ever a snare (or a cord) in the sin of the wicked, viz. to strangle their joy with; "but the righteous sing and rejoice," Proverbs 29:6 .
For thou hast gone a whoring from thy God] That is a foul business, and may well dampen thy joy. Sins are the snuffs that dim our candlestick, the leaven that soureth our passovers, the sanies of a plague sore that threateneth our very life. And whereas the sins of others are but rebellions against God, the sins of his professed people are treacheries; they go a whoring from their God, desuper Deo suo, vel omisso Deo suo, from under their God, or laying aside their God; casting him, as it were, into a bycorner. Hence those pathetic complaints in Jeremiah, Jeremiah 18:13, "Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing": filthiness in a stew is nothing so odious as filthiness in a virgin. And again, Jeremiah 32:30, "The children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil from their youth." God takes evil so heinously from them, as if they had never done him any good service all their days; or as if they were the only sinners upon earth; they were so much worse, because they ought to have been better than other nations. Now God expects our sorrows should be proportionable to our sins; Rejoice not, therefore, but (by a liptote) weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you.
Thou hast loved a reward (or a harlot's hire, mercedem meretriciam) upon every threshingfloor] i.e. Thou hast prostituted thyself to a loose idolatry; like to a common whore that goeth a whoring up and down the threshingfloors. Hence Boaz' fear lest it should be rumoured that Ruth had lain at his feet, and that a woman came into the floor, Ruth 3:14. Or else he meaneth (saith Diodati) some particular kind of idolatry used in the time of harvest and threshing: as if they would have acknowledged their increase to come by their idols' goodness. Such was that of the Metapontines, of whom Strabo tells the story, that when they had had a good harvest, and were grown rich thereby, they dedicated to Apollo at Delphi χρυσουν Yερος, a harvest of gold. See Trapp on " Hos 2:1 " &c