I. Apostasy from Jehovah, which appears here also as Israel’s chief sin, brought death upon them: they died (Hos_13:1).—This conception sounds the depths of the subject. Outwardly regarded, they lived long, even after they gave themselves up to the worship of Baal (just like a fruitful tree, Hos_13:15), but in truth inwardly they were dead. For true life consists in union with Jehovah: idols can give no life. Israel owed its life to Jehovah alone (Hos_13:4). Therefore (Hos_13:9): ‘It has destroyed thee that thou hast been against Me, thy Help.’ What God had done for Israel from the beginning is here again (Hos_13:4-5) made prominent, and the deliverance from Egypt with the leading through the desert appear again as the fundamental act of mercy, for through them Israel became ‘living.’ Their present conduct towards God was a base and ungrateful ignoring of those deeds in the presumption of a prosperity which they owed to their God (Hos_13:6). A people who are inwardly dead cannot long outwardly survive. That God Whom they had forgotten, and from Whom they had turned away would and must at last show them that He had not forgotten them (Hos_13:12) by destroying them without sparing. This is indeed the only means of bringing them to life. For that and that alone is designed by God in their case. This must ever be kept in view if we are to understand the threatenings aright, which are reproduced here in a peculiarly intensified form (Hos_13:7-8, Hos_13:12 to chap. Hos_14:1). But how true and striking is such a description seen to be, when we remember that this Divine judgment is executed by the invasion of a foreign conqueror! With what can his attack be better compared than with the attack of devouring beasts, or, after another image, with a scorching wind that destroys everything in its course? How often has that been repeated in the history of the nations!
II. The whole (temporal) kingdom was a Divine system of punishment and chastening.—At the request of the people, He granted them a king, but with the expression of His displeasure at their desire because it proceeded from unbelief and vanity, and with the declaration that they would lose their freedom by its realisation. But, at the same time, this kingdom of Israel might become a blessing if it with its king would obey God. Nay, God, by establishing the throne of David in Zion, even connected the most precious promises with this kingdom, if the king were entirely one with God and should gather about him a nation obedient to God. But the people with their king followed more and more decidedly a course opposed to God by separating (in the kingdom of the Ten Tribes) from the house with which God had connected his promises, and so forsaking the king which God had given them, they must therefore be punished by having this self-erected kingdom taken away, and the punishment is all the greater that they shall never return to a state of freedom, but must lie under the much viler bondage of foreign rulers, until they return to the king whom God had promised to raise up from the House of David.
Illustration
‘So far can the love of God be changed into wrath that He, to Whom it were easy to save, does not do so, but delivers over to death and destruction, nay, even, as it were, invokes the powers of destruction to execute His wrath, without His repenting or recalling His purpose. Even in this God has assuredly purposes of salvation. He punishes so severely only to open the eyes, when and since all other means have failed.’
