Hosea 10:8

‘The high places also of Aven, will be destroyed,

The sin of Israel,

The thorn and the thistle will come up

Upon their altars,

And they will say to the mountains, “Cover us,”

and to the hills, “Fall on us.”

And what has been left behind, the high places of Beth-Aven (or ‘of evil') will be destroyed, because they represented ‘The Sin Of Israel'. Beth-aven more than anywhere else symbolised their unfaithfulness and apostasy. Thus, with their altars destroyed, there would be nothing left for the calves to come home to. They had failed the land, and the land had spewed them out. And their deserted altars will become overgrown with weeds, a place of thorns and thistles, symbolic of YHWH's curse on the ground in Genesis 3:18 and an indication that the land has been cursed.

The final awfulness of the situation comes out in the final two lines. Such will be the desolation and misery that the people will call on the mountains to cover them with a rockslide, and will call on the hills to fall on them. They will not be able to bear the thought of what the future holds.