Hosea 11:2

As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) As they (i.e., the prophets) called them, so they (Israel) went from them.—Sought to avoid the voice and presence of the men of God.

Benson Commentary

Hosea 11:2. As they called them, so, &c. — Or, The more they called them, or, they were called, so much the more they went from him; that is, the more earnestly the prophets called upon them to cleave steadfastly to the true God, (see Hosea 11:7,) the more they were bent to depart from him to the worship of idols. They sacrificed to Baalim — See note on Hosea 2:13. And burned incense to graven images — “We read frequently, in our English Bibles, of graven images, and of molten images. And the words are become so familiar, as names of idolatrous images, that, although they are not well chosen to express the Hebrew names, it seems not advisable to change them for others, that might more exactly correspond with the original. The graven image was not a thing wrought in metal by the tool of the workman we should now call an engraver; nor was the molten image an image made of metal, or any other substance melted, and shaped in a mould. In fact, the graven image and the molten image are the same thing under different names. The images of the ancient idolaters were first cut out of wood by the carpenter, as is very evident from the Prophet Isaiah. The figure of wood was overlaid with plates, either of gold or silver, or sometimes, perhaps, of an inferior metal. And in this finished state it was called a graven image, (that is, a carved image,) in reference to the inner solid figure of wood, and a molten (that is, an overlaid, or covered) image in reference to the outer metalline case, or covering. And sometimes both epithets are applied to it at once:” see Nahum 1:14; Habakkuk 2:18, and Bishop Horsley.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

11:1-7 When Israel were weak and helpless as children, foolish and froward as children, then God loved them; he bore them as the nurse does the sucking child, nourished them, and suffered their manners. All who are grown up, ought often to reflect upon the goodness of God to them in their childhood. He took care of them, took pains with them, not only as a father, or a tutor, but as a mother, or nurse. When they were in the wilderness, God showed them the way in which they should go, and bore them up, taking them by the arms. He taught them the way of his commandments by the ceremonial law given by Moses. He took them by the arms, to guide them, that they might not stray, and to hold them up, that they might not stumble and fall. God's spiritual Israel are all thus supported. It is God's work to draw poor souls to himself; and none can come to him except he draw them. With bands of love; this word signifies stronger cords than the former. He eased them of the burdens they had long groaned under. Israel is very ungrateful to God. God's counsels would have saved them, but their own counsels ruined them. They backslide; there is no hold of them, no stedfastness in them. They backslide from me, from God, the chief good. They are bent to backslide; they are ready to sin; they are forward to close with every temptation. Their hearts are fully set in them to do evil. Those only are truly happy, whom the Lord teaches by his Spirit, upholds by his power, and causes to walk in his ways. By his grace he takes away the love and dominion of sin, and creates a desire for the blessed feast of the gospel, that they may feed thereon, and live for ever.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

As they called them, so they went from them - The prophet changes his tone, no longer speaking of that one first call of God to Israel as a whole, whereby He brought out Israel as one man, His one son; which one call he obeyed. Here he speaks of God's manifold calls to the people, throughout their whole history, which they as often disobeyed, and not disobeyed only, but went contrariwise. "They called them." Whether God employed Moses, or the judges, or priests, or kings, or prophets, to call them, it was all one. Whenever or by whomsoever they were called, they turned away in the opposite direction, to serve their idols. They proportioned and fitted, as it were, their disobedience to God's long-suffering. : "Then chiefly they threw off obedience, despised their admonitions, and worked themselves up the more franticly to a zeal for the sin which they had begun." "They," God's messengers, "called; so," in like manner, "they went away from them. They sacrificed unto Baalim," i. e., their many Baals, in which they cherished idolatry, cruelty, and fleshly sin. : So "when Christ came and called them manifoldly, as in the great day of the feast, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink," the more diligently He called them, the more diligently they went away from Him, and returned to their idols, to the love and possession of riches and houses and pleasures, for whose sake they despised the truth."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. As they called them—"they," namely, monitors sent by Me. "Called," in Ho 11:1, suggests the idea of the many subsequent calls by the prophets.

went from them—turned away in contempt (Jer 2:27).

Baalim—images of Baal, set up in various places.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

As they; Moses and Aaron, and other prophets, and holy, zealous judges and priests, as Samuel, &c.

Called; advised, persuaded, entreated, and urged by exhortations.

Them; the whole house of Israel, and among these the ten tribes, or Ephraim.

So they Israelites, called and entreated, especially they of that age when the division was made, and ever since.

Went from; frowardly and most disingenuously apostatized more and more, as the prophet, Isaiah 1:5. Horrible ingratitude so to requite God!

From them; from the prophets’ counsel and commands, delivered as they came from God.

They sacrificed unto Baalim; in the desert they began this apostacy, joined themselves to Baal-peor, Numbers 25:3, and worshipped the calf, Exodus 32:4-6, and held on with obstinacy in it.

Graven images; images of their gods, before which they performed another part of religious worship, burning incense before them.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

As they called them, so they went from them,.... That is, the prophets of the Lord, the true prophets, called Israel to the worship and service of God; but they turned a deaf ear to them, and their backs upon them; and the more they called to them, the further they went from them, and from the way of their duty; see Hosea 11:7. So the Targum,

"I sent the prophets to teach them, but they wandered from them;''

Moses and Aaron were sent unto them, and called them out of Egypt, but they hearkened not unto them; see Exodus 6:9; in later times the prophets were sent unto them, to exhort them to their duty, and to reclaim them from their evil ways, but they despised and refused to attend to their advice and instructions; and this was continued to the times of Israel, or the ten tribes, departing from the house of David, and setting up idolatrous worship; and during their revolt and apostasy: but all in vain. So after Christ was called out of Egypt, he and his apostles, and John the Baptist before them, called them to hearken to him, but they turned away from them. Aben Ezra interprets it of the false prophets, who called them to idolatry, and they went after them. Schmidt understands it of the Israelites calling one another to it, and going after it, for their own sakes, and because it pleased them, and was agreeable to them;

they sacrificed to Baalim, and burnt incense to graven images: they joined themselves to Baalpeor, and worshipped the golden calf, fashioned with a graving tool, in the wilderness; they sacrificed to Baalim, one or another of them, in the times of the judges, and of Ahab, and committed idolatry with other graven images, of which burning incense is a part. And the Jews in Christ's time, instead of hearkening to him and his apostles, followed the traditions of the elders, and the dictates of the Scribes and Pharisees, who were their Baals, their lords and masters and they sought for life and righteousness by their own works, which was sacrificing to their net, and burning incense to their drag; all this was great ingratitude. Next follows a narrative of other benefits done to this people.

Geneva Study Bible

As they called them, so they {b} went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.

(b) They rebelled and went a contrary way when the Prophets called them to repentance.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. As they called them, &c.] Or, The more they called them, &c. (comp. Hosea 4:7). Since Israel disobeyed the first call by Moses, prophets were sent to repeat the call, but their preaching only seemed to increase Israel’s obstinacy (comp. Isaiah 6:9-10; Jeremiah 7:25-26). What, then, was the good of prophecy? It kept up a church within the nation, and it developed ideas which bore fruit in due time.

unto Baalim, &c.] Rather, to the Baalim (see on Hosea 2:13) … to the graven images.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.

(1) Adverting to his own call mentioned in the first verse, God here refers to the many subsequent calls which he addressed to them through his servants the prophets and other messengers.

(2) The subject of the verb is erroneously understood by some, as, for example, Aben Ezra and Eichhorn, to be the idols, or their false priests or prophets; while

(3) Jerome is also mistaken in referring the words to the time of Israel's rebelling when Moses and Aaron wished to lead them out of Egypt. The correct reference is that first stated, and the sense is that, instead of appreciating the invitations and monitions of the prophets of God, they showed their utter insensibility and thanklessness, turning away from them in contempt and scorn. Nay, the more the messengers of God called them, the more they turned a deaf ear to those who were their truest friends and best advisers. Pursuing their idolatrous practices, they sacrificed to Baal, that is to say, the various representations of that idol, and burned incense to their images, whether of wood or stone or precious metal. Thus Kimchi correctly comments as follows: "The prophets which I sent to them called to them morning and evening to turn to Jehovah, so (much the more) did they go away from them, not hearkening to their words nor desisting from their evil works." The word כֵן, even so, denoting the measure or relation, corresponds to ואשר to be supplied in the first clause. The imperfects imply continuance of action or a general truth.

(4) The Septuagint rendering, followed by the Syriac, is ἐκ προσώπου μου αὐτοὶ, "from my presence: they;" as if they had read on מִפָנַי הֵם instead of the present text. Hosea 11:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The prophet goes back a third time (cf. Hosea 10:1; Hosea 9:10) to the early times of Israel, and shows how the people had repaid the Lord, for all the proofs of His love, with nothing but ingratitude and unfaithfulness; so that it would have merited utter destruction from off the earth, if God should not restrain His wrath for the sake of His unchangeable faithfulness, in order that, after severely chastening, He might gather together once more those that were rescued from among the heathen. Hosea 11:1. "When Israel was young, then I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. Hosea 11:2. Men called to them; so they went away from their countenance: they offer sacrifice to the Baals, and burn incense to the idols." Hosea 11:1 rests upon Exodus 4:22-23, where the Lord directs Moses to say to Pharaoh, "Israel is my first-born son; let my son go, that he may serve me." Israel was the son of Jehovah, by virtue of its election to be Jehovah's peculiar people (see at Exodus 4:22). In this election lay the ground for the love which God showed to Israel, by bringing it out of Egypt, to give it the land of Canaan, promised to the fathers for its inheritance. The adoption of Israel as the son of Jehovah, which began with its deliverance out of the bondage of Egypt, and was completed in the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, forms the first stage in the carrying out of the divine work of salvation, which was completed in the incarnation of the Son of God for the redemption of mankind from death and ruin. The development and guidance of Israel as the people of God all pointed to Christ; not, however, in any such sense as that the nation of Israel was to bring forth the son of God from within itself, but in this sense, that the relation which the Lord of heaven and earth established and sustained with that nation, was a preparation for the union of God with humanity, and paved the way for the incarnation of His Son, by the fact that Israel was trained to be a vessel of divine grace. All essential factors in the history of Israel point to this as their end, and thereby become types and material prophecies of the life of Him in whom the reconciliation of man to God was to be realized, and the union of God with the human race to be developed into a personal unity. It is in this sense that the second half of our verse is quoted in Matthew 2:15 as a prophecy of Christ, not because the words of the prophet refer directly and immediately to Christ, but because the sojourn in Egypt, and return out of that land, had the same significance in relation to the development of the life of Jesus Christ, as it had to the nation of Israel. Just as Israel grew into a nation in Egypt, where it was out of the reach of Canaanitish ways, so was the child Jesus hidden in Egypt from the hostility of Herod. But Hosea 11:2 is attached thus as an antithesis: this love of its God was repaid by Israel with base apostasy. קראוּ, they, viz., the prophets (cf. Hosea 11:7; 2 Kings 17:13; Jeremiah 7:25; Jeremiah 25:4; Zechariah 1:4), called to them, called the Israelites to the Lord and to obedience to Him; but they (the Israelites) went away from their countenance, would not hearken to the prophets, or come to the Lord (Jeremiah 2:31). The thought is strengthened by כּן, with the כּאשׁר of the protasis omitted (Ewald, 360, a): as the prophets called, so the Israelites drew back from them, and served idols. בּעלים as in Hosea 2:15, and פּסלים as in 2 Kings 17:41 and Deuteronomy 7:5, Deuteronomy 7:25 (see at Exodus 20:4).