Hosea 5
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The consequences
The consequences
Three times in three different ways God tries to make them listen.
Hear this, O priests!
Pay attention, O house of Israel!
Give ear, O house of the king!
For the judgment is for you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah
and a net spread upon Tabor.
And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter,
but I will discipline all of them.
Those are reinforced with three warnings
I know Ephraim,
and Israel is not hidden from me;
for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
Israel is defiled.
Their deeds do not permit them
to return to their God.
For the spirit of whoredom is within them,
and they know not the Lord.
Ephraim remember is the top of the food chain in the northern kingdom. They’re getting some of the prime blame because they’re the leaders. All of the country still followed along and is defiled though. We see in vs 4 they are going to be cut off from God, unable to return. While there is only one sin the Bible says won’t be forgiven I don’t think that’s what the text means here. Their actions will not allow them to go back to God. They aren’t prevented from going back they just won’t go back because their actions have taken them down a road of worshiping idols, they don’t know the Lord at all, and they just won’t come back. In our own lives we have to watch for that same abandonment of God. For our kids lives, our friends we should caution them when we see them walking down those paths to make sure they don’t head somewhere they just don’t want to come back from.
The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
Judah also shall stumble with them.
With their flocks and herds they shall go
to seek the Lord,
but they will not find him;
he has withdrawn from them.
They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;
for they have borne alien children.
Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
The sin is clear and self evident. They are dragging Judah into the same sin though. They were warned to not drag them in but they still do. Though it’s a few hundred years until they get too far into sin and get overthrown.
Without God you cannot find God. At this point God is no longer seeking these people. They might go looking for him but I don’t think they’re going to honestly seek God. With their flocks and herds they’re going to try and ‘get’ God to do what they want. We’ve seen them already think interacting with God can be a transaction just like with all the false Gods they’ve fornicated with.
Not understanding the fundamental nature of God can lead you into false understanding and the wrong way of approaching God in true repentance and humility.
Hosea, Joel Israel Leads Judah into Sin (5:1–7)
A Threefold Warnings (5:1–2)
B Prostitution/apostasy of Israel/Ephraim (5:3)
C Impossibility of repentance (5:4)
D Stumbling of Israel, Ephraim, and Judah (5:5)
C′ Impossibility of repentance (5:6)
B′ Prostitution/apostasy [of Israel] (5:7a)
A′ Punishment (5:7b)
This structure we looked at a few weeks ago is still here so i’ll just point it out again the New American Commentary charted this out really well.
Blow the horn in Gibeah,
the trumpet in Ramah.
Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
we follow you, O Benjamin!
Gibeah, Ramah, and Beth-aven are all towns in the territory of Benjamin. Benjamin being part of the southern kingdom immediately to the south. In fact these three towns are almost a straight shot north up from Jerusalem. We seem to have shifted into what might be viewed as an invation the towns are listed from south to north and “we follow you, O Benjamin!” could have been a rallying cry. Certainly horns, trumpets and alarms give us a different feeling than the warnings before now things seem eminent! Did you also notice we have a three fold call to action similar to verse 1?
Ephraim shall become a desolation
in the day of punishment;
among the tribes of Israel
I make known what is sure.
The princes of Judah have become
like those who move the landmark;
upon them I will pour out
my wrath like water.
This sounds more dire as we go but notice we have another 3 things with a statement at the end
Ephraim desolate
Make known among israel
Judah like those who move the landmark - we’ll come back to that
upon them i pour out wrath
These then make another chaistic structure again just not symetrically but by repeated pattern. (compare 8 with 9-10)
This takes a little pondering but isn’t very surprising once we think it through. What on earth would “move the landmark mean?” and why does it sound like such a big deal? Have you ever seen people sharing around those Karen videos where someone is freaking out? There are a bunch about the property line between two houses out there it’s pretty common if you’re just scrolling through Karen videos… which I’m not, at least not on purpose. Anyway the one thing that people do that will get others the most upset is moving the corner stake. It’s one thing if you got a new survey done and people are mad it’s a whole other thing, and an illegal thing, if you go and move a corner stake for a property line. Now… It’s one thing for your neighbor to do this to you… Now imagine it’s the border to a country and one country is moving the border. I don’t know how we could possibly imagine this in our current times but… Oh yeah there’s that whole Russia v Ukraine ordeal going on. That’s this level of moving the landmark upsetting.
Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,
because he was determined to go after filth.
But I am like a moth to Ephraim,
and like dry rot to the house of Judah.
How effective is a moth at changing a nation? How quickly will a household throw out a falling apart bag?
When Ephraim saw his sickness,
and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
and sent to the great king.
But he is not able to cure you
or heal your wound.
Once they realize that their country will not survive in the northern kingdom instead of repenting they turn to man. They go to Assyria for assistance and get consumed instead of healed.
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I, even I, will tear and go away;
I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
Now ramping up the point we go from sickness killing them to a lion from the slow death to a sudden one. When God acts he does so decisively. Both north and south are implicated - possibly the fact that Judah only deals with a young lion shows it will be taken out later in time rather than immediately. Hosea does correctly prophecy that the people will be carried off without rescue.
I will return again to my place,
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
and in their distress earnestly seek me.
This last verse gets back to our most important point of this chapter.
Repentance might not always be likely but it’s always possible. We see the prophets who prophecy about this captivity address this very thing. Jeremiah is like the Hosea of the southern kingdom being the prophet right before the southern kingdom goes into Babylonian captivity. In
“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.
Ezekial is a phrophet later that’s captured by the Babylonians writes
then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols. And they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils that they have committed, for all their abominations.
These fall in line with what God laid out provision for in Lev 26.40-42
“But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
There is hope because there is promise. For as far into sin as we get redemption is always possible because we aren’t the ones who do the redeeming. As Israel is carried off in captivity God has already promised they’ll come back. They’ll acknowledge their guilt and come back to the Lord. This is a pattern God’s people have gone through many times and they’ll acknowledge Christ in the end in His return.
We are sinners, we need to repent, God has called us to seek his face and to know him. We cannot pretend to worship God while having idols in our closets. We have to acknowledge our guilt and our inability to make that right. We need to earnestly respond to God’s call to surrender to Him.