O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah - There must have been great sin, on both sides, of Israel as well as Benjamin, when Israel punished the atrocity of Gibeah, since God caused Israel so to be smitten before Benjamin. Such sin had continued ever since, so that, although God, in His longsuffering, had hitherto spared them, "it was not of late only that they had deserved those judgments, although now at last only, God inflicted them." "There" in Gibeah, "they stood." Although smitten twice at Gibeah, and heavily chastened, there they were avengers of the sacredness of God's law, and, in the end, "they stood; chastened but not killed." But now, none of the ten tribes took the side of God. Neither zeal for God, nor the greatness of the guilt, nor fear of judgment, nor the peril of utter ruin, induced any to set themselves against sin so great. The sin devised by one, diffused among the many, was burnt and branded into them, so that they never parted with it. : "The battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them," i. e., it did not overtake them then, but it shall overtake them now. Or if we render, (as is more probable,) "shall not overtake them," it will mean, not a battle like that in Gibeah, terrible as that was, "shall" now "overtake them;" but one far worse. For, although the tribe of Benjamin was then reduced to six hundred men, yet the tribe still survived and flourished again; now the kingdom of the ten tribes, and the name of Ephraim, should be utterly blotted out.

Thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah - This is another reference to the horrible rape and murder of the Levite's wife, Judges 19:13, Judges 19:14.

There they stood - Only one tribe was nearly destroyed, viz., that of Benjamin. They were the criminals, the children of iniquity; the others were faultless, and stood only for the rights of justice and mercy.

O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah,.... This has no respect, as the Targum, and others, to Gibeah of Saul, of which place he was, and the choosing him to be king; but to the affair of the Levite and his concubine at Gibeah in the days of the judges, and what followed upon it, Judges 19:1; suggesting, that the sins of Israel were not new ones; they were the same with what were committed formerly, as early as the history referred to, and had been continued ever since; the measure of which were now filling up: or, as Aben Ezra and Abarbinel interpret it, "thou hast sinned more than the days of Gibeah"; were guilty of more idolatry, inhumanity, and impurity, than in those times; and yet the grossest of sins, particularly unnatural lusts, were then committed:

there they stood; either the men of Gibeah continued in their sins, and did not repent of them; and stood in their own defence against the tribes of Israel, and the Benjamites stood also with them, and by them; and stood two battles, and were conquerors in them; and, though beaten in the third, were not wholly destroyed, as now the Israelites would be: or the tribes of Israel stood, and continued in, and connived at, the idolatry of the Levite; or rather stood sluggish and slothful, and were not eagar to fight with the Benjamites, who took part with the men of Gibeah; which were their sins, for which they were worsted in the two first battles, and in which the present Israelites imitated them:

the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them; the two first battles against the men of Gibeah and the Benjamites, who are the children of iniquity, the one the actors, and the other the abettors and patrons of it, did not succeed against them, but the Israelites were overcome; and the third battle, in which they got the day, did not overtake them so as utterly to cut them off; for six hundred persons made their escape; but, in the present case prophesied of, it is suggested, that as their sins were as great or greater than theirs, their ruin should be entire and complete: or the sense is, that they were backward to go to battle; they were not eager upon it; they did not at once espouse the cause of the Levite; they did not stir in it till he had done that unheard of thing, cutting his concubine into twelve pieces, and sending them to the twelve tribes of Israel; and then they were not overly anxious, but sought the Lord, as if it was a doubtful case; which backwardness was resented in their ill success at first; and the same slow disposition to punish vice had continued with them ever since; so Schmidt.

After the threatening of punishment has thus been extended in Hosea 10:8, even to the utter ruin of the kingdom, the prophet returns in Hosea 10:9 to the earlier times, for the purpose of exhibiting in a new form and deeply rooted sinfulness of the people, and then, under cover of an appeal to them to return to righteousness, depicting still further the time of visitation, and (in Hosea 10:14, Hosea 10:15) predicting with still greater clearness the destruction of the kingdom and the overthrow of the monarchy. Hosea 10:9. "Since the days of Gibeah hast thou sinned, O Israel: there have they remained: the war against the sons of wickedness did not overtake them at Gibeah. Hosea 10:10. According to my desire shall I chastise them; and nations will be gathered together against them, to bind them to their two transgressions." Just as in Hosea 9:9, the days of Gibeah, i.e., the days when that ruthless crime was committed at Gibeah upon the concubine of the Levite, are mentioned as a time of deep corruption; so are those days described in the present passage as the commencement of Israel's sin. For it is as obvious that מיממי is not to be understood in a comparative sense, as it is that the days of Gibeah are not to be taken as referring to the choice of Saul, who sprang from Gibeah, to be their king (Chald.). The following words, שׁם עמדוּ גגו, which are very difficult, and have been variously explained, do not describe the conduct of Israel in those days; for, in the first place, the statement that the war did not overtake them is by no means in harmony with this, since the other tribes avenged that crime so severely that the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated; and secondly, the suffix attached to תּשּׂיגם evidently refers to the same persons as that appended to אסּ'רם in Hosea 9:10, i.e., to the Israelites of the ten tribes, to which Hosea foretels the coming judgment. These are therefore the subject to עמדוּ, and consequently עמד signifies to stand, to remain, to persevere (cf. Isaiah 47:12; Jeremiah 32:14). There, in Gibeah, did they remain, that is to say, they persevered in the sin of Gibeah, without the war at Gibeah against the sinners overtaking them (the imperfect, in a subordinated clause, used to describe the necessary consequence; and עלוה transposed from עולה mo, like זעוה in Deuteronomy 28:25 for זועה). The meaning is, that since the days of Gibeah the Israelites persist in the same sin as the Gibeahites; but whereas those sinners were punished and destroyed by the war, the ten tribes still live on in the same sin without having been destroyed by any similar war. Jehovah will now chastise them for it. בּאוּתי, in my desire, equivalent to according to my wish - an anthropomorphic description of the severity of the chastisement. ואסּ'רם from יסר (according to Ewald, 139, a), with the Vav of the apodosis. The chastisement will consist in the fact, that nations will be gathered together against Israel בּאסרם, lit., at their binding, i.e., when I shall bind them. The chethib עינתם cannot well be the plural of עין, because the plural עינות is not used for the eyes; and the rendering, "before their two eyes," in the sense of "without their being able to prevent it" (Ewald), yields the unheard-of conception of binding a person before his own eyes; and, moreover, the use of שׁתּי עינות instead of the simple dual would still be left unexplained. We must therefore give the preference to the keri עונת, and regard the chethib as another form, that may be accounted for from the transition of the verbs עי into עו, and עונת as a contraction of עונת, since עונה cannot be shown to have either the meaning of "sorrow" (Chald., A. E.), or that of the severe labour of "tributary service." And, moreover, neither of these meanings would give us a suitable thought; whilst the very same objection may be brought against the supposition that the doubleness of the work refers to Ephraim and Judah, which has been brought against the rendering "to bind to his furrows," viz., that it would be non solum ineptum, sed locutionis monstrum. לשׁתּי עונתם, "to their two transgression" to bind them: i.e., to place them in connection with the transgressions by the punishment, so that they will be obliged to drag them along like beasts of burden. By the two transgressions we are to understand neither the two golden calves at Bethel and Daniel (Hitzig), nor unfaithfulness towards Jehovah and devotedness to idols, after Jeremiah 2:13 (Cyr., Theod.); but their apostasy from Jehovah and the royal house of David, in accordance with Hosea 3:5, where it is distinctly stated that the ultimate conversion of the nation will consist in its seeking Jehovah and David their king.

O Israel, thou hast {k} sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they {l} stood: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not {m} overtake them.

(k) In those days you were as wicked as the Gibeonites, as God there partly declared: for your zeal could not be good in executing God's judgments, seeing your own deeds were as wicked as theirs.

(l) That is, to fight, or, the Israelites remained in that stubbornness from that time.

(m) The Israelites were not moved by the example of the Gibeonites to cease from their sins.

10:9 They - Probably the six hundred men who fled to the rock Rimmon. Overtake them - That fatal battle did not reach them; but now Israel shall be more severely punished.

9. Gibeah-(Ho 9:9; Jud 19:1-20:48). They are singled out as a specimen of the whole nation.

there they stood-The Israelites have, as there and then, so ever since, persisted in their sin [Calvin]. Or, better, "they stood their ground," that is, did not perish then [Maurer].

the battle . did not overtake them-Though God spared you then, He will not do so now; nay, the battle whereby God punished the Gibeonite "children of iniquity," shall the more heavily visit you for your continued impenitence. Though "they stood" then, it shall not be so now. The change from "thou" to "they" marks God's alienation from them; they are, by the use of the third person, put to a greater distance from God.

10:9-15 Because God does not desire the death and ruin of sinners, therefore in mercy he desires their chastisement. The children of iniquity still remained in Israel. The enemies would be gathered against them. It is just with God to make those know what hardships mean, who indulge themselves in ease and pleasure. Let them cleanse their hearts from all corrupt affections and lusts, and be a broken and contrite spirit. Let them abound in works of piety towards God, and of justice and charity towards one another: herein let them sow to the Spirit. Seeking the Lord is to be every day's work, but there are special occasions when to seek him. Christ shall come as the Lord our righteousness, and grant us of it abundantly. If we sow in righteousness, we shall reap according to mercy; a reward not of debt, but of grace. Even the gains of sin yield the sinner no satisfaction. As our comforts, so our confidences in the service of sin will certainly fail us. Come and seek the Lord, and thy hope in him shall not deceive thee. See what cruel work war makes. Whatever mischief is done, it is sin that does it. What miseries men's sins bring on them, even in this world!