Hosea 8:1

(1) Eagle.— The image of swiftness ( Jeremiah 4:13 ; Jeremiah 48:40 ). So Assyria shall come swooping down on Samaria, to which Hosea, though with some irony, gives the name “House of Jehovah,” recognising that the calf was meant to be symbolic in some sense of Israel’s God. (See, however, Note on Hosea 9:15 .)

Set the trumpet to thy {a} mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law. (a) God encourages the Prophet to signify the speedy coming of the enemy against Israel, which was once the people of God.

CHAPTER 8 Ho 8:1-14. Prophecy of the Irruption of the Assyrians, in Punishment for Israel's Apostasy, Idolatry, and Setting Up of Kings without God's Sanction. In Ho 8:14, Judah is said to multiply fenced cities; and in Ho 8:7-9, Israel, to its great hurt, is said to have gone up to Assyria for help. This answers best to the reign of Menahem. For it was then that Uzziah of Judah, his contemporary, built fenced cities (2Ch 26:6, 9, 10). Then also Israel turned to Assyria and had to pay for their sinful folly a thousand talents of silver (2Ki 15:19) [Maurer]. 1. Set the trumpet, &c.—to give warning of the approach of the enemy: "To thy palate (that is, 'mouth,' Job 31:30, Margin) the trumpet"; the abruptness of expression indicates the suddenness of the attack. So Ho 5:8. as … eagle—the Assyrian (De 28:49; Jer 48:40; Hab 1:8). against … house of … Lord—not the temple, but Israel viewed as the family of God (Ho 9:15; Nu 12:7; Zec 9:8; Heb 3:2; 1Ti 3:15; 1Pe 4:17).Destruction is threatened both to Israel and Judah for their impiety and idolatry. The Lord here commands the prophet to publish, as by sound of trumpet, that which God will bring upon apostate Israel, awaken them with the alarm of war. He; the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, who carried Israel captive. As an eagle; swift, hungry, surmounting all difficulties, and which from above seizeth his prey; so shall the Assyrian army come. Against; or up to, as far as, so some, but it is better as here, against.

The house of the Lord; either so called because the Israelites pretended their temples were not idols’ houses, but houses of Jehovah, and so the prophet for once calls them so, perhaps to intimate to that their sins would bring an enemy against those though they were indeed what they pretend them to be, the house of the Lord; or else by house of the Lord is meant the family of Israel, or the Israelitish church, which till unchurched might be called the house of the Lord: or it may be a sarcasm or irony against their wilful, brutish ignorance, who would not understand what was most plain, that his house was only at Jerusalem; or a softer derision of them, one of whose principal places of worship was Beth-el, which in signification is near the same with this in the text, house of God. They have transgressed my covenant; taken other gods instead of me, turned idolaters. Trespassed against my law: this explains and confirms the former; covenant and law are synonymous, and so are transgressing and trespassing. They have violated the whole law and covenant, and are apostates from their God, rebels against him their King.

Hosea 8:1 . Set the trumpet to thy mouth — The Vulgate renders it, In guttere tuo sit tuba; that is, Let thy throat, or mouth, sound like a trumpet. God speaks in these words, says Grotius, to the prophet, and commands him to proclaim, with a very loud voice, both the sins of the people, and the evils about to come upon them. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord — The words, he shall come, are not in the Hebrew, and seem to be improperly supplied by the translators; the sense of the words appearing to be, that the prophet should warn the people, and denounce the judgments of God against them for their sins, with a voice so loud that it might be heard as far as the cry of the eagle, flying over, or sitting upon, the top of the temple. Because they have transgressed — Or rather, that they have transgressed my covenant. “Hoc enim ipsum est quod proclamari vult Deus;” for this is the thing which God commanded to be proclaimed. — Grotius. Namely, that they had transgressed against God’s covenant, and violated his law.

1–7 . In great emotion (which reflects itself in the short clauses) the prophet announces the imminent invasion of N. Israel, and its true causes—idolatry and schism 1 . Set the trumpet to thy mouth ] Lit., To thy palate the cornet ! An abrupt appeal by a heavenly voice to the prophet, who is bidden to give warning of the approach of the foe (comp. Hosea 5:8 note). ‘Palate’, or ‘mouth’, as the organ of speech, as Proverbs 5:3 ; Proverbs 8:7 , &c. as an eagle ] The Hebr. word ( nesher ) seems to have been specially applied to the great griffon vulture, the carrion-eating habits of which are referred to in Job 39:30 ; Proverbs 30:17 ; Matthew 24:28 , and its swift flight in Deuteronomy 28:49 ; 2 Samuel 1:23 ; Jeremiah 49:22 . References to this bird of prey (Assyr. nasru ) are frequent in the cuneiform, inscriptions, and figures of it occur in battle-scenes on the monument. The more appropriate is it as an emblem of the Assyrian invaders. Similarly Nebuchadnezzar (whom St Jerome wrongly supposes to be meant here) is called an eagle (or vulture) in Jeremiah 49:22 ; Ezekiel 17:3 . the house of the Lord ] In chap. 2 we had the people of Israel represented as a bride who is sustained and adorned by her husband; here we have the figure completed by the description of the land of Canaan as the divine Bridegroom’s house (as Hosea 9:15 , comp. Hosea 8:3 ). This beautiful figure is obscured if, with Reynolds and Whitehouse, we compare the weakened sense, ‘country’, of Assyr. bît .

In the N.T. the house of God, or of Christ, is the Church, see Hebrews 3:6 ; 1 Timothy 3:15 . my covenant ] Most explain this of the ‘covenant’ or contract between Jehovah and Israel. But the phrase is more probably equivalent to ‘mine ordinance’, for the parallel clause has ‘my law.’ The Heb. word ( b’rîth ) sometimes appears to mean simply ‘appointment’, ‘ordinance’ (so 2 Kings 11:4 ; Jeremiah 11:6 ; Jeremiah 34:13 ; Jeremiah 34:18 ; Job 31:1 ; Psalm 105:10 ), which may even be the primary meaning (comp. Assyr. barû ‘to decide’). Comp. the phrase ‘the book of the covenant’ ( Exodus 24:7 ). my law ] See note on Hosea 8:12 .

The trumpet to thy mouth! - So God bids the prophet Isaiah, "Cry aloud, spare not, llft up thy voice like a trumpet" Isaiah 58:1 . The prophets, as watchmen, were set by God to give notice of His coming judgments Ezekiel 33:3 ; Amos 3:6 . As the sound of a war-trumpet would startle a sleeping people, so would God have the prophet's warning burst upon their sleep of sin. The ministers of the Church are called to be "watchmen" . "They too are forbidden to keep a cowardly silence, when "the house of the Lord" is imperilled by the breach of the covenant or violation of the law. If fear of the wicked or false respect for the great silences the voice of those whose office it is to "cry aloud," how shall such cowardice be excused?" He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord - The words "he shall come" are inserted for clearness. The prophet beholds the enemy speeding with the swiftness of an eagle, as it darts down upon its prey. "The house of the Lord" is, most strictly, the temple, as being "the place which God had chosen to place His name there." Next, it is used, of the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, among whom the temple was; from where God says, "I have forsaken My house, I have left Mine heritage; I have given the dearly-beloved of My soul into the hands of her enemies" Jeremiah 12:7, and, "What hath My beloved to do in Mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?" Jeremiah 11:15.

Yet the title of "God's house" is older than the temple, for God Himself uses it of His whole people, saying of Moses, "My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house" Numbers 12:7. And even the ten tribes, separated as they were from the Temple-worship, and apostates from the true faith of God, were not, as yet, counted by Him as wholly excluded from the "house of God." For God, below, threatens that removal, as something still to come; "for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of My house" Hosea 9:15. The eagle, then coming down "against or upon" the house of the Lord, is primarily Shalmaneser, who came down and carried off the ten tribes. Yet since Hosea, in these prophecies, includes Judah, also, "the house of the Lord" is most probably to be taken in its fullest sense, as including the whole people of God, among whom He dwelt, and the temple where His Name was placed. The "eagle" includes then Nebuchadnezzar also, whom other prophets so call Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 17:12; Jeremiah 48:40; Habakkuk 1:8; and (since, all through, the principle of sin is the same and the punishment the same) it includes the Roman eagle, the ensign of their armies. Because they have transgressed My covenant - "God, whose justice is always unquestionable, useth to make clear to people its reasonableness." Israel had broken the covenant which God had made with their fathers, that He would be to them a God, and they to Him a people.

Verse 1. - The exclamation in this verse, A trumpet to thy mouth, supersedes the necessity of supplying a verb. The alarm of war or of hostile invasion is to be sounded by the prophet at the command of Jehovah. The (1) trumpet is at once to be employed for the purpose. The rendering of both the Targum and Syriac (2) expresses the same idea, though under a different form; the former has, "Cry with thy throat, as if it were a trumpet;" and the latter, "Let thy mouth be as a trumpet." According to this view, the Prophet Hoses expresses here very briefly what Isaiah has done more fully in the words, "Cry aloud [Hebrew, 'with the throat'] spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." (3) The LXX. here deviates considerably from the Maseoretic Hebrew text, translating εἰς κόλπον ( תֵיקְך ) αὐτῶν , ὡς γῆ , of the meaning of which Jerome acknowledges his ignorance, though he attempts to explain it. Cyril connects the words with the concluding part of the preceding chapter, thus: "This their setting at naught (of me) in the land of Egypt shall come into their own bosom.