A merchant has dishonest scales in his hand. He loves to defraud.
Thus, the old Canaanite traders gave humanity a word, in the same sense that the Corinthians did.  "To Corinthianize" meant to debauch; and "Canaanite" meant a crooked, false trader.  The significance of that old word surfacing here in Hosea is that Israe! had become one in character with the vile Canaanites who preceded him in that land.  The spiritual overtones of the passage are this: God had destroyed the Canaanites to permit Israel to occupy the land; now that Israel had become "Canaan," God would displace them also.