Hosea 4:11-14

Faults in the life breed errors in the brain, and errors ¢n the brain produce in turn faults in the life.

Thus it was with Israel. Debauchery and drunkenness, and this to an extreme degree, had darkened the understanding, hardened the heart, paralyzed the will, and seared the conscience. In this enfeebled state of their intellectual and moral powers, they had recourse, in cases of doubt or difficulty, not to the high priest, or prophets of God, or Divine Word, for guidance and direction, but to their images of wood or idolatrous divining staff.

I. SIN LEADS TO SIN . If sorrows love a train, sins like a series. How often the culprit endeavors to conceal his guilt by lying, and thus adds one sin to another! Lewdness and intemperance, as here intimated, frequently go hand in hand. Since, then, sins are so linked to each other, our safety as well as our duty is to resist the very beginnings and buddings of evil in the soul. Every time sin is indulged the power of resistance is weakened, until men become the prey of the evil one, and, after a few weak wrestlings of the spirit against the flesh, the heart is easily taken captive. An effectual way of avoiding vice or any vicious course is to practice the opposite virtues. This is vastly more than forming a theory of virtue in one's thoughts; for, as Butler has shown, "from our very faculty of habits passive impressions, by being repeated, grow weaker," but "practical habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts."

II. THE FOLLY OF SIN . The stupidity of which Israel gave evidence is traced to a spirit of whoredoms. The ruach , or spirit, in this passage somewhat resembles the personification of Ate by the Greeks, which in Homer denotes the infatuation or spirit of error that prompts to crime, then the crime committed, and also the punishment that overtakes crime. In the allegoric representation of Ate by Homer she has different and apparently contradictory attributes: as infatuation, taking possession of the mind; and blinding its faculties through passion. She has tender feet, does not tread on the ground, but moves gently and noiselessly over men's heads, surprising them in their unguarded moments, to their unspeakable injury. Again, in the commission of crime her gait is marked by strength of body and firmness of step and strong excitement, while in the punishment of crime the retribution is sudden, powerful, and certain. In these two capacities, that is to say, the perpetration of crime and its punishment, she is vigorous and firm of step. To the spirit of whoredom as an evil spirit of infatuation, like this Greek Ate, bewilderingly misleading men to the perpetration of evil and making them obnoxious to punishment, the prophet traces Israel's stupidity in consulting idols and similar means of divination on the one hand, and their sin in departing from God, the loving Husband and rightful Head of his people, on the other. Thus the spirit of whoredoms may be compared with similar Scripture expressions, such as a spirit of jealousy, a lying spirit, an unclean spirit; or it may denote the vehement spirit with which men, bent on idolatry and adultery—adultery both in the spiritual and carnal sense—were hurried along; while the faithlessness of the adulteress fitly represents the spiritual infidelity of Israel.

III. ZEAL CONTRARY TO KNOWLEDGE . The people of Israel fancied that they were worshipping God on the high hills and under the tall trees; but this was ignorant will-worship, or worse. God had appointed Jerusalem as the place of his worship, and had commanded sacrifices and incense to be offered there, and nowhere else.

1. The multiplication of altars and memorials elsewhere, however praiseworthy Israel might imagine it, was really a violation of the Divine command; and so God regarded it, for "behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams? Will-worship may have a show of wisdom in it, and may be well meaning, yet it is will-worship all the same. If we will worship God acceptably, then it must be in the place he has appointed and in the manner he has himself prescribed. Mountains have often been associated with sacred service and sacred scenes. Thus the sacrifice of Isaac was to be on a mountain; the giving of the Law was on a mountain; the temple was erected on a mountain; the transfiguration, the crucifixion, and the ascension, were each on a mountain. But mountains became scenes of idolatry and sin, and therefore God, when he forbade such worship, forbade the scenes thereof.

2. Israel's zeal was worthy of a better cause. That zeal characterized their sacrifices, for it is the intensive form of the verb that is used —yezabbechu (Piel), not yizbechu (Qal); it distinguished their burning of incense, for again it is first yeqatteru , not yaqteru . "The words express," says Pusey, "that this which God forbade they did diligently; they sacrificed much and diligently; they burned incense much and diligently." Nor was this all. They performed with equal diligence both the important parts of the service—the sacrifice and the burning of incense.

3. The blood of the sacrifice signified atonement; the pleasant smell of the incense typified service acceptably offered. "Incense, being fragrant, represented that which is pleasing, and which has in it acceptability; and when offered along with prayer, praise, or any feeling of the soul, exhibited a type of the merits of the Surety enveloping his people's services."

IV. MEN 'S OWN SINS ARE OFTEN MADE THEIR SCOURGES . Never did the great poet of human nature give expression to a truer sentiment than that—

"The gods are just, and of our pleasant ricer

Make instruments to scourge us."

This was eminently the case with Israel. They had committed spiritual adultery, renouncing their subjection to him by violation of the marriage covenant, and thereby forfeiting that protection secured to them by the conditions of that covenant. "They," says an old writer," who commit idolatry, and follow false religions, and so do renounce subjection to God, and put themselves from under his directions, do also put themselves from under his protection; for in both these respects it is true that Israel went a-whoring from under their God." They prostituted themselves to idols, and withdrew from under God's authority, casting off the obedience they owed him and the reverence which was his due. Nay, more, fathers of families and husbands at the head of households were not only guilty of spiritual whoredom or idolatry; they were guilty of carnal whoredom with those vile priestesses to abominable idols and prostitutes to the worshippers—devotee-harlots who had consecrated themselves to a life of sin, as though such shameful desecration of themselves were consecration to Divine service. Now they are in turn disgraced and distressed by the whoredom of their daughters and the adultery of their wives; nor are they allowed to comfort themselves by the hope of a speedy cessation of such corruption, for, unchecked by chastisement, the licentiousness continues, prosperity in sin tempting to perseverance. "So," says Pusey, "through their own disgrace and bitter griefs, in the persons of those whose honor they most cherished, they should learn how ill they themselves had done, in departing from him who is the Father and Husband of every soul. The sins of the fathers descend very often to the children, both in the way of nature, that the children inherit strong temptations to their parents' sin, and by way of example, that they greedily imitate, often exaggerate them."