Book of Hosea Chapter 8 Vs. 4

 Israel Will Reap the Whirlwind

They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. Hos. 8:4

They have set... God Himself foretold to Jeroboam by Ahijah the prophet, that He would rend the kingdom out of the hands of Solomon, and give ten tribes to him, and would take him, and he should reign according to all that his soul desired and should be king over Israel (1Kgs. 11:31; 1Kgs. 11:37). And after the ten tribes had made Jeroboam king, God said by Shemaiah the prophet to Rehoboam and the two tribes, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to his house, for this thing is from Me (1Kgs. 12:22-24).

not by me... Not with My sanction (1Kgs. 11:31; 12:20). Israel set up Jeroboam and his successors, whereas God had appointed the house of David as the rightful kings of the whole nation.

knew it not... He that will not approve any one evil, when his omniscience discerns all, is pleased to say he knew not what he did not approve.

they made them... Heathen like, they have made them gods, and set up idolatry, so have perverted all in church and state settled by me.

that they may... As if they were resolved to cut themselves off from being a people. By this they thought to establish themselves, but it will be quite contrary, these sins will be their ruin.

Israel was to be under the direction of God in their civil matters, as well as their religious matters. They have rebelled against God and done what was right in their own sight. They have even used the silver and gold, that God had blessed them with, to make false gods (idols), with. The worship of false gods is what has cut them off from God. They have been an unfaithful wife to God.

ARTIFICIAL KINGS AND ARTIFICIAL GODS

The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had fallen is that it produces no men. Had the people had in them the root of the matter, had there been the stalk and the fiber of a national consciousness and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man. In the similar time of her outgoings upon the world Prussia had her Frederick the Great, and Israel, too, would have produced a leader, a heaven-sent king, if the national spirit had not been squandered on foreign trade and fashions. But after the death of Jeroboam every man who rose to eminence in Israel, rose, not on the nation, but only on the fevered and transient impulse of some faction; and through the broken years one party monarch was lifted after another to the brief tenancy of a blood-stained throne. They were not from God, these monarchs; but man-made, and sooner or later man murdered. With his sharp insight Hosea likens these artificial kings to the artificial gods, also the work of men’s hands; and till near the close of his book the idols of the sanctuary and the puppets of the throne form the twin targets of his scorn.

Two examples of Israel’s sin are given in Hos. 8:4-6. She had appointed kings and other leaders without consulting the Lord. This alludes to the series of palace revolts that plagued the Northern Kingdom after Jeroboam II’s reign (cf. Hos. 7:5-7). Israel had also made idols for themselves in direct violation of the second commandment (cf. Exo. 20:4).