The prophet, starting anew, here returns to a description of her guilt and punishment; and it is only from ver. 16 that he expands what, in ver. 9, he had intimated concerning her conversion, and her obtaining mercy. The words, "She saith," in that verse, belong thus to a period more remote than the words, "She does not know," in the verse before us. The things which are here enumerated were, in the case of Israel, in a peculiar sense, the gift of God. He bestowed them upon the Congregation as her Covenant-God, as her husband. They are thus announced as early as in the Pentateuch; compare, _e.g._, Deut. vii. 13: "And He loveth thee, and blesseth thee, and multiplieth thee, and blesseth the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, thy must, and thy oil;" xi. 14: "And I give the rain of your land in due season, and thou gatherest in thy corn, thy must, and thy oil." It is certainly not accidental that Hosea enumerates the three objects, just in the same order in which they occur in these two passages. By the celebration of the feasts, and by the offering of the first-fruits, the Israelites were to give expression to the acknowledgment, [Pg 242] that they derived these gifts of God from His special providence--from the covenant relation. The relative clause עשו לבעל is subjoined, as is frequently the case, without a sign of its relation, and without a _pron. suff._, which is manifest from the preceding substantive. Several interpreters, from the Chaldee Paraphrast down to _Ewald_, give the explanation, "which they have made for a Baal," _i.e._, from which they have made images of Baal, and appeal to viii. 4: "Their silver and their gold they have made into idols for themselves." But we must object to this opinion on the following grounds. 1. עשה, with ל following, is a religious _terminus technicus_, with the sense of, "to make to any one," "to appropriate," "to dedicate," as appears from its frequent repetition in Exod. x. 25 sqq., and also from the fact that ליהוה is frequently omitted. The phrase is used with a reference to idolatry in 2 Kings xvii. 32; 2 Chron. xxiv. 7.--2. It cannot be proved that הבעל, in the singular and with the Article, could be used for "statues of Baal."--3. By this explanation we lose the striking contrast between that which the Israelites _were doing_, and that which they _were to do_. That which the Lord gave to them, they consecrated to Baal, instead of to Him, to whom alone these embodied thanks were due. And, not satisfied in withdrawing from the true God the honour and thanks which were due to Him, they transferred them to His enemy and worthless rival,--a proceeding which bears witness to the deep corruption of human nature, and which, up to the present day, is continually repeated, and must be so, because the corruption remains the same. It is substantially the same thing that the Israelites dedicated their gold to Baal, and that our great poets consecrate to the world and its prince the rich