by
Rev. Mark Perkins, Pastor
Denver Bible Church
326 E. Colorado Ave.
Denver, Colorado 80210
To: Hosea
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"Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations!
For you have played the prostitute, forsaking your God. You have
loved the hire of a prostitute on every threshing floor. Threshing
floor and wine press will not feed them, and the new wine will
utterly deceive them. They will not remain in the Lord's land,
but Ephraim will return to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat
unclean food. They will not pour out libations of wine to the
Lord, their sacrifices will not please Him. Their bread will
be like mourners' bread; all who eat of it will be defiled, for
their bread will be for themselves alone; it will not enter the
house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed
festival and on the day of the feast of the Lord? For behold,
they will go because of destruction; Egypt will gather them up,
Memphis will bury them. Weeds will take over their treasures
of silver; thorns will be in their tents."
1. God prohibits the people of Israel from rejoicing. The kind
of rejoicing is idolatry.
A. The verb SHAMAH reveals different shades of the rejoicing theme.
1. It can mean the rejoicing that is a part of everyday life. In love and relationships; in work and play; in personal triumph.
2. It can mean the rejoicing that is a part of a healthy relationship with God, in praise and worship.
3. It describes the illegitimate rejoicing of sin and idolatry.B. Since the rejoicing here is associated with the exultation of the unbeliever nations, this use must fall into the third category.
C. Furthermore, the reason for the prohibition is the adulterous activities of Israel - something that would only fall into the third category.
2. As the harlot, Israel has left her husband, who is God. God
was and is the greatest husband who has ever lived, and she left
him.
3. Remember, Hosea knows exactly how God feels. He has lost his
wife to prostitution... that is the reason that his sermons have
so much power, and vitality. God made Hosea great, and yet great
was not good enough for degenerate Israel.
4. Israel prefers the life and wages of prostitution to a normal
life and honest wages.
A. The threshing floor reveals irony - it is a place where honest wages are earned through the hard work of the harvest. The life of the prostitute is really, really rough. Her clientele is universally scummy, and the profession brings disease, mental illness, and total hopelessness. The prostitute with a heart of gold is an absolute myth, in spite of the modern media and entertainment industry. Anyone who dehumanizes sex in such a way is a total loser whose only hope is Christ.
B. The threshing floor is also where the wheat is separated from the chaff, and so it goes with divine discipline.
5. The second verse reiterates the economic failures that go
with the first two cycles of discipline.
A. The threshing floor and wine vat will not feed them. These are two of the major production areas of the ancient world. The threshing floor for the food, and the wine vat for the drink. The second is more of a luxury.
B. Furthermore, the new wine will utterly deceive them.1. The verb YEKACHESH is in the piel imperfect.
a. Its base meaning is deceive.
b. The piel stem adds the idea of intense deception.
c. The imperfect tense reveals a continuous action.2. The new wine is the bad stuff. It means that they are out of the good old wine, and that they are way too addicted and degenerate to wait for any more wine to age. As long as it has alcohol, it is good. These are the kinds of degenerates that populate the northern kingdom.
6. The third verse recalls the return to Egypt and slavery theme.
A. What is new here is the association of Egypt with Assyria, so that it is clear that Assyria will be the place of their exile.
B. They will eat unclean food in Assyria - they will be totally unable to practice the Law while they are away. Once cut off from God, there will be no turning back. They will be separated from their food just as effecitively as they will be separated from their temple, and the worship that is done there.
C. However, do not fear. God always rewards positive volition with the truth. He simply communicates here that the truth will not longer have a daily presence; that they will have to develop positive volition anew.
7. The fourth verse continues the theme of inability.
A. Israel will not pour out wine to Yahweh - the drink offering.
B. They will not please Him with their sacrifices - the blood and burnt offerings.
C. The only purpose for bread will be physical sustenance, and not to provide shewbread in the Holy place, or grain offerings, or in the feast of unleavened bread.
D. In other words, the word of God will not be a part of their lives.1. Part of this will be the bitterness of the slaves and survivors of the final discipline. They will not have anything to do with a God who would allow this.
2. The other part of it will be the unavailability of the elements due to abject poverty.
3. They will have the remembered word, and always the chance to go back on positive signals.
4. But for centuries this nation has been the receptacle for the word of God. They have been the basis for evangelism and the teaching of the Word. And now the Word will be foreign to them.
5. They will have truly become like the Gentiles, in need of the light of the word, due to its absence among them.
8. The fifth verse asks a rhetorical question.
A. When the appointed day of a feast comes, what will happen?
B. Israel, who has celebrated the Passover and the Tabernacles and others for more than five hundred years will suddenly have no possibility of completing the requirement.
C. Suddenly the full moon of passover will be a great void in their lives, and the merriness of tabernacles an emptiness.
D. The solemnity and relief of 'the day' - the day of atonement, will have no relief... just another day in an endless calendar of slavery and oppression.
9. And the sixth verse tells how they will get to this place
without celebration and the word.
A. They will go because of destruction. The Assyrian army is about to eat their country alive, and leave little in its wake. They will go into slavery happily because the alternative is death in a barren land.
B. Some will actually flee to Egypt, and die in the city of Memphis.
C. And in the emptiness left behind, the weeds and thistles grow, taking over what was left of a great country.
"The days of THE punishment have come, the days of THE
retribution have come; Israel will continually know this! The
prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented, because of the
grossness of your iniquity, and because your hostility is so
great. Ephraim was a watchman, a prophet with my God; the snare
of a bird catcher is in all his ways; hostility is in the house
of his God. They have personally gone deep, they are utterly
corrupt in depravity; He will continually remember their iniquity;
he will continually punish their sins.""
1. The two synonyms for divine discipline are HAPEQUDAH and HASSILUM.
A. PEQUDAH means literally, 'visitation'. However, in the frame of reference of divine disicipline, it means punishment. It shows a just God making a visit to a fallen Israel. The definite article bears an ominous message: this is THE visitation. And notice: you would normally be thrilled to receive a visit from God - but NOT if you are in reversionism.
B. HASSILUM is literally 'recompense' or 'reward'. It portrays someone receiving their just reward for a job well done. But in the frame of reference of discipline, this is another matter - retribution works perfectly. The definite article is present here as well, and also quite ominous. This is THE retribution.
2. The qal perfect verb B'U reveal that the final discipline
is now a reality. This was the sermon on the very day of destruction.
The perfect tense reveals a completed action. Final disicipline
is not near, it is NOW.
3. The qal imperfect verb YADH`U concentrates on continual intimate
knowledge.
A. Here, the imperfect tense unveils the continuous knowledge of Israel during their exile. Those who survive the final discipline will remember it vividly for all their days.
B. The kind of knowledge is intimate - this is the knowledge of trauma - the knowledge of bad dreams and waking nightmares from which there is little relief.
4. The prophet is a fool - AWIL - the big word of the book of
Proverbs.
A. The Proverbs often describe the fool. The word itself comes from the verb which records the laugh of the hyena and birds of prey.
B. It therefore indicates the person in question makes no more sense than the laugh of the hyena.
C. The verb is almost universally connected with sin, and thus sin results in foolishness and even more sin.
D. The prophet is only a so-called prophet. Many men were appointed to the office during this time, yet few of them actually had the gift of God. Yet the second part of the parallelism records the gift.
5. The man of the spirit is mad.
A. ISH HARUACH is the man of the Spirit. From the power of God the Holy Spirit the prophet prophesies. This is the one with the gift of prophecy.
B. MESUNNA` records another animal sound, the whinny of the camel, or the coo of the pigeon. It indicates not only foolishness but madness. 6. The reason for the foolishness and madness is the great degeneracy of Israel, and her animosity toward God. Degeneracy among the people is often followed by degeneracy among her religious leadership. Without the truth, they react in the worst ways.
7. "Ephraim was a watchman, a prophet with my God"
A. This was the former state of the Northern Kingdom - they were watchmen and prophets with God.
B. They were zealous watchmen for the word of truth. They guarded its precepts, and held onto it with great integrity.
C. They were also prophets, proclaiming the truth of God to the nations. They were God's great ambassadors.
8. "the snare of the bird catcher is upon all of his ways."
A. The snare is a bird trap, a loop or a net that is designed to catch a bird for the purpose of food.
B. The bird catcher is the slyest of men, quiet and stealthy to the extreme. He is catlike and clever, quick with his snare. The bird catcher is a profession - he makes his living from the birds he catches and sells.
C. The bird catcher is Satan, the deceiver. His snare is temptation to sin; cosmic rationales, and counterfeit truth.
D. The snare is upon all of the ways of Ephraim. The people have been taken completely by his temptations.
9. "hostility is in the house of his God" Again, Hosea
mentions animosity against God, and this time in the house of
God - the temple. Even here there is hatred of God.
10. "They have personally gone deep, they are utterly corrupt
as in the days of Gibeah;"
A. The hiphil causative reveals the personal nature of Ephraim's involvement in the cosmic system.
B. The piel intensive reveals the intensity of their corruption.
C. Gibeah was a place of terrible sin, as we have already studied.1. All of these have in common that they are hills, and places of demon worship. They were also signal hills, so that in sequence the alarm goes from south to north. It makes the picture of a warning going from Judah to Israel. Hey! Wake up! You are degenerate!
2. Gibeah had quite a history for the Jews, even before the separation of the kingdoms.a. Gibeah came to characterize the degeneracy of Israel under the Judges, and their need for greater restraint under a king. Judges 19-21 recounts a event that was paramount in degeneracy.
1. At that time, a traveler came to Gibeah and was spending the night. And certain demon-possessed homosexual men came to the house where he was staying, and demanded that he come out to the town square and have a homosexual orgy with them.
2. Instead the traveler and his host threw their women out to the homos in order to appease them.
3. The traveler's concubine (mistress) was raped and tortured all night by the demon homos, and she died as she tried to claw her way back into the house.
4. The man then cut this woman's body into twelve pieces and sent them to the twelve tribes of Israel. He lied and exonerated his guilt, and as a result 400,000 soldiers mustered at nearby Mizpah. They came from all the tribes.
5. What followed was a great battle, in which the people of Gibeah were destroyed.
6. But the people of Israel continued to make terrible misapplications and commit great acts of injustice against the people of the region of Benjamin. Benjamin suffered terribly because of the acts of a few and the lies of one. The mob ruled, and there was no king. 19:1 and 21:25.b. Gibeah became the headquarters of Saul, the first king of Israel. Israel needed a king, but they needed one who had his sin nature under control. Saul was not that man, and so Israel learned a hard lesson with their first king.
c. Gibeah was also the route for the invasion of the Assyrians. Isa 10:29.
11. "He will continually remember their iniquity; he will
continually punish their sins."
A. This is the complement to verse seven - "Israel will continually know this".
B. Both verbs - "continually remember", and "continually punish", are in the imperfect tense, the tense of open-ended action. The remembrance and punishment extend indefinitely into the future.
C. God is the one who produces this action - He remembers, and He punishes.
D. This remembrance is still compatible with the idea of forgiveness. The forgiveness of God was available to this nation until His justice could no longer tolerate their abuses.
1. To any Ephraimite who believed after this, there would still be forgiveness in salvation.
2. To any Ephraimite believer who confessed his sins, there would be temporal forgiveness.
3. And note: this remembrance and punishment is on a national basis, and not an individual one. National discipline never disables forgiveness on an individual level.
Grace Notes
Warren Doud, Editor
1705 Aggie Lane, Austin, Texas 78757
Phone: 512-458-8923