Hosea 4:12 My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declares to them: for the spirit of prostitutions has caused them to err… There was a kind of idolatry which the Jews had, a way to ask counsel by the staff, and with this the prophet here charges them. The Romans practised the same, calling it divination by rods, sticks, arrows, or staves. There were four ways in which they divined with these things. The first was to put arrows or staves into a closed case, having the names written on them of what they divined about; and then, drawing out one or two, they determined their business according to what they found written; thus their staff declared unto them either good or bad. A second was by casting up staves or arrows into the air, and according as they fell, on the right hand or on the left, before or behind, so they divined their good or ill luck, as they called it. A third way was this, they used to peel off the bark of some part of a stick, and then cast it up, and divined according to which part of the pith, either black or white, appeared first. A fourth was, as we find in the Roman antiquities, that their augurs or soothsayers used to sit upon the top of a tower or castle, in clear and fair weather, with a crooked staff in their hand, which the Latins call Lituus, and having quartered out the regions of heaven, so far as to answer their purpose, and offered sacrifices and prayers, they stretched it forth upon the head of the person or thing they would divine for, and so foreboded good or ill luck, according to what at that time they observed in the heavens, the birds flying, etc. (Jeremiah Burroughs.) Parallel Verses KJV: My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God. |
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