_The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital. Israel already experiences_[566] _them! A fool is the prophet, raving mad the man of the spirit._ The old ecstasy of Saul's day has become delirium and fanaticism.[567] Why? _For the mass of thy guilt and the multiplied treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with my God._ There is probably a play on the name, for with the meaning a _watchman_ for God it is elsewhere used as an honourable title of the prophets. _The prophet is a fowler's snare upon all his ways. Treachery--they have made it profound in the very house of their God._[568] _They have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity is remembered; visitation is made on their sin._ * * * * * These then were the symptoms of the profound political decay which followed on Israel's immorality. The national spirit and unity of the people had disappeared. Society--half of it was raw, half of it was baked to a cinder. The nation, broken into factions, produced no man to lead, no king with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed; monarchs were made and murdered. There was no prestige abroad, nothing but contempt among the Gentiles for a people whom they had exhausted. Judgment was inevitable by exile--nay, it had come already in the corruption of the spiritual leaders of the nation. Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still. 4. "THE CORRUPTION THAT IS THROUGH LUST." HOSEA ix. 10-17: cf. iv. 11-14. Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a Paganism--without the Pagan conscience--and exalting licentiousness to the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has attempted their experiment, with far more sincerity than they themselves can put into it, and how invariably the result has been recorded by history to be weariness, decay and death. On this occasion we have the story told to us by one who to the experience of the statesman adds the vision of the poet.