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Hosea 8:1

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Set the trumpet to thy mouth - Sound another alarm. Let them know that an enemy is fast approaching.

As an eagle against the house of the Lord - of this be a prophecy against Judah, as some have supposed, then by the eagle Nebuchadnezzar is meant, who is often compared to this king of birds. See Ezekiel 17:3; Jeremiah 48:40; Jeremiah 49:22; Daniel 7:4.

But if the prophecy be against Israel, which is the most likely, then Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, is intended, who, for his rapidity, avarice, rapacity, and strength, is fitly compared to this royal bird. He is represented here as hovering over the house of God, as the eagle does over the prey which he has just espied, and on which he is immediately to pounce.

Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

The trumpet to thy mouth! - So God bids the prophet Isaiah, “Cry aloud, spare not, llft up thy voice like a trumpet” Isaiah 58:1. The prophets, as watchmen, were set by God to give notice of His coming judgments Ezekiel 33:3; Amos 3:6. As the sound of a war-trumpet would startle a sleeping people, so would God have the prophet‘s warning burst upon their sleep of sin. The ministers of the Church are called to be “watchmen”. “They too are forbidden to keep a cowardly silence, when “the house of the Lord” is imperilled by the breach of the covenant or violation of the law. If fear of the wicked or false respect for the great silences the voice of those whose office it is to “cry aloud,” how shall such cowardice be excused?”

He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord - The words “he shall come” are inserted for clearness. The prophet beholds the enemy speeding with the swiftness of an eagle, as it darts down upon its prey. “The house of the Lord” is, most strictly, the temple, as being “the place which God had chosen to place His name there.” Next, it is used, of the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, among whom the temple was; from where God says, “I have forsaken My house, I have left Mine heritage; I have given the dearly-beloved of My soul into the hands of her enemies” Jeremiah 12:7, and, “What hath My beloved to do in Mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?” Jeremiah 11:15. Yet the title of “God‘s house” is older than the temple, for God Himself uses it of His whole people, saying of Moses, “My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house” Numbers 12:7. And even the ten tribes, separated as they were from the Temple-worship, and apostates from the true faith of God, were not, as yet, counted by Him as wholly excluded from the “house of God.” For God, below, threatens that removal, as something still to come; “for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of My house” Hosea 9:15. The eagle, then coming down “against or upon” the house of the Lord, is primarily Shalmaneser, who came down and carried off the ten tribes. Yet since Hosea, in these prophecies, includes Judah, also, “the house of the Lord” is most probably to be taken in its fullest sense, as including the whole people of God, among whom He dwelt, and the temple where His Name was placed. The “eagle” includes then Nebuchadnezzar also, whom other prophets so call Ezekiel 17:3, Ezekiel 17:12; Jeremiah 48:40; Habakkuk 1:8; and (since, all through, the principle of sin is the same and the punishment the same) it includes the Roman eagle, the ensign of their armies.

Because they have transgressed My covenant - “God, whose justice is always unquestionable, useth to make clear to people its reasonableness.” Israel had broken the covenant which God had made with their fathers, that He would be to them a God, and they to Him a people. The “covenant” they had broken chiefly by idolatry and apostasy; the “law,” by sins against their neighbor. In both ways they had rejected God; therefore God rejected them.

Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary
When Israel was hard pressed, they would claim protection from God, but this would be disregarded. What stead will it stand in to say, My God, I know thee, if we cannot say, My God, I love thee, serve thee, and cleave to thee only?
Ellen G. White
SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 4 (EGW), 1157

1 (Hosea 8:1; 13:9; Matthew 15:6). Shepherds That Scatter—There are professedly pious men who screen the sinner by their own transgression. They disregard the commandments of God, choosing the traditions of men, making void the law of God, and promoting apostasy. The excuses they make are feeble and weak and will bring destruction to their own souls and the souls of others.... 4BC 1157.1

Upon those who have taken upon them the work of shepherds of the flock, will be visited the heaviest judgments, because they have presented to the people fables instead of truth. Children will rise up and curse their parents. Church members, who have seen the light and been convicted, but who have trusted the salvation of their souls to the minister, will learn in the day of God that no other soul can pay the ransom for their transgression. A terrible cry will be raised, “I am lost, eternally lost.” Men will feel as though they could rend in pieces the ministers who have preached falsehoods and condemned the truth. The pure truth for this time requires a reformation in the life, but they separate themselves from the love of the truth, and of them it can be said, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” The Lord sends a message to the people, “Set a trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and trespassed against my law” (Letter 30, 1900). 4BC 1157.2

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Ellen G. White
The Great Controversy, 310

It was needful that men should be awakened to their danger; that they should be roused to prepare for the solemn events connected with the close of probation. The prophet of God declares: “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” Who shall stand when He appeareth who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil,” and cannot “look on iniquity”? Joel 2:11; Habakkuk 1:13. To them that cry, “My God, we know Thee,” yet have transgressed His covenant, and hastened after another god, hiding iniquity in their hearts, and loving the paths of unrighteousness—to these the day of the Lord is “darkness, and not light, even very dark, and no brightness in it.” Hosea 8:2, 1; Psalm 16:4; Amos 5:20. “It shall come to pass at that time,” saith the Lord, “that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil.” Zephaniah 1:12. “I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” Isaiah 13:11. “Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them;” “their goods shall become a booty, and their houses a desolation.” Zephaniah 1:18, 13. GC 310.1

The prophet Jeremiah, looking forward to this fearful time, exclaimed: “I am pained at my very heart.... I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried.” Jeremiah 4:19, 20. GC 310.2

“That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm.” Zephaniah 1:15, 16. “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, ... to lay the land desolate: and He shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” Isaiah 13:9. GC 310.3

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