Commentary on Hosea John Calvin (continued)
HOSEA
adoption. We now perceive the mind of the Prophet. Let us proceed ---
Hosea 12:6-7
6. Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgement, and wait on thy
God continually.
6. Et tu ad Deum tuum convertere; bonitatem et judicium custodi; et spera in Deo tuo semper.
7. He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hand: he loveth to oppress.
7. Chanaan! In manu ejus statera fraudis (vel, dolosa;) praedari diligit.
The Prophet is now here urgent on the people. Having referred to the example of the patriarch, he shows how unlike him were his posterity, with whom God could avail nothing by sound teaching, though he was constantly solicitous for their salvation, and stirred up his Prophets to bring back the lost and scattered to the way of safety.
Since then it was so, the Prophet accuses them of ingratitude. But he speaks first of repentance; and then he shows that he and other ministers of God had laboured in vain; for such was the perversity of the people, that teaching had no effect. His sermon is short, but yet it contains much.
Turn, he says, to thy God. He glances here at the apostasy of the people, by bidding them to turn to their God, and, at the same time, condemns whatever the Israelites were wont to set up as a defence, when the Prophets reproved them. For they wished their own fictitious modes of worship to come in as a reason; they wished the gods devised by themselves to occupy the place of the true God. The Prophet cuts off the handle from subterfuges of this kind by commanding the people to turn to their God. ``Why,'' he says, ``you do indeed worship gods, and greatly weary yourselves in your superstitions; but confess that you are apostates, who have rejected the law delivered to you by the true God. Return, then, to your God.'' And he calls God the God of Israel, not to honour them, but to-reproach them, because they had willingly and designedly cast off the worship of the true God, who had made himself known to them.
There is afterwards shown the true way of repentance. The beginning of the verse, as I have already said, requires the people to repent; but as we know that men trifle with God when they are called to repentance, it is not in vain that a definitive, or, at least, a short description of repentance, is added by which is made evident what it is to repent, or to turn to God. Then the Prophet says, --- Keep mercy, or kindness and judgement He begins with the second table, and then he adds piety towards
God. But he lays down two things only, in which he included the whole teaching of the second table. For what is God's design, from the fifth to the last commandment, but to teach us to shape our life according to the rule of love? We are then taught in the second table of the law how we ought to act towards our brethren; or if one wishes to have a shorter summary, in the second table of the law are shown the mutual duties of men. But the Prophet begins here with the second part of the law; for the Prophets are not wont strictly to observe order, Nor do they always observe a regular method; but it is enough with them to mention the main things by which they explain their subject; and hence, it is no wonder that the Prophet here, according to his usual manner, mentions love in the first place, and then goes on