Hosea 8:1

[Set] the trumpet to thy mouth,.... Or, "the trumpet to the roof of thy mouth" (t); a concise expression denoting haste, and the vehemence of the passions speaking; they are either the words of the

Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law.

HOSEA CHAPTER 8 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. [He shall come] as an eagle against the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law.Ver. 1. Set the trumpet to thy mouth] Heb. The trumpet to thy palate. A hasty expression, an abrupt and imperfect speech, common with such as are moved with passions, of anger, grief, or fear, as Hosea 5:8, "after thee, O Benjamin." God, though not subject to such perturbations, James 1:17, yet here aud elsewhere utters himself in this sort; to set forth the nearness of the people’ s danger by the enemies’ approach; and the necessity of their return to him by true repentance, for the diversion of his displeasure. "Break off thy sins by righteousness," saith the prophet to Nebuchadnezzar; be abrupt in the work, cut the cart ropes of vanity, if "it may be a lengthening of the tranquillity," Daniel 4:27. Take the bark from the tree, and the sap can never find the way to the boughs; get sin remitted, and punishment shall be removed. In this sermon of the prophet (which is much sharper than the former, and may seem to be one of the last, because God is so absolute in threatening, as if he meant to be resolute in punishing) there is (as one saith) peccatorum et poenarum συναθροισμος, a heaping together of sins and of punishments of many sorts; and the prophet commanded to give sudden warning of the enemy at hand, which is elegantly set forth by a military hypotyposis, or lively representation; as if it were now doing. "The trumpet to thy mouth," that is, set up thy note, and proclaim with a loud and clear voice, as Isaiah 58:1, cry in the throat (so the Chaldee hath it here), spare not, that none may say he was not warned; "lift up thy voice like a trumpet," that all may hear and fear, Amos 3:6, as people use to do when an alarm is sounded, or the bells are rung backward. See Hosea 5:8. There they had been before alarmed, here reminded in brief; for the prophet is, as it were, monosyllabus, as one in haste; he uttereth amputatas sententias et verba ante expectatum cadentia, as Seneca somewhere hath it, broken sentences, concise but pithy periods. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord] He, that is, the Assyrian; not Nebuchadnezzar, though the like is said of him, Ezekiel 17:3; Ezekiel 17:7; much less the Romans (as Lyra interpreteth this text of the last destruction of Jerusalem, because the eagle was their ensign); but Pul, Tiglathpileser, and Shalmaneser, who came against the ten tribes as an eagle, to waste, spoil, and carry captive speedily, impetuously, irresistibly; as 2 Kings 15:19; 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Kings 17:3; 2 Kings 18:19 Lamentations 4:19. The eagle is the strongest and swiftest of birds, and feareth no obstacle, either from other fowl, or wind, or thunderbolt, as Pliny afflrmeth (Plin. lib. x. 3).

(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.)

CHAPTER VIII This chapter begins with threatening some hostile invasion in short and broken sentences, full of rapidity, and expressive of sudden danger and alarm: "The trumpet to thy mouth; he cometh as an eagle," 1. And why? For their hypocrisy, 2; iniquity, 3; treason (see 2Kg 15:13; 2Kg 15:17) and idolatry, 4; particularly the worshipping of the calves of Dan and Bethel, 5, 6. The folly and unprofitableness of pursuing evil courses is then set forth in brief but very emphatic terms. The labour of the wicked is vain, like sowing of the wind; and the fruit of it destructive as the whirlwind. Like corn blighted in the bud, their toil shall have no recompense; or if it should have a little, their enemies shall devour it, 7. They themselves, too, shall suffer the same fate, and shall be treated by the nations of Assyria and Egypt as the vile sherds of a broken vessel, 8, 9. Their incorrigible idolatry is again declared to be the cause of their approaching captivity under the king of Assyria. And as they delighted in idolatrous altars, there they shall have these in abundance, 10-14. The last words contain a prediction of the destruction of the fenced cities of Judah, because the people trusted in these for deliverance, and not in the Lord their God. NOTES ON CHAP. VIII Verse 1. Set the trumpet to thy mouth] Sound another alarm. Let them know that an enemy is fast approaching. As an eagle against the house of the Lord] of this be a prophecy against Judah, as some have supposed, then by the eagle Nebuchadnezzar is meant, who is often compared to this king of birds. See Ezekiel 17:3; Jeremiah 48:40; Jeremiah 49:22; Daniel 7:4. But if the prophecy be against Israel, which is the most likely, then Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, is intended, who, for his rapidity, avarice, rapacity, and strength, is fitly compared to this royal bird. He is represented here as hovering over the house of God, as the eagle does over the prey which he has just espied, and on which he is immediately to pounce.

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; Psalms 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.

After this general announcement the prophet proceeds to call attention to the imminence of the judgment (Hosea 8:1), to describe the terror that will befall Israel (Hosea 8:2), and to point out the