Verse 1

VERS. 1.

Rejoyce not, O Israel for joy as other people; for you have gone a whoring from your God, you have loved a reward upon every corn-flour.

HERE begins another Sermon of the Prophets. Gualter thinks this to be the sixth Sermon that the Prophet Hosea preached to these ten Tribes, wherein he yet goes on in the way as he did before, convincing of sin, and threatning of wrath against Israel; and this Sermon was preached in a prosperous time, when Israel (the ten Tribes) seemed to be in their greatest ruff of pride & jolity. It refers according to Interpreters to one of these two times: Either to some special time when they prevailed against their Enemies, or to the time when they made their League with the Assyrians.

The time when they prevailed against their Enemies, and so it's thought to refer either to the time that we reade of in 2 Kings 13:15, the time of Jehoash when he beat Benhadad three times, and recovered the Cities of Israel.

Or that time in 1 Kings 14:13: And Jehoash King of Israel, took Amaziah King of Judah, and came to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem; and took all the Gold and Silver, and all the vessels that were found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the Kings house, and hostages, and returned to Samaria. This certainly was a time of great jolity and mirth among the ten Tribes, or in the time of Jeroboam (2 Kings 14:28), and so in the time of Pekah (2 Chronicles 28), that was a time of great jolity and mirth to the ten Tribes because of their prevailing, the text says, They slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, all valiant men: and the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria. Now in this time their hearts did swell much, for in verse 10 the Prophet Obed came to them and says, Behold, because the Lord God of your fathers was wrath with Judah he has delivered them into your hands, and you have slain him in a rage that reached up to Heaven. And now you purpose to keep under the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bond-men and bond-women to you. But are there not with you, even with you sins against the Lord your God? It seems to be almost the same expression as we have here in the text, as if he should say, Now you purpose to keep the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bond men and bond-women, and you insult and rejoyce, and you think you have gotten the day and you have prevailed; but are there not sins among you? Just as he says here, Rejoyce not, O Israel, for you are gone a whoring from the Lord, as if he should have said, though God has given you a victory and you think you have matter of much joy, yet rejoyce not O Israel as other people.