Hosea 2:8

"For she did not know that I gave her the grain, and the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baal."

These verses are primarily concerned with the sufferings and sorrows which will fall upon the people because of their turning away from God; but it is not merely the punishment of the whore which surfaces here; there are pointed citations of her guilt, also. Her self-induced ignorance and her brazen misuse of God's blessings are two such citations in this verse.

"She did not know ..." There was no excuse for this intellectual blindness. Israel, indeed the whole human race, had once known the true God (Romans 1:21). Prophet after prophet had pleaded with them in vain not to forget God, but to no avail. The thought of this verse was featured by Jesus himself in his sentence of destruction upon the city of Jerusalem, when he exclaimed: "If thou hadst known in this thy day, even thou, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now are they hid from thine eyes" (Luke 19:42). By that late date, when Jesus thus cried out against the city, it was apparent that the whore would never know (except for the righteous remnant).

"She did not know ... which they used for Baal ..." Note the shift from the singular "she" to the plural "they," indicating that it is the nation as a whole about which Hosea is speaking.

"Which they used for Baal ..." The guilt of this lies in the fact that the very wealth which God had bestowed upon Israel was used to build, ornament, promote and worship the vulgar old god of the Canaanites, Baal! Gold was used for images of that so-called `god', as when Jeroboam I manufactured and installed the golden calves at Dan and at Bethel. Such wealth was also lavished upon the building of pagan shrines, the support of the pagan priesthood, etc. Thus, the very wealth which God had bestowed upon them became, in their hands, the instrument of their dishonoring him. It is evident here that, "The prophet is thinking simultaneously of his unfaithful wife and of unfaithful Israel."[31] "Baal was the Phoenician sun-god, answering to the female Astarte, the moon-goddess."[32] As noted above, Jezebel had taken the lead in the introduction of this abomination into Israel, when, as the daughter of Ethbaal, she came from her native Tyre to be the wife of Ahab the king of Israel.