Hosea 7:3

3 They have made the king glad with their wickedness: and the princes with their lies.

Hosea 7:3 Meaning and Commentary

Hosea 7:3

They make the king glad with their wickedness
Not any particular king; not Jeroboam the first, as Kimchi; nor Jehu, as Grotius; if any particular king, rather Jeroboam the second; but their kings in general, as the Septuagint render it, in succession, one after another; who were highly delighted and pleased with the priests in offering sacrifice to the calves, and with the people in attending to that idolatrous worship, by which they hoped to secure the kingdom of Israel to themselves, and prevent the people going to Jerusalem to worship: it made them glad to the heart to hear them say that God was as well pleased with sacrifices offered at Dan and Bethel, as at Jerusalem: and the princes with their lies;
with their idols and idolatrous practices, which are vanity and a lie; though some interpret this of their flatteries, either of them, or their favourites; and of their calumnies and detractions of such they had a dislike of.

Hosea 7:3 In-Context

1 When I would have healed Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria, for they have committed falsehood, and the thief is come in to steal, the robber is without.

2 And lest they may say in their hearts, that I remember all their wickedness: their own devices now have beset them about, they have been done before my face.

3 They have made the king glad with their wickedness: and the princes with their lies.

4 They are all adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker: the city rested a little from the mingling of the leaven, till the whole was leavened.

5 The day of our king, the princes began to be mad with wine: he stretched out his hand with scorners.