The Twelve Prophets Volume I
A PEOPLE IN DECAY: 2. POLITICALLY Hos 7:8-10 MORAL decay means political decay. Sins like these are the gangrene of nations. It is part of Hosea’s greatness to have traced this, a proof of that versatility which distinguishes him above other prophets. The most spiritual of them all, he is at the same time the most political. We owe him an analysis of repentance to which the New Testament has little to add; but he has also left us a criticism of society and of polities in Israel, unrivalled except by Isaiah. We owe him an intellectual conception of God, which for the first time in Israel exploded idolatry; yet he also is the first to define Israel’s position in the politics of Western Asia. With the single courage of conscience Amos had said to the people: You are bad, therefore you must perish. But Hosea’s is the insight to follow the processes by which sin brings forth death-to trace, for instance, the effects of impurity upon a nation’s powers of reproduction, as well as upon its intellectual vigor. So intimate are these two faculties of Hosea that in chapters devoted chiefly to the sins of Israel we have already seen him expose the political disasters that follow. But from the point we have now reached- Hos 7:8 -the proportion of his prophesying is reversed: he gives us less of the sin and more of the social decay and political folly of his age. 1. THE CONFUSION OF THE NATION Hos 7:8-16; Hos 8:1-3 Hosea begins by summing up the public aspect of Israel in two epigrams, short but of marvelous adequacy:-{Hos 7:8} "Ephraim-among the nations he mixeth himself: Ephraim has become a cake not turned." It is a great crisis for any nation to pass from the seclusion of its youth and become a factor in the main history of the world. But for Israel the crisis was trebly great. Their difference from all other tribes about them had struck the Canaanites on their first entry to the land; {Num 23:9 b; Jos 2:8} their own earliest writers had emphasized their seclusion as their strength; {Deu 33:27} and their first prophets consistently deprecated every overture made by them either to Egypt or to Assyria. We feel the force of the prophets’ policy when we remember what happened to the Philistines. These were a people as strong and as distinctive as Israel, with whom at one time they disputed possession of the whole land. But their position as traders in the main line of traffic between Asia and Africa rendered the Philistines peculiarly open to foreign influence. They were now Egyptian vassals, now Assyrian victims; and after the invasion of Alexander the Great their cities became centers of Hellenism, while the Jews upon their secluded hills still stubbornly held unmixed their race and their religion. This contrast, so remarkably developed in later centuries, has justified the prophets of the eighth in their anxiety that Israel should not annul the advantages of her geographical seclusion by trade or treaties with the Gentiles. But it was easier for Judaea to take heed to the warning than for Ephraim. The latter lies as open and fertile as her sister province is barren and aloof. She has many gates into the world, and they open upon many markets. Nobler opportunities there could not be for a nation in the maturity of its genius and loyal to its vocation:- "Rejoice, O Zebulun, in thine outgoings: They shall call the nations to the mountain; They shall suck of the abundance of the seas And of the treasure that is stored in the sands." {Deu 33:18-19} But in the time of his outgoings Ephraim was not sure of himself nor true to his God, the one secret and strength of the national distinctiveness. So he met the world weak and unformed, and, instead of impressing it, was by it dissipated and confused. The tides of a lavish commerce scattered abroad the faculties of the people, and swept back upon their life alien fashions and tempers, to subdue which there was neither native strength nor definiteness of national purpose. All this is what Hosea means by the first of his epigrams: "Ephraim-among the nations he lets himself be poured out," or "mixed up." The form of the verb does not elsewhere occur; but it is reflexive, and the meaning of the root is certain. "Balal" is to "pour out," or "mingle," as of oil in the sacrificial flour. Yet it is sometimes used of a mixing which is not sacred, but profane and hopeless. It is applied to the first great confusion of mankind, to which a popular etymology has traced the name Babel, as if for Balbel. Derivatives of the stem bear the additional ideas of staining and impurity. The alternative renderings which have been proposed, "lets himself be soaked" and "scatters himself" abroad like wheat among tares, are not so probable, yet hardly change the meaning. Ephraim wastes and confuses himself among the Gentiles. The nation’s character is so disguised that Hosea afterwards nicknames him Canaan {Hos 12:8} their religion so filled with foreign influences that he calls the people the harlot of the Ba’alim. If the first of Hosea’s epigrams satirizes Israel’s foreign relations, the second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the temper and constitution of society at home. For the metaphor of which this epigram is composed Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all classes in the East, especially under conditions requiring haste, there is in demand a round flat scone, which is baked by being laid on hot stones or attached to the wall of a heated oven. The whole art of baking consists in turning the scone over at the proper moment. If this be mismanaged it does not need a baker to tell us that one side may be burnt to a cinder, while the other remains raw. "Ephraim," says Hosea, "is an unturned cake." By this he may mean one of several things, or all of them together, for they are infectious of each other. There was, for instance, the social conditions of the people. What can better be described as an unturned scone than a community one half of whose number are too rich, and the other too poor? Or Hosea may refer to that unequal distribution of religion through life with which in other parts of his prophecy he reproaches Israel. They keep their religion, as Amos more fully tells us, for their temples, and neglect to carry its spirit into their daily business. Or he may refer to Israel’s politics, which were equally in want of thoroughness. They rushed hotly at an enterprise, but having expended so much fire in the beginning of it, they let the end drop cold and dead. Or he may wish to satirize, like Amos, Israel’s imperfect culture-the pretentious and overdone arts, stuck excrescence-wise upon the unrefined bulk of the nation, just as in many German principalities last century society took on a few French fashions in rough and exaggerated forms, while at heart still brutal and coarse. Hosea may mean any one of these things, for the figure suits all, and all spring from the same defect. Want of thoroughness and equable effort was Israel’s besetting sin, and it told on all sides of his life. How better describe a half-fed people, a half-cultured society, a half-lived religion, a half-hearted policy, than by a half-baked scone? We who are so proud of our political bakers, we who scorn the rapid revolutions of our neighbors and complacently dwell upon our equable ovens, those slow and cautious centuries of political development which lie behind us-have we anything better than our neighbors, anything better than Israel, to show in our civilization? Hosea’s epigram fits us to the letter. After all those ages of baking, society is still with us "an unturned scone": one end of the nation with the strength burnt out of it by too much enjoyment of life, the other with not enough of warmth to be quickened into anything like adequate vitality. No man can deny that this is so; we are able to live only by shutting our hearts to the fact. Or is religion equally distributed through the lives of the religious portion of our nation? Of late years religion has spread, and spread wonderfully, but of how many Christians is it still true that they are but half-baked-living a life one side of which is reeking with the smoke of sacrifice, while the other is never warmed by one religious thought. We may have too much religion if we confine it to one day or one department of life: our worship overdone, with the sap and the freshness burnt out of it, cindery, dusty, unattractive, fit only for crumbling; our conduct cold, damp, and heavy, like dough the fire has never reached. Upon the theme of these two epigrams the other verses of this chapter are variations. Has Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples? "Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not," senselessly congratulating himself upon the increase of his trade and wealth, while he does not feel that these have sucked from him all his distinctive virtue. "Yea, grey hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knoweth it not." He makes his energy the measure of his life, as Isaiah also marked, {Hos 9:9 f.} but sees not that it all means waste and decay. "The pride of Israel testifieth to his face, yet"-even when the pride of the nation is touched to the quick by such humiliating overtures as they make to both Assyria and Egypt-"they do not return to Jehovah their God, nor seek Him for all this." With virtue and single-hearted faith have disappeared intellect and the capacity for affairs. "Ephraim is become like a silly dove-a dove without heart," to the Hebrews the organ of the wits of a man-"they cry to Egypt, they go off to Assyria." Poor pigeon of a people, fluttering from one refuge to another! But "as they go I will throw over them My net, like a bird of the air I will bring them down. I will punish them as their congregation have heard"-this text as it stands: can only mean "in the manner I have publicly proclaimed in Israel." "Woe to them that they have strayed from Me! Damnation to them that they have rebelled against Me! While I would have redeemed them they spoke lies about Me. And they have never cried unto Me with their heart, but they keep howling from their beds for corn and new wine." No real repentance theirs, but some fear of drought and miscarriage of the harvests, a sensual and servile sorrow in which they wallow. They seek God with no heart, no true appreciation of what He is, but use the senseless means by which the heathen invoke their gods: "they cut themselves, and "so "apostatize from Me! And yet it was I who disciplined them, I strengthened their arm, but with regard to Me they kept thinking" only "evil!" So fickle and sensitive to fear, "they turn" indeed "but not upwards"; no Godward conversion theirs. In their repentance "they are like a bow which swerves" off upon some impulse of their ill-balanced natures. "Their princes must fall by the sword because of the bitterness"-we should have expected "falseness"-"of their tongue: this is their scorn in the land of Egypt!" To the allusion we have no key. With so false a people nothing can be done. Their doom is inevitable. So "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." "To thy mouth with the trumpet! The Eagle is down upon the house of Jehovah!" Where the carcass is, there are the eagles gathered together. "For"-to sum up the whole crisis-"they have transgressed My covenant, and against My law have they rebelled. To Me they cry, My God, we know Thee, we Israeli" What does it matter? "Israel hath spurned the good: the Foe must pursue him." It is the same climax of inevitable war to which Amos led up his periods; and a new subject is now introduced. 2. ARTIFICIAL KINGS AND ARTIFICIAL GODS Hos 8:4-13 The curse of such a state of dissipation as that to which Israel had fallen is that it produces no men. Had the people had in them "the root of the matter," had there been the stalk and the fiber of a national consciousness and purpose, it would have blossomed to a man. In the similar time of her outgoings upon the world Prussia had her Frederick the Great, and Israel, too, would have produced a leader, a heaven-sent king, if the national spirit had not been squandered on foreign trade and fashions. But after the death of Jeroboam every man who rose to eminence in Israel, rose, not on the nation, but only on the fevered and transient impulse of some faction; and through the broken years one party monarch was lifted after another to the brief tenancy of a blood-stained throne. They were not from God, these monarchs; but man-made, and sooner or later man-murdered. With his sharp insight Hosea likens these artificial kings to the artificial gods, also the work of men’s hands; and till near the close of his book the idols of the sanctuary and the puppets of the throne form the twin targets of his scorn. "They have made kings, but not from Me; they have made princes, but I knew not. With their silver and their gold they have manufactured themselves idols, only that they may be cut off"-king after king, idol upon idol. "He loathes thy Calf, O Samaria," the thing of wood and gold which thou callest Jehovah. And God confirms this. "Kindled is Mine anger against them! How long will they be incapable of innocence?"-unable to clear themselves of guilt! The idol is still in his mind. "For from Israel is it also-as much as the puppet-kings"; a workman made it, and no god is it. Yea, splinters shall the Calf of Samaria become." Splinters shall everything in Israel become. "For they sow the wind, and the whirlwind shall they reap." Indeed like a storm Hosea’s own language now sweeps along; and his metaphors are torn into shreds upon it. "Stalk it hath none: the sprout brings forth no grain: if it were to bring forth, strangers would swallow it." Nay, "Israel hath let herself be swallowed up! Already are they becoming among the nations like a vessel there is no more use for." Heathen empires have sucked them dry. "They have gone up to Assyria like a runaway wild-ass. Ephraim hath hired lovers." It is again the note of their mad dissipation among the foreigners. "But if they" thus "give themselves away among the nations, I must gather them in, and" then "shall they have to cease a little from the anointing of a king and princes." This willful roaming of theirs among the foreigners shall be followed by compulsory exile, and all their unholy artificial politics shall cease. The discourse turns to the other target. For Ephraim hath multiplied altars-to sin; altars are his own-to sin. Were I to write for him by myriads My laws, as those of a stranger would they be accounted. They slay burnt-offerings for Me and eat flesh. Jehovah hath no delight in them. Now must He remember their guilt and make visitation upon their sin. They-to Egypt-shall return" Back to their ancient servitude must they go, as formerly He said He would withdraw them to the wilderness. {Hos 2:16} 3. THE EFFECTS OF EXILE Hos 9:1-9 Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy and the sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed, every taste offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of having deserted Jehovah, they cannot pretend to enjoy the feasts of the Ba’alim in the same hearty way as the heathen with whom they mix. But, whether or no, the time is near when nature-feasts and all other religious ceremonies-all that makes life glad and regular and solemn-shall be impossible. "Rejoice not, O Israel, to" the pitch of "rapture like the heathen, for thou hast played the harlot from thy God; a harlot’s hire hast thou loved on all threshing-floors. Threshing-floor and wine-vat shall ignore them, and the new wine shall play them false. They shall not abide in the land of Jehovah, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat what is unclean. They shall not pour libations to Jehovah, nor prepare for Him their sacrifices. Like the bread of sorrows shall their bread be; all that eat of it shall be defiled": yea, "their bread shall be" only "for their appetite; they shall not bring" it "to the temple of Jehovah." He cannot be worshipped off His own land. They will have to live like animals, divorced from religion, unable to hold communion with their God. "What shall ye do for days of festival, or for a day of pilgrimage to Jehovah? For lo," they "shall be gone forth from destruction," the shock and invasion of their land, only "that Egypt may gather them in, Memphis give them sepulcher, nettles inherit their jewels of silver, thorns "come up" in their tents." The threat of exile still wavers between Assyria and Egypt. And in Egypt Memphis is chosen as the destined grave of Israel; for even then her Pyramids and mausoleums were ancient and renowned, her vaults and sepulchers were countless and spacious. But what need is there to seek the future for Israel’s doom, when already this is being fulfilled by the corruption of her spiritual leaders? "The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital. Israel" already "experiences them! A fool is the prophet, raving mad the man of the spirit." The old ecstasy of Saul’s day has become delirium and fanaticism. Why? "For the mass of thy guilt and the multiplied treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with My God." There is probably a play on the name, for with the meaning a "watchman" for God it is elsewhere used as an honorable title of the prophets. "The prophet is a fowler’s snare upon all his ways. Treachery-they have made it profound in the "very" house of their God. They have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity is remembered; visitation is made on their sin." These, then, were the symptoms of the profound political decay which followed on Israel’s immorality. The national spirit and unity of the people had disappeared. Society-half of it was raw, half of it was baked to a cinder. The nation, broken into fractions, produced no man to lead, no king with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed; monarchs were made and murdered. There was no prestige abroad, nothing but contempt among the Gentiles for a people whom they had exhausted. Judgment was inevitable by exile-nay, it had come already in the corruption of the spiritual leaders of the nation. Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still. 4. "THE CORRUPTION THAT IS THROUGH LUST" Hos 9:10-17 CF. Hos 4:11-14 Those who at the present time are enforcing among us the revival of a paganism-without the pagan conscience-and exalting licentiousness to the level of an art, forget how frequently the human race has attempted their experiment, with far more sincerity than they themselves can put into it, and how invariably the result has been recorded by history to be weariness, decay, and death. On this occasion we have the story told to us by one who to the experience of the statesman adds the vision of the poet. The generation to which Hosea belonged practiced a periodical unchastity under the alleged sanctions of nature and religion. And, although their prophet told them that-like our own apostates from Christianity-they could never do so with the abandon of the pagans, for they carried within them the conscience and the memory of a higher faith, it appears that even the fathers of Israel resorted openly and without shame to the licentious rites of the sanctuaries. In an earlier passage of his book Hosea insists that all this must impair the people’s intellect. "Harlotry takes away the brains." {Hos 4:12} He has shown also how it confuses the family, and has exposed the old delusion that men may be impure and keep their womankind chaste. {Hos 4:13-14} But now he diagnoses another of the inevitable results of this sin. After tracing the sin and the theory of life which permitted it, to their historical beginnings at the entry of the people into Canaan, he describes how the long practice of it, no matter how pretentious its sanctions, inevitably leads not only to exterminating strifes, but to the decay of the vigor of the nation, to barrenness and a diminishing population. "Like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit on a fig-tree in her first season I saw your fathers." So had the lusty nation appeared to God in its youth; in that dry wilderness all the sap and promise of spring were in its eyes, because it was still pure. But "they-they came to Ba’al-Peor"-the first of the shrines of Canaan which they touched-"and dedicated themselves to the shame, and became as abominable as the object of their love. "Ephraim"-the "Fruitful" name is emphasized-"their glory is flown away like a bird. No more birth, no more motherhood, no more conception! Blasted is Ephraim, withered the root of them, fruit they produce not: yea, even when they beget children I slay the darlings of their womb. Yea, though they bring up their sons I bereave them," till they are "poor in men. Yea, woe upon themselves" also, when I look away from them! Ephraim"-again the "Fruitful" name is dragged to the front-"for prey, as I have seen, are his sons destined. Ephraim" - he "must lead his sons to the slaughter." And the prophet interrupts with his chorus: "Give them, O Lord-what wilt Thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and breasts that are dry!" "All their mischief is in Gilgal"-again the Divine voice strikes the connection between the national worship and the national sin-"yea, there do I hate them: for the evil of their doings from My house I will drive them. I will love them no more: all their nobles are rebels." And again the prophet responds: "My God will cast them away, for they have not hearkened to Him, and they shall be vagabonds among the nations." Some of the warnings which Hosea enforces with regard to this sin have been instinctively felt by mankind since the beginnings of civilization, and are found expressed among the proverbs of nearly all the languages. But I am unaware of any earlier moralist in any literature who traced the effects of national licentiousness in a diminishing population, or who exposed the persistent delusion of libertine men that they themselves may resort to vice, yet keep their womankind chaste. Hosea, so far as we know, was the first to do this. History in many periods has confirmed the justice of his observations, and by one strong voice after another enforced his terrible warnings. The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt; the languor of the Greek cities; the "deep weariness and sated lust" which in Imperial Rome "made human life a hell"; the decay which overtook Italy after the renascence of Paganism without the Pagan virtues; the strife and anarchy that have rent every court where, as in the case of Henri Quatre, the king set the example of libertinage; the incompetence, the poltroonery, the treachery, that have corrupted every camp where, as in French Metz in 1870, soldiers and officers gave way so openly to vice; the checks suffered by modern civilization in face of barbarism because its pioneers mingled in vice with the savage races they were subduing; the number of great statesmen falling by their passions, and in their fall frustrating the hopes of nations; the great families worn out by indulgence; the homes broken up by infidelities; the tainting of the blood of a new generation by the poisonous practices of the old, -have not all these things been in every age, and do they not still happen near enough to ourselves to give us a great fear of the sin which causes them all? Alas! how stow men are to listen and to lay to heart! Is it possible that we can gild by the names of frivolity and piquancy habits the wages of which are death? Is it possible that we can enjoy comedies which make such things their jest? We have among us many who find their business in the theatre, or in some of the periodical literature of our time, in writing and speaking and exhibiting as closely as they dare to limits of public decency. When will they learn that it is not upon the easy edge of mere conventions that they are capering, but upon the brink of those eternal laws whose further side is death and hell-that it is not the tolerance of their fellow men they are testing, but the patience of God Himself? As for those loud few who claim license in the name of art and literature, let us not shrink from them as if they were strong or their high words true. They are not strong, they are only reckless; their claims are lies. All history, the poets and the prophets, whether Christian or Pagan, are against them. They are traitors alike to art, to love, and to every other high interest of mankind. It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes great license in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only by the ambition to expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself affirms. This is true. Some of the ablest and most popular writers of our time have pictured the facts, which Hosea describes, with so vivid a realism that we cannot but judge them to be inspired to confirm his ancient warnings, and to excite a disgust of vice in a generation which otherwise treats vice so lightly. But if so, their ministry is exceeding narrow, and it is by their side that we best estimate the greatness of the ancient prophet. Their transcript of human life may be true to the facts it selects, but we find in it no trace of facts which are greater and more essential to humanity. They have nothing to tell us of forgiveness and repentance, and yet these are as real as the things they describe. Their pessimism is unrelieved. They see the "corruption that is in the world through lust"; they forget that there is an escape from it. {2 Peter 1} It is Hosea’s greatness that, while he felt the vices of his day with all needed thoroughness and realism, he yet never allowed them to be inevitable or ultimate, but preached repentance and pardon, with the possibility of holiness even for his depraved generation. It is the littleness of the art of our day that these great facts are forgotten by her, though once she was their interpreter to men. When she remembers them the greatness of her past will return. 5. ONCE MORE: PUPPET-KINGS AND PUPPET-GODS Hosea 10 For another section, the tenth chapter, the prophet returns to the twin targets of his scorn: the idols and the puppet-kings. But few notes are needed. Observe the reiterated connection between the fertility of the land and the idolatry of the people. "A wanton vine is Israel; he lavishes his fruit; the more his fruit, the more he made his altars; the goodlier his land, the more goodly he made his macceboth, or sacred pillars. False is the heart of them: now must they atone for it. He shall break the neck of their altars; He shall ruin their pillars. For already they are saying, No king have we, for we have not feared Jehovah, and the king-what could he do for us? Speaking of words, swearing of false oaths, making of bargains-till law breaks out like weeds in the furrows of the field." "For the Calf of Beth-Aven the inhabitants of Samaria shall be anxious: yea, mourn for him shall his people, and his priestlings shall writhe for him - for his glory that it is banished from him." In these days of heavy tribute shall the gold of the golden calf be safe? "Yea, himself shall they pack to Assyria; he shall be offered as tribute to King Pick-Quarrel. Ephraim shall take disgrace, and Israel be ashamed because of his counsel. Undone Samaria! Her king like chip on the face of the waters!" This may refer to one of the revolutions in which the king was murdered. But it seems more appropriate to the final catastrophe of 724-21: the fall of the kingdom, and the king’s banishment to Assyria. If the latter, the verse has been inserted; but the following verse would lead us to take these disasters as still future. "And the high places of idolatry shall be destroyed, the sin of Israel; thorn and thistle shall come up on their altars. And they shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us." It cannot be too often repeated: these handmade gods, these chips of kings, shall be swept away together. Once more the prophet returns to the ancient origins of Israel’s present sins, and once more to their shirking of the discipline necessary for spiritual results, but only that he may lead up as before to the inevitable doom. "From the days of Gibeah thou hast sinned, O Israel. There have they remained"-never progressed beyond their position there-"and this without war overtaking them in Gibeah against the dastards. As soon as I please, I can chastise them, and peoples shall be gathered against them in chastisement for their double sin." This can scarcely be, as some suggest, the two calves at Bethel and Dan. More probably it is still the idols and the man-made kings. Now he returns to the ambition of the people for spiritual results without a spiritual discipline. "And Ephraim is a broken-in heifer, that loveth to thresh. But I have come on her fair neck. I will yoke Ephraim; Judah must plough; Jacob must harrow for himself. It is all very well for the unmuzzled beast," {Deu 25:4; 1Co 9:9; 1Ti 5:18} to love the threshing, but harder and unrewarded labors of ploughing and harrowing have to come before the floor be heaped with sheaves. Israel must not expect religious festival without religious discipline. "Sow for yourselves righteousness; then shall ye reap the fruit of God’s leal love. Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek Jehovah, till He come and shower salvation upon you. Ye have ploughed wickedness; disaster have ye reaped: ye have eaten the fruit of falsehood; for thou didst trust in thy chariots, in the multitude of thy warriors. For the tumult of war shall arise among thy tribes, and all thy fenced cities shall be ruined, as Salman beat to ruin Beth-Arbel in the day of war: the mother shall be broken on the children"-presumably the land shall fall with the falling of her cities. "Thus shall I do to you, O house of Israel, because of the evil of your evil: soon shall the king of Israel be undone-undone." The political decay of Israel, then, so deeply figured in all these chapters, must end in utter collapse. Let us sum up the gradual features of this decay: the substance of the people scattered abroad; the national spirit dissipated; the national prestige humbled; the kings mere puppets; the prophets corrupted; the national vigor sapped by impurity; the idolatry conscious of its impotence.