14.  Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel in the day of battle:  the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children. 15.  So shall Beth-el do unto you because of your great wickedness:  in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.’—­HOSEA x. 1-15.

The prophecy of this chapter has two themes—­Israel’s sin, and its punishment.  These recur again and again.  Reiteration, not progress of thought, characterises Hosea’s fiery stream of inspired eloquence.  Conviction of sin and prediction of judgment are his message.  We trace a fourfold repetition of it here, and further note that in each case there is a double reference to Israel’s sin as consisting in the rebellion which set up a king and in the schism which established the calf worship; while there is also a double phase of the punishment corresponding to these, in the annihilation of the kingdom and the destruction of the idols.

The first section may be taken to be verses 1-3.  The image of a luxuriant vine laden with fruit is as old as Jacob’s blessing of the tribes (Gen. xlix. 22), where it is applied to Joseph, whose descendants were the strength of the Northern Kingdom.  Hosea has already used it, and here it is employed to set forth picturesquely the material prosperity of Israel.  Probably the period referred to is the successful reign of Jeroboam II.  But prosperity increased sin.  The more fruit or material wealth, the more altars; the better the harvests, the more the obelisks or pillars to gods, falsely supposed to be the authors of the blessings.  The words are as condensed as a proverb, and are as true to-day as ever.  Israel had attributed its prosperity to Baal (Hosea ii. 8).  The misuse of worldly wealth and the tendency of success to draw us away from God, and to blind to the true source of all blessing, are as rife now as then.

The root of the evil was, as always, a heart divided—­that is, between God and Baal—­or, perhaps, ‘smooth’; that is, dissimulating and insincere.  In reality, Baal alone possesses the heart which its owner would share between him and Jehovah.  ‘All in all, or not at all,’ is the law.  Whether Baals or calves were set beside God, He was equally deposed.

Then, with a swift turn, Hosea proclaims the impending judgment, setting himself and the people as if already in the future.  He hears the first peal of the storm, and echoes it in that abrupt ‘now.’  The first burst of the judgment shatters dreams of innocence, and the cowering wretches see their sin by the lurid light.  That discovery awaits every man whose heart has been ‘divided.’  To the gazers and to himself masks drop, and the true character stands out with appalling clearness.  What will that light show us to be?  An unnamed hand overthrows altars and pillars.  No need to say whose it is.  One half of Israel’s sin is crushed at a blow, and the destruction of the other follows immediately.