Hosea 9

Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote those words about the

Compromise with the world leads to unbalanced conduct and immature character.

Continuing the theme of compromise, Hosea pictures Israel as a man getting gray and not knowing it (vv. 9–10). By mixing with the nations and ignoring the Lord, the nation was secretly losing her strength, like someone getting older and weaker but in her pride refusing to admit it. This is the tragedy of undetected losses that quietly lead to ultimate failures. Samson made this mistake (Judg. 16:20) and so did the church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:17). Israel saw her political strategy failing, but the leaders still refused to turn to the Lord. “The pride of Israel” (Hos. 7:10; see 5:5) refers to Israel’s national glory, which had greatly eroded since the days of David and Solomon. Selfish politicians and corrupt priests had brought the nation to ruin.

In their political policies, the Israelites were like a silly dove (7:11–12). First they turned to Egypt for help and then to Assyria, and both nations proved to be false allies (5:13; 8:8–10; 12:1). If the leaders had listened to the prophets, they would have known that Assyria would one day invade the land (9:3; 10:5–6; Isa. 7:18—8:10). God warned that Israel’s “flying here and there” would come to an end when He caught them in His net and gave them to the king of Assyria. God is in control of the nations, but His people would not obey Him.

According to the covenant God had with His people, the Jews could trade with the other nations, but they were not to enter into political alliances that would compromise their obedience to the Lord. “I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations” (Num. 23: niv). “You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own” (Lev. 20: niv). Solomon used many wives to form alliances with other nations, and this was the beginning of the nation’s downfall (1 Kings 11:1ff.).

The final image is a faulty bow (Hos. 7:13–16), because God couldn’t depend on Israel to be faithful. (This image is also used in Ps. 78:57.) God had called Israel and trained them, so they should have been able to “hit the target.” But because they had strayed from the Lord, rebelled against Him, lied to Him (in their feigned repentance), and refused to call upon Him, they could not win the battle.

As we review these images, we might take inventory of our own devotion to the Lord. How lasting is it? How deep is it? How strong is it? How serious is it? How dependable is it?

For the second time, Hosea calls for the trumpet to be blown (8:1; 5:8). According to Numbers 10, the Jews used trumpets to announce special occasions, to sound alarms, to gather the people for assemblies, and to proclaim war. This call was a trumpet of alarm because the enemy was coming and God was giving His people opportunity to repent. Hosea again used a number of familiar images to show the people what God would do to them because of their sin.

The eagle (8:1–6). “The house of the Lord” refers to the nation of Israel, for the people were God’s dwelling-place (9:15; Ex. 15:17; Num. 12:7). The Assyrian eagle was about to swoop down and destroy God’s house because the nation was given over to idolatry, and the leaders were not seeking God’s will in their decisions. They made kings and removed kings to satisfy their own desires, and they manufactured gods (especially the golden calves at Bethel and Dan) that could not help them.

Sowing and reaping (8:7). The concept of sowing and reaping as it relates to conduct is often used in Scripture (Job 4:8; Prov. 22:8; Jer. 12:13; Gal. 6:7–8), and Hosea used it twice (Hos. 8:7; 10:12–13). In their idolatry and political alliances, the Israelites were trying to sow seeds that would produce a good harvest, but they were only sowing the wind—vanity, nothing— and would reap the whirlwind. Nothing could stop the force of the Assyrian army. The harvest would be more powerful than the seed!

The sowing/reaping image continues with the picture of a blighted crop of grain. The rulers of Israel thought their worship of Baal and their foreign alliances would produce a good crop of peace and prosperity; but when the time came for the harvest, there was nothing to reap. And even where heads of grain did appear, the enemy reaped the harvest and Israel gained nothing. In the image of the wind, Hosea said, “You will reap far more than you sowed, and it will be destructive!” In the image of the grain, he said, “You will reap nothing at all, and your enemies will get the benefit of all the promises you made.”

Worthless pottery (8:8). There was no grain for Israel to swallow, but she herself would be “swallowed up” by Assyria. She was a useless vessel “in which no one delights” (nasb). Their compromise had so cheapened them that Israel was of no value to the community of nations. Nobody feared them, nobody courted them, nobody wanted them.

A stupid donkey (Hos. 8:9a) Israel wanted to be a part of the alliances that were forming to fight Assyria, but she was actually very much alone. She was like a dumb animal that had lost its way in the wilderness. Israel had forsaken her God, and she had been forsaken by her allies, so she was abandoned to face a terrible future alone.

A prostitute (8:9b–10). In negotiating with the Gentile nations for protection, Ephraim (Israel) acted like a common prostitute selling herself for money. Israel’s kings paid tribute to the king of Assyria and also sent gifts to Egypt (12:1). Instead of being faithful to her Husband, Jehovah God, Israel prostituted herself to the Gentile nations—and lost everything. God promised to gather them together for judgment, and they would “waste away” (niv) under the ruthless hand of the Assyrian king.

Egyptian bondage (8:11—9:9). Hosea mentions Egypt thirteen times in his book, and these references fall into three distinct categories: past—the exodus of the Jews from Egypt (2:15; 11:1; 12:9, 13; 13:4); present—Israel’s unholy alliances with Egypt (7:11, 16; 12:1); future—Egypt as a symbol of their impending bondage to Assyria (8:13; 9:3, 6; 11:5, 11). Three times in this section, the prophet announces, “They shall go to Egypt” (8:13; 9:3, 6); but 11: makes it clear that “Egypt” is a symbol for Assyrian bondage: “He shall not return to the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall be his king” (nkjv).

The prophet contrasts the past exodus from the bondage of Egypt with the impending “exodus” into bondage of Assyria, the new “Egypt.” When the Jews left Egypt, they had not yet received the law, nor did they have the tabernacle and its system of sacrifices. But now the Jews had heard the law for centuries, and the temple had been standing since Solomon’s time. Yet they ignored the law, and the priesthood became corrupt. The NIV catches the irony in 8:11, “Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning.”

Instead of trusting the Lord to protect her from Assyria, Israel fortified her towns and sought help from foreign nations, and from a spiritual point of view, this was like prostitution. (During the harvest season, prostitutes frequented the threshing floors where the men slept to guard the grain.) The harvest season was a time of great joy (Isa. 9:3), but there would be no joy in Israel. And when the people ended up in a foreign land, everything would be unclean to them, but they were an unclean people anyway, so what difference would it make?

Agriculture (9:10—10:10). God reviews the history of His relationship with the Jews. You don’t find grapes in the desert, but if you did, it would thrill you. That’s how God felt when He called Israel. The early fruit of the fig tree is especially good, and Israel was special to the Lord. But this joyful experience didn’t last, for King Balak gave Israel her first taste of Baal worship, and the nation indulged in idolatry and immorality with its neighbors (Num. 25).

God planted His people in a special land, but they polluted the land with their idols (Hos. 9:13). The more prosperous they became, the more they turned away from God. Now they must suffer a bitter harvest for their sins, they and their children. The nation is blighted, having no roots and bearing no fruits. She was a “spreading vine” (10: niv), but now she is without fruit. These agricultural images remind us that we reap what we sow.

There’s an interesting agricultural image in 10:4: “Therefore lawsuits spring up like poisonous weeds in a plowed field” (niv). People couldn’t trust one another and few were keeping their promises; therefore, they had to sue one another to get what they deserved. The multiplying of laws and lawsuits is one evidence that integrity and credibility are vanishing from society.

The final agricultural image is in verse 8: the idolatrous shrines will become nothing but clumps and weeds, and the people will beg the Lord to destroy them quickly (v. 8; see Luke 23:30; Rev. 6:16).

Twice in this passage, Hosea mentions “the days of Gibeah” (Hos. 9:9; 10:9). The reference is to the awful sins of the men of Gibeah and the tragic civil war that followed (Judg. 19—21). The men of Gibeah practiced unnatural lust and killed an innocent woman in a gang rape episode. The city would not punish the offenders, so the whole nation attacked Benjamin and almost destroyed the tribe. In Hosea’s day, all the ten tribes of Israel were practicing these abominable things, but God would judge them and they would reap what they had sown.

The chapter closes (Hos. 10:11–15) by comparing Israel to a young heifer that enjoys treading out the grain because she can eat and work at the same time. But then she is yoked to another beast and forced to do the hard work of plowing. Israel’s “salad days” were over and she would feel the Assyrian yoke.

In verse 12, the prophet gives one more appeal to the nation to repent and seek the Lord. “Fallow ground” is land that has lain idle and become hard and full of weeds. This appeal sounds like the preaching of John the Baptist: “Repent! Bear fruits worthy of repentance!” (Matt. 3:1–12). The plow of conviction must first break up hard hearts before the seed of the Word can be planted and the gracious rain be sent from heaven.

The nation did not repent, and judgment fell. In 722 BC, the Assyrian army invaded the land, and the ten tribes as a nation vanished from the pages of history.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14: nkjv).

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33: nkjv).