You will stumble in the day, And the prophet will also stumble with you in the night; And I will destroy your mother.
"And I will destroy thy mother ..." This refers to "the whole nation, as such, - the kingdom of Israel."[14]   Hosea also referred to Israel as "your mother" earlier  (Hosea 2:2).  Some have questioned this, but there is no satisfactory alternative.  Mauchline thought that "Aaron" might be referred to; but these priests were not Levites!  One alternative would be to make Baal the mother of those priests, or the paganism of Israel. Hindley thought "the mother" here to be, "the tribe of Levi, into which all priests were born";[15]  but there was no way in which this could be correct.  As noted above, the priests of Israel were recruited from the lowest class of people and without regard to Levitical descent.  Besides this, the wife of Ahab, the notorious Jezebel had murdered practically all of the true priests and had imported a vast horde of pagan priests from Sidon.  As time went on, it must have been a rare thing indeed for any descendant of Levi to have enjoyed the office of the priesthood in Israel.