I will be thy king: where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? and thy judges of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and princes?
He afterwards more fully confirms the same by saying, I will be; and then he says, Thy king, where is he? By saying, ‘I will be,’ God retreats what he had before declared, that he would always be the same; for, as James says ‘No overshadowing happens to him,’ (James 1:17.) Hence ‘I will be;’ that is, “Though the Israelites rail against me, that I...
The first of these verses is the summary, or contents, of all the rest (Hos 13:9), where we have, 1. All the blame of Israel's ruin laid upon themselves: O Israel! thy perdition is thence; it is of and from thyself; or, "It has destroyed thee, O Israel! that is, all that sin and folly of thine which thou art before charged with.
Commenting on Hosea 13:9-16
I will be thy King, where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities?.... Governor, Protector, and Defender; and so confirming what is before said, that their help was in him: or, as the Targum, Abarbinel, and others (n), "where is thy king now, that he may serve thee in all thy cities?" whom they had asked, rejecting the Lord, and in...