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Hos_8:8 Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein [is] no pleasure.
Ver. 8. Israel is swallowed up] Not their meal only, as Hos_8:7, but themselves also are devoured by those workers of iniquity, that eat up God’s people as they eat bread, Psa_14:4. Persecutors are men-eaters, more cruel than those American cannibals, that devour men piecemeal; they make but a breakfast of God’s people, as Sennacherib meant to do of Jerusalem, and the powder-papists of England. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us; then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us. But blessed be God, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth," Psa_124:2-3; Psa_124:6. Let us keep us out of the claws and clutches of that old manslayer, who night and day walketh about (in a circular motion) that he may take us at advantage, seeking whom he may swallow down his wide gullet, 1Pe_5:8, êáôáðéç , which he hath even made red with the blood of souls; and is therefore happily called the great red dragon, Rev_12:3, that hath seven heads to plot, and ten horns to push men into the sin of idolatry, and thereby into hell. So long as Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase, all that devoured him found that they offended; for evil came upon them, Jer_2:3, they could no more digest him than the whale did Jonah; a cup of trembling or of poison he was to all the people round about, Zec_12:2 : see the note there. But "when he offended in Baal he died"; when he "chose new gods, then was war in the gates," Jdg_5:8; when they made leagues with idolaters, then were they even swallowed up by them; as were likewise the Greek and Latin Churches by the Eastern and Western Antichrist, those crooked Leviathans, those dragons in the sea, as the Egyptian and Assyrian are called, Isa_27:1.
Now shall they be among the Gentiles] Whose favour and friendship they have basely sought, and dearly bought. It was threatened in the former chapter, Hos_7:16, that "they should be a derision in the land of Egypt." {See Trapp on "Hos_7:16"} To have Egyptians deride us, and that for sin, is a heavy judgment. So here, to be disdained and vilified by such, as an old broken vessel, fit for none but unclean uses.
As a vessel wherein is no pleasure] No delight or complacence; vas despectum, reieculum, abiectum, a vessel that is for the carrying up and down of excrements: so shall Israel be employed by Gentiles in base and contemptible offices, as they were by the Babylonians, Jer_51:34; yea, Jehoiakim himself (though a king) was no better used, Jer_22:18, and Moab, that haughty nation, Jer_48:38. In which sense, "Moab shall be my washpot," saith David, Psa_60:8, that is, brought into most abject slavery, as your scullions or scavengers; they shall "lie among the pots," Psa_68:13, not only to make pots for the king of Babylon’s use (as those servile souls, the base brood of their degenerated forefathers, 1Ch_4:23), but also to hold pots, or empty pots and vessels of dishonour, matulam praebere, that they might know a difference between God’s service (which is all clean and fair work, fit for a vessel of honour, an elect vessel, elect and precious, sanctified and fit for the master’s use, 2Ti_2:21) and the service of their enemies, base and beastly; such as is beneath the excellence of an ingenuous man, such as the Turks at this day put the Jews to, and the Spaniards the poor Indians.