Hosea 9

Hosea 9 1-9

v.1 In this verse, the “threshing floors” refers to the harvest. The threshing floor was where the wheat would be separated. Baal was known as a fertility god. It was thought that allegiance to him brought great agricultural blessings. Because of this, the harvest time was one of the most celebratory times of worship for Baal followers. This time would be celebrated with feasting, drinking and sexual immorality. Israel enjoyed the worship of Baal as the pagan nations did. They “loved the reward” of following Baal. They engaged in the sexual immorality of Baal worship and in doing this they forsook God.

Hosea commands Israel not to celebrate (rejoice) with the Baal worshippers. There are a couple of reasons for this:

* It is sinful activity that they should not engage in.

* They have no reason to rejoice because soon they will experience great turmoil.

v.2 Regardless of their allegiance to the fertility god, their fields will not be fertile. There will not be enough crop or wine to sustain them (2:12). They would find out that it was not Baal, but YHWH that provided them with sustenance (2:8).

v.3 When judgment came Israel would be deported from the Lord’s land. This should be understood as the Promised Land that it had taken Israel so long to inhabit. They would quickly be taken into bondage. In this foreign land they would be forced to survive off unclean things. The Law was clear about which foods the Jews could and could not eat. In Israel they had a choice of what to eat. In Assyria they would eat what they were given as slaves.

v.4 Before Israel was exiled drought and famine would come to the land. In His grace, God sends warning signs to wake up a nation before He judges it. The famine would make it impossible for Israel to worship the Lord in the Temple in the proper manner.

* There would be no wine to offer.

* The Lord would not be pleased, because there was no offering for Him.

* Their sacrifices would be unclean. “The bread of mourners” describes a home where people are mourning over a death. Contact with a dead body made a person unclean and their sacrifice unfit (Deut. 26:14).

v.5 Israel had many special days they were to observe, as well as feasts. The question is posed “What will you do on these days?” Their religious traditions were still very important to them. They had not forsaken these traditions. They had simply embraced pagan practices as well. Because of famine Israel would find that they were not able to observe the very precious parts of their religion that they adored. This is God’s way of stopping their hypocrisy. The observance of these days was not helping Israel anyway. In taking them away, God is doing them a favor. He is showing them that they have no relationship with Him.

v.6 In the famine some Israelites would seek relief in Egypt. Memphis is a city in Egypt. Abraham did this in Genesis 12:10. As well, some Israelites who were not captured by the invading Assyrian army would flee to Egypt. Israel thought they would be safe in Egypt. Hosea tells them that Egypt would bury them!

“Nettles” are weeds and thorns. Israel’s prized possessions as well as their tents would be laid waste and overtaken by weeds and thorns. No one would be left to protect their belongings. During the Exodus many Jews believed it would have been better for them to return to Egypt (Num. 14:3). In this verse a description is given to describe what happens to those who do return. When they left Egypt they took treasure, lived in tents and entered the Promised Land and lived. Here they leave the Promised Land, lose their tents, their treasures and ultimately their lives.

v.7-9 In these verses we have the preachers of Israel and the people of Israel described. God was going to send judgment on the land. It would be the “day of punishment and recompense”. Both words speak of God’s wrath against sin. Israel would know that the judgment was coming because the Lord would send preachers to warn them.

The preachers:

* The prophet was considered a fool. Jeremiah was called a mad man in Jer. 29:26. Others were considered foolish as well.

*The man of the spirit is mad. This is the man who is governed by the Spirit of God. thought that anyone who believed God would judge them must be insane.

* The watchman was in the presence of God. Israel prophets were described as watchmen sometimes (Ezekiel 33:2). Regardless of what Israel thought, the true prophets, like Hosea, were speaking what the Lord revealed to them.

* The prophet had become a snare to the people. It was the intent of the prophet to deliver Israel because Israel would not receive the word of the Lord; the prophets had become a trap to the people.

The people:

* The iniquity of Israel had driven the preachers crazy. Hosea says in verse 7 “because of your great iniquity”. The sin of Israel drove the preachers to proclaim the type of message they were hearing.

* Israel hated the preachers. They hated them because of the message they were preaching. Israel was being “hewed and slain” (6:5) by the messages they were hearing.

* The people had deeply corrupted themselves. The reference is given to Gibeah. The story is told , beginning in Judges 19, of a Levite whose concubine was raped and killed by people of the tribe of Benjamin. The Levite cut her body into twelve pieces and sent a piece to each tribe of Israel. This started a civil war that ended with the death of 25,000 soldiers in Benjamin’s army (20:46). The days of Gibeah were days of serious sin that resulted in great bloodshed. The generation of Hosea was like that generation. Their serious sin would bring about the judgment of God through the Assyrian army. Much blood would be shed. God would not forget their sin. He would visit them with His judgment.

Thoughts to Consider

1. It is a great insult to God that we would rejoice in sin.

2. All the offerings we bring to God He first brings to us.

3. Satan wants us to forget the bondage of sin & remember its momentary pleasure.

4. It’s a lot easier to criticize the preacher than to correct ourselves.

Hosea 9 10-17

v.10 Israel had not always caused God such heartache. As the nation grew older it had also grown spiritually cold. There was a time when Israel brought great joy to God. She was like “grapes in the wilderness” and “first fruit on the fig tree.” Grapes were not usually found in the wilderness (desert). If a person were to stumble upon a grape vine in the desert they would be filled with joy. Figs were a delicacy to Israel’s culture. The first figs on a fig tree would bring delight because one would have gone an entire season without them. Hosea makes the point that Israel had brought great joy to God in her youth. “Fathers” refers to a previous generation of Jews that pleased God. Now, as an older nation, she brought Him grief.

God’s memory of Israel as a delightful nation does not last long. He brings up an incident that happened before Israel entered the Promised Land. Numbers 25 tells the story of the Israelites committing great sin in Baal- peor. Israel joined themselves in sexual relationships with the prostitutes of the Moabites. They also engaged in the worship of the Moabites false gods. As a result, God poured out a plague on the people that killed 24,000 Israelites. The plague stopped when Phinehas killed an Israelite man and a Moabite woman, apparently in the act, with a spear. We see three things about this act:

*It was shameful.

*It was detestable.

*It was what they loved to do.

v.11 Here we see the result of Israel’s (Ephraim) sin. Their glory shall fly away. “Glory” means “esteem, honor, weight”. The nation had been considered a glorious one at one point. It was honored and feared by other nations. Now that glory would quickly depart, as a bird flies away.

This judgment is extremely severe. It deals with the ability of Israel to procreate. There had been a time when Israel was blessed with children (Exodus 1:7). Now God would bring judgment upon them and greatly limit the number of children they bore.

v. 12 Some children would be born. Yet those children would suffer as well. God would “bereave” them. “Bereave” means to deprive someone of a loved one by death.

The verse ends with an expression of judgment. “Woe to them” describes the serious consequence of their sin that is coming. The worst thing that is happening to Israel is not that they are losing children. The children are being spared the suffering of captivity by the Assyrians. They are going straight to heaven. The terrible thing that is happening to Israel is that the Lord is leaving them. Therefore, their glory (11) is leaving them.

v.13 Ephraim was like the Phoenician city of Tyrus. It had become a very wealthy place. Both Ephraim and Tyre, which had been blessed in the past, would soon be cursed.

The “slaughter” refers to someone who willingly takes the life of a human. This verse reveals that Israel had identified itself with pagan worship so deeply that it even engaged in child sacrifice (Psalm 106:37-39). Tyre and Israel were overtaken by the Assyrian Army. Just as Israel presented it’s own children to the slaughter, God would now present the nation of Israel to its own slaughterer.

v.14 Hosea asks “What will You give them Lord?” He answers his own question. He suggests that God give them the inability to carry or feed children. Israel does not deserve children because she is involved in such ungodly practices. God has already stated that He would do just that in vs. 11-12.

v.15 Gilgal is mentioned in other places in this book (4:15, 12:11). The sin that was taking place in this city summarized the sin of the entire nation. “All their wickedness” was in Gilgal. Amos described it as a place of hypocritical and pagan worship (Amos 4:4-5). It was in this city that God came to “hate them”. God makes a distinction between His love for His people and the people of the world (Romans 9:13). Jesus says that we are to make that same distinction in Luke 14:26. Because there was a generation of Jews that had no relationship with God, they were not united to Him in covenant love. The reality of their lack of relationship with Him was most abundantly expressed in the city of Gilgal. God lays much of the blame for His lack of relationship with Israel on the rulers of Israel. They were all “rebels”. They had rebelled against God. God would drive the nation out of His house as an adulterous wife is driven out. They would be taken from the Promised Land into Assyrian captivity.

v.16 This verse basically repeats what God has already said. Ephraim would become barren. Children would be scarce. The children that were born would die at a high rate. This is not judgment on the children. Those children go to heaven. This is judgment on the nation.

v.17 Israel will be cast away from God and out of their land. The reason is that they did not listen to God. He gave them fair warning, but they chose to follow their own ways. Their own path led them to be wanderers in other nations. Once again, they would have no home. They would be swallowed up by others. Their identity would be gone.

Thoughts to Consider

1. It is possible for us to bring God pleasure one day and pain the next.

2. The way a society treats children says much about their relationship with God.

3. God loves the saved in a more deep and abiding way than the lost.

4. We can never blame God for His judgment; He has given us sufficient warning.