Hosea 10:9

"O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood; the battle against the children of iniquity doth not overtake them in Gibeah."

The commentators usually refer this sin mentioned here to the elevation of Saul and the rejection of the Theocracy, and that was no doubt the very thing signified in the first mention of it (Hosea 9:9); but by Hosea's mention of the same place again here, he evidently had in mind something more than the rejection of the Theocracy, a fact made almost certain by the mention of "their two transgressions" in Hosea 10:10, following. See more on that verse, below.

"There they stood ..." This carries the meaning that the evil conduct in view here did not change. Israel continued in it; even the war that followed and resulted in the near-extermination of the tribe of Benjamin did not even touch the real problem, the punishment of which God Himself would bring about in the forthcoming destruction of the whole kingdom. Well, what was the gross sin that lay at the very root of Israel's debauchery and apostasy from God? See under verse 10. As Given noted, "The words here meant that Israel, since the days of Gibeah, persevered in the same sin, or a like sin of the Gibeahites."[18]