Hosea 12:1

Lies and desolations— Perfidiousness and violence. Houbigant reads the next clause, They make a covenant with the Assyrians, whilst in the mean time oil is carried into Egypt. That is, "While they were in covenant with the Assyrians, they were secretly and perfidiously seeking an alliance with the Egyptians." Egypt was not a country remarkable for oil of olives, which yet is one great necessary of life in the eastern countries, being very much used there for food. At the same time oil was wanted for lights there, which must not only have been necessarily very numerous in so populous a country; but was also used by the ancient Egyptians in great quantities for illuminations, which are still very frequent in those countries; and especially in those months when the Nile overflows, of which Maillet in his Letters gives a most amusing description, and which we may suppose obtained sometimes, more or less, even in the prophetic times. To which also we may add, the custom which obtains universally there, of keeping lamps burning during the night, in all the apartments of a house that are kept in use; which occasions Maillet to say, that perhaps there is no country in the world where so much oil is consumed as in Egypt. This great consumption of oil occasioned the Egyptians anciently to extract it from other vegetables, as well as olives; and still occasions them to do so. One plant in particular, called cirika, which greatly resembles wild succory, furnishes them with a good deal of oil; but as its smell is very disagreeable, and its light not so clear as that of olive oil, it is not burnt by people of condition, or those who would be thought such. Syria, on the contrary, was a land of oil; and it was produced in great quantities in that part which the Jews inhabited. It is no wonder then, that when the Jews wanted to pay their court to the Egyptians, they sent them the present of oil, with which the prophet here upbraids them. It was what their country produced in great abundance, and it was highly acceptable in Egypt. See the Observations, p. 387.