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Hos_12:11 [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.
Ver. 11. Is there iniquity in Gilead] What, in Gilead, a city of priests? {Hos_6:8} {See Trapp on "Hos_6:8"} yea, Gilead is a city of those that work iniquity, a very Poneropolis, a place of naughty packs, Hos_4:15. Now there is not a worse creature on earth than a wicked priest, nor a worse place than a wicked Gilead. The Hebrew hath it thus, Is Gilead iniquity? Or as Luther, Drusius, and others, Surely it is so ( àí certe, vere, profecto). Confer Mic_1:5. Gregory Nazianzen reports of Athens, that it was the plaguiest place in the world for superstition. Our universities were so in times of Popery, and began to be so again a few years since. Revera Gilead est iniquitas, profecto vanitas sunt, they were grown so incorrigibly flagitious that they seemed to be, as it were, transformed into sin’s image. Some render the text thus: "Is there iniquity in Gilead? Are they only vanity in Gilgal? They sacrificed bullocks," and set this sense upon it. What? think you the men of Gilead, those beyond the river of Jordan, whom Tiglathpileser spoiled and led captives, that they only were guilty of idolatry, and you not, because you remain at home, untouched of the Assyrian? Nay, saith he, the very entrance into the country, Gilgal itself, so aboundeth with idolatry, that it is not to be doubted but in the rest of the parts of the kingdom their altars are as thick as furrows in the field, that is to say, innumerable. Some think this last clause, "their altars are as heaps in the furrows of the field" (or of my fields, whereof I am chief Lord, and wherein he should have served me, and not idols), hath reference to some superstitious way of theirs, of seeking God by erecting altars in the furrows, for the fructifying of their fields: the heathen did so to their Dii Terminales; boundary gods, and the Papists still do so in their solemn processions, erecting crosses and crucifixes in the bounds of their fields, and thereby thinking to get a blessing on their corn and pastures. Tarnovius noteth here, that God in the Old Testament would therefore have but one altar whereon to offer sacrifice, and that to be at Jerusalem only; to teach them that Christ, the anti-type of all their sacrifices, should once be offered up upon the altar of his cross, a propitiation for their sins, Heb_9:1-28; Heb_10:1-39. This altar he also appointed to be in the temple, that the sacrificers might believe the gracious presence of God with them, and might worship him in spirit and in truth.