Hosea 5:1

Rebuke of Israel’s apostasy, Hosea 5:1-7.

Hosea 5:1 opens with a summons.

Priests Already condemned in chapter 4.

House of Israel The people.

House of the king The king and his courtiers. Toward [“unto”] Not all three classes, but only the leaders, as 1b indicates.

Judgment Not judicial powers, but the sentence of judgment about to be uttered. So, margin, “against you is the judgment.”

Because The reason for the judgment. They have caused the people to stumble. The latter are compared to unsuspecting birds, which fly to the places where they may expect to find shelter; instead they are cruelly trapped.

Mizpah Probably Mizpah in Gilead (Judges 10:17; Judges 11:11), the same as Ramoth-gilead (Joshua 20:8; 2 Kings 9:1, etc.) now es-Salt.

Tabor The well-known mountain of that name, east of Nazareth, in Galilee. Some have thought that these localities represent the territory east and west of the Jordan respectively, the combination of the two indicating that the wrongdoing of the leaders covered the whole land. It is more likely, however, that the two places are mentioned because there the immoral practices connected with the cult were most dangerously seductive.