Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.
Interpreters nearly all agree in this, that the Prophet threatens not the kingdom of Israel, but the kingdom of Judah, at the beginning of this chapter, because he names the house of God, which they take to be the temple. I indeed allow, that the Prophet has spoken already, in two places, of the kingdom of Judah, but as it were in passing.
The reproofs and threatenings here are introduced with an order to the prophet to set the trumpet to his mouth (Hos 8:1), thus to call a solemn assembly, that all might take notice of what he had to deliver and take warning by it. He must sound an alarm, must, in God's name, proclaim war with this rebellious nation.
Commenting on Hosea 8:1-7
Set the trumpet to thy mouth,.... Or, "the trumpet to the roof of thy mouth" (t); a concise expression denoting haste, and the vehemence of the passions speaking; they are either the words of the Lord to the prophet, as the Targum, "O prophet, cry with thy throat as with a trumpet, saying;'' Aben Ezra take them to be the words of the Lord the...