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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Hosea 13:2 - 13:2
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And now, though they are admonished, threatened, and in part punished, yet now that Baal is taken in for a god and worshipped,
they sin more and more; they go on to sin, and add new idolatries to the old, they increase the number of their sins; in some respect their new sins are greater than those committed formerly, but the prophet here speaks not of greatness of sins, but the number.
And have made them molten images of their silver: these were the figures and representations of the gods they worshipped, and were multiplied as families, able to go to the cost, did multiply; every one got their household gods. heathen like, and most of these puppets were made of silver. Or the phrase may imply, that at their own charge these people made them gods; so though it was a straight ash, or wood that would not soon putrefy, which was formed into the idol, yet because bought with their silver it may by a metonymy be called their silver.
Idols according to their own understanding; every one as he fancied, as he thought most comely, and proper to represent a deity; perhaps these idolaters vied with each other who should have the handsomest god, as Ahaz would vie altars, and therefore made new ones. Perhaps some of these idolaters melted down their old less handsome gods to run them into more pleasing features.
All of it the work of the craftsmen; whatever is of the image is of the workman, who gave it shape, but could not give it breath, still it is a lifeless lump or image.
They, either the kings of Israel, or the priests of these idols, or the people, say of them, of the idols,
Let the men that sacrifice, let every one that sacrificeth, all that bring their offerings to these idols,
kiss; reverence, worship, or adore, and show they do so by kissing the calves. They will make them give full worship to their idols.