The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad, for the abundance of thine iniquity, and because the enmity is great.

The days of visitation are come, the days of repaying are come: know ye, O Israel, that the prophet was foolish, the spiritual man was mad, for the multitude of thy iniquity, and the multitude of thy madness.

The days of visitation are come; the days of recompence are come: Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the inspired man is mad, because of the greatness of thine iniquity, and the great enmity.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and because the enmity is great.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thy iniquity, and the great hatred.

Come in have the days of inspection, Come in have the days of recompence, Israel doth know! a fool is the prophet, Mad is the man of the Spirit, Because of the abundance of thine iniquity, And great is the hatred.

The days of punishment, the days of reward are come; Israel will be put to shame; the prophet is foolish, the man who has the spirit is off his head, because of your great sin.

The days of visitation are come, The days of recompense are come, Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad! For the multitude of thine iniquity, the enmity is great.

The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Let Israel know. The prophet is a fool, and the man of the spirit is mad, because of the abundance of your sins, and because your hostility is great.

The days of visitation have arrived; the days of retribution are here. Know this, Israel: that the prophet was foolish, the spiritual man was mad, because of the multitude of your iniquities and the great extent of your foolishness.

Venerunt dies visitationis, venerunt dies retributionis; agnoscet Israel; stultus Propheta (vel, uno contextu, sicuti alii legunt, cognoscet Israel stultum Prophetam,) insanum virum spiritus, propter multitudinem iniquitatis tuae, et multum odium (vel, stultus Prophets, vaesanus vir spiritus propter multitudinem iniquitatis tuae et multum odium: et propter accentun melior est distinctio, quam secundo loco posui, cognoscet Israel, stultus est Propheta: et que sequuntur poterunt legi separatim, sed tamen ego utrunque exponam, ut libera deinde sit electio. [53] )

The Prophet, by saying that the days of visitation had come, intended to shake off from hypocrites that supine torpor of which we have often spoken; for as they were agitated by their own lusts, and were in a state of continual fervour, so they hardened themselves against God's judgement, and, as it were, covered themselves over with hardness. It was then necessary to deal roughly with them in order to break down such stubbornness. This is the reason that the Prophet repeats so often and in so many forms what might be expressed in this one sentence -- That God would be a just avenger. Hence he cries out here, that the days of visitation had come. For when the Lord spared them, as sacred history relates, and as we said at the beginning, (and under the king Jeroboam the second, the son of Joash, their affairs were prosperous,) their pride and contempt of God the more increased. Since then they thought themselves to be now beyond the reach of harm, the Prophet declares that the days had come. And there is here an implied contrast in reference to the time during which the Lord had borne with them; for as the Lord had not immediately visited their sins, they thought that they had escaped. But the Prophet here distinguishes between time and time: "You have hitherto thought," he says, "that you are at peace with God; as if he, by conniving at the sins of men, denied himself, so as not to discharge any more the office of a judge: nay, there is another thing to be here considered, and that is, that God has certain days of visitation, which he has fixed for himself; and these days are now come." And he again teaches the same thing, The days of retribution have come He uses another word, that they might know that they could not go unpunished for having in so many ways provoked God. For as the Lord disappoints not the hope of his people, who honour him; so also there is a reward laid up for the ungodly, who regard as nothing his judgement. "God will then repay you what you have deserved, though for a time it may please him to suspend his judgement." Then he says, Israel shall know This is the wisdom of fools, as it is said even in an old proverb; and Homer has also said, pathon de te nepios egno, (Even the foolish knows when he suffers.) The foolish is not wise, except when he suffers. Hence the Prophet says, that Israel, when afflicted, would then perceive that instruction had been despised, and that all warnings had been trifled with, at least had not been regarded. Israel then shall know; that is, he shall at length, when too late, understand that he had to do with God, even when the time of repentance shall be no more. The meaning then is that as the ungodly reject the word of God, and obey not wise admonitions and counsels, they shall at length be taken to another school, where God teaches not by the mouth but by the hand. Whosoever then does not now willingly submit to his teaching, shall find God to be a judge, and shall not escape his hand. They who join what follows elicit this meaning, Israel shall know the Prophet to be foolish, the man of the spirit to be mad; that is, Israel shall then understand that he was deluded by flatteries, when the false Prophets promised that all things would be prosperous. We indeed know that they catched at those prophecies which pleased their ears; for which Micah also reproves them; hence he calls those who gave hope of a better state of things, the Prophets of wine and oil and wheat, (Micah 2:11.) The world wishes to be ever thus deceived. Since then there were many in Israel, who by their impositions deceived the miserable, he says, Israel shall at last know that he has been deluded by his own teachers. If we receive this sense, there is then here a reproof to Israel for thinking that the vengeance of God was in some way restrained, when the false Prophets said that he was pacified, and that there was no danger to be feared. For do not men in this way stultify themselves? And how gross is their stupidity, when they think that God's hands are tied, when men are silent, or when they perfidiously turn the truth into a lie? And yet even at this day this disease prevails in the world, as it has prevailed almost in all ages. For what do the ungodly seek, but to be let alone in their sins? When mouths are closed, they think that they have gained much. This madness the Prophet derides, intimating that those profane men, who have such delicate ears, that they can bear no words of reproof, shall at last know what they had gained by hiring prophets to flatter them. We hence see, in short, that the adulations, by which the ungodly harden themselves against God, will be to them the occasion of a twofold destruction; for such fallacies dementate them, so that they much more boldly provoke against themselves the wrath of God. But if we read the two clauses apart, the rendering will be this, "The Prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad." And as to the matter itself, there is not much difference. I will not then dwell on the subject; for when we are agreed as to the design of the Prophet and the truth remains the same, it is vain, at least it is of no benefit, to labour very anxiously about the form of the sentence. If then we begin a sentence with these words, 'vyl hnvy', avil enebia, the sense will be this, "I know that the Prophets promise impunity to you; but they who thus hide your sins, and cover them over as with plasters, are insane men, yea, they are wholly infatuated. There is then no reason why their flatteries should delight you; for the event will show that they are mere absurdities and idle ravings." We now see that there is no great difference in the sense: for this remains still unaltered, that there were many flatterers among the people, who made it their business to lie, that they might thus procure the favour of the people; and this ambition has prevailed in all ages: and sometimes also cupidity or avarice takes such hold on men, that they use a meretricious tongue, and excuse all vices however grievous, and elude all threatening. This is what the Prophet shows in the first place; and then he shows, that men without any advantage indulge their vices, when there is no one severely to reprove them, or boldly to exhort them to repent; and that though all the Prophets should give them hope of safety they should yet perish: for men cannot by their silence restrain God from executing at last his judgement. Nay, we must remember this, that God spares men when he does not spare them; that is, when he chastises them, when he reproves their sins, and when he constrains them by terror, he then would spare them. And again, when God spares, he does not spare; that is, when he connives at their sins, and leaves men to their own will, to grow wanton at their pleasure, without any yoke or bridle, he then by no means spares them, for he destines them for destruction. "The man of the spirit," some render "the man of the wind;" and some "the fanatical man;" but they are in my judgement mistaken; for the Prophet, I doubt not, uses a respectful term, but yet by way of concession. He then calls those the men of the spirit who were by their office prophets, but who abused that title, as those who at this day call themselves pastors when they are really rapacious wolves. The Prophets, as we know, always declared that they did not speak from their own minds but what the Spirit of God dictated to them. Hence they were men of the Spirit, that is, spiritual men: for the genitive case, we know, was used by the Hebrews to express what we designate by an adjective. The Prophets then were the men of the Spirit. He concedes this name, in itself illustrious and honourable, to impostors; but in the same sense as when I speak generally of teachers; I then include the false as well as the true. This then is the real meaning of the expression, as we may gather from the context: for he says the same thing twice, 'vyl hnvy', avil enebia, Fool is the Prophet, and then, msg 'ys hrvch, moshigo aish eruch, Mad is the man of the spirit As he spoke of a Prophet, so he now mentions the same by calling him a man of the spirit, or a spiritual man. At the end of the verse he adds, For the multitude of thine iniquity, for great hatred, or, much hatred; for it may be rendered in these two ways. Here the Prophet shows, that though the false Prophets stultified by their fallacies the people, yet this could by no means avail for an excuse or for extenuating the fault of the people. How so? Because they suffered the punishment of their own impiety. For whence comes it, that the Lord takes away his light from us, that after having once shown to us the way of salvation, he turns suddenly his back on us, and suffers us to go astray to our perdition? How does this happen? Doubtless, because we are unworthy of that light, which was a witness to us of God's favour. For as much then as men through their own fault procure such a judgement to themselves, the Lord neither blinds them nor gives to Satan the power of deluding them, except when they deserve such a treatment. Hence the Prophet says, For the multitude of thine iniquity, and for thy crimes, by which thou hast excited against thyself the wrath and hatred of God. We hence see how frivolous are the pretences by which men clear themselves, when they object and say that they have been deceived and that if their teachers had been faithful and honest, they would have willingly obeyed God. When therefore men make these objections, the ready answer is this, that they had been deprived of true and faithful teachers, because they had refused the favour offered to them, and extinguished the light, and as Paul says, preferred a lie to the truth; and that they had been deceived by false Prophets, because they willingly hastened to ruin when the Lord called them to salvation. We now then understand the import of what is here taught. The Prophet says, in the first place, that the day of vengeance was now at hand, because the Lord by forbearance could prevail nothing with the obstinate. He then adds, that as all threatenings were despised by the people, and as they were deaf to every instruction, they would at length know that God had not spoken in vain but would perceive that their were justly treated; for the Lord would not now teach them by his word, but by scourges. He adds, in the third place, that the Prophet was foolish and delirious, and also, that they who boasted themselves to be the men of the spirit were mad: by which expressions he meant that the flatteries, by which the people were lulled asleep were foolish; for God would not fail at last, when the time came, to execute his office. And, lastly he reminds them that this would happen through the fault of the people, that there was no reason for them to trace or to ascribe the cause of the evil to any thing else; for this blindness was their just punishment. The Lord would have never permitted Satan thus to prevail in his own inheritance, had not the people, by the immense filth of their sins, provoked God for a long time, and as it were with a determined purpose. It now follows --

The days of visitation are come - The false prophets had continually hood-winked the people, promising them that those days would never come. "They had put far away the evil day" Amos 6:3. Now it was not at hand only. In God's purpose, those "days" were "come," irresistible, inevitable, inextricable; days in which God would visit, what in His long-suffering, He seemed to overlook, and would "recompense each according to his works."
Israel shall know it - Israel would not know by believing it; now it should "know," by feeling it.
The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad - The true prophet gives to the false the title which they claimed for themselves, "the prophet" and "the man of the spirit." Only the event showed what spirit was in them, not the spirit of God but a lying spirit. The people of the world called the true prophets, "mad," literally, maddened, "driven mad," , as Festus thought of Paul; "Thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad" Acts 26:24. Jehu's captains called by the same name the young prophet whom Elisha sent to anoint him. "Wherefore came this mad fellow unto thee?" 2-Kings 9:11. Shemaiah, the false prophet, who deposed God's priest, set false priests to "be officers in the house of the Lord," to have an oversight as to "every man who is mad and maketh himself a prophet," calling Jeremiah both a false prophet and a "madman" (Jeremiah 29:25-26. The word is the same).
The event was the test. Of our Lord Himself, the Jews blaspbemed, "He hath a devil and is mad" John 10:20. And long afterward, "madness," "phrensy" were among the names which the pagan gave to the faith in Christ . As Paul says, that "Christ crucified" was "to the Greeks" and to "them that perish, foolishness," and that the "things of the Spirit of God, are foolishness to the natural man, neither can he know" them, "because they are spiritually discerned" 1-Corinthians 1:18, 1-Corinthians 1:23; 1-Corinthians 2:14. The man of the world and the Christian judge of the same things by clean contrary rules, use them for quite contrary ends. The slave of pleasure counts him mad, who foregoes it; the wealthy trader counts him mad, who gives away profusely. In these days, profusion for the love of Christ has been counted a ground for depriving a man of the care of his property. One or the other is mad. And worldlings must count the Christian mad; else they must own themselves to be so most fearfully. In the Day of Judgment, Wisdom says, "They, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This was he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach. We fools counted his life madness, and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!" (Wisd. 5:3-6).
For the multitude of thine iniquity and the great hatred - The words stand at the close of the verse, as the reason of all which had gone before. Their "manifold iniquity" and their "great hatred" of God were the ground why the "days of visitation" and "recompense" should "come." They were the ground also, why God allowed such prophets to delude them. The words, "the great hatred," stand quite undefined, so that they may signify alike the hatred of Ephraim against God and good people and His true prophets, or God's hatred of them. Yet it, most likely, means, "their" great hatred, since of them the prophet uses it again in the next verse. The sinner first neglects God; then, as the will of God is brought before him, he willfully disobeys Him; then, when, he finds God's will irreconcilably at variance with his own, or when God chastens him, he hates Him, and (the prophet speaks out plainly) "hates" Him "greatly."

The days of visitation - Of punishment are come.
The prophet is a fool - Who has pretended to foretell, on Divine authority, peace and plenty; for behold all is desolation.
The spiritual man - איש הרוח ish haruach, the man of spirit, who was ever pretending to be under a Divine afflatus.
Is mad - He is now enraged to see every thing falling out contrary to his prediction.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know [it]: (h) the prophet [is] a fool, the spiritual man [is] mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.
(h) Then they will know that they were deluded by those who claimed themselves to be their prophets and spiritual men.

The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come,.... In which the Lord would punish the people of Israel for their sins, and reward them in a righteous manner, according as their evil works deserved; which time, being fixed and appointed by him, are called "days"; and these, because near at hand, are said to be "come"; and this is repeated for the certainty of it:
Israel shall know it; by sad experience, that these days are come; and shall acknowledge the truth of the divine predictions, and the righteousness of God in his judgments. Schultens (z), from the use of the phrase in the Arabic language, interprets it of Israel's suffering punishment; with which agrees the Septuagint version, "Israel shall be afflicted", or it shall go ill with him; and to the same purpose the Arabic version:
the prophet is a fool; so Israel said, before those days came, of a true prophet of the Lord, that he was a fool for prophesying of evil things, but now they shall find it otherwise. So the Targum,
"they of the house of Israel shall know that they who had prophesied to them were true prophets;''
but rather this is to be understood of false prophets, who, when the day of God's visitation shall come on Israel in a way of wrath and vengeance, will appear both to themselves and others to be fools, for prophesying good things to them, when evil was at hand:
the spiritual man is mad; he that was truly so, and prophesied under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, was accounted a madman for speaking against the idolatry of the times, and foretelling the judgments of God that would come upon the nation for it; but now it would be manifest, that not he, but such who pretended to be spiritual men, and to be directed and dictated by the Spirit of God, when they promised the people peace, though they walked after the imagination of their hearts, were the real madmen; who pursued the frenzies and fancies of their own minds, to the deception of themselves and the people, and called these the revelations of God, and pretended they came from the Spirit of God:
for the multitude of thine iniquities, and the great hatred; that is, either those evil days came upon them for their manifold sins and transgressions, which were hateful to God, and the cause of his hatred of them; or they were suffered to give heed to those foolish and mad prophets, because of their many sins, especially idolatry; and because of their great hatred of God, and of his true prophets, and of his laws and ordinances, of his word, will, and worship, and of one another, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to a judicial blindness and hardness of heart, to believe a lie, and whatsoever those false prophets declared unto them, because they did not like to retain him in their knowledge, to walk according to his law, and to believe his prophets. The Targum is,
"but the false prophets besotted them, so as to increase thy transgression, and strengthen thine iniquities.''
(z) Animadv. Philol. in Job, p. 78.

Time had been when the spiritual watchmen of Israel were with the Lord, but now they were like the snare of a fowler to entangle persons to their ruin. The people were become as corrupt as those of Gibeah, Judges 19; and their crimes should be visited in like manner. At first God had found Israel pleasing to Him, as grapes to the traveller in the wilderness. He saw them with pleasure as the first ripe figs. This shows the delight God took in them; yet they followed after idolatry.

visitation--vengeance: punishment (Isaiah 10:3).
Israel shall know it--to her cost experimentally (Isaiah 9:9).
the prophet is a fool--The false prophet who foretold prosperity to the nation shall be convicted of folly by the event.
the spiritual man--the man pretending to inspiration (Lamentations 2:14; Ezekiel 13:3; Micah 3:11; Zephaniah 3:4).
for the multitude of thine iniquity, &c.--Connect these words with, "the days of visitation . . . are come"; "the prophet . . . is mad," being parenthetical.
the great hatred--or, "the great provocation" [HENDERSON]; or, "(thy) great apostasy" [MAURER]. English Version means Israel's "hatred" of God's prophets and the law.

"The days of visitation are come, the days of retribution are come; Israel will learn: a fool the prophet, a madman the man of spirit, for the greatness of thy guilt, and the great enmity. Hosea 9:8. A spy is Ephraim with my God: the prophet a snare of the bird-catcher in all his ways, enmity in the house of his God. Hosea 9:9. They have acted most corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah: He remembers their iniquity, visits their sins." The perfects in Hosea 9:7 are prophetic. The time of visitation and retribution is approaching. Then will Israel learn that its prophets, who only predicted prosperity and good (Ezekiel 13:10), were infatuated fools. אויל וגו introduces, without kı̄, what Israel will experience, as in Hosea 7:2; Amos 5:12. It does not follow, from the use of the expression 'ı̄sh rūăch, that the reference is to true prophets. 'Ish rūăch (a man of spirit) is synonymous with the 'ı̄sh hōlēkh rūăch (a man walking in the spirit) mentioned in Micah 2:11 as prophesying lies, and may be explained from the fact, that even the false prophets stood under the influence of a superior demoniacal power, and were inspired by a rūăch sheqer ("a lying spirit," 1-Kings 22:22). The words which follow, viz., "a fool is the prophet," etc., which cannot possibly mean, that men have treated, despised, and persecuted the prophets as fools and madmen, are a decisive proof that the expression does not refer to true prophets. על רב עונך is attached to the principal clauses, השּׁלּם בּאוּ. The punishment and retribution occur because of the greatness of the guilt of Israel. In ורבּה the preposition על continues in force, but as a conjunction: "and because the enmity is great" (cf. Ewald, 351, a). Mastēmâh, enmity, not merely against their fellow-men generally, but principally against God and His servants the true prophets. This is sustained by facts in Hosea 9:8. The first clause, which is a difficult one and has been interpreted in very different ways, "spying is Ephraim עם אלהי" (with or by my God), cannot contain the thought that Ephraim, the tribe, is, according to its true vocation, a watchman for the rest of the people, whose duty it is to stand with the Lord upon the watch-tower and warn Israel when the Lord threatens punishment and judgment (Jerome, Schmidt); for the idea of a prophet standing with Jehovah upon a watch-tower is not only quite foreign to the Old Testament, but irreconcilable with the relation in which the prophets stood to Jehovah. The Lord did indeed appoint prophets as watchmen to His people (Ezekiel 3:17); but He does take His own stand upon the watch-tower with them. Tsâphâh in this connection, where prophets are spoken of both before and after, can only denote the eager watching on the part of the prophets for divine revelations, as in Habakkuk 2:1, and not their looking out for help; and עם אלהי cannot express their fellowship or agreement with God, if only on account of the suffix "my God," in which Hosea contrasts the true God as His own, with the God of the people. The thought indicated would require אלהיו, a reading which is indeed met with in some codices, but is only a worthless conjecture. עם denotes outward fellowship here: "with" = by the side of. Israel looks out for prophecies or divine revelations with the God of the prophet, i.e., at the side of Jehovah; in other words, it does not follow or trust its own prophets, who are not inspired by Jehovah. These are like snares of a bird-catcher in its road, i.e., they cast the people headlong into destruction. נביא stands at the head, both collectively and absolutely. In all its ways there is the trap of the bird-catcher: i.e., all its projects and all that it does will only tend to ensnare the people. Hostility to Jehovah and His servants the true prophets, is in the house of the God of the Israelites, i.e., in the temple erected for the calf-worship; a fact of which Amos (Amos 7:10-17) furnishes a practical example. Israel has thereby fallen as deeply into abomination and sins as in the days of Gibeah, i.e., as at the time when the abominable conduct of the men of Gibeah in connection with the concubine of a Levite took place, as related in Judg. 19ff., in consequence of which the tribe of Benjamin was almost exterminated. The same depravity on the part of Israel will be equally punished by the Lord now (cf. Hosea 8:13).

The prophet - The false prophet. The spiritual man - That pretends to be full of the spirit of prophecy. For thine iniquity - God began his punishments in giving them over to believe their false prophets. The great hatred - Which God had against your sins.