Hosea
7
This chapter may be divided into three sections.
·
In the
first section, including vs. 1-7, the prophet reproves with
much but deserved
severity the depraved morals of king and
princes. It deals
with the internal corruption of the northern
kingdom.
·
In the
second section, consisting of vs. 8-11, he rebukes their
sinfulness, silliness, pride, and stupid obstinacy,
notwithstanding
the
many manifest tokens of decay. It also exposes their
sinful
and
harmful foreign policy.
·
The third
section, continuing from vs. 12-16,
threatens the
infliction of
punishment incurred by their gross wickedness
and base ingratitude to God.
v. 1 – “For they commit falsehood and
the thief cometh in, and the troop of
robbers spoileth (margin, strippeth) without. Here follows an enumeration
of the crimes
of which they were guilty. There was falsehood, or fraud,
or
deception generally, and that, not only in words, but in
works; next comes
dishonesty, both in public and in private. The thief privately
entered the
houses, and committed burglary; robbers - gangs of highwaymen publicly
infested the roads, spoiling the passers-by, or rather
roamed or spread them-
selves abroad for plunder, since it is the causative
conjugation of pashat that
has the signification of stripping or spoiling others. The
thief within, the
robber robs without.
v. 2 - “And they
consider not in their hearts that I remember
all their
wickedness ……their own
doings……are before my face”
“Thou hast set our
iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of
thy countenance” – Psalm
90:8
v.
3 – “They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with
their lies” - The moral
corruption and depravity of
extreme and
universal. They reached from the rabble to royalty, from
the common
people to the princes of the court.
vs. 4-7 - vs. 4, 6, and 7 are linked together by the
figure of an “oven,” common
to
them; while 4 and 6 have also in common the figure of a “baker.” Further, we
are
helped to the literal meaning of the metaphorical language of vs. 4 and 6 by
vs. 5 and 7 respectively – “They are all adulterers,
as an oven heated by the
baker” - Whether the sin indicated was idolatry, which is often
represented as
spiritual adultery, or adultery in the literal sense, which was its
frequent
accompaniment; or in a larger sense faithlessness to solemn obligations
such as
treason, treachery, or perfidy in general; it was their habitual
practice, as intimated
by
Piel participle in its iterative or intensive sense.
The persons charged with this
sin
were kullam, all of them — sovereign and subjects,
princes and people
alike. The traitors of the time referred to, or rather their
heart heated with
lawless lust and pernicious passion, is pictured by the prophet as
an oven;
and
the oven is heated by tile baker, or more literally, burning from the
baker. Who or what is represented by the baker? This may be a
personification of the spirit of treason like the spirit of whoredoms
(Hosea 5:4), or evil agency that impelled these men to
their nefarious
deeds; or we may understand by the “baker”
those persons who were the
prime movers in such matters, and who instigated others to
become their
tools and execute their plans. In
either case the burning, once commenced,
continued of itself; the primary
instigators had no difficulty in securing
agents ready and willing as themselves for such bad and bloody work, and
who,
once set ageing, needed no further impulse, but of their own motion
delighted to carry it through. “who ceaseth from raising after he hath
kneaded the dough, until it be leavened” - An interval of time elapses
between the inception and execution of the work. The baker ceaseth from
raising, more literally, from stirring or stoking; after kindling
the fire in the
oven he lets it burn on and leaves off stirring it until the kneaded dough
is
fully fermented. This respite is
allowed that the leaven of wickedness may
do
its work, and completely pervade the minds into which it has been
introduced, and until matters are thoroughly matured for action. Meantime
the
fire burns steadily and sufficiently, until the oven requires to be more
highly heated for the well-prepared and perfectly leavened dough.
The use
of
the participle dy[ime is well explained
by the principle stated by Ewald as
follows: “Just as the idea of the verb ‘to be’ is placed in
immediate
construction with the word which more exactly forms the predicate, so
also
may
those verbs which describe a somewhat more specific kind of being,
e.g. verbs which signify ‘commencing’ to be, i.e.
becoming… verbs of
hastening, i.e. quickly becoming… and those of ceasing
to be, Hosea 7:4.…
The following verb, if such a word be required for the more
specific
predicate, most readily chooses the participial form.., verbs
denoting
continuance would be constructed
in the same way.” The particle d[",
equivalent to usque ad, implies the completeness of the leavening.
v. 5 – “the princes have made him sick with bottles of
wine” - The literal
rendering is, have made sick the heat of him; i.e.
made him sick with heat
from wine. The construction resembles Micah 6:13, “I will make sick
thy
smiting;” i.e. I will make thee sick through smiting thee. The
heat from
wine repeats in some sort the preceding figure of a heated oven. The object
of
these wretches was twofold — to inflame their passion, and nerve their
hands
for the bloody work on which they were set; and to leave the king
powerless, a helpless victim in their hands. “he stretched out his
hand
with scorners” - Whatever the
real origin of this phrase may be, the meaning
is
plain — he joined in fellowship with those
wicked princes, and took part
on
terms of equality with them in their brutish debauch and profane
carousal. He stretched out his hand
and hailed them as boon-companions.
v. 7 – “They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured
their judges; all
their kings are fallen” -
Here we have the application, and so the explanation
of
the figurative language of the preceding verse, which, as we have seen,
is
the
second stage of the action. The heat of the oven denotes the intense
violence
of
their passion, as also their fierce and fiery power of destruction.
Inferior
rulers and magistrates fell victims to it; while regicides
(the killing of a king)
in
incredible number were the result of it. Three
regicides were perpetrated in
thirteen years; and four in less than forty, the victims being
Zechariah, Shallum,
Pekahiah, and
Pekah. Also Nadab, Elah, Zimri, Zibni,
and Jehoram perished
by
their successors – “there is none among them that calleth
unto me” - Amid
such horrid scenes of blood and violence, of disorder and
anarchy, there was none
of them to realize the calamities of the times or recognize the cause.
Consequently
there was no one to
discover the remedy, and apply to the true and only source
of relief.
The people who had been corrupted by their rulers now
turned
against their corrupters; disloyalty to God brought in its train
disloyalty to
man; kings and subordinate rulers perished in quick succession. And
notwithstanding the times of anarchy, insecurity for life and property, and
general upheaval of social order — amid
all those scenes of terrible
confusion, there was none among them to realize the fact that “for the
transgression of a land many are the princes thereof.” (Proverbs 28:2)
Consequently there was none among them to call upon God in supplication
for relief and preservation.
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v.
8 – “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people;
Ephraim is a
cake not turned” - The
people of the northern kingdom had fallen away from
Jehovah, and mixed themselves with the heathen nationalities. They resembled
a
cake which, through neglect of turning, was burnt on the one side and raw on
the
other. The best commentary on the first
clause of this verse is found in Psalm
106:35, 36, and 39; they “were mingled among the heathen, and learned their
works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them.... Thus
were they defiled with their own works, and went
a-whoring with their own
inventions.” The second
clause is well explained by Bishop Horsley as
follows:
“One thing on
one side, another on the other; burnt to a coal at bottom, raw dough
at the top
(an apt image of a character that is all
inconsistencies). Such were
the
ten tribes of the prophet’s day; worshippers of Jehovah in profession,
but
adopting all the idolatries of the neighboring nations, in addition to
their own semi-idolatry of the calves.” Similarly, the Geneva
Bible has,
“Baked on one side and raw on the ether, he is neither
through hot nor
through cold, but partly a Jew and partly a Gentile.” (Compare Christ’s
words to the Church
at Laodecia – Revelation 3:14-22) - Jehovah had
chosen
The object of this segregation was that
and
a holy nation. Thus distinguished, they were to dwell alone; but,
ungrateful for this high distinction, and unmindful of their high
destiny,
they
mingled with the nations, learned their heathenish ways, and
worshipped their hateful idols. Thus they forfeited their theocratic preeminence.
Like
the peoples subsequently brought from
lands of the dispossessed Israelites, they worshipped
the Lord, but served
their own gods (II Kings 17:33)— they were neither true worshippers of
Jehovah nor out-and-out followers of Baal. In religion they were mongrels —
inconsistent and worthless hybrids; they were, in fact, what Calvin in
rather homely phrase says of them, “neither flesh nor fish.”
v. 9 – “Strangers have devoured his
strength and he knoweth it not”
The strangers are the foreign nations with
which
into treaties or formed alliances, in
contravention of the constitution
which God had given them.
“grey
hairs are here and there upon him”
From foreign foes and internal feuds, the
body politic was manifesting
unmistakeable symptoms of decay and decrepitude and
approaching
dissolution, just as grey
hairs on the human body give indication
of the advance of
old age, with its decay of strength and nearness
to the tomb.
“yet he knoweth it not” – Of the
approaching decadence, though they
could not pretend ignorance of the fact, they remained in
ignorance of the
cause, its consequence, and the cure. They overlooked the lamentable cause
of all, which was their sin,
national and individual, in departing from the
Lord; and at the same time the dangerous consequences that
were neither
remote nor capable of being staved off; as also the only possible cure to be
found in direct and immediate return and application to that
God from
whom they had so revolted.
it he could hide it
from himself and others.
v. 10 – “the pride of
return to
the Lord their God, nor seek Him for all this”
This emphasizes the obstinate blindness and perverseness
of
Ephraim, when, amid all the calamities and miseries of
the kingdom both
within and without, they turned not to Jehovah to solicit help
and
deliverance, but concluded treaties or made alliances with foreign
nations
in hope of being lifted up out of their NATIONAL IMPOTENCE!
v. 11 – “Ephraim also is like a silly dove” - The prophet compares Ephraim to
a dove which gets caught in a net owing to its simplicity, because it has
no sense to perceive that, when it goes to gather grains of corn, a net is
spread there to catch it. (Normally, a bird is very wary - compare Proverbs
1:17 – “Surely in vain the net is spread in the
sight of any bird” and
Proverbs
7:23 - “as
a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth
not it is
for his life” – this in the context of sexual immorality – These verses
are an accurate portrayal of Ephraim because Hosea 4:11 and 17 says
“Whoredom” takes “away the heart” and “Ephraim is
joined to idols:
let him
alone” and in this verse Ephraim is likened unto “a silly dove”.
v. 12 – “When they shall go, I will spread my net over them” - So Ephraim,
when they went and asked help from Assyria or from
that they went to their hurt, when they sought help from the foreign nations
and not from God
“I will chastise
them, as their congregation hath heard” -
The literal rendering
makes the meaning more obvious; it is: “I will chastise them according to the
tidings [or,’
announcement ‘] to their congregation.” In the Law and by the
prophets it was repeatedly declared
that judgments would fall upon the disobedient
and
rebellions. As specimens of such announcements, we may refer to
Leviticus
26:14-39; Deuteronomy 28:15-68; and Deuteronomy 32:15-35
v. 13 – “Woe unto them! for they have fled
from me” – just the opposite
of what the scriptures from beginning to end
advise – that we
should “flee
to the Lord” instead of running from Him.
“yet they have spoken lies against me” - The lies in question included, no
doubt, a denial of His essential Deity or sole Divinity; of His power or willingness
either to protect or punish.
v. 14 – “when they howled upon their beds” - They gave vent to their feelings
of distress by howlings upon their
beds; but those howlings
were the expression of
unbelief and despair, not by any means evidences of faith.
“They do not cry
to
me,” says Aben Ezra,
“as the sick man cries to the physician.”
“they assemble themselves for corn and wine” - their chief design and highest
aim being a good supply of corn and wine, that is, the
supply of mere bodily wants,
only to rebel against
God!
v. 15 – “Though
I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do they
imagine
mischief against me” - Here we have
another instance of
God’s goodness and
v. 16 – “They return, but not to the Most High:
they are like a deceitful bow”
Their God-defying attitude, as described in v. 15, is represented in v. 16
allegorically as a deceitful bow, which fails to send the arrow to the mark.
They disappointed the high hopes raised, and missed their
own high destiny,
and
thus they resembled a bow, of which the string, losing its elasticity, could
not
propel the arrow to the object aimed at.
Appearing to return to the worship
of
Jehovah, they turned aside to an idol. Thus in Psalm 78:57, they “turned back
and dealt
unfaithfully like their fathers: they were turned aside like a deceitful
bow.”
(Is it any wonder
that of Ephraim it is said in Psalm 78:9 - “The
children of
Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle”
-
compare the attitude of
many “flower children” during the Viet-nam War
whose rallying cry
was “MAKE LOVE – NOT WAR” – CY – 2009)
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Sin is represented in Scripture as a disease — an all-pervading disease; it is as
universal as the human race, for all have sinned; it is an all-embracing disease,
for it extends to the faculties
and feelings of the soul, and employs as its
instruments all the members of the body. It infects whole peoples as well as
individual persons. The description which Isaiah gives of its widespread ravages
applies to the body politic as well as to the body human: “The whole
head
is sick, and the
whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the
head there is no
soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying
sores.” (Isaiah 1:5-6) It is thus a loathsome disease, a dangerous disease, a
deadly disease; and,
unless arrested in time, it is a fearfully fatal disease. The
Apostle James gives us the genesis and development of this
disease: “When
lust hath conceived,
it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death;” – (James 1:14-15)
and the symbol of this spiritual
malady is leprosy - one of the most
frightful scourges of humanity.
The disease is so desperate that ONLY GOD CAN CURE IT!
The attitudes of men down through history has
foolishly resisted this cure –
When Christ would have gathered the people of
inhabitants of its principal city, with all the tenderness and all
the
carefulness that the parent bird exercises in gathering its brood
under its
outspread wings, they would not.
So is it still;
sinners condemnation is self-
procured as well as justly deserved, (like alcohol – a self-inflicted disease –
CY –
2009) while the salvation of the righteous is only of the Lord! “The
Lord God of
their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes,
and sending;
because He had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling
place: but they
mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words,
and misused His
prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His
people, till there was NO REMEDY” – II Chronicles 36:14-16
When the iniquity
of Ephraim was fully discovered and the wickedness of
Samaria clearly
seen, it proved incurable, so enormous was their guilt, so
hardened were they in their
transgressions, above all, so impenitent were
they and so unwilling
to be helped and healed. Their obduracy barred the
door against the
entrance of mercy, their refusal to part with their
enormities checked the
outgoings of the Divine goodness towards them.
They were strangers to any right searching of heart, or any serious
reflection on the issues of their conduct and conversation. It is thus with
hundreds of our fellow-men; want of consideration has ruined
thousands
Both for time and eternity; hence the earnest wish of the great lawgiver,
“Oh that they were
wise, that they understood this, that they would
consider their latter end!” – (Deuteronomy 32:29 - Hence, too, the
solemn command of “the Lord of hosts; “Consider your ways.” –
(Haggai 1:5)
The lack of consideration or of communing with their own heart had
special reference to the relationship in which they stood to
God. They did
not reflect that God
remembered all their wickedness, consequently they
did not recollect
their liability to punishment for their wickedness at the
hand of God, and
therefore they did not feel any remorse on account of
their wickedness when committed. Being spared after their wickedness,
and not visited with immediate vengeance because of their wickedness,
they thought themselves certain of impunity; enjoying a season of
prosperity notwithstanding the greatness of their wickedness, they were
emboldened in their wicked ways. (compare
Ecclesiastes 8:11) – “Because
sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily, therefore the
heart of the sons of
men is fully set in them to do evil”
Atheism,
theoretical or practical, or both, was at the root of the matter
with them. The first article of belief embraces the existence of God,
and the
existence of God implies a Being of Divine attributes and infinite
perfections; the second article includes a belief in God that He is a
Recompenser of men’s actions — a Rewarder of them that diligently
seek
Him, (Hebrews 11:6) and a Punisher of all workers of wickedness. They
rejected, at least practically, these rudiments of the faith, these primary
articles of belief; “as if God could not see their wickedness, though He is all
eye; and did not heed it, though His name is Jealous; or had forgotten it,
though He is an eternal mind that can never be unmindful; or would not
reckon for it, though He is the Judge of heaven and earth. This is the sinner’s
atheism; as good say there is no God, as say He is either ignorant
or forgetful;
none that
judgeth in the earth, as say He remembers not the
things He is to give
judgment upon; it is a high affront they put upon God, it is a
damning cheat
they
put upon themselves, when they say, “The
Lord shall not see nor
remember”.
The eyes of such shall be opened one day. They shall wake
up out of
their daydream, and their delusion shall vanish when their
doings shall beset
them about and the sad effects thereof shall entangle them as
in a net. They
shall see their sins in the punishments they bring upon them;
they shall feel
them in the sorrows and sufferings that attend them; and they
shall
recognize that God had them before His face all the time, having
knowledge
of them when committed, taking notice of their demerit, and remembering
them for the exercise of his retributive justice. Even men’s secret sins God
sets in the light (literally “luminary,” maor) of His countenance; the fireflashing
eye of the Omniscient penetrates the deep recesses of the human
heart, and brings forth its secret workings into the sight of the sun and the
broad light of day.
THE COURSE OF SIN IS A DOWNWARD SLOPE!
DRUNKENNESS IS A PREPARATION FOR OTHER WICKEDNESS.
The reference to it in v. 5 is interjected between the mention of adultery and
other enormities, as if it were an incentive thereto.
Days of high
festival that ought to be days of thanksgiving to God, of
grateful praise and
holy joy, are too often taken advantage of for purposes of
intemperance, gluttony, or dissipation. Days that should be consecrated to
religious exercises or
real national rejoicing are too frequently
desecrated
by
irreligious sensuality and anti-religious debauch.
When God is displeased with a person or a people, one way
in which He manifests
such displeasure is by desertion. He leaves them in the hands of their enemies.
On
the contrary, “when
a man’s ways please the Lord, He makes his enemies to
be at peace with
him”. (Proverbs
16:7) When
thus deserted,
strangers devoured his strength, that is to say, his substance;
they robbed him of
his wealth.
(Two things
Americans should address and understand:
·
God has set precedents by withdrawing His Holy Spirit
without whom no man can come to the Father or be saved!
·
Wealth – Materialism – gods of this modern age have been
taken away by precedents set by God before! (CY – 2009)
Characteristics of Spiritual Decay:
·
diminished
appreciation of the Divine Word, without self
application of
it, or growth in the it or growth in the knowledge
of it;
·
restraining
prayer before God, without supplication for one’s
self on special
occasions and under particular circumstances,
and without
earnest intercession for others;
·
less love
to Christ and less leaning on Him;
·
less hatred of sin
and less esteem for the righteous.