Hosea 10:1-11

REPROVINGISRAEL FELL INTO ANARCHY

TEXT: Hosea 10:1-11

1

Israel is a luxuriant vine, that putteth forth his fruit: according to the abundance of his fruit he hath multiplied his altars; according to the goodness of their land they have made goodly pillars.

2

Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty: he will smite their altars, he will destroy their pillars.

3

Surely now shall they say, We have no king; for we fear not Jehovah; and the king, what can he do for us?

4

They speak vain words, swearing falsely in making covenants: therefore judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.

5

The inhabitants of Samaria shall be in terror for the calves of Bethaven; for the people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof, that rejoiced over it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from it.

6

It also shall be carried unto Assyria for a present to king Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel.

7

As for Samaria, her king is cut off, as foam upon the water.

8

The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us.

9

O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood; the battle against the children of iniquity doth not overtake them in Gibeah.

10

When it is my desire, I will chastise them; and the peoples shall be gathered against them, when they are bound to their two transgressions.

11

And Ephraim is a heifer that is taught, that loveth to tread out the grain; but I have passed over upon her fair neck: I will set a rider on Ephraim: Judah shall plow, Jacob shall break his clods.

QUERIES

a.

How is the heart of Israel divided?

b.

Who is king Jareb?

c.

What were the two transgressions binding Israel?

PARAPHRASE

Israel is prospering like a luxuriant grape vine sagging under the weight of much fruit. But the more prosperous I make her, the more she devotes herself to heathen altars and pagan idols. Her heart is smooth and treacherous. She is guilty and must be punished. God will destroy all her altars and idols. Surely under the circumstances of the coming judgment they will cry out We do not fear Jehovahnow we have no kingbut what is the difference? No king could help us now! Their talk is emptythey make promises they never intended to keep. On account of this they are sowing the poison of anarchy and destruction within their own land. The people of Israel will moan over the destruction of their national shrines and gods, The priests will perform a ritual dance, imploring their idols to save them. But this idolthis calf-god thingwill be carted off helplessly into captivity with Israel as a present to the great Warrior King of Assyria. Israel and her calf-god will be disgraced. The advice and programs Israel thought were so politically and religiously wise will appear to be so foolish to her then. The proud monarchy of Israel vanishes like a splinter upon the surface of this water which is carried away by the current without leaving a trace behind. Those majestic and expensive idol-altars of Aven at Bethel where Israel sinned will crumble. They will be so deserted thorns and thistles will grow up in their place. And the deluded people, forsaken by their helpless gods, cast off by the Lord, stand in awe and terror as they see God's judgment coming upon themthey cry for the mountains and the hills to cover them and hide them from the wrath of Jehovah. Ah, Israel, since the days of Gibeah you have persisted in the same sin as the Gibeahites; but whereas those sinners were punished and destroyed by the war, you still live on in the same sin without having been destroyed in a similar war. When it is according to my purpose, I will punish Israel. The Gentile nations will be arrayed against them. Their two transgressions, apostacy from Jehovah and separation from the royal house of David, will haunt them all during their punishment, Israel is accustomed to pleasant, productive. profitable labor, like the heifer that loves to tread out the grain because she is allowed to eat at her pleasure. But it will soon be different. I will seize her and harness her by a heavy yoke to the plow and harrow. Yes, Judah too shall be put to hard labor in captivity, just like Israel.

SUMMARY

Israel's prosperity was only a veneer giving an outward appearance of well-being. Inside she was corrupt, lawless, idolatrous and in the throes of anarchy.

COMMENT

Hosea 10:1 ISRAEL IS A LUXURIANT VINE. The KJV has it, Israel is an empty vine. Practically all scholars of the Hebrew texts consider this a palpable inaccuracy. Lange says, a thriving vine. Keil says, a running vine. The translators of both the ASV and the RSV translated a luxuriant vine. Hosea was probably using satire or irony in so addressing Israel. Israel waxed prosperous, it is true, in spite of national calamities. But what kind of fruit was Israel producing? Fruit of its own choosing, of its own pleasure, instead of the fruit for which God looked. The figure of the vine is an old and familiar figure (cf. Psalms 80:8 ff; Isaiah 5:1-10; Jeremiah 2:21; Ezekiel 15:1 ff; Ezekiel 17:6 ff; John 15:1 ff). In Jesus-' day the great gate of the Temple, the outer gate, had emblazoned upon it a golden vine. It was the symbol of national life. Isaiah tells us (Isaiah 5:1 ff) what fruit God expected to find on His vine (the covenant people). God expected justice and righteousness but found instead oppression and iniquity. God was not judging them because they were prosperousbut because they misused their prosperity. They were selfish. They spent it on their own pleasureon vain and ungodly practices. The more their wealth increased, the more they spent on idolatry and sensuality. More wealth, less dependence upon God and more self-worship. Hosea uses more irony in calling their pillars goodly pillars. They were probably obelisks erected to pagan deities. They were probably very artistic and expensive. According to their prosperity they had built themselves ornate idols; God was lost, mislaid, and instead of Him there were ornate pillars, obelisks, stones. This certainly strikes a familiar note. America has become a luxuriant vine, but she produces fruit unto herself. She has forgotten God and built altars to power, reason, progress, humanism and is no longer dependent upon the Creator.

Hosea 10:2 THEIR HEART IS DIVIDED. The Hebrew word chalag should be translated smooth, treacherous, rather than divided. Jeroboam was very solicitous for the care and convenience of his dear people (1 Kings 12:27-28); all the while he was thinking of his own desires to set up and secure an apostate nation. The people were happy to follow the same deceitprofessing with their lips to belong to Jehovah but rejecting His law and worshipping idols. The spirit of harlotry was in Israel's heart (Hosea 5:4). If it were not so tragic it would be amusing to behold Israel trying to deceive Jehovah. Surely they would be aware of the many times in their past history when every man and woman who tried to deceive God was inevitably caught!

Hosea 10:3 SURELY NOW SHALL THEY SAY, WE HAVE NO KING. As Pusey points out, These are the words of despair, not of repentance; of men terrified by the consciousness of guilt, but not coming forth out of its darkness; describing their condition, not confessing the iniquity which brought it on them. Israel had rebelled against the kingship of God and asked for a king of their own (cf. Hosea 8:3-4). God gave them Jeroboam. Now, after all the years of gradual political, moral and civil decay and degenerationto the point of anarchysurely they will be compelled to confess that they no longer have a king. Yes, they confess it! They also admit that they have no fear of Jehovah. But that is not such a problem as the present king they do have. If we had a king like the Jeroboams, they probably wail, we might hope for better times; but now? The king we have now; it's all his fault. Their hearts are not only deceitful, they are deceived! This is the oldest trick of sin and Satandeceiving man into blaming others for the consequences of their own sins! When man blames others for his sins, he is in no mind to repent.

Hosea 10:4 THEY SPEAK VAIN WORDS. JUDGMENT SPRINGETH UP AS HEMLOCK. No man's word could be trusted (cf. Jeremiah 9:5-9; Micah 7:5-7). Their deceitful, smooth, treacherous hearts manifested themselves in their business dealings. What a man is down deep within his heart soon appears in his deeds (cf. Mark 7:21-23). These people of Israel were conducting their business like the Pharisees of Jesus-' day (cf. Matthew 23:16-22). Honor, duty, justice, righteousness, truth have all long since ceased to be. Law and order ceases to be right. Might becomes right. Judges are bribed; debtors are sold into slavery; covenants are broken. Right has been made to be wrong and wrong has been made to be right, (cf. Isaiah 5:20-23; Micah 3:2). Right has degenerated into bitter wrongjustice is so perverted it covers the land like the poisonous weed hemlock (cf. Amos 5:7). Hemlock, the reader will remember, was what Socrates was forced to drink to induce his death, There was plenty of so-called justice in the landbut what kind of justice? Judgments as bitter and fatal as hemlock, (cf. Habakkuk 1:4).

Hosea 10:5-6. SAMARIA SHALL BE IN TERROR FOR THE CALVES OF BETH-AVEN:. IT ALSO SHALL BE CARRIED UNTO ASSYRIA. These two verses, although predicting the behavior of Israel at the time of her captivities in the future, are exact representations of how she reacted. First, Israel was concerned for the safety of her national temples, obelisks and calf-idols. What was to become of them. Then, as the reality of the captivity came immediately upon them they began to wail, perform ritual dances, imploring their idol to help them. But their gods were deaf and dumb. There were no answers; no actions. The Assyrians defeated Israel, plundered her spacious buildings from the smallest to the greatest, and the calf-god of Israel they carried off helpless and silent to be given to the Assyrian king as a present. The calf-god of Israel appears to have been included in the Assyrian pantheon of gods and placed in the temple of Marduk (cf. 2 Kings 18:33-35; 2 Kings 25:13-16; Ezra 1:7-11). Cyrus, king of Persia, restored all these gods to their original homes. Israel is disgraced! Shame and ridicule is now her lot. Why has all this happened? Because Israel trusted in her own pridein her own vain counsel. She would not listen to the law of God nor to His prophets. She made kings after her own desires; she made gods according to the lust of her heart; she joined herself to pagan countries for protection and became their vassal. Now all this shameful self-counseling is paying its wagesshame!

Hosea 10:7 AS FOR SAMARIA, HER KING IS CUT OFF, AS FOAM UPON THE WATER. Not only is her calf-god useless to help her, Israel's king cannot help. The word translated foam would have been more literally translated, splinter, or small stick. The king was like one of those little sticks or straws which float in countless numbers on the surface of the ocean or streams, give the image oflightness, emptiness, a thing too light to sink, but driven impetuously and unresistingly, hither and thither, at the impulse of the torrent which hurries it along. Hoshea, their last king, was just so easily swept by the flood which broke on Israel from Assyria.

Hosea 10:8 THE HIGH PLACES. OF AVEN. SHALL BE DESTROYED. Aven is a pun. Aven means, worthless, vile, useless. Bethel, seat of their idolatrous worship, was called Beth-aven. Here, Aven probably also means Bethel. High place is from the Hebrew word bamah or ramah and means simply, elevation. We quote here from Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, edited by Merrill C. Tenney, pg. 354:

It seems to be inherent in human nature to think of God as dwelling in the heights. From earliest times men have tended to choose high places for their worship, whether of God, or of the false gods which men have invented. In Canaan these high places had become the scenes of orgies and human sacrifice connected with the idolatrous worship of these imaginary gods; and so when Israel entered the Promised Land they were told to be iconoclasts as well as conquerors.. (Numbers 33:52). These figured stones bore upon themselves crude carvings, sometimes more or less like geometrical figures, or else talismans, or other signs presumably understood by the priests and used to mystify or terrorize the worshippers. Israel partly obeyed but largely failed in this work. Later some godly kings like Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 31:1) destroyed the high places, while others like Manasseh relapsed and rebuilt them (2 Chronicles 33:3). After Manasseh had been punished and had repented, he was restored to his throne, and resumed the temple worship, but the people -sacrificed still in the high places, but only unto Jehovah their God-' (2 Chronicles 33:17). Through Manasseh's early influence, the people had gone so far into apostasy that they could not repent, but through the godliness of Josiah, especially after he had heard the law read (2 Kings 22:8-20), the judgment was delayed till after the death of Josiah.

The high places came to be specifically noted for idolatrous worship. So the title was transferred from the elevation to the sanctuary on the elevation and so came to be used of any idolatrous shrine, whether constructed on an elevation or not (cf. 2 Kings 16:4; 2 Kings 17:9; 2 Chronicles 21:11; 2 Chronicles 28:4; Isaiah 36:7; Amos 7:9; Micah 1:5; Micah 4:1; Jeremiah 7:31; Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:32; Ezekiel 6:3-6; Ezekiel 16:16; Ezekiel 20:29; Ezekiel 43:7, etc.). All these places in Israel were utterly destroyed and made desolate and deserted when Israel was taken captive. Weeds and thorns grew up where thousands once performed heathen religious rites in the name of Jehovah. Their ruins are there today to be seen and pondered! The deluded, shamed people, forsaken by their helpless gods and impotent kings shake with terror as they see God's judgments coming upon them. Clothed in the filthy garments of sin, they are totally unprepared to meet God (cf. Amos 4:13). There is no place to hide when the Day of the Lord comes (cf. Amos 5:18-20; Amos 9:2-4). They cry out for the mountains and the hills to fall upon them and cover them from His terrible wrath (cf. Revelation 6:16). Only those who have washed their robes white in the blood of The Lamb will not be ashamed on that final great and terrible Day of the Lord! Have you been washed, my brother? Prepare to meet thy God!

Hosea 10:9. THOU HAST SINNED FROM THE DAYS OF GIBEAH. From the very days when the people of Gibeah sinned against the concubine of the Levite (cf. Hosea 9:9), Israel has continued in the same sin. But whereas those sinners were punished and destroyed by war, you still live on in the same sin without having similarly been destroyed.

Hosea 10:10 WHEN IT IS MY DESIRE, I WILL CHASTISE THEM. Yes, the wheels of God's justice grind slow, at times, but very fine! When the time comes within the omniscient plan and purpose of God for it to be, He will punish Israel for her sins just as surely and completely as He punished the Gibeahites! God never acts without intelligent, fore-planned purpose. Every event of history has a time and a place foreknown in the purpose of Almighty God and man can neither hinder it nor speed it. Furthermore, God uses whatever secondary agents He desires in carrying out His purposes. In Israel's case He chose to use the peoples, or Gentile nations, to carry out His wrath upon this recalcitrant nation (cf. Isaiah 10:5 ff).

The two transgressions of Israel which will cling to them and bind them like seaweed strangles a drowning man are: (a) Their idolatry; (b) Their making kings according to their own desires. These two specific rebellions against the Holy God will haunt them and plague them all the rest of their days as they wander over all the face of the earth.

Hosea 10:11 AND EPHRAIM IS A HEIFER THAT. LOVETH TO TREAD OUT THE GRAIN. Having been trained and provided for by the Lord, growing fat and sleek, Ephraim (Israel) loved to thresh. Like the young ox, walking leisurely over the corn, permitted to eat her fill (Deuteronomy 25:4), Israel loved to do work which to him seemed pleasant, productive, profitable, neglecting and forgetting the training of his Master; resenting His instructions when they ran counter to his own desires; shirking the arduous duty of self-discipline (Deuteronomy 32:15-18) demanded by Jehovah. Passed over her fair neck, says Keil, means rushing in upon a person. The actual idea is that of putting a heavy yoke upon the neck. No longer will Israel be treated like a privileged and petted heifer, but she will be yoked to a plow to do servile, exhausting labor (in captivity). So Judah, too, because of her sins will be taken captive. Israel (like Jacob) will be driven out of their homeland into exile, into hard labor of slavery.

QUIZ

1.

What is the meaning of likening Israel to a luxuriant vine?

2.

What are the goodly pillars?

3.

Why did Israel cry, We have no king. what can he do for us?

4.

Why is judgment springing up like hemlock?

5.

How and why did the people mourn over their calves of Bethaven?

6.

What are the high places of Aven?

7.

Whose desire is spoken of in Hosea 10:10?

8.

How is Israel like a heifer that loves to tread out the grain?