Hosea 2:8

For she did not know - The prophet having, in summary Hosea 2:5, related her fall, her chastisement, and her recovery, begins anew, enlarging both on the impending inflictions, and the future mercy. She “did not know,” because she would not; she “would not retain God in her knowledge” Romans 1:28. “Knowledge,” in Holy Scripture, is not of the understanding, but of the heart and the will.

That I gave her corn ... - The I is emphatic (אנכי( ci). “She did not know, that it was I who gave her.” God gave them the “corn, and wine, and oil,” first, because He gave them the land itself. They held it of Him as their Lord. As He says, “The land is Mine, and ye are strangers and sojourners with Me” Leviticus 25:23. He gave them also in the course of His ordinary providence, wherein He also gave them “the gold and silver,” which they gained by trading. Silver He had so multiplied to her in the days of Solomon, that it was in “Jerusalem as stones, nothing accounted of” 1 Kings 10:27, 1 Kings 10:21, and gold, through the favor which He gave him 1 Kings 9:14; 1 Kings 10:10, 1 Kings 10:14, was in abundance above measure.

Which they prepared for Baal - Rather, as in the English Margin, “which they made into Baal” (see Hosea 8:4; Ezekiel 16:17). “Of that gold and silver, which God had so multiplied, Israel, revolting from the house of David and Solomon, made, first the calves of gold, and then Baal.” Of God’s own gifts they made their gods. They took God’s gifts as from their gods, and made them into gods to them. “Baal,” Lord, the same as Bel, was an object of idolatry among the Phoenicians and Tyrians. Its worship was brought into Israel by Jezebel, daughter of a king of Sidon. Jehu destroyed it for a time, because its adherents were adherents of the house of Ahab. The worship was partly cruel, like that of Moloch, partly abominable. It had this aggravation beyond that of the calves, that Jezebel aimed at the extirpation of the worship of God, setting up a rival temple, with its 450 prophets and 400 of the kindred idolatry of Ashtaroth, and slaying all the prophets of God.

It seems to us strange folly. They attributed to gods, who represented the functions of nature, the power to give what God alone gives. How is it different, when people now say, “nature does this, or that,” or speak of “the operations of nature,” or the laws of “nature,” and ignore God who appoints those laws, and “worketh hitherto” John 5:17 “those operations?” They attributed to planets (as have astrologers at all times) influence over the affairs of people, and worshiped a god, Baal-Gad, or Jupiter, who presided over them. Wherein do those otherwise, who displace God’s providence by fortune or fate or destiny, and say “fortune willed,” “fortune denied him,” “it was his fate, his destiny,” and, even when God most signally interposes, shrink from naming Him, as if to speak of God’s providence were something superstitious? What is this, but to ascribe to Baal, under a new name, the works and gifts of God? And more widely yet. Since “men have as many strange gods as they have sins,” what do they, who seek pleasure or gain or greatness or praise in forbidden ways or from forbidden sources, than make their pleasure or gain or ambition their god, and offer their time and understanding and ingenuity and intellect, yea, their whole lives and their whole selves, their souls and bodies, all the gifts of God, in sacrifice to the idol which they have made? Nay, since whosoever believes of God otherwise than He has revealed Himself, does, in fact, believe in another god, not in the One True God, what else does all heresy, but form to itself an idol out of God’s choicest gift of nature, man’s own mind, and worship, not indeed the works of man’s own hands, but the creature of his own understanding?