They themselves abjure their allegiance; for they have found out that their king is a king Log, and can do them no good.  A king, set up in opposition to God’s will, cannot save.  The ruin of their projects teaches godless men at last that they have been fools to take their own way; for all defences, recourses, and protectors, chosen in defiance of God, prove powerless when the strain comes.  The annihilation of one half of their sin sickens them of the other.  The calves and the monarchy stood or fell together.  It is a dismal thing to have to bear the brunt of chastisement for what we see to have been a blunder as well as a crime.  But such is the fate of those who seek other gods and another king.

In verse 4 Hosea recurs to Israel’s crime, and appends a description of the chastisement, substantially the same as before, but more detailed, which continues till verse 8.  The sin now is contemplated in its effects on human relations.  Before, it was regarded in relation to God.  But men who are wrong with Him cannot be right with one another.  Morality is rooted in religion, and if we lie to God, we shall not be true to our brother.  Hence, passing over all other sins for the present, Hosea fixes upon one, the prevalence of which strikes at the very foundation of society.  What can be done with a community in which lying has become a national characteristic, and that even in formal agreements?  Honey-combed with falsehood, it is only fit for burning.

Sin is bound by an iron link to penalty.  Therefore, says Hosea, God’s judgment springs up, like a bitter plant (the precise name of which is unknown) in the furrows, where the farmer did not know that its seeds lay.  They little dreamed what they were sowing when they scattered abroad their lies, but this is the fruit of these.  ’Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap’; and whatever other crop we may hope to gather from our sins, we shall gather that bitter one which we did not expect.  The inevitable connection of sin and judgment, the bitterness of its results, the unexpectedness of them, are all here, and to be laid to heart by us.

Then verses 5 and 6 dilate with keen irony on the fate of the first half of Israel’s sin—­the calf.  It was thought a god, but its worshippers shall be in a fright for it.  ‘Calves,’ says Hosea, though there was but one at Beth-el; and he uses the feminine, as some think, depreciatingly.  ‘Beth-aven’ or the ‘house of vanity,’ he says, instead of Beth-el, ’the house of God.’  A fine god whose worshippers had to be alarmed for its safety!  ’Its people’—­what a contrast to the name they might have borne, ‘My people’!  God disowns them, and says, ‘They belong to it, not to Me.’  The idolatrous priests of the calf worship will tremble when that image, which had been shamefully their ‘glory,’ is carried off to Assyria, and given as a present to ’king Jareb’—­a name for the king of Assyria meaning the fighting or quarrelsome king.  The captivity of the god is the shame of