Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Calf of Samaria
Hosea 8:1-6
1 “Put the trumpet to your lips! Something like an eagle is over Yahweh’s house, because they have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law. · WEB
The nation claims to know God in the same breath as it keeps an image, and the book's answer is that the thing was manufactured.
Verse 1 sets an alarm and a bird of prey over the temple: something like an eagle is over Yahweh's house. The charge is stated in covenant terms — they have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law.
Then verse 2, and it is one of the book's sharpest juxtapositions: they cry to me, My God, we, Israel, acknowledge you! The verb is the book's knowledge word, claimed by the people the book keeps saying do not have it Hosea 4:1 Hosea 5:4. The claim is made loudly and, on the book's account, sincerely.
Verse 4 supplies what the claim coexists with, in two parallel charges. They have set up kings, but not by me — the political instability the previous chapter described as arson Hosea 7:7 — and of their silver and their gold they have made themselves idols.
And verses 5 and 6 press the second, with the argument the prophets always press against images. The workman made it, and it is no God. The calf at Samaria is not disproved by theology but by manufacture: somebody's hands did this, and the maker cannot be smaller than the made.
The question in verse 5 is the human one underneath the whole book: how long will it be until they are capable of purity? Not until they choose it — until they are capable of it, which is the same doubt about capacity chapter 5 raised when it said their deeds would not let them turn Hosea 5:4.
And the verdict on the calf is demolition: it shall be broken in pieces.
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