Hosea 4:12

My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused [them] to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.

Ver. 12. My people ask counsel at their stocks] That is, at their images, which are here called stocks in contempt, as Hezekiah called the brazen serpent (when it was idolized by the people) Nehushtan, or, a piece of brass; and as Julius Palmer, martyr, called the rood in Paul's a jackanapes; and as the poet, in contempt of his own god Priapus, brings him in saying

“ Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum. ”

So the prophet cries shame upon the house of Israel for saying to a stock, Thou art my father, and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth, Jeremiah 2:27 Isaiah 44:11. But to such senseless practices men fall many times when they grow sensual; see 2Th 2:10 Revelation 17:5. Spiritual whoredom and bodily go usually together. Rivet tells us here of a nobleman that went out of the church from hearing mass into the very next house, where he kept a whore; and said to the bystanders, a lupanari ad missam unum tantum esse passum, that there is but one step from the mass to a whore house.

And their staff] That is, saith Kimchi, their false prophets, upon whom they lean, and by whom they are led, as a blind man by his staff. But I rather think it is meant of rhabdomancy, a a kind of odd way of divining by rods and staves, as Nebuchadnezzar is brought in doing, Ezekiel 21:22, and was common in those eastern parts. Or else hereby are meant the soothsayers' and magicians' rods, as Exo 7:12 Hebrews 11:21. It is said that Jacob worshipped leaning upon the top of his staff, and thereby lifting up his body to do reverence to God, where the Vulgate text, omitting the preposition, hath committed a manifest error, in saying that Jacob worshipped the top of his rod or staff; as if there had been some picture there engraven. The Hebrew is, towards the bed's heads. And it is certain that Jacob worshipped none but God; and bowed himself either towards the bed's head, or leaning upon his staff, to testify his humility, faith, and hope, which adoration how far it was from the worshipping of images (which the Papists urge from this place), who seeth not?

For the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err] That unclean spirit, Zechariah 13:2, the devil (who is ειδωλοχαρης, as Synesius saith, a delighter in idols), drives them satanico impetu, to commit whoredom, both spiritual and corporal, with strength of affection. Now, if that spirit of error, 1 John 4:6, and of giddiness, Isaiah 19:14, cause men to err, and carry them with a vehement impetus to idol worship (which indeed is devil worship), what wonder? Men that are that way bent know not of what spirit they are; little think that they are acted and agitated by the devil. O pray with David, Psalms 143:10, that that good Spirit of God may lead us into all truth and holiness.

And they are gone a whoring from under their God] i.e. from under the yoke of his obedience; they are gone out of his precincts, and therefore also out of his protection; as a whore that forsaketh her husband, and is therefore worthily cast off.

a Divination by means of a rod or wand; spec. the art of discovering ores, springs of water, etc., in the earth by means of a divining rod. ŒD.