My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.
The Prophet calls here the Israelites the people of God, not to honor them, but rather to increase their sin; for the more heinous was the perfidy of the people, that having been chosen, they had afterwards forsaken their heavenly Father. Hence My people: there is here an implied comparison between all other nations and the seed of Abraham, whom God had adopted; “This is, forsooth!
In these verses we have, as before, I. The sins charged upon the people of Israel, for which God had a controversy with them, and they are, 1. Spiritual whoredom, or idolatry. They have in them a spirit of whoredoms, a strong inclination to that sin; the bent and bias of their hearts are that way; it is their own iniquity; they are carried out...
Commenting on Hosea 4:12-19
My people ask counsel at their stocks,.... Or "at his wood" (a), or stick; his wooden image, as the Targum; their wooden gods, their idols made of wood, mere stocks and blocks, without life or sense, and much less reason and understanding, and still less divinity.