The days of visitation are come - The false prophets had continually hood-winked the people, promising them that those days would never come. "They had put far away the evil day" Amos 6:3. Now it was not at hand only. In God's purpose, those "days" were "come," irresistible, inevitable, inextricable; days in which God would visit, what in His long-suffering, He seemed to overlook, and would "recompense each according to his works."

Israel shall know it - Israel would not know by believing it; now it should "know," by feeling it.

The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad - The true prophet gives to the false the title which they claimed for themselves, "the prophet" and "the man of the spirit." Only the event showed what spirit was in them, not the spirit of God but a lying spirit. The people of the world called the true prophets, "mad," literally, maddened, "driven mad," , as Festus thought of Paul; "Thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad" Acts 26:24. Jehu's captains called by the same name the young prophet whom Elisha sent to anoint him. "Wherefore came this mad fellow unto thee?" 2 Kings 9:11. Shemaiah, the false prophet, who deposed God's priest, set false priests to "be officers in the house of the Lord," to have an oversight as to "every man who is mad and maketh himself a prophet," calling Jeremiah both a false prophet and a "madman" (Jeremiah 29:25-26. The word is the same).

The event was the test. Of our Lord Himself, the Jews blaspbemed, "He hath a devil and is mad" John 10:20. And long afterward, "madness," "phrensy" were among the names which the pagan gave to the faith in Christ . As Paul says, that "Christ crucified" was "to the Greeks" and to "them that perish, foolishness," and that the "things of the Spirit of God, are foolishness to the natural man, neither can he know" them, "because they are spiritually discerned" 1 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 1:23; 1 Corinthians 2:14. The man of the world and the Christian judge of the same things by clean contrary rules, use them for quite contrary ends. The slave of pleasure counts him mad, who foregoes it; the wealthy trader counts him mad, who gives away profusely. In these days, profusion for the love of Christ has been counted a ground for depriving a man of the care of his property. One or the other is mad. And worldlings must count the Christian mad; else they must own themselves to be so most fearfully. In the Day of Judgment, Wisdom says, "They, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This was he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach. We fools counted his life madness, and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!" (Wisd. 5:3-6).

For the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred - The words stand at the close of the verse, as the reason of all which had gone before. Their "manifold iniquity" and their "great hatred" of God were the ground why the "days of visitation" and "recompense" should "come." They were the ground also, why God allowed such prophets to delude them. The words, "the great hatred," stand quite undefined, so that they may signify alike the hatred of Ephraim against God and good people and His true prophets, or God's hatred of them. Yet it, most likely, means, "their" great hatred, since of them the prophet uses it again in the next verse. The sinner first neglects God; then, as the will of God is brought before him, he willfully disobeys Him; then, when, he finds God's will irreconcilably at variance with his own, or when God chastens him, he hates Him, and (the prophet speaks out plainly) "hates" Him "greatly."

The days of visitation - Of punishment are come.

The prophet is a fool - Who has pretended to foretell, on Divine authority, peace and plenty; for behold all is desolation.

The spiritual man - איש הרוח ish haruach, the man of spirit, who was ever pretending to be under a Divine afflatus.

Is mad - He is now enraged to see every thing falling out contrary to his prediction.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come,.... In which the Lord would punish the people of Israel for their sins, and reward them in a righteous manner, according as their evil works deserved; which time, being fixed and appointed by him, are called "days"; and these, because near at hand, are said to be "come"; and this is repeated for the certainty of it:

Israel shall know it; by sad experience, that these days are come; and shall acknowledge the truth of the divine predictions, and the righteousness of God in his judgments. Schultens (z), from the use of the phrase in the Arabic language, interprets it of Israel's suffering punishment; with which agrees the Septuagint version, "Israel shall be afflicted", or it shall go ill with him; and to the same purpose the Arabic version:

the prophet is a fool; so Israel said, before those days came, of a true prophet of the Lord, that he was a fool for prophesying of evil things, but now they shall find it otherwise. So the Targum,

"they of the house of Israel shall know that they who had prophesied to them were true prophets;''

but rather this is to be understood of false prophets, who, when the day of God's visitation shall come on Israel in a way of wrath and vengeance, will appear both to themselves and others to be fools, for prophesying good things to them, when evil was at hand:

the spiritual man is mad; he that was truly so, and prophesied under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, was accounted a madman for speaking against the idolatry of the times, and foretelling the judgments of God that would come upon the nation for it; but now it would be manifest, that not he, but such who pretended to be spiritual men, and to be directed and dictated by the Spirit of God, when they promised the people peace, though they walked after the imagination of their hearts, were the real madmen; who pursued the frenzies and fancies of their own minds, to the deception of themselves and the people, and called these the revelations of God, and pretended they came from the Spirit of God:

for the multitude of thine iniquities, and the great hatred; that is, either those evil days came upon them for their manifold sins and transgressions, which were hateful to God, and the cause of his hatred of them; or they were suffered to give heed to those foolish and mad prophets, because of their many sins, especially idolatry; and because of their great hatred of God, and of his true prophets, and of his laws and ordinances, of his word, will, and worship, and of one another, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to a judicial blindness and hardness of heart, to believe a lie, and whatsoever those false prophets declared unto them, because they did not like to retain him in their knowledge, to walk according to his law, and to believe his prophets. The Targum is,

"but the false prophets besotted them, so as to increase thy transgression, and strengthen thine iniquities.''

(z) Animadv. Philol. in Job, p. 78.

"The days of visitation are come, the days of retribution are come; Israel will learn: a fool the prophet, a madman the man of spirit, for the greatness of thy guilt, and the great enmity. Hosea 9:8. A spy is Ephraim with my God: the prophet a snare of the bird-catcher in all his ways, enmity in the house of his God. Hosea 9:9. They have acted most corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah: He remembers their iniquity, visits their sins." The perfects in Hosea 9:7 are prophetic. The time of visitation and retribution is approaching. Then will Israel learn that its prophets, who only predicted prosperity and good (Ezekiel 13:10), were infatuated fools. אויל וגו introduces, without kı̄, what Israel will experience, as in Hosea 7:2; Amos 5:12. It does not follow, from the use of the expression 'ı̄sh rūăch, that the reference is to true prophets. 'Ish rūăch (a man of spirit) is synonymous with the 'ı̄sh hōlēkh rūăch (a man walking in the spirit) mentioned in Micah 2:11 as prophesying lies, and may be explained from the fact, that even the false prophets stood under the influence of a superior demoniacal power, and were inspired by a rūăch sheqer ("a lying spirit," 1 Kings 22:22). The words which follow, viz., "a fool is the prophet," etc., which cannot possibly mean, that men have treated, despised, and persecuted the prophets as fools and madmen, are a decisive proof that the expression does not refer to true prophets. על רב עונך is attached to the principal clauses, השּׁלּם ... בּאוּ. The punishment and retribution occur because of the greatness of the guilt of Israel. In ורבּה the preposition על continues in force, but as a conjunction: "and because the enmity is great" (cf. Ewald, 351, a). Mastēmâh, enmity, not merely against their fellow-men generally, but principally against God and His servants the true prophets. This is sustained by facts in Hosea 9:8. The first clause, which is a difficult one and has been interpreted in very different ways, "spying is Ephraim עם אלהי" (with or by my God), cannot contain the thought that Ephraim, the tribe, is, according to its true vocation, a watchman for the rest of the people, whose duty it is to stand with the Lord upon the watch-tower and warn Israel when the Lord threatens punishment and judgment (Jerome, Schmidt); for the idea of a prophet standing with Jehovah upon a watch-tower is not only quite foreign to the Old Testament, but irreconcilable with the relation in which the prophets stood to Jehovah. The Lord did indeed appoint prophets as watchmen to His people (Ezekiel 3:17); but He does take His own stand upon the watch-tower with them. Tsâphâh in this connection, where prophets are spoken of both before and after, can only denote the eager watching on the part of the prophets for divine revelations, as in Habakkuk 2:1, and not their looking out for help; and עם אלהי cannot express their fellowship or agreement with God, if only on account of the suffix "my God," in which Hosea contrasts the true God as His own, with the God of the people. The thought indicated would require אלהיו, a reading which is indeed met with in some codices, but is only a worthless conjecture. עם denotes outward fellowship here: "with" equals by the side of. Israel looks out for prophecies or divine revelations with the God of the prophet, i.e., at the side of Jehovah; in other words, it does not follow or trust its own prophets, who are not inspired by Jehovah. These are like snares of a bird-catcher in its road, i.e., they cast the people headlong into destruction. נביא stands at the head, both collectively and absolutely. In all its ways there is the trap of the bird-catcher: i.e., all its projects and all that it does will only tend to ensnare the people. Hostility to Jehovah and His servants the true prophets, is in the house of the God of the Israelites, i.e., in the temple erected for the calf-worship; a fact of which Amos (Amos 7:10-17) furnishes a practical example. Israel has thereby fallen as deeply into abomination and sins as in the days of Gibeah, i.e., as at the time when the abominable conduct of the men of Gibeah in connection with the concubine of a Levite took place, as related in Judges 19ff., in consequence of which the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated. The same depravity on the part of Israel will be equally punished by the Lord now (cf. Hosea 8:13).

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: {h} the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.

(h) Then they will know that they were deluded by those who claimed themselves to be their prophets and spiritual men.

9:7 The prophet - The false prophet. The spiritual man - That pretends to be full of the spirit of prophecy. For thine iniquity - God began his punishments in giving them over to believe their false prophets. The great hatred - Which God had against your sins.

spiritual...: Heb. man of the spirit

7. visitation-vengeance: punishment (Isa 10:3).

Israel shall know it-to her cost experimentally (Isa 9:9).

the prophet is a fool-The false prophet who foretold prosperity to the nation shall be convicted of folly by the event.

the spiritual man-the man pretending to inspiration (La 2:14; Eze 13:3; Mic 3:11; Zep 3:4).

for the multitude of thine iniquity, &c.-Connect these words with, "the days of visitation . are come"; "the prophet . is mad," being parenthetical.

the great hatred-or, "the great provocation" [Henderson]; or, "(thy) great apostasy" [Maurer]. English Version means Israel's "hatred" of God's prophets and the law.

9:7-10 Time had been when the spiritual watchmen of Israel were with the Lord, but now they were like the snare of a fowler to entangle persons to their ruin. The people were become as corrupt as those of Gibeah, Jud 19; and their crimes should be visited in like manner. At first God had found Israel pleasing to Him, as grapes to the traveller in the wilderness. He saw them with pleasure as the first ripe figs. This shows the delight God took in them; yet they followed after idolatry.