Hosea 7:5

In the day of our king,.... Either his birthday, or his coronation day, when he was inaugurated into his kingly office, as the Targum, Jarchi, and Kimchi; or the day on which Jeroboam set up the

In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners. In the day of our king - his birthday, or day of inauguration.

In the day of our king: whether this day were any occasional day that the king of Israel took to feast his nobles, as Ahasuerus did his; or whether the anniversary of his birth or coronation, both which were usually celebrated among most nations, the birthday especially; so Pharaoh, , and Herod, ; whether of these we inquire not curiously. The princes, who attended on the king to witness their joy in the remembrance of that day which made the public glad so great a blessing was bestowed upon them, and to wish many such days unto their king and the kingdom. Have made him sick with bottles of wine; in their excess of drinking healths, no doubt; instead of a pious arid thankful remembrance of God’ s mercies, they run into monstrous impieties of luxury and drunkenness, and with bottles of wine, drank off probably at one draught, inflame themselves and their king, and drink him almost to death while they drink and wish his life. He stretched out his hand: in these drunken feasts it seems the king of Israel forgat himself, became too familiar a companion, and used the formalities of these drinking matches, stretched out his hand with scorners, who deride religion, and wish confusion to the professors of it.

Hosea 7:5 In the day of our king the princes have made [him] sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners.Ver. 5. In the day of our king] Our good king, on whom they so much doted, that they forgot God and his sincerer service. Quaecunque a regibus dicuntur aut fiunt, Gallis mirifice solet placere. It is reported of the French by their own chronicles, that they are wonderfully well pleased with whatsoever is said or done by their king (Epit. Hist. Gallor. 134); so that they affect to speak like him, to be arrayed like him, and to imitate him in everything. Their song is, Mihi placet quicquid Regi placet. But is not this to idolize the creature? and have not many (otherwise well minded men) among us been by this means miscarried to their cost in our late combustions? This day of their king was either his birthday (so Pagnine rendereth it here, die natalis eius), or his coronation day (so the Chaldee paraphrast carrieth it), which also is the birthday of a king as he is king, 1 Samuel 13:1, unless haply he have the happiness to be crowned (not in his cradle only, as Europus, king of Macedon, and the late King James were, but) in his mother’ s womb, as Misdaetus, king of Persia, was, the crown being set upon his mother’ s great belly before he was born. Now in this solemn day of the king (when they should have been better busied), the princes have made him sick, or the princes were sick, they drank themselves sick, drowning their bodies and souls (as Richard III did his brother Clarence) in a butt of Malmsey. How many importunate and impudent drinkers are there, that by drinking other men’ s health destroy their own! See Master Prinne’ s Health’ s-sickness, and accord him that said, “ Una salus sanis, nullam potare salutem, Non est in pota vera salute salus. ” But what beastly bedlams, or rather incarnate devils, were those three drunkards mentioned by Jo. Manlius in his Common Places, who drank so long till one of them fell down stark dead; and yet the other two, nothing terrified with such a dreadful example of divine vengeance, went on to drink, and poured the dead man’ s part into him as he lay by them? Oh horrible! Drunkenness is a detestable vice in any, but especially in men of place and power, Proverbs 31:4. Woe be to those drunken vice-gods (as I may in the worst sense best call them), woe to the very crown of their pride, in drinking down many, Isaiah 28:1, as Mark Antony wrote, or rather spued out, a book concerning his own abilities to bear strong drink! Darius also boasted of the same faculty in his very epitaph: a poor praise.

(5) Following the hint of the LXX. and other versions, the rendering of which is based on a slightly different punctuation of the Hebrew, we prefer to translate, the day of our king the princes have begun with the glowing (or fever) of wine—i.e., the carousal of the princely retinue in celebration of the sovereign’s coronation-day (or birthday) commences at an early hour, significant of monstrous excess. (Comp. Acts 2:15.) There is bitterness in the use of the pronoun “our” before “king.” Otherwise we must render, have made themselves ill with the fever of wine (the Authorised version is here inaccurate). The last clause is obscure; probably it means “he (i.e., our king) hath made common cause with scorners,” and is boon-companion of the dissolute and depraved. (Comp. Exodus 23:1.)

5. Here the figurative description is interrupted by one from real life. In the day of our king] Either the coronation-day (so the Targum), or (comp. Matthew 14:6) the royal birthday is meant. The prophet quotes the words of the princes. He was himself too loyal to the house of David to adopt the phrase seriously. have made him sick with bottles of wine] Rather, are become sick with the fever of wine. The Auth. Version probably means to imply that the princes meant to assassinate the king when he was drunk; but there is no evidence of this (see on Hosea 7:7). he stretched out his hand with scorners] i.e. he (the king) entered into close relations with proud, lawless men (comp. Proverbs 21:24). So Isaiah too calls the politicians of Judah ‘men of scorn’ (Isaiah 28:14). Hosea may perhaps refer to some lawless project decided upon in the intoxication of the revel.

In the day of our king, the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine - (Or, “with heat from wine.”) Their holydays, like those of so many Englishmen now, were days of excess.

NEW PICTURE OF THE MORAL AND ANARCHY, Hosea 6:11 to Hosea 7:7.1, 2.