Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the LORD now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?
The Prophet compares Israel here to an untamable heifer. Some render it, “A straying heifer”, and we may render it, “A wanton heifer.” But to others a defection seems to have been more especially intended, because they had receded or departed from God: but this comparison is not so apposite.
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
For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer,.... A heifer or young cow Israel is compared unto; the rather, because of the object of their idolatrous worship, the calves at Dan and Bethel: the Septuagint calls them "heifers": which they are hereby put in mind of, and upbraided with; as also to express their brutish stupidity in worshipping such idols, in which they obstinately persisted...