The inhabitants of Samaria will be in terror for the calves of Beth Aven; For its people will mourn over it, Along with its priests who rejoiced over it, For its glory, because it has departed from it.
For the glory thereof, because it is departed from it - The true glory of Israel was God; the Glory of God is in Himself. “The glory of the calves,” for whom Ephraim had exchanged their God, was something quite outward to them, the gold of which they were made, and the rich offerings made to them. Both together became an occasion of their being carried captive. They mourned, not because they had offended God by their sin, but for the loss of that dumb idol, whose worship had beetn their sin, and which had brought these heavy woes upon them. Impenitent even under chastisement! The prophet does not mention any grief for “the despoiling of their country, the burning of their cities, the slaughter of their people, their shame” . One only thing he names as moving them. Even then their one chief anxiety was, not that God was departed from them, but that their calf in which they had set their “glory,” whereupon they so franticly relied, on which they had lavished their substance, their national distinction and disgrace, was gone. Without the grace of God people mourn, not their sins, but their idols.