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Israel is reproved and threatened for their impiety and idolatry, and exhorted to repentance.

Israel and Ephraim are terms our prophet doth ordinarily use, and they signify the same people, the ten tribes revolted from the house of David, and from the true worship of God.

Is an empty vine; a vine wasted and spoiled, that hath lost its strength to bring forth any fruit, or that is robbed and pilled of the fruit it doth bring forth; this partly for want of the Divine protection and benediction, which they were wont to have, and partly from an inherent barrenness and weakness in this vine.

He bringeth forth fruit unto himself; whatever fruit was brought forth by its remaining strength was not brought forth to God, for his service and honour; but for themselves, for their own use, for service of a state interest, to make presents, and to pay tribute; or, which is yet worse, to maintain the worship of idols.

According to the multitude of his fruit: when the land yielded more plentiful increase, this plenty was impiously employed on multiplied idols, or on multiplied altars, built to the same idols.

He hath increased the altars of their idols, either by adding to the number of altars, or else adding to the numbers of sacrifices offered to the idols on their altars.

According to the goodness of his land: idolaters sottishly imagined that the goodness of their land was a blessing on them from their idols; thus sacrilegiously they robbed God, and on this mistake they proceed to further impiety.

He hath made goodly images; more stately, more curiously wrought, more richly adorned, and it is most likely more for number too, accounting it a great devotion to have many and rich statues of their idols.

Their heart is divided from God and his worship, or between God and Baal, such as Zephaniah 1:5 speaks of, or else divided one from another by parties, and factions, and civil wars, which tended to their ruin.

Now shall they be found faulty; as this was their sin, so the effects hereof should manifestly prove them faulty.

He, either God, or the king of Assyria stirred up by God to invade and destroy Ephraim,

shall break down their altars; utterly pull down those altars which they had multiplied to their idols: the Assyrians shall, as other conquering heathen idolaters, rage against the gods of the people they conquer, as well as against the people; such was the pride and atheism of these men.

He shall spoil their images; waste or destroy them; how goodly soever they had seemed to be, yet they should be broken to pieces; and where made of rich materials, as silver and gold, or if adorned with it, the enemy should the sooner spoil them; and then it will appear how sottish this people were to trust in them, or ascribe any praise to them, when Baal cannot defend his own images or people.

For; surely. Now; ere long.

They shall say; see, and feel, and be convinced too of this truth. We have no king; either no king at all, as in an interregnum, or no such king as we expected and hoped: our dependence was much upon the wise, valiant, and successful conduct of our king; but he is either less wise and valiant, or less successful in his enterprises.

Because we feared not the Lord; worshipped not, kept not his law, depended not on God, therefore we have no king, or one next to none, not able to help us.

What then should a king do to us? and now if we had our king, were he as powerful, wise, and successful as Jeroboam the Second, yet it would be too late, the Assyrian power hath so far prevailed, and God is so far departed from us: kings are not able to save without the God of kings.

They, the nobles and great men in Israel, the heads of the parties, or the counsellors of the kingdom,

have spoken words; have in long and repeated consultations and debates contrived and laid forth the designs most like to help us; but all in vain, all is but words; or thus they have deceived one another, and ruined all; and this latter seems exactly to suit with what follows.

Swearing falsely, by perjury deceiving those they treated with, in making a covenant; either among themselves, accepting a usurper, promising and swearing fealty to him; or with their allies, as with the Assyrian king, whose covenant they perjuriously broke, and, contrary to oath, sent to and confederated with Sun, or So, king of Egypt.

Judgment, i.e. Divine revenges, do so abound every where; or else unequal and sinful projects, counsels, and resolutions of their rulers are, instead of just, wholesome, and saving, turned into bitter, poisonous, and pernicious as hemlock.

As hemlock in the furrows of the field; a proverbial speech, expressing the greatness of this pernicious evil. So this will be explained by Amos 6:12, oppression, injustice, and all sins spread (as hemlock quickly overruns a field) over all the kingdom.

The citizens who dwelt yet safe in Samaria, but knew that the Assyrian invaded the kingdom, beat Israel’s army, and took his city; these idolatrous citizens were in bodily fear for their gods, lest the Assyrians should rudely spoil their godships.

Because of the calves of Beth-aven: some give the reason of their fear, because they had sinned by these calves, and provoked God, therefore should this fear seize them; but it is more likely this doth speak the object of the Samaritans’ fears, their cow-calves (as by way of contempt in the Hebrew) were the goodly deities they were afraid for; yet they trusted in these for aid against enemies, and now fear they have not power enough to defend themselves: what brutes are idolaters! Of this

Beth-aven, principal seat of the calf god, see Hosea 4:15.

The people thereof; they who dwelt at Beth-aven, who had gain and profit by the idol, to which many resorted; or else they that were addicted to this idol, worshipped it, and trusted in it.

Shall mourn over it; howl and cry over the endangered god: so let all their sorrows be multiplied that hasten after any strange god.

The priests thereof, that were to attend and offer sacrifices to these calves; the priests were like to lose their livings with their idol.

That rejoiced on it: these priests formerly were fed, clothed, enriched, and got into credit by these their idols, this made them right glad.

The glory thereof, all its credit and veneration, is departed from it; is vanished: it was once taken for a god, but now the case is altered, it is turned into a captive, and with loss of liberty hath lost its deity also; the Assyrians have either broken it, or carried it in derision into Assyria.

It; the golden calf made by Jeroboam the First, 1 Kings 12:28.

Shall be carried; though it hath feet, it cannot go, it must be borne; as Isaiah derides the idols of Babylon, Isaiah 46:2,7 Jer 10:5; and it is carried in triumph. For a present; according to the custom of conquering generals, the rich and rare things of the conquered people were reserved for gifts to their kings; and here is a rarity indeed, a captive god, and it is rich, for it is made of gold.

King Jareb: see Hosea 5:13.

Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed: the great confusion of this people is here foretold, and the certainty of it by the ingemination of the phrase: the Assyrians shall upbraid them with their brutish folly, to think that a god which could not keep itself from becoming a prey to insolent soldiers; and when thus taunted, Israel shall have nothing to answer, but must be silent with shame.

Of his own counsel; which is expressly mentioned 1 Kings 12:28; it was against the counsel of God; and as they began, so they persisted in it by the same counsel.

As for Samaria, after three years’ siege she shall be cut off. Her king is cut off; for all the rest of the kingdom was lost, and now he is pent up there also; he that was once the confidence of the ten tribes, and king of a mighty people, is now spoiled of all but one only city, where he is rather a prisoner than a king, kept close till made a captive.

Is cut off; shortly will be cut off; it is not unlikely this prophecy should be delivered when Samaria was besieged.

As the foam upon the water; as a contemptible, weak, and light thing: it is a proverb, and foretells how contemptibly the Assyrians should use them.

The high places; the temples and altars of Baal and other idols.

Aven, for Beth-aven, say most interpreters: what if. Aven, vanity, folly, be here put for all idol worship and rites, which was notoriously

the sin of Israel?

Shall be destroyed; utterly overthrown; and lie so long waste and desolate, that thorns and thistles shall spring up out of the places where their altars once stood within their stately temples. When this shall be brought to pass, the idolatrous Israelites shall be in such perplexity, that they shall wish the mountains and hills might fall on them, and bury them alive, that they might escape the troubles that they did foresee were coming upon them; or it may be an upbraiding them for praying to lifeless stocks or statues, and telling them in their distress, and when their gods are gone, and cannot help, they should cry to deaf mountains to cover them.