And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.
All the hires thereof shall be burnt with the fire - the wealth which Israel boasted of receiving from her idols as the "rewards" or hire for worshipping them (Hosea 2:5; Hosea 2:12).
And all the idols thereof will I lay desolate - i:e., give them up to the foe to strip of the silver and gold with which they are overlaid.
For she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot. Israel gathered (made for herself) her idols from the gold and silver received from false gods, (as she thought) the hire of her worshipping them; and they shall again become what they had been before, the hire of spiritual harlotry - i:e., the prosperity of the foe, who also being worshippers of idols will ascribe the acquisition to their idols (Maurer). Grotius explains it, The offerings sent to Israel's temple by the Assyrians, whose idolatry Israel adopted, shall go back to the Assyrians, her teachers in idolatry, as the hire or fee for having taught it. The image of a harlot's hire for the supposed temporal rewards of spiritual fornication is more common in Scripture (Hosea 9:1, "O Israel ... thou hast gone a whoring from thy God; thou hast loved a reward upon every grain-floor." Literal prostitution of the person was practiced in Babylon, Cyprus, and Syria, and the hire was dedicated in honour of their impure goddesses (cf. Hosea 4:14; also the precept in Deuteronomy 23:18, "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow").