Context No. 3625 of 4322 · Hosea

Hosea 9:1-17: in context

1Don’t rejoice, Israel, to jubilation like the nations; for you were unfaithful to your God. You love the wages of a prostitute at every grain threshing floor. 2The threshing floor and the wine press won’t feed them, and the new wine will fail her. 3They won’t dwell in the LORD’s land; but Ephraim will return to Egypt, and they will eat unclean food in Assyria. 4They won’t pour out wine offerings to the LORD, neither will they be pleasing to him. Their sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat of it will be polluted; for their bread will be for their appetite. It will not come into the LORD’s house. 5What will you do in the day of solemn assembly, and in the day of the feast of the LORD? 6For, behold, when they flee destruction, Egypt will gather them up. Memphis will bury them. Nettles will possess their pleasant things of silver. Thorns will be in their tents. 7The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool, and the man who is inspired to be insane, because of the abundance of your sins, and because your hostility is great. 8A prophet watches over Ephraim with my God. A fowler’s snare is on all of his paths, and hostility in the house of his God. 9They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity. He will punish them for their sins. 10I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing, and became abominable like that which they loved. 11As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird. There will be no birth, no one with child, and no conception. 12Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them, so that not a man shall be left. Indeed, woe also to them when I depart from them! 13I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place; but Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer. 14Give them—LORD what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. 15“All their wickedness is in Gilgal; for there I hated 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. 16Ephraim is struck. Their root has dried up. They will bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, yet I will kill the beloved ones of their womb.” 17My God will cast them away, because they didn’t listen to him; and they will be wanderers among the nations.

This is a heavy chapter of judgment on Israel for persistent unfaithfulness, and much of its imagery is stark and painful; we read it soberly, not dwelling on the hardest lines. But underneath the severity runs a note of profound sorrow.

God says the days of reckoning have come, and Israel treats his prophet as a fool, so hardened have they become. And there is a heartbreaking undertone: God recalls how he first found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, a delight to him, before they turned aside to shameful idols. The tragedy is the loss of what was once precious. God had loved this people, delighted in them, and their persistent turning away leads to a grievous separation. Even in the midst of judgment, we glimpse the grief of a God whose love has been spurned. There is a warning here about the terrible cost of persistent unfaithfulness, and a glimpse of the sorrow it brings to the heart of God, who remembers what his people once were to him.

Do I grasp how persistent unfaithfulness grieves the God who once delighted in me, and does that move me to return to him rather than harden my heart?

Sources

Hosea 9:10: "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness... but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing."
Hosea 9:7: "The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come."
Hosea 9:17: "My God will cast them away, because they didn't listen to him."