Commentary on Hosea John Calvin
HOSEA
righteousness would not lose their expense and toil, he says, the Lord will rain upon you the fruit of righteousness.
Now follows the other verse, which, as I have said, completes the passage, Ye have ploughed ungodliness, iniquity have ye reaped: ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood
The Prophet shows that the people had in vain been daily admonished, and so kindly and sweetly allured by the Lord; for they had not only slighted wholesome warnings, but had, in their perverse wickedness, abandoned themselves to a contrary course: ye have ploughed, he says, impiety; God has exhorted you to sow righteousness, --- what have ye sown? Impiety; and then ye have reaped iniquity. Some think that the punishments which the people had to bear are pointed out here; as though the Prophet had said, ``God has returned to you such a produce as was suitable to your sowing; ye are therefore satiated with falsehood --- that is, with your own false confidence.'' But he seems rather to pursue the same strain of thought, and to say, that they had ploughed impiety --- that is, that they had been from the beginning ungodly; and then, that they had reaped iniquity --- that is, that they had continued their wickedness to the very harvest, and laid up their fruit as it were in a storehouse, that they might satiate themselves with treachery. The Prophet, I think, speaks in this sense; but let there be a free choice. I only show what seems to me most suitable.
For it follows then, For thou hast trusted in thine own way, in the multitude of thy valiant ones Here the Prophet points out the chief spring-head of all sins; for the Israelites, trusting in their own counsels, gave no ear to the word of God: and then, being fortified by their own strength, they dreaded not his judgements, nor fled to his pledged protection to defend them. This pride is not then named here by the Prophet without reason as the chief source of all sins. For when one distrusts his own wisdom, or is afraid, being conscious of his weakness, he can be easily subdued; but when pride possesses man's minds so that he thinks himself wise, nothing will then prevail with him, neither counsel nor instruction. It is the same when any one greatly extols his own strength, and is inflated with pride, he cannot be made tractable, were he admonished a hundred times. The Prophet then defines here the falsehood, the impiety, and the iniquity of which he had been speaking. For though the people sinned in various ways, the fountain and root was in this lie or falsehood, that they were wont to set up their own strength in opposition to God, and thought themselves so endued with wisdom, that they had no need of teachers. Since, then, the people were so blinded with their own pride, the Prophet shows here that it was this lie with which they had satiated themselves. It follows ---
Hosea 10:14-15
14. Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
14. Et (vel, ideo, copula enim illativam particulam valet, ideo) surget tumultus in populis tuis; et unaquaeque munitionum tuarum vastabitur, secundum vastationem
Salman Beth-arbel: in die proelii mater super filios allidetur.
15. So shall Bethel do unto you because of your great wickedness: in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.