Court Intemperance
George Hutcheson. Hosea 7:2 And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about… On the king's birthday, or some other solemnity yearly observed, the princes induced the king to drink until he became sick, and forgot and prostituted his place and authority by joining with scorners, or men eminently dissolute. Doctrine. I. Days which men will have observed as days of festivity and solemnity do ordinarily prove days of great miscarriage and provocation against God. 2. Drunkenness and sensuality are heinous and crying sins, especially in rulers. It is a sad challenge that they should be given to "bottles of wine." 3. Nobles and princes and great courtiers are ordinarily great plagues and snares to kings, who, having their ear and countenance, do make use of it for no other end but to draw them to sin against God. 4. It is the height of sensuality, when men not only become brutish themselves, but dare invite and tempt others to the same excess of riot, and by all means draw them to drunkenness. 5. Men by their intemperance do not only draw on the guilt of misspending time, and abusing the good creatures of God, but of self-murder and abusing their own bodies also. 6. Days of feasting and intemperance do also ordinarily prove days of great insolence and boldness in other sins. 7. It is also the great sin of drunkenness, that by their sensuality they deprive them. selves of the use of reason, and render themselves contemptible, and like beasts, that they can neither know their place nor duty. The king debased himself to keep company with lewd persons and look like them. (George Hutcheson.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about; they are before my face. WEB: They don't consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their own deeds have engulfed them. They are before my face.