Hosea 9
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Rejoice not, O Israel!
Exult not like the peoples;
for you have played the whore, forsaking your God.
You have loved a prostitute’s wages
on all threshing floors.
Not like (the peoples) your relatives
Do you remember from many weeks ago what they expected as wages from prostituting themselves out? It was the prosperity of their land. We get a long list of things and it ends in Hos 2.12 ...of which she said, ‘These are my wages, which my lovers have given me.’ ” this looks back a little bit where it’s summarized by God Hos 2.8 “And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.” But it’s those things she things she’s earning for herself, that the nation, the people are acquiring this wealth and prosperity because of their worship of false gods.
To complete the wrongness of this thought we keep reading.
Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them,
and the new wine shall fail them.
They shall not remain in the land of the Lord,
but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,
and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.
This famine is another pattern that leads them into captivity. If they read their Bible which, clearly they hadn’t been they might have recognized this pattern from back in Deut 28.38-41
You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.
It’s the last punishment from God before they are finally handed over to captivity.
And we get the picture of how they don’t want the divorce but they do want to stay in their whoredom. They didn’t reject God but wanted to add in their own worship of Baal.
They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord,
and their sacrifices shall not please him.
It shall be like mourners’ bread to them;
all who eat of it shall be defiled;
for their bread shall be for their hunger only;
it shall not come to the house of the Lord.
What will you do on the day of the appointed festival,
and on the day of the feast of the Lord?
For behold, they are going away from destruction;
but Egypt shall gather them;
Memphis shall bury them.
Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;
thorns shall be in their tents.
You see they kept up the rituals, they kept their connection to Yahweh because they thought they could treat him like a vending machine like all the other religions treat their God.
Instead their rejection will start with famine and end up with them going to Egypt of all places for help. That worked before in famine with Joseph right? but now the opposite of salvation in God’s sovereignty is happening we have the judgment of God’s wrath for their disobedience in view instead. So instead of life and growth in Egypt during famine it will be death and burial.
The days of punishment have come;
the days of recompense have come;
Israel shall know it.
The prophet is a fool;
the man of the spirit is mad,
because of your great iniquity
and great hatred.
The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God;
yet a fowler’s snare is on all his ways,
and hatred in the house of his God.
They have deeply corrupted themselves
as in the days of Gibeah:
he will remember their iniquity;
he will punish their sins.
This short poem here has a very patterned manner and it’s judgment and lament. As a prophet he’s not being heard, punishment is coming and they can only blame themselves they are the ones who have deeply corrupted themselves. God will remember their sin a phrase to mean their sins have not been forgiven. They have no repentance here and so He shall deal with them and punish their sins.
In the next verse, verse 10 we can see the disappointment from God.
Like grapes in the wilderness,
I found Israel.
Like the first fruit on the fig tree
in its first season,
I saw your fathers.
But they came to Baal-peor
and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame,
and became detestable like the thing they loved.
Grapes in the wilderness? that word is for dry land like a desert not a wilderness like a jungle. So grapes in a desert would be an amazing find and a wonderful treat.
Like the first fig to come into season when you’ve had to wait almost a year for the fig season to come again is great. It’s hard to connect to some of these personally when we can get an orange all year long at the store, we can get exotic fruits almost anytime we want. They never got a pineapple, they just got what was local. You can’t transport that on a donkey cart a thousand miles away, you just can’t.
Then we get to the but… you know what a but means in a sentance? It means all that other stuff before it doesn’t really matter like what’s coming next. They went off and defiled themselves.
There is actually part of a psalm about this but the whole Psalm is a good quick history lesson Psalm 106:28-30
Praise the Lord!
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
Who can utter the mighty deeds of the Lord,
or declare all his praise?
Blessed are they who observe justice,
who do righteousness at all times!
Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people;
help me when you save them,
that I may look upon the prosperity of your chosen ones,
that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation,
that I may glory with your inheritance.
Both we and our fathers have sinned;
we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness.
Our fathers, when they were in Egypt,
did not consider your wondrous works;
they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love,
but rebelled by the sea, at the Red Sea.
Yet he saved them for his name’s sake,
that he might make known his mighty power.
He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry,
and he led them through the deep as through a desert.
So he saved them from the hand of the foe
and redeemed them from the power of the enemy.
And the waters covered their adversaries;
not one of them was left.
Then they believed his words;
they sang his praise.
But they soon forgot his works;
they did not wait for his counsel.
But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,
and put God to the test in the desert;
he gave them what they asked,
but sent a wasting disease among them.
When men in the camp were jealous of Moses
and Aaron, the holy one of the Lord,
the earth opened and swallowed up Dathan,
and covered the company of Abiram.
Fire also broke out in their company;
the flame burned up the wicked.
They made a calf in Horeb
and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore he said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.
Then they despised the pleasant land,
having no faith in his promise.
They murmured in their tents,
and did not obey the voice of the Lord.
Therefore he raised his hand and swore to them
that he would make them fall in the wilderness,
and would make their offspring fall among the nations,
scattering them among the lands.
Then they yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor,
and ate sacrifices offered to the dead;
they provoked the Lord to anger with their deeds,
and a plague broke out among them.
Then Phinehas stood up and intervened,
and the plague was stayed.
And that was counted to him as righteousness
from generation to generation forever.
They angered him at the waters of Meribah,
and it went ill with Moses on their account,
for they made his spirit bitter,
and he spoke rashly with his lips.
They did not destroy the peoples,
as the Lord commanded them,
but they mixed with the nations
and learned to do as they did.
They served their idols,
which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
and the land was polluted with blood.
Thus they became unclean by their acts,
and played the whore in their deeds.
Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people,
and he abhorred his heritage;
he gave them into the hand of the nations,
so that those who hated them ruled over them.
Their enemies oppressed them,
and they were brought into subjection under their power.
Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.
Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
He caused them to be pitied
by all those who held them captive.
Save us, O Lord our God,
and gather us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
and glory in your praise.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting!
And let all the people say, “Amen!”
Praise the Lord!
God always remembers his covenant and preserves a remnant of his people.
Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
Even if they bring up children,
I will bereave them till none is left.
Woe to them
when I depart from them!
It is the death of a nation not to have children this would be a terrible curse for no one to even get pregnant or if they did for their children to still be taken away.
Then a weird verse gets dropped in with 13.
Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow;
but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.
young palm can also be the place Tyre, and really that makes a lot more sense in this context. Ephraim was like Tyre (that city that was destroyed by God [through babylon] for their Baal worship) a city that started in prosperity but after time is sent out into the slaughter.
The next verse sees to be darker than total city destruction. The subject seems even worse that just being destroyed. Hos 9.14
Give them, O Lord—
what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and dry breasts.
I don’t think Hosea is the one desiring the judgment there though it kind of reads that way but I think we can also read this as a rhetorical question from God that God answers and not the desire of Hosea.
Why such a terrible judgment?
Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal;
there I began to hate them.
Because of the wickedness of their deeds
I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more;
all their princes are rebels.
Because they’re in rebellion especially Gilgal where every single problem Hosea has mentioned so far is practiced.
Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up;
they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will put their beloved children to death.
My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him;
they shall be wanderers among the nations.
The doom and gloom continues, and their fertility and prosperity is at and end.
The fertility of the country is vital to it’s survival this judgment is a national death sentance. China has the lowest fertility rate in the world and it’s going to be a massive crisis. Christian fertility is not just Christ centered families having kids… although I obviously think that’s pretty important myself… The reality is our fertility is the going out and sharing our faith. We cannot rely on others to do that for us, like Assyria or Egypt to rescue us. We need to spread the Godspel and have God grow our people. Something God will not do if we are actively rejecting him and stringing him along as if he were the vending machine to fix this or that problem in our life. Or that He was just one of several other things that are most important to us that we just need to maintain our rituals with.
[pray]
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