Hosea 7
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Healing exposes us.
Healing exposes us.
Let’s start by reading out the first section here.
Hos 6.11b “...When I restore the fortunes of my people,”
when I would heal Israel,
the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
and the evil deeds of Samaria,
for they deal falsely;
the thief breaks in,
and the bandits raid outside.
But they do not consider
that I remember all their evil.
Now their deeds surround them;
they are before my face.
This first section can be misread and I think looking over some notes from scholars that many translations have implied something the text doesn’t say. When I restore and When I heal are not gramatical maybe statements. They are certain and definite statements. They are a declaration that despite what we see next God’s going to fulfill His promise. In fact part of the healing may reveal the sin. So despite some translations saying “When I would”, “Whenever I would have”, or “Whenever I would” there is no indication that God wanted to heal but was prevented in someway by what followed. The LXX gets this right.
The deeper look we see three names for the same place Israel, Ephraim, and Samaria. The descendants here are the ones who we know as the Samaritans in the new testament. Then 3 deal falsey, thieving, raiding. Then 2 responses Don’t consider God remembers, and their deeds surround them.
By their evil they make the king glad,
and the princes by their treachery.
They are all adulterers;
they are like a heated oven
whose baker ceases to stir the fire,
from the kneading of the dough
until it is leavened.
On the day of our king, the princes
became sick with the heat of wine;
he stretched out his hand with mockers.
For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
all night their anger smolders;
in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
All of them are hot as an oven,
and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen,
and none of them calls upon me.
You know when your commentary starts out saying “This is without question among the most vexing texts in the Hebrew Bible.” It’s a bit obscure there isn’t an obvious point. It does have a Chiastic structure that highlights in verse 7 not one calls on God. It certainly is descriptive and we have to just take it at face value that we are emphasizing in metaphor how bad things are.
Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Strangers devour his strength,
and he knows it not;
gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
and he knows it not.
The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
yet they do not return to the Lord their God,
nor seek him, for all this.
Ephraim is like a dove,
silly and without sense,
calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
As they go, I will spread over them my net;
I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
Our metaphors continue and we don’t just look at the oven but what it’s baking… I kind of wanted to change this to Ephraim is a pancake not flipped. That just rings clearer with my personal experience as far as metaphors go.
Then we look at all the things that are corrupting Ephraim. Yes their leadership is at a high fault like we’ve mentioned in past chapters but there is also this mixing that has always been forbidden to Israel they’ve mixed themselves with strangers. It reminds me of Pergamum.
“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.
“ ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’
Pergamum has a similar warning to them. They’ve mixed themselves with several anti doctrinal ideas in their ranks. They’ve become mixed with heresy. The resolution outside of repentance is the same resolution Israel faces here. “I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.” God will bring in destruction to break those who lead his people astray and destroy everything ungodly. Do not be mixed with people who are strange to Christianity. I hope you get what I mean. We must mingle with those who are not Christians and those who have rejected Christianity. We cannot retreat to our ivory towers and study and meditate on this book alone as Christians. We must be in the world to shine the light of God for the people OF the world to see it and come to it. What we need to be cautious about is who we mix with who we are connected to deeply in the religious, political, and cultural levels across our lives. Israel has done that, Ephraim has done that very deeply, and eventually it’s forced on them even more and Assyria scatters them forcibly to all over the world to be mixed with other people groups. This mixing is a violation of the sacred law and why they are considered half jews by the Southern Kingdom after it’s restored. They’re worse than someone who was just a pagan.
And now we get in our last four verses a Lament from God that begins about the spiritual failure in paganism and apostasy.
Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!
Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
I would redeem them,
but they speak lies against me.
They do not cry to me from the heart,
but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
they rebel against me.
Then we continue the lament around the political failure of this kingdom.
Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
yet they devise evil against me.
They return, but not upward;
they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.