Hosea 13:2

‘And now they sin more and more,

And have made for themselves molten images from their silver,

Even idols according to their own understanding,

All of them the work of the craftsmen.

They say of them,

“Let the men who sacrifice kiss the calves.”

And they had continued to sin more and more, making themselves 1) molten images of silver, 2) idols which were derived from their own inventiveness, 3) idols which had been made by men's hands, and which they had the encouraged men to kiss.

The descriptions bring out the folly of their position. The images were made from their own silver, they were inventions of their own minds, they were made with their own hands, and they could be kissed or not as men chose. They were ‘made in Israel', from Israelite raw material, using Israel's skilled workmen. And yet they bowed down to them. What folly! And then they even went so far as to persuade MEN to kiss CALVES! Had it not been true it would have been seen as incredible. And this was in direct disobedience to YHWH's command that they should have no other gods before Him (Hosea 13:4; compare Exodus 20:3) and should not make graven images and bow down to them (Hosea 11:2; compare Exodus 20:4).

No doubt many Israelites would have claimed that when they bowed down to the calves and kissed them they saw themselves as worshipping YHWH and only ‘venerating' the calves, but God knew that in their hearts it was a demeaned YHWH that they were thinking of, Who was being imagined as a nature god. By it they were stripping God of His unique deity.