Prophetarum assimilavi (vel, similitudines posui.) (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
so reproved the men of his age, that he also speaks to us at this day. Let us now proceed ---
Hosea 12:11
11. Is there iniquity in Gilead? surely they are vanity: they sacrifice bullocks in Gilgal; yea, their altars are as heaps in the furrows of the fields.
11. An in Gilead iniquitas? (vel, an Gilead coepit peccare?) certe vanitas (vel, mendacium) fuerunt in Gilgal (alii disjungunt istud {,}בגלגלut contexant cum sequentibus) boves sacrificarunt, etiam altaria eorum sicut acervi super sulcos agrorum.
It is an ironical question, when the Prophet says, Is there iniquity in Gilead? and he laughs to scorn their madness who delighted themselves in vices so gross, when their worship was wholly spurious and degenerated. When they knew that they were perfidious towards God, and followed a worship alienated from his law, they yet were so perverse, that they proudly refused all admonitions. Since then they were blinded in their vices, the Prophet asks them ironically, Is there iniquity in Gilead? They are as yet doubtful, forsooth, whether they are guilty before God, whether they bear any blame. Surely, he says, they are vanity; that is, ``How much soever they may seek specious pretences for themselves, and deny that they are conscious of doing wrong, and also introduce many reasons for doubt, that they may not be forced to own their sin, they yet, he says, are guilty of falsehood; all their glosses contain nothing solid, but they are mere disguises, which avail nothing before God.'' We now then apprehend the meaning of the Prophet.
But there is no doubt but that he also condemns here their perverted worship, by which the Israelites at the same time thought that they rendered the best service to God. But obedience, we know, is better than all sacrifices. The Prophet then inveighs here against all fictitious modes of worship, devised without God against the authority of God's law. But at the same time, as we have just hinted, he indirectly exposes their thoughtlessness for imagining themselves excusable, provided they set up their own good intention, as it is commonly done, and say, that they built altars with no other design than to make known everywhere the name of God, to preserve among themselves some tokens of religion. Since, then, they thus raised up a cloud of smoke to cover their impiety, the Prophet says, ``They indeed still inquire, as of a doubtful thing, whether there is iniquity in Gilead; let them inquire and dispute; surely,'' he says, ``they are vain;'' literally, surely they have been falsehood: but he means that they foolishly brought forward those frivolous excuses, by which they tried to escape the crime and its punishment. How was it that they were vain?
Because God values his own law more than all the glosses of men, and he will have all men to obey, without dispute, his own word: but when they thus licentiously depart from his commandments, it is what he cannot endure. They are then false and deceive themselves, who think that their own inventions are of any value before God. He then lays down their crimes
In Gilgal, he says, have they sacrificed oxen Jerome translates, ``They sacrifice to oxen,'' and thinks that the Israelites are reprehended here for sacrificing to the calves: but this seems too remote from the words of the Prophet. The Prophet then