Hosea 8:1

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.

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.

8:1 Set the trumpet - The Lord here commands the prophet to publish, as by sound of trumpet, that which God will bring upon apostate Israel.He - The king of Assyria. As an eagle - Swift, hungry, surmounting all difficulties. House of the Lord - The family of Israel, the Israelites church.