They return, but not to the most High: they are like a deceitful bow: their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue: this shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.
They return, but not to the Most High - or, 'to one who is not the Most High,' one very different from Him, a stock or a stone. So the Septuagint.
They are like a deceitful bow - (Psalms 78:57). A bow which, from its faulty construction, shoots wide of the mark. So Israel pretends to seek God, but turns aside to idols.
Their princes shall fall by the sword for the rage of their tongue - their boast of safety from Egyptian aid, and their "lies" (Hosea 7:13) whereby they pretended to serve God, while worshipping idols; also, their perverse defense for their idolatries and blasphemies against God and his prophets (Psalms 73:9; Psalms 120:2-3).
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt - their "fall" shall be the subject of "derision" to Egypt, to whose king, So, they applied for help (Hosea 9:3; Hosea 9:6, "Ephraim shall return to Egypt ... Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them;" 2 Kings 17:4).
Remarks:
(1) The very love of God, and His willingness to save and "heal," is turned, by the sinner's perversity, only into a fresh occasion for discovering his inbred "iniquity." The malady was only brought out into greater virulence by the loving remedy applied (Hosea 7:1), as if the patient were to turn upon the good physician who sought to cure him. No power short of the Almighty Spirit of God can conquer the self-destroying stubbornness of the carnal heart.
(2) Want of 'consideration' ruins millions (Hosea 7:2). They will not commune with their own hearts, and consult their consciences. They will not stop to say to themselves that God "remembers all their wickedness," however they may try to dismiss it from their memory. And what God remembers, that God will take a strict account of. Even "now" men's own doings beset them, encircling them wheresoever they go, and at all times; and are destined at last, unless repented of, and cleansed in the blood of the atonement, to be cited as so many witnesses against the sinner, all whose most minute and secret ways are ever 'before the face of God.'
(3) The king and the people in Israel were a mutual curse to each other. He who ought to have been the punisher of sin was its encourager. His delight was in wickedness; and they, seeing this, were glad to gratify his corrupt taste by first doing, and then recounting for his amusement, deeds that should not be so much as named. Adultery was the universal sin of all classes (Hosea 7:4). Their heart was as an oven, first heated by Satan, and thou left to burn with the pent-up fire and fuel of the corrupt passions. Though not breaking out into actual crime at all times, the interval of rest is rather apparent than real. The evil spirit has lodged the leaven of lust in the soul, and leaves it to work of itself, secure of the result. Like the baker sleeping at night, Satan rests secure that, at the first opportunity, the hidden fires will break forth, ready for the execution of whatever purpose of evil he devises and suggests. The actual wickedness of men's lives bears a very small proportion to what burns within their hearts! But when lust is inwardly fostered, it will, as occasion presents itself, break forth into outward sin (Hosea 7:4; Hosea 7:6).
(4) How many there are who make holy days days of excess! Even the great forget their dignity, as the princes tempted the King of Israel to forget his, and to play the buffoon, through bottles of wine (Hosea 7:5). Then, as "wine is a mocker" (Proverbs 20:1), so he who indulges too freely in wine soon "stretches out his hand with scorners." Scoffers are the boon companions of drunkards. The king or nobleman who listens to such flatteries, listens to his own ruin; even as the wretched King Zachariah was "lain in wait" for by Shallum and those who "made him sick" with wine (Hosea 7:5-6). But plots of sin at last recoil on their originators. Those who had inflamed the popular passions perished by them (Hosea 7:7), just as the kindlers of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace were themselves "devoted" by it. Murderers of others were murdered themselves, so that of all Israel's kings but eight died a natural death.
(5) The professors of religion who needlessly intermix with sinners, as Ephraim did with the pagan, are sure to suffer by it in religious principle and practice (Hosea 7:8). Ephraim was as "a cake not turned," overburnt on one side, doughy and unpenetrated by the heat on the other side. The fire spoiled, and did not penetrate through it. Such are many religious professors, having on the one hand outward warmth, on the other hand inward coldness. God's fire of discipline has outwardly impressed, but not inwardly changed them. On one side they are overdone, on the other not vitally influenced at all. Their seeming zeal for the Lord, like Jehu's, is only zeal for themselves.
(6) Yet all the while Ephraim was unconscious of his own real state. The foreign powers, Assyria and Egypt, whose aid he had invoked, only "devoured his strength" (Hosea 7:9); yet he knew it not. Like men who shut their eyes to the gray hairs here and there, the tokens of their approaching old age and death, so men spiritually will not take notice of the signs of their own declension in vital religion. The outward forms and the stated services remain, but, like Samson, after he had, for the sake of sensual pleasure, betrayed the secret of his strength they are unconscious that God has departed from them And when God's chastisements are sent upon them, their "pride" (Hosea 7:10) keeps them from acknowledging and repenting of their sins, and "returning to the Lord their God." "For all" their afflictions they will not "seek" Him, so that nothing remains but destroying judgments, now that all the means of correction and grace have been tried in vain. Yet, like a silly dove, Ephraim, when ruin threatened him from God, still called to Egypt, who could not help him, instead of calling to God, who both could and would. Israel thought to make each of the two rival empires, Assyria and Egypt, to be her helper by turns against the other. It was seemingly a clever piece of state policy, but proved to be the very means of her destruction, because she had forsaken God. Let our statesmen beware of any fancied security resting on the so-called "balance of power" in Europe, and learn that our true safety is in the favour of God alone. God can "spread his net upon" the silly dove, which leaves its nest to flee elsewhere for help in time of alarm, and can "bring down" also the high-soaring "fowls of the heaven" (Hosea 7:12).
(7) All who depart from God to any human help are like the bird that "flees" (Hosea 7:13) from her secure resting-place only to be caught in the net of 'destruction.' "Woe" is their heritage. Perversity, short-sighted selfishness, and ingratitude are their ruin. God hath "redeemed them" at the cost of His beloved Son's suffering: they requite Him by lying misrepresentations of His character and His dealings, and of His people, and of all true religion. Then, when just judgments descend on them, they "cry" indeed, but it is the cry of impatience under pain, the mere "howling" of animal suffering "upon their beds" of anguish, not the cry of a child to a chastening but loving father from "their heart" (Hosea 7:14). Instead of complaining to God, they complain of God, and are angry, not with themselves, but with God. It is true "they assemble themselves together" as if for a religious service; but if they come before God at all, it is as a tumultuous assembly clamouring for "corn and wine," God's gifts, but having no longing after God Himself. Theirs is the cry of Esau, who only desired his father's blessing for the sake of the earthly wealth which it carried with it, not the prayer of "the generation of them that seek thy face, O God of Jacob" (margin, Psalms 24:6).
(8) Whether God tried chastening, or "strengthened the arms" of Ephraim (Hosea 7:15), all means alike proved vain. They only rebelled and imagined mischief against God. 'Man would dethrone God if he could' (Pusey). Whenever under trial they turned, it was "not to the Most High" (Hosea 7:16). When the God of Israel would have heat his covenant-nation as a bow to direct arrows against the kingdom of Satan, pagandom, and ungodliness, they were "like a deceitful bow," which carries not its arrows true to the mark: "the rage of their tongue" was "as an arrow shot out" (Jeremiah 9:8) against God and man: and ultimately they themselves "fall" by it. The very pagan were amazed at it. Egypt, in whom they trusted, made them "their derision." The raging and suicidal fanaticism of the Jews astonished even the Romans, who were the executioners of God's vengeance on them. Such is the portion of all who forsake God for the world: the world, which was the instrument of their sin, shall be the instrument of their punishment.