Hosea 13:9

thou . . . in me--in contrast. hast destroyed thyself--that is, thy destruction is of thyself (Pr 6:32; 8:36). in me is thine help--literally, "in thine help" (compare De 33:26).

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IT would be a very important subject for our meditation if we kept to the text and thought upon its great Truth of God—that the ruin of man is altogether of himself and the salvation of man is altogether of God. These two statements, I believe, comprehend the main points of a sound theology. There have been divisions in the Church over these points where there ought not to have been any. The Calvinist has said and said right bravely, that salvation is of Grace alone. And the Arminian has said and said most truthfully, that damnation is of man's will, alone, and as the result of man's sin, and of that only. Then they have fallen out with one another. The fact is, they had, each one, laid hold of a Truth of God, and if they could have put their heads together and accepted both Truths, it might have been greatly for the advantage of the Church of Christ! These two doctrines are like tram lines that you can travel on with safety and comfort, these parallel lines—ruin, of man; restoration, of God. Sin, of man's will; salvation, of God's will. Reprobation, of man's demerit; election, of God's free and Sovereign Grace. The sinner lost in Hell through himself, alone, the saint lifted up to Heaven wholly and alone by the power and Grace of God! Get those two Truths of God thoroughly engraved upon your heart and you will then hold comprehensively the great Truths of Scripture. You will not need to crowd them into one narrow system of theology, but you will have a sort of duplicate system which will contain, as far as the mind of man, being finite, can contain—the great Truths revealed by the Infinite God. I am not, however, at this time going so much into the doctrinal point as to try and make use of my text for practical soul-saving purposes. You notice in this text, "O Israel, you have destroyed yourself," how God comes to close terms with men.

O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself - These evils come not by my immediate infliction; they are the consequences of thy own crimes. In the above terrifying figures of the ferocious beasts, the prophet only shows what they would meet with from the hand of the Assyrians in the war, the famine, and the captivity; God being represented as doing what he only permits to be done. But in me is thine help - “Though thou hast destroyed thyself, yet in me alone can thy help be found” - Newcome. And others read, And who will help thee? reading מי mi, who, for בי bi, in me. Though this is countenanced by the Syriac, yet there is no evidence of it in any of the MSS. yet collated, nor do I think it to be the true reading.