Hosea 4
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The Accusations
The Accusations
Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,
for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
and no knowledge of God in the land;
With Chapter four we see an intentional break to start the new section. In the first three chapters we had a continuing narrative. This doesn’t necessarily break with the narrative but it does indicate we should give this section a new heading.
I do think it’s interesting that God brings in the children of Israel to hear a complaint as if they were going to participate or judge someone else for what God was about to say. It’s like if I called all my children together in the living room of my house and said “Sons, I need you to hear this. There are some problems with the boys who live in this house.” I’m clearly talking to them, about them but I’m doing it in a tone that brings them in to witness their own faults. The problem for the children of Israel is three fold.
No Faithfulness
No Love
No Knowledge or Discernment of God
there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
and the birds of the heavens,
and even the fish of the sea are taken away.
Here’s a small link let’s try and think what does it make you think of when someone references these things all together? Beasts of the field, birds of the heavens, and fish of the sea?
Creation is what I thought of, but this order is a clue. This is the order they appear but in reverse. The result of sin and rejection of God is an un-creation event and Hosea is pointing that out to us right here. We’re tearing at the fabric of the universe when we reject God by persisting in sin and ignoring his will for our lives. Hosea is not the first and certainly not the last to use uncreation to point to us to the same idea.
Yet let no one contend,
and let none accuse,
for with you is my contention, O priest.
You shall stumble by day;
the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;
and I will destroy your mother.
No one contend or accuse, why? We see why because the contention is with the priests! And what’s more the prophet of the land who is kind of a backstop will stumble and Israel (mother) will be destroyed. The pillars of society here have already fallen. The priests are all doing the wrong thing and we’ll see that more and more and the prophets are not prophets of God.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge;
because you have rejected knowledge,
I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children.
Here we see this threefold accusation come to bear they don’t KNOW God so God won’t know them.
The more they increased,
the more they sinned against me;
I will change their glory into shame.
They feed on the sin of my people;
they are greedy for their iniquity.
And it shall be like people, like priest;
I will punish them for their ways
and repay them for their deeds.
They shall eat, but not be satisfied;
they shall play the whore, but not multiply,
because they have forsaken the Lord
to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine,
which take away the understanding.
They turn from God to things of the world. They think there is satisfaction in them but it’s all fruitless they’ve given up their love of God to love their own iniquity.
My people inquire of a piece of wood,
and their walking staff gives them oracles.
For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray,
and they have left their God to play the whore.
They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains
and burn offerings on the hills,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
because their shade is good.
Therefore your daughters play the whore,
and your brides commit adultery.
I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore,
nor your brides when they commit adultery;
for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes
and sacrifice with cult prostitutes,
and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.
The people don’t remain faithful but they inquire after dead wood for answers, they sacrifice on mountains and burn offerings on the hills. They become physically unfaithful in adultery both men and women. This will bring ruin to the people.
Though you play the whore, O Israel,
let not Judah become guilty.
Enter not into Gilgal,
nor go up to Beth-aven,
and swear not, “As the Lord lives.”
We’ve once again brought Judah, the southern kingdom back into the picture. This abrupt inclusion of the other people of God called upon here is a bit of a rebuke. Don’t drag them into this as well with your sinful pagan worship. Two places of that pagan worship get called out, don’t go there!
Like a stubborn heifer,
Israel is stubborn;
can the Lord now feed them
like a lamb in a broad pasture?
Ephraim is joined to idols;
leave him alone.
When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;
their rulers dearly love shame.
A wind has wrapped them in its wings,
and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.
Now being compared to a stubborn cow Israel has been shown everything it is. Ephraim (the most prominent tribe of the northern kingdom) is called out for their alliance with idol worship. When they aren’t drinking they’re whoring.
So… what do we do with all of this? Well we’ve seen some connections and we really could have spent a lot more time on things there. The un-creation notion is a big one. It’s a theme that runs throughout if you can catch it, like in Gen 6.7 and many other places. We see the absolute failure in Sin that seems to just be inherent with Israel at this point. Because there was no Faithfulness, Love, or Knowledge of God. Those got touched in reverse order from their first listing like many of those AB patterns we’ve seen, and at the end of the chapter they’re wrapped up in a wind that our foreshadowing would tell us is going to sweep them away and out of the land. What do we take away from these sorts of things?
I think the three points I highlighted are something we should strive to come back to when we find ourselves in trouble spiritually.
When everything around us seems to be spiritually falling apart we go back to the Knowledge of God. The discernment not just a mere factual knowledge that’s a different Hebrew word actually. This we get from the scriptures.
The love of God is our next focus and where we mediate in the scriptures.
Finally in faithfulness we surrender the remaining iniquities we want to keep holding onto.
Christ has been faithful for us it’s not our own faith that some how makes us trust in Christ.
Christ has loved us far deeper than we know and can express.
Christ has become our discernment and joined us as heirs to be able to know God and discern his will.