Hosea 7:2 | |
2. Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; | 2. Et non sixerunt in corde suo, omnis malitiae eorum recordatus sum (hoc est, quod recordatus sim omnis malitiae ipsorum:) nunc circumdederunt ipsos facinora eorum, in conspectu meo sunt. |
The Prophet shows here that the Israelites had advanced to the highest summit of all wickedness; for they thought that no account was ever to be given by them to God. Hence arises the contempt of God; that is, when men imagine that he is, as it were, sleeping in heaven, and that he rests from every work. They dare not indeed to deny God, and yet they take from him what especially belongs to his divinity, for they exclude him from the office of being a judge. Hence then it is that men allow themselves so much liberty, because they imagine that they have made a truce with God; yea, they think that they can do any thing with impurity, as if they had made a covenant with death and hell, as Isaiah says, (Isaiah 28:15.) Of this sottishness then does the Prophet here arraign the Israelites,
He then adds,
Let us learn from this place, that nothing ought to be more feared than that Satan should so fascinate us as to make us to think that God rests idly in heaven. There is nothing that can stir us up more to repentance, than when we adorn God with his own power, and be persuaded that he is the judge of the world, and also when we walk as in his sight, and know that our sins cannot come to oblivion, except when he buries them by pardon. This then is what the Prophet teaches in the first part of the verse. Now when we imagine that we have peace with God, and with death and hell, as Isaiah says in the place we have quoted, the prophet teaches that God is yet awake, and that his office cannot be taken from him, for he knows whatever is carried on in this world; and that this will at length be made openly known, when our sins shall surround us, as it is also said in Genesis chapter 4, 'Sin will lie down at thy door.' For we may for a time imagine that we have many escapes or at least hiding-places; but God will at length show that all this is in vain, for he will come upon us, and has no need of forces, procured from this or that quarter; we shall have enemies enough in our own vices, for we shall be besieged by them no otherwise than if God were to arm the whole world against us. Let us go on --