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Hos_7:15 Though I have bound [and] strengthened their arms, yet do they imagine mischief against me.
Ver. 15. Though I have bound and strengthened their arms] Quum ego erudivi, so Pagnine, Polanus, and others; when I taught them, or chastened them, as Hos_7:12, "and strengthened their arms"; there is no and in the original; it is an asyndeton; to show that God had done both for them, together and at once: he had acted the part both of an instructor and of a surgeon (like as, Rev_3:18, he takes upon him the person both of a rich merchant and a skilful physician); he had done all that could be done to do them good; teaching their hands to war and their fingers to fight, Psa_144:1, binding up their broken arms, {see Eze_30:24} and strengthening their feeble sinews, their hands that hung down, Heb_12:12. After I have scourged them I have re-established them; but what thanks for my labour? what Minerval or pay for my pains? The world’s wages; such as Hercules paid the schoolmaster Linus, whom he knocked on the head, Hoc ictu ceu didactro accepto Linus mortuus est (Buchol.); or as Agricola’s scholars in Germany killed their master with their penknives; or as physicians and surgeons are many times paid by their penurious patients, of whom the poet wittily,
“ Tres medicus facies habet, unam, quando rogatur;
Angelicam, mox est cum iuvat, ipse Deus.
Ast ubi curato poscit sun munera morbo,
Horridus apparet terribilisque Satan. ”
Yet do they imagine mischief against me] All goes against God. {See Trapp on "Hos_7:13"} Here they "imagine mischief" against him, as before they "spake lies against him," Hos_7:13, and acted rebellion against him, Hos_7:14. Thus they spake and did evil things as they could, Jer_3:5; and the reason of all was, they imagined mischief, cogitabant quasi coagitabant, they were men of wicked devices, Pro_12:2, wholly made up of sinful projects and purposes; they plotted and ploughed mischief, and that against God himself (which is horrible); David thought much that his enemies should machinate mischief against him, though but dust and ashes; and threateneth them sore for so doing, Psa_62:3, "How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? ye shall be slain all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence": he meaneth, ye shall be surely and suddenly ruined. What then will become of those Zamzummims that imagine mischief against the Lord? and such a Lord as hath bound and strengthened their arms, that had been broken by the enemies, and sought their good every way, puniendo, muniendo, malis et bonis afficiendo, &c. If they had slipped into some small offence against him, of infirmity and at unawares, it had been nothing so grievous; but to busy their brains, and bend their wits and studies scientes, volentes, et deliberate consilio, to plot and practise mischief, or (as the Septuagint render it) ôá ðïíçñá , mischiefs against God, (for every transgression and disobedience is contrary to his most pure nature and sacred law, and shall therefore "receive a just recompense of reward," Heb_2:2), so gracious a God, this is detestable ingratitude. This is as if those in the Gospel should have railed against Christ for raising them from the dead; it is like the matchless mischievousness of that monster Michael Balbus, who that night that his prince pardoned and released him got out and slew him (Zonaras in Annul.). Omne peccatum est deicidium, for although wicked men cannot reach God, yet they reach at him; shooting up their darts against heaven (as the Thracians did once in a storm), and saying in effect as Caligula did to his Jupiter, ç ì áíáåéñ ç åãù óå ! either kill me or I will kill thee (Herodot. Homer).