Hosea Chapter 8 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 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. As the land, as the eagle against the house of the Lord;" while his explanation is as follows: "Since, though I preserved them and instructed them, and gave them victory over their enemies (for I strengthened them), they have impiously set me at naught, worshipping demons for gods, and have trusted to the land of the Egyptians, and have fancied that their help shall be sufficient for their prosperity, therefore their attempt shall return unto their own besom, and they shall find no good reward of their temerity; but they shall receive, as it were, into their bosom the deserved punishment. For he shall come, he shall come who shall lay them waste - the King of Assyria, with an innumerable multitude of warriors, and he shall come to them as the whole land and region and country, that one might think that the whole region of the Persians and Medes had wholly migrated and had come into Samaria. This is the meaning of the whole land (ὡς γῆ). He shall likewise come as an eagle into the house of the Lord." (He shall come) as an eagle against the house of the Lord. These words cannot mean, . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(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.)