A PEOPLE IN DECAY: 1 MORALLY
Hosea 4 - Hosea 7:7

PURSUING the plan laid down in the last chapter, we now take the section of Hosea’s discourse which lies between chapter 4 and Hos 7:7. Chapter 4 is the only really separable bit of it; but there are also slight breaks at Hos 5:15 and Hos 7:2. So we may attempt a division into four periods:

1. Chapter 4, which states God’s general charge against the people;
2. Hos 5:1-14, which discusses the priests and princes;
3. Hos 5:15 - Hos 7:2, which abjures the people’s attempts at repentance; and
4. Hos 7:3-7, which is a lurid spectacle of the drunken and profligate court.

All these give symptoms of the moral decay of the people, -the family destroyed by impurity, and society by theft and murder; the corruption of the spiritual guides of the people; the debauchery of the nobles; the sympathy of the throne with evil, -with the despairing judgment that such a people are incapable even of repentance. The keynotes are these: "No truth, nor real love, nor knowledge of God in the land. Priest and Prophet stumble. Ephraim and Judah stumble. I am as the moth to Ephraim. What can I make of thee, Ephraim? When I would heal them, their guilt is only the more exposed." Morally, Israel is rotten. The prophet, of course, cannot help adding signs of their political incoherence. But these he deals with more especially in the part of his discourse which follows chapter 7:7.

I. THE LORD’S QUARREL WITH ISRAEL
Hosea 4

"Hear the word of Jehovah, sons of Israel! Jehovah hath a quarrel with the inhabitants of the land, for there is no truth nor real love nor knowledge of God in the land. Perjury and murder and theft and adultery! They break out, and blood strikes upon blood."

That stable and well-furnished life, across which, while it was still noon, Amos hurled his alarms-how quickly it has broken up! If there be still "ease in Zion," there is no more "security in Samaria." {Amo 6:1} The great Jeroboam is dead, and society, which in the East depends so much on the individual, is loose and falling to pieces. The sins which are exposed by Amos were those that lurked beneath a still strong government, but Hosea adds outbreaks which set all order at defiance. Later we shall find him describing housebreaking, highway robbery, and assassination. "Therefore doth the land wither, and every one of her denizens languisheth, even to the beast of the field and the fowl of the heaven; yea, even the fish of the sea are swept up" in the universal sickness of man and nature: for Hosea feels, like Amos, the liability of nature to the curse upon sin.

Yet the guilt is not that of the whole people, but of their religious guides. "Let none find fault and none upbraid, for My people are but as their priestlings. O Priest, thou hast stumbled today: and stumble tonight shall the prophet with thee." One order of the nation’s ministers goes staggering after the other!"‘ And I will destroy thy Mother," presumably the nation herself. "Perished are My people for lack of knowledge." But how? By the sin of their teachers. "Because thou," O Priest, "hast rejected knowledge, I reject thee from being priest to Me; and as thou hast forgotten the Torah of thy God, I forget thy children- I on My side. As many as they be, so many have sinned against Me." Every jack-priest of them is culpable. "They have turned their glory into shame. They feed on the sin of My people, and to the guilt of these lift up their appetite!" The more the people sin, the more merrily thrive the priests by fines and sin-offerings. They live upon the vice of the day, and have a vested interest in its crimes. English Langland said the same thing of the friars of his time. The contention is obvious. The priests have given themselves wholly to the ritual; they have forgotten that their office is an intellectual and moral one. We shall return to this when treating of Hosea’s doctrine of knowledge and its responsibilities. Priesthood, let us only remember, priesthood is an intellectual trust.

"Thus it comes to be-like people like priest: "they also have fallen under the ritual, doing from lust what the priests do from greed. "But I will visit upon them their ways, and their deeds will I requite to them. For they" (those) "shall eat and not be satisfied," (these) "shall play the harlot and have no increase, because they have left off heeding Jehovah." This absorption in ritual at the expense of the moral and intellectual elements of religion has insensibly led them over into idolatry, with all its unchaste and drunken services. "Harlotry, wine, and new wine take away the brains!" The result is seen in the stupidity with which they consult their stocks for guidance. "My people! of its bit of wood it asketh counsel, and its staff telleth to it" the oracle! "For a spirit of harlotry hath led them astray, and they have played the harlot from their God. Upon the headlands of the hills they sacrifice, and on the heights offer incense, under oak or poplar or terebinth, for the shade of them is pleasant." On "headlands," not summits, for here no trees grow; and the altar was generally built under a tree and near water on some promontory, from which the flight of birds or of clouds might be watched. "Wherefore"-because of this your frequenting of the heathen shrines-"your daughters play the harlot and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. I will not come with punishment upon your daughters because they play the harlot, nor upon your daughters-in-law because they commit adultery." Why? For "they themselves," the fathers of Israel-or does he still mean the priests?-"go aside with the harlots and sacrifice with the common women of the shrines! "It is vain for the men of a nation to practice impurity and fancy that nevertheless they can keep their womankind chaste. "So the stupid people fall to ruin!"

("Though thou play the harlot, Israel, let not Judah bring guilt on herself. And come not to Gilgal, and go not up to Beth-Aven, and take not your oath at the Well-of-the-Oath, BeerSheba, "By the life of Jehovah!" This obvious parenthesis may be either by Hosea or a later writer; the latter is more probable.")

"Yea, like a wild heifer Israel has gone wild. How now can Jehovah feed them like a lamb in a broad meadow?" To treat this clause interrogatively is the only way to get sense out of it. "Wedded to idols is Ephraim: leave him alone." The participle means "mated" or "leagued." The corresponding noun is used of a wife as the "mate" of her husband {Mal 2:4} and of an idolater as the "mate" of his idols. {Isa 44:11} The expression is doubly appropriate here, since Hosea used marriage as the figure of the relation of a deity to his worshippers. "Leave him alone"-he must go from bad to worse. "Their drunkenness over, they take to harlotry: her rulers have fallen in love with shame," or "they love shame more than their pride." But in spite of all their servile worship the Assyrian tempest shall sweep them away in its trail. "A wind hath wrapt them up in her skirts; and they shall be put to shame by their sacrifices."

This brings the passage to such a climax as Amos loved to crown his periods. And the opening of the next chapter offers a new exordium.

2. PRIESTS AND PRINCES FAIL
Hos 5:1-14

The line followed in this paragraph is almost parallel to that of chapter 4, running out to a prospect of invasion. But the charge is directed solely against the chiefs of the people, and the strictures of Hos 7:7 ff. upon the political folly of the rulers are anticipated.

"Hear this, O Priests, and hearken, House of Israel, and House of the King, give ear. For on you is the sentence!" You who have hitherto been the judges, this time shall be judged.

"A snare have ye become at Mizpeh, and a net spread out upon Tabor, and a pit have they made deep upon Shittim; but I shall be the scourge of them all. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me-for now hast thou played the harlot, Ephraim, Israel is defiled." The worship on the high places, whether nominally of Jehovah or not, was sheer service of Ba’alim. It was in the interest both of the priesthood and of the rulers to multiply these sanctuaries, but they were only traps for the people. "Their deeds will not let them return to their God; for a harlot spirit is in their midst, and Jehovah," for all their oaths by Him, "they have not known. But the pride of Israel shall testify to his face; and Israel and Ephraim shall stumble by their guilt-stumble also shall Judah with them." By Israel’s pride many understand God. But the term is used too opprobriously by Amos to allow us to agree to this. The phrase must mean that Israel’s arrogance, or her proud prosperity, by the wounds which it feels in this time of national decay, shall itself testify against the people-a profound ethical symptom to which we shall return when treating of Repentance. Yet the verse may be rendered in harmony with the context: "the pride of Israel shall be humbled to his face. With their sheep and their cattle they go about to seek Jehovah, and shall not find" Him"; He hath drawn off from them. They have been unfaithful to Jehovah, for they have begotten strange children." A generation has grown up who are not His. "Now may a month devour them with their portions!" Any month may bring the swift invader. Hark! the alarum of war! How it reaches to the back of the land!

"Blow the trumpet in Gibeah the clarion in Ramah
Raise the slogan, Beth-Aven: ‘After thee Benjamin!’"

"Ephraim shall become desolation in the day of rebuke! Among the tribes of Israel I have made known what is certain!"

At this point (Hos 5:10) the discourse swerves from the religious to the political leaders of Israel; but as the princes were included with the priests in the exordium (Hos 5:1), we can hardly count this a new oracle.

"The princes of Judah are like landmark-re-movers"-commonest cheats in Israel-"upon them will I pour out My wrath like water. Ephraim is oppressed, crushed is his right, for he willfully went after vanity. And I am as the moth to Ephraim, and as rottenness to the house of Judah." Both kingdoms have begun to fall to pieces, for by this time Uzziah of Judah also is dead, and the weak politicians are in charge whom Isaiah satirized. "And Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his sore; and Ephraim went to Asshur and sent to King Jareb-King Combative, King Pick-Quarrel," a nickname for the Assyrian monarch. The verse probably refers to the tribute which Mena-hem sent to Assyria in 738. If so, then Israel has drifted full five years into her "thick night." "But he cannot heal you, nor dry up your sore. For I, Myself, am like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, I rend and go My way; I carry off and there is none to deliver." It is the same truth which Isaiah expressed with even greater grimness. God Himself is His people’s sore; and not all their statecraft nor alliances may heal what He inflicts. Priests and Princes, then, have alike failed. A greater failure is to follow.

3. REPENTANCE FALLS
Hosea 5:15 - Hosea 7:2

Seeing that their leaders are so helpless, and feeling their wounds, the people may themselves turn to God for healing, but that will be with a repentance so shallow as also to be futile. They have no conviction of sin, nor appreciation of how deeply their evils have eaten.

This too facile repentance is expressed in a prayer which the Christian Church has paraphrased into one of its most beautiful hymns of conversion. Yet the introduction to this prayer, and its own easy assurance of how soon God will heal the wounds He has made, as well as the impatience with which God receives it, oblige us to take the prayer in another sense than the hymn which has been derived from it. It offers but one more symptom of the optimism of this light-hearted people, whom no discipline and no judgment can impress with the reality of their incurable decay. They said of themselves, "The bricks are fallen, let us build with stones," and now they say just as easily and airily of their God, "He hath torn" only "that He may heal: "we are fallen, but" He will raise us up again in a day or two." At first it is still God who speaks.

"I am going My way, I am returning to My own place, until they feel their guilt and seek My face. When trouble comes upon them, they will soon enough seek Me, saying":-

"Come and let us return to Jehovah;
For He hath rent, that He may heal us,
And hath wounded, that He may bind us up.
He will bring us to life in a couple of days;
On the third day He will raise us up again,
That we may live in His presence."

"Let us know, let us follow up to know, Jehovah:
As soon as we seek Him, we shall find Him
And He shall come to us like the winter-rain,
Like the spring-rain, pouring on the land!"

But how is this fair prayer received by God? With incredulity, with impatience. What can I make of thee, Ephraim? what can I make of thee, Judah? since your love is like the morning cloud and like the dew so early gone. Their shallow hearts need deepening. Have they not been deepened enough? "Wherefore I have hewn" them "by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of My mouth, and My judgment goeth forth like the lightning. For real love have I desired, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings."

That the discourse comes back to the ritual is very intelligible. For what could make repentance stem so easy as the belief that forgiveness can be won by simply offering sacrifices? Then the prophet leaps upon what each new year of that anarchy revealed afresh-the profound sinfulness of the people.

"But they in human fashion have transgressed the covenant! There"-he will now point out the very spots-"have they betrayed Me! Gilead is a city of evil-doers: stamped with the bloody footprints; assassins in troops; a gang of priests murder on the way to Shechem. Yea, crime have they done. In the house of Israel I have seen horrors: there Ephraim hath played the harlot: Israel is defiled-Judah as well."

Truly the sinfulness of Israel is endless. Every effort to redeem them only discovers more of it. "When I would turn, when I would heal Israel, then the guilt of Ephraim displays itself and the evils of Samaria," these namely: "that they work fraud and the thief cometh in"-evidently a technical term for housebreaking -" while abroad a crew" of highwaymen foray. And they never think in their hearts that all their evil is recorded by Me. Now have their deeds encompassed them: they are constantly before

Evidently real repentance on the part of such a people is impossible. As Hosea said before, "Their deeds will not let them return." {Hos 5:4}

4. WICKEDNESS IN HIGH PLACES
Hos 7:3-7

There follows now a very difficult passage. The text is corrupt, and we have no means of determining what precise events are intended. The drift of meaning, however, is evident. The disorder and licentiousness of the people are favored in high places; the throne itself is guilty.

"With their evil they make a king glad, and princes with their falsehoods: all of them are adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker"

"On the day of our king"-some coronation or king’s birthday-"the princes were sick with fever from wine. He stretched forth his hand with loose fellows," presumably made them his associates. "Like an oven have they made their hearts with their intriguing. All night their anger sleepeth in the morning it blazes like a flame of fire. All of them glow like an oven, and devour their rulers: all their kings have fallen, without one of them calling on Me."

An obscure passage upon obscure events; yet so lurid with the passion of that fevered people in the flagrant years 743-735 that we can make out the kind of crimes described. A king surrounded by loose and unscrupulous nobles: adultery, drunkenness, conspiracies, assassination: every man striking for himself; none appealing to God.

From the court, then, downwards, by princes, priests, and prophets, to the common fathers of Israel and their households, immorality prevails. There is no redeeming feature, and no hope of better things. For repentance itself the capacity is gone.

In making so thorough an indictment of the moral condition of Israel, it would have been impossible for Hosea not to speak also of the political stupidity and restlessness which resulted from it. But he has largely reserved these for that part of his discourse which now follows, and which we will take in the next chapter.