The wind hath bound her up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.
The wind hath bound her up in her wings. Israel shall be swept away from her land (Hosea 4:16) suddenly and violently, as if by "the wings of the wind" (Psalms 18:10; Psalms 104:3; Jeremiah 4:11-12, "A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, not to fan, nor to cleanse, even a full wind").
And they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices - disappointed to their shame in their hope of help through their sacrifices to idols. That disappointment has ever since weaned them from love of idols.
Remarks:
(1) The Lord begins His expostulation with His apostate people by calling them "children of Israel" - a name which ought to have fired them with a holy zeal not to prove unworthy of Israel, their God-fearing ancestor. How much more ought the name "Christian" incite us to walk worthy of Him whose name we bear!
(2) When God is about to enter into judgment with His people for sin, He appeals in His "controversy" with them to their own consciences to attest the righteousness of His dealings. In the great day of judgment every mouth shall be stopped, and conscience shall cause the lost to justify the Judge. The sinner shall be without excuse, and "speechless" as he who had not on the wedding garment (Matthew 22:11-12). If the former "inhabitants of the land" (Hosea 4:1) were cast out of it for their abominations, how could the righteous God connive at the same abominations perpetrated by His own people, who enjoyed so much higher privileges than their pagan predecessors? If the pagan and the Jew were punished for guilt, how shall we escape if we neglect the far-clearer revelation which we enjoy?
(3) Where there is neither truth nor mercy, uprightness nor generosity, there is no true "knowledge of God," however much men may know about God. For "hereby do we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.-Everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 2:3; 1 John 4:7-8). The speculative knowledge which unbelievers have, like Balaam, will only increase their condemnation: and bad practice is sure, sooner or later, to corrupt even such barren head-knowledge as they have. Then, when the soul is empty of good, it is sure to become full of evil, so that "swearing, lying," bloodshed, and "adultery" (Hosea 4:2), will, as in Israel, "burst through" all restraints, as a flood sweeping away the whole embankment through which a passage has been once made. Then as the outward world is made by God to correspond to the inward, at last even the productions of the earth-the beasts, the fowl, and the fish of the adjoining seas-are withdrawn from a godless land, and the physical desolation answers to the moral desolation caused by its inhabitants (Hosea 4:3).
(4) When the Lord has a controversy with presumptuous scorners (Hosea 4:4), it is useless for man to "strive" with the Lord in their behalf. They who resist the ministers of God in the exercise of their office, resist God Himself; and as such, if unchanged, they must be given over to their doom. "He that despiseth you," said Christ to His 70 missionaries, "despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth Him that sent me" (Luke 10:16). Let us pray for ourselves, our families and our nation, that we and they may never fall into such a state.
(5) Many fancy that they know God, who know Him not. Of these it may be said by God, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). Whatever else men know, if they know not God as a reconciled Father in Christ, they are destitute of the only knowledge which is essential to an immortal being. And what renders their ignorance inexcusable is, they might know the saving truth, and Him who is the Truth, if they would know both it and Him. But if they will not, God will reject them even as they reject the knowledge of Him. He will forget them and their children who forget Him (Hosea 4:6).
(6) How often people turn the very resources and increased numbers which God gives, in order that He may therewith be the more glorified, into the instruments of increased sinning against Him a (Hosea 4:7.) Then God, in righteous retribution, makes what should have been their glory become their shame. Increased wealth, begetting pride, becomes the occasion of falling. An abundant population, producing haughty self-reliance, tempts nations to war, and so involves them in misery and shame. Compare 2 Kings 14:8-14. Let us see that we use God's multiplied gifts to the glory of the Giver; so shall they tend to our own true honour, and not to our shame.
(7) The priests in Israel, profiting by the calf-worship which was countenanced by the rulers, and deriving their fees from the idolatrous sacrifices, not only connived at, but even abetted, the national apostasy (Hosea 4:8). So too often in our own days Christian ministers and Christian laymen, from fear of man and love of popularity, shrink from denouncing the fashionable sins and follies of all classes, the spurious liberalism in religion, the equivocal amusements, luxury, absence of modesty in apparel, and covetousness, so prevalent. Ministers conniving at the corrupt ways of the people, and the people screening their sin behind the worldliness of ministers, are both alike in guilt, and shall therefore be also alike in punishment. God will make their sin their punishment; their own presumptuous doings shall be their reward. Nor can anymore awful punishment be imagined than sin left to its own unrestricted working in the transgressor. In hell the libertine, the covetous, the ambitions, and the greedy shall have the same restless longings as on earth, but shall never have them satisfied. Even already here they who "have left off to take heed to the Lord" are tormented by their own insatiable desires-eating, but not having enough; drinking, yet ever thirsting for more; and never content with the present.
(8) Of all sins none more blunt the fine edge of the understanding, and prostitute and degrade the affections, than whoredom, voluptuousness, and drunkenness (Hosea 4:11), Any lust indulged will paralyze the better feelings of the heart. Then the step to superstition becomes an easy one, and one soon taken. Then from the parents the evil descends to the children; the children inherit the evil nature and copy the bad example of their elders, and even exceed them in turpitude; so that in just retribution the children's sin is made a source of bitter shame and grief to the parents. Nor can the parents upbraid their children with the sin of which they themselves set the example. Let all professing Christians, and parents especially, beware of cherishing any secret or open lust, which may take away their heart, deaden the liveliness of their religious experiences, and act prejudicially on the character and everlasting interests of those nearest and dearest to them.
(9) Now that Israel had fallen through willful blindness (Hosea 4:14-15), Judah was to beware of being corrupted by needless contact with her, especially by taking any part in or giving a tacit sanction to her idolatries: so now Christians should beware of all defilements of those around them, whether in doctrine or practice. Members of the pure reformed churches should give no countenance by their gifts or their presence to the corruptions and idolatries of the Roman and Greek apostasies. Religious professors should beware of sanctioning the worldly usages and amusements in which their God and Saviour can have no place, and where Satan's anti-trinity reigns - "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." They who, like Ephraim, are "joined" heart and body "to idols" must be "left" to themselves, to eat the awful fruit of their own ways (Hosea 4:17): the godly should have nothing to say to them, lest, partaking in their sin, the godly should partake also in their punishment. It is the last and most hopeless stage of guilt when the sinner's conscience ceases to chide him, and the godly must leave him to himself. The sinner, like Israel, often is impatient of the narrowness of God's way; but woe be to him when God gives him his guilty wish, and lets him roam at "large" (Hosea 4:16), like Israel in Assyria, in a broad way indeed, but one which ends in destruction! Israel, who was once borne by Yahweh "on eagles' wings" (Exodus 19:4), was now about to be borne on "the wings of the wind," like chaff driven away. Let us all shun Israel's sin, as we would escape Israel's doom. Let us shrink from every pollution, and give all diligence, amidst our higher privileges, to make our calling and election sure.