Commentary on Hosea John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
filthy reward from adulterers. Such are idolaters. For God offers himself freely to us, and testifies that he will perform the part of a father and preserver; but the greater part, despising the blessing of God, flee elsewhere, and invent for themselves false gods, as we see to be done under the Papacy: for who are the patrons (nutricios --- nourishers) they implore, when either drought or any other adverse season threatens sterility and want? They have an innumerable multitude of gods to whom they flee.
They are then strumpets who hunt for gain from adulterers; while, at the same time, God freely promises to be a husband to them, and to take care that nothing should be wanting. Since, then, they are not satisfied with the blessing of God alone, it is a meretricious lust, which is insatiable, and in itself filthy and disgraceful.
We now then see what the Prophet repudiates in the people of Israel, and that is, They hoped for a larger abundance of corn from their idols than from the true God, as was the case with the idolaters mentioned by Jeremiah, `when we served,' they said, `the queen of heaven, we abounded in wine and corn,' (Jeremiah 44:17.)
They compared God with idols, and denied that they were so well and so sumptuously provided for when they worshipped God alone. Since, then, idolaters give honour to fictitious gods, so as to think them to be more liberal to them than the true God, this is the reason that the Prophet now so severely blames Israel, when he says that they loved a meretricious reward on all the floors of wheat. It then follows
Hosea 9:2
2. The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her. 52
2. Area et torcular non pascet eos, et mustum mentietur in ea.
God now denounces such a punishment as the Israelites deserved. They had been drawn away, as we have said, from the pure worship of God by allurements; they hoped for more profit from superstitions. Hence God shows, that he would on this account punish them by taking away from them their wine and corn, as we have already noticed in Hosea 2: for it is the only way by which the Lord restores men to a sane mind, or at least renders them inexcusable, to deprive them of his blessings.
The harlot, as long as gain is to be had, as long as she surpasses all honest and chaste matrons in her dress and mode of living, is pleased with herself and blinded by her own splendour; but when she is reduced to extreme want, when she sees herself to be the laughing-stock of all, and when she drags a miserable life in poverty, she then sighs and owns how infatuated she had been in leaving her husband. So the Lord now declares by his Prophet, that he would thus deal with the Israelites, that they might no longer please themselves with such delusions.
Hence he says, The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them, and the new wine shall disappoint them, (mentietur illis --- shall lie to them;) --- that is, the vineyards shall not answer their expectation. It is the same as though he said, ``As these men regard only their stomach, as they deem nothing of any moment but provision, 52'And the choice wine shall deceive them.' — Newcome. The true reading no doubt is {,{בם
and not ,{` }בהher,' confirmed by all the early versions and by several of the best MSS., and is adopted by Horsley as well as Newcome. And so does Calvin in his exposition take the word. --- Ed.