Faithful God (Part Twelve): The Party’s Over

Transcript

JROT 12
03/19/2023
Faithful God (Part Twelve): The Party’s Over
Hosea 9:1-17
Jesse Randolph

Alright, well, we are back in Hosea this evening, part twelve in our “Faithful God” series. And tonight, we’re going to be tackling Hosea chapter 9 which in my estimation and in the estimation of many of them that I was studying this week, is likely the darkest and bleakest chapter of the book. This morning, as Aaron was sharing during announcements the graphic he put up on the screen with the title of this morning’s message “Playing with Fire” and this evening’s message “The Party’s Over,” my beautiful wife leaned over to me and said with a smile “that’s real encouraging, Jesse.” Well, that’s the beauty of verse-by-verse exposition. It keeps the preacher away from preaching his message and keeps him focused on preaching God’s message. Amen? So, Hosea 9 it is.

This chapter contains the harshest and most definitive statements of God’s wrath and judgment that we’ve encountered so far in this book. In this chapter God actively puts an end to rejoicing among the Israelites. In this chapter God tells Israel that a famine is coming upon them. In this chapter God tells Israel that they are going to be taken from their land and taken into captivity. And that while they are in captivity they will no longer be able to worship Him. But they will lose all their wealth back home as they wait for their death in their new land. In this chapter God’s going to call out Israel’s harlotry and the grossness of its iniquity. In this chapter God will say that He remembers their iniquity, and that he will punish their sins. In this chapter God refers to Israel as detestable. He’s going to bring about infertility, and that their children will be killed. In this chapter God speaks of Israel being cast away as wanderers. And He says to them He “will love them no more,” and that, in fact, He has come to hate them.

This text wouldn’t typically be the first choice to pass, you know, to pass around the dinner table giving everyone a chance to read before you dig into the family meal. This text would not be the one you would typically give to your beloved relative in hospice care or have your 6-year-old memorize. But it is God’s Word. And because it’s God’s Word we know it’s true and we know it’s profitable. We know that there are no wasted words in Scripture so we know that God has something to say to us through this passage all these years later on the other side of the world here in this church tonight.

So I’m going to read the text in full, like we typically do, and then we’re going to take it verse-by-verse after that. Reading it in full to get the whole feel for it and the setting for it and then we’ll take it verse by verse. Hosea 9 says, “Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor. Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, and the new wine will fail 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 drink offerings of wine to the LORD, their sacrifices will not please Him. Their bread will be like mourner’s 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.”

“The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution have come; let Israel 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 with my God, a prophet; yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways, and there is only hostility in the house of his God. They have gone deep in depravity as in the days of Gibeah; He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins.”

“I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, and they became as detestable as that which they loved. As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy and no conception! Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Yes, woe to them indeed when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, is planted in a pleasant meadow like Tyre; but Ephraim will bring out his children for slaughter. Give them, O LORD— what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.”

“All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels. Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up. They will bear no fruit. Even though they bear children, I will slay the precious ones of their womb. My God will cast them away because they have not listened to Him; and they will be wanderers among the nations.”

Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us this evening not only in terms of the number of verses that we’ll be covering but also the number of topics Hosea addresses in these seventeen verses. So let’s dive right into it starting in verses 1 and 2 where he says, “Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God.” It’s interesting when you read the Old Testament, you’re going to see over and over, especially when you get into the Psalms, this call on Israel, the original people of God, to rejoice. Psalm 32:11, “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart.” Psalm 68:3, “But let the righteous be glad; let them exult before God; yes, let them rejoice with gladness.” Psalm 118:24, “This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Which make the first words here of Hosea 9:1 so striking where he says “Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations!”

The setting here apparently is the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Booths, that late summer/early fall harvest celebration. And this would have been a time of happy celebration, a time of rejoicing and singing and dancing and shouting for joy. Under normal circumstances, a celebration like this would have been welcomed by Yahweh. The celebration of the Feast of Booths wasn’t merely welcomed by God though, it was actually mandated by God in the giving of the Law to Moses. We see that all throughout the Pentateuch, the Torah.
So here we have the people of Israel in Hosea’s day though, rejoicing and reveling seemingly in keeping with what God’s Law had prescribed. But God here says through the prophet Hosea, here in verse 1, “not so fast, the party’s over, I’m shutting it down.” “Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations!”

And right away, we’re told why. Look at the next part of verse 1. He says, “For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor.” Now I referenced this passage if you were here this morning, “For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God” in the message that I preached from James 4:4 this morning. And recall the context in James 4:4 was James calling out that early gathering of Christian believers “adulteresses,” based on their friendship with the world. They were gathering as the people of God, they were calling themselves the people of God, they were doing the things the people of God seemingly ought to do. But they were proving themselves to be spiritual “adulteresses.”

We’ve similar situation, a very similar scene, here in Hosea. They were gathering for appointed festivals. They were gathering in a familiar place in Israelite culture, the threshing floor, but they were doing so as spiritual harlots, as a people who were totally adrift from God who were chasing after the world and, specifically after the gods of the surrounding Canaanite peoples. And what’s not really stated with a ton of specificity here in verse 1 is that the bountiful harvest they had received and were now celebrating, they weren’t crediting to Yahweh. Instead, they were attributing the harvest to the various false gods to whom they had turned. Yahweh had addressed this problem earlier in the book of Hosea, Hosea 2:8. He says, “she,” that’s Hosea to Gomer but it’s really picturing God to Israel, “does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil.” In other words, what we have here in Hosea 9:1 was a perversion of true worship. These people weren’t assembling and reveling to give thanks and praise and worship to Almighty God. They weren’t praising Him for His provision. In fact, they had already rejected Him and turned their backs on Him. It says, “For you have played the harlot, forsaking your God.”

So now Yahweh was going to shut down all the gaiety. He continues “You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor.” Wheat, grapes, figs, wool, linen - whatever they had grown, whatever they had harvested, whatever they cultivated, whatever they were now celebrating, these were “harlots’ earnings.” They were being likened here to a whore’s wages, a prostitute’s haul. Why? Well, as we’ve seen already throughout this book, the Israelites of Hosea’s day didn’t think it was Yahweh who had provided for and who had blessed them. They thought it was the gods of the surrounding nations who had supplied the harvest they were now celebrating. Again Hosea 2:4-5, He says, “Also, I will have no compassion on her children, because they are children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who gave me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ ” Such spiritual blindness. Such spiritual rebellion.

Well, the plentiful harvests were about to end, and God was going to bring the curtain down on the feeding frenzy. Look at verse 2, He says, “Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, and the new wine will fail them.” Now, threshing floors were these spacious, flat, open areas used to thresh, to sift, items like wheat and barley. And these were also assembly areas for religious or civil ceremonies even. We know from scripture that David built an altar to God on a threshing floor. That’s given in 2 Samuel 24:18-23. We know that Solomon built the temple on grounds that had been a threshing floor on Mount Moriah, 2 Chronicles 3:1. And more general harvest festivities we know did take place on threshing floors. For instance, we encounter Boaz in Ruth chapter 3 winnowing barley at the threshing floor. So that’s the threshing floor, winepresses, wine vats. These were these two-leveled, hollowed out spaces where grapes were pressed through in the upper trough and the juice was collected in the lower trough. And these winepresses were used for both grapes and for olives to provide wine and oil which along with bread were a staple of the average diet in these days.

Well, by Hosea’s day these threshing floors, these winepresses, which had initially been used for agricultural production and in which should have reminded the Israelites of the divine provision and blessing of Yahweh, had become places where they were worshiping the false gods of the land. Meaning not only was Israel not worshiping God in those places, they were worshiping these non-existent pagan deities in these places. And to make matters even worse they were crediting these deities with these plentiful harvests that they now enjoyed. What a slap in the face to God, what a bite to the actual hand that had fed them. Well, Yahweh wasn’t having it. The celebration was about to come to an end. The party, again, was over. Look again at verse 2. He says, “Threshing floor and wine press will not feed them, and the new wine will fail them.”

This is a prediction of famine which was about to come upon the land of Israel which Yahweh actually said He was going to bring about back in all the way back in Hosea 4:9-10. He there says, “So I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They will eat, but not have enough,” famine language. That’s actually in fulfillment of the covenant curses that God gave Moses to give to the Israelites back in Deuteronomy 28. Deuteronomy 28:39-40 says, “You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm will devour them,” these are the curses of disobedience, “You shall have olive trees throughout your territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off.”

Such a sad and unnecessary outcome, that they were facing this famine to be sure, but even more so that the reason they were facing the coming days of famine was the fruit and the consequence of their own actions and behaviors. They were this nation of adulteresses, this nation full of spiritual harlots who had forsaken God for another. Now, apparently they still were a religious people. They were still gathering and reveling and rejoicing but theirs was an empty religiosity. Which is an important reminder for all of us, even today, to regularly examine ourselves and our worship. Now admittedly there are no Canaanites running around Lincoln these days to lure us into their false religious practices. But there are various false conceptions of God out there which are being peddled by weak pulpits. And which are being peddled by anyone who can rub two nickels together and buy themselves a microphone and call themselves a Christian podcaster. Or anybody can scrounge up enough money to self-publish a book and give a new, hot take on Christian theology. Just like the Israelites of Hosea’s day there’s so many ways we can unwittingly get drawn into a polluted form of worship which in many ways resembles the syncretistic forms of religion which Yahweh condemned during Hosea’s day.

I mean, that’s how the whole notion of this so-called “carnal Christianity” developed all these years ago. That’s how Santa Claus ends up in nativity scenes in Christian homes. That’s how Christians will argue till they’re blue in the face that it’s totally fine for them to do yoga because it’s the Christian kind, not the pagan, Hindu kind. God has never approved of any form of syncretistic worship. Meaning He’s never approved of worship that mixes truth with falsehood.
He condemned it in Hosea’s day. He condemns it in our day. “What fellowship,” 2 Corinthians 6:14, “does light have with darkness?” James called it out this morning. “You adulteresses,” James 4:4. I know we don’t like to hear words, they grate on the ears when I say over and over and over, like adulteresses and harlotry and whoredom. It brings up these images that we don’t want to think about. like illicit trysts and red-light districts and undesirable people. Well, we need to get over our discomfort with these terms and what they symbolize in our day and in our culture because what God’s Word reveals to us is that this is how He views idolatry and false worship of any kind. It’s spiritual adultery. It’s spiritual harlotry. It’s spiritual whoredom.

Now, as we move on to verse 3, we see another common theme of Hosea 9 developed further.
That theme here in Hosea 9:3 is exile. The judgment pictured in verse 2 would be accomplished ultimately through Assyrian invasion and exile. Not only were Israel’s days of feasting and revelry coming to an end and not only was famine about to strike the land, but the people were about to be hauled into exile into this foreign land. Scattered and dispersed and ripped away from the only land this generation of Israelites had ever known. Look at verse 3, it says, “They will not remain in the Lord’s land.” Such a simple yet powerful statement of the Lord’s dominion and authority. The land mentioned here is the very land, the land of Canaan, which God had promised to give to Abraham. It’s referring to the Promised Land, the land that was flowing with milk and honey. Well, in the centuries that followed, the people of Israel had been trampling all over this land doing whatever they pleased, with whomever they pleased and with whichever false “god” they pleased. And here in verse 3 they are told they aren’t welcome anymore. “They will not remain in the Lord’s land.” The land belonged to the Lord and the Lord was responsible for its fertility and its production. So, when the Israelites attributed the production of the land to these false gods of the surrounding peoples they forfeited the blessing of living on that land in peace and prosperity. Yahweh was the landowner. The Israelites were mere tenants and He was about to kick them out.

Look what comes next in verse 3, He says, “But Ephraim will return to Egypt, and in Assyria they will eat unclean food.” As we saw in our last study last time of Hosea, Egypt here is mentioned here as a symbol of the place of exile to where Israel was going. Assyria was the actual place that they were going to be exiled to. And don’t miss this key link to the reason for their exile. Yahweh brought Israel out of physical Egypt back in the days of the exodus so that they might worship Him, stated in Exodus 5:3. Now, all these centuries later in the days of Hosea
Israel’s idolatrous practices struck at the very heart of why God had brought them out of Egypt in the first place. So, as punishment He was sending them back into exile, not to physical Egypt, but rather He was sending them to Assyria. But don’t lose sight of the big-picture idea here. Yahweh was sending His people back to the same plight from which they came because of their rejection of Him. Because they had turned to false gods He was going to return them to that condition of slavery of which they came.

And then, there’s this statement at the end of verse 3, “And in Assyria they will eat unclean food.” The punishment fit the crime. Israel had become defiled by her sin. We saw that back in Hosea 5:3, it says, “Israel has defiled herself.” As a result, Israel was now an unclean people so God was now going to send her to an unclean land where she’d be forced to eat ceremonially unclean food rather than the fruits of God’s blessing in the land. How appropriate. The people were called to be holy, Leviticus 11:44-45, and a major part of being holy meant maintaining a distinction in their diets between the sacred and the profane. Well, not only would the Israelites’ eating of unclean foods violate those distinctions, what it would do was it would highlight the fact that their distinctive relationship with Yahweh had been severed.

The words of judgment and exile continue on in verse 4, it says, “They will not pour out drink offerings 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.” The context here is still exile. In other words, what life would look like for Israel once they were taken into captivity in Assyria. And the picture that’s painted here (we see in verse 4) is apparently of Israelites, once exiled, trying to still curry favor with God through their various offerings and sacrifices in the land of exile. And what God is saying here in verse 4 is “too little, too late.” While they were still in the Promised Land, Israel’s worship was ravaged with hypocrisy so the Lord rejected it. We saw that in Hosea 6:6 where He says, “For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Well, He was going to continue to reject their hypocritical worship and offerings and sacrifices once they crossed the border into Assyria as exiles. A nation which refused to conduct its worship in the proper spirit in Canaan would not suddenly enjoy the privilege of worshiping God or approaching Him through sacrifices once they got to Assyria. That’s what it means here when it says, “They will not pour out drink offerings of wine to the Lord.” Drink offerings would have accompanied certain types of sacrifices including burnt offerings and grain offerings. We see that in Numbers 15:1-12. Well, those would come to an end in Assyria. They would no longer be accepted. God says, “their sacrifices,” next here in verse 4, “will not please Him.” Any sacrifices offered by this wayward people in the foreign land to which they were going would not be acceptable to the Lord.

Such sacrifices are compared, as we keep moving through verse 4, to “mourners’ bread.” “Their bread,” it says, “will be like mourners’ bread.” Now mourners, according to Numbers 19, were ceremonially unclean since in their mourning they would have had some kind of contact with a dead body. So everything the mourner touched, including bread, was considered ceremonially unclean and therefore rejected. Mourners’ bread could be eaten but it could not enter the Tabernacle or Temple, that sanctified, holy place. In a similar way, any sacrifices offered by the people of Israel while they were in exile would have the same effect on a worshiper as bread eaten by mourners. They were unclean. They were not fit for approaching a holy God and so rejected.

There would be bread for the people to eat in Assyria, while in exile. They wouldn’t starve to death. Their food though would be for the satisfaction of their hunger only. It would have no ceremonial worth, no religious value. It would fill their bellies but it would get them no closer to God. He says, “For their bread will be for themselves alone;” I’m at the end of verse 4 here, “it will not enter the house of the Lord.” The Israelites had become an unclean people, as spiritual harlots. They were going to an unclean place, Assyria. And now they were going to be eating unclean food as we just saw in verse 3. And as they ate their bread, their unclean, defiled, ceremonially unclean food, they’d have to do so ‘outside the camp,’ not in the temple but instead outside like unclean mourners. And as if that weren’t enough, Yahweh tells them that their sacrifices were going to be incapable of being pleasing to a holy God. It says, for “their sacrifices will not please Him.” Any acceptable worship of Yahweh was going to be impossible for them.

Now, as we turn to verse 5 the context is still this impending exile to Assyria. And God through the prophet Hosea asks this question, verse 5, “What will you do on the day of the appointed festival and on the day of the feast of the Lord?” It’s a rhetorical question and it’s emphasizing the exiles’ plight once they were in exile in Assyria, away from the Temple, away from the land. Now while the words “on the day of the appointed festival” is likely another reference to the Feast of Booths, the application here is far broader. What this is saying is that Israel would no longer be able to celebrate any of the various appointed festivals that were on Israel’s religious calendar. They’d all be distant memories at this point. Though this was an adulterous people as we have established over and over, those words in verse 5, still would have stung because this was still very much so an outwardly religious people. So religious practices including the various festivals that had been established by God were very much still built into the rhythm of their lives.

And their internal clocks would have told them, year over year, that it must be time to celebrate and revel at certain times of the year. The way that certain sights and smells of the seasons help us to know, oh, it’s Christmas time now or it’s Fourth of July time now. But those opportunities to celebrate and revel on these appointed feast days would no longer be available to the Israelites once they got to Assyria. And the question posed here in verse 5, “What will you do on the day of the appointed festival and on the day of the feast of the Lord,”
that was designed to bring these people to this place of serious reflection on the situation confronting them. What would they do when the internal clock told them it was time to partake in these various festivals but they couldn’t do so? What were they going to do now that they were in this strange new land, this pagan land, which offered them no means to partake of these festivals? Surely this would have brought about some feelings of remorse and possibly even some regret and possibly even some homesickness for the land from which they had been plucked.

Well, whatever feelings of remorse or homesickness they had, those feelings weren’t ultimately going to rescue them or spare them because as we see in verse 6 the judgment that was about to befall them was inevitable. It was bound to happen. There was no escaping it now. Look at verse 6, He says, “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.” First, the text says, “they will go because of destruction.” That’s referring to the fact that destruction would first sweep over the land of Canaan. Hosea 7:13, we’ve already been here but it says, “Destruction is theirs, for they have rebelled against Me!” The land, the land of Canaan, would be ransacked and pillaged and burnt over, and only after that would they go into exile. The sword of the Assyrians would slay many and for those who were spared the sword, they weren’t spared judgment. Ultimately they instead would go into captivity.

It says, “Egypt will gather them up.” Again, Egypt here is being used metaphorically to describe Assyria. Again with the main idea being from slavery they came and back to slavery they will go. And then Memphis here is not referring to a city in southwest Tennessee. It’s referring to a location in Egypt. It was a city about 20 miles south of modern-day Cairo and it was a place that was famous for being a burial place. It was the ancient capital of Egypt known not only for its pyramids, but for its tombs. And here, that use of the word “Memphis” appears to be symbolizing or symbolic of the fact that the Israelite exiles were being sent to Assyria, which like Memphis in Egypt, was going to serve as a mass, foreign graveyard. The people of Israel, in other words, were about to be taken on a death march. They were being led to what would eventually become their cemetery.

And then we get to the end of verse 6, and this appears to be a reference to what was going to happen to Israel’s possessions and belongings back in their homeland while they were in exile in Assyria. It says, “Weeds will take over their treasures of silver; thorns will be in their tents.”
And the basic idea here is that their possessions and their dwelling places would lie in ruin. The things they valued and craved, the things they sought most to protect, not their relationship with Yahweh but instead their material possessions, they would no longer have any control over now that they were exiled. And the natural elements, weeds and thorns, would overtake and envelop all that they had acquired and possessed. Thistles and thorns were going to wipe out whatever wealth they had accumulated and there was nothing the deported Israelites could do about it.

God’s retribution for persistent faithlessness had arrived. They were going to face destruction in their own land. They were going to be gathered up by their Assyrian invaders, here personified as Egypt. They were going to be buried, meaning they would die in this land and all the while their wealth and their acquisitions back in their homeland would shrivel. A sad outcome but a deserved outcome for this proud and stiff-necked people.

And that naturally transitions to what the prophet says next in verse 7. He says, “The days of punishment have come, the days of retribution have come; let Israel know this!” Note, it’s “The days of punishment have come,” along with these “days of retribution.” That’s given in the perfect tense in Hebrew which means that both the time of punishment and the time of retribution are viewed here as having in some sense already begun. They aren’t thought of here as taking place in the future in some distant, far-off century. Rather, the period of retribution and punishment, the days of judgment, had in some degree already begun. Dark days, days of punishment, desolation, judgment, had arrived. And the words, “let Israel know this!” only reinforce this fact. These are words of warning to let Israel know that judgment was on its doorstep.

And then look at what comes next, still in verse 7, it says, “The prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented, because of the grossness of your iniquity, and because your hostility is so great.” The prophets were God’s inspired messengers and watchmen. We know that from the book of Ezekiel, the book of Habakkuk. They were the spiritual men, the inspired men, the men of God during this time. But, yet Israel, prideful, spiritually wayward Israel, considered these spiritual men to be fools and demented. The people of this time were so taken up with their sinful and adulterous ways that they considered those who were charged to deliver the message of truth to be fools and demented.

There’s a parallel today, isn’t there, in the church age? Who gets the hate mail? The preachers who deliver ear-tickling messages that are deemed culturally appropriate? Or the preachers who confront the culture with biblical truth? Who gets attacked online? The preachers who fudge on what the Bible actually says out of fear for losing popularity or church members or tax exempt status? Or the preachers who cut it straight and let it fly? Who gets called a fool and demented in our day? Those who speak for God and proclaim His Word? Or those who reject the Word and instead represent the world? There are very close parallels between what the Israelites were doing in Hosea’s day and what we see in our day. And by that I mean we, like the Israelites of Hosea’s day, live in a society which is given over to the lustful craving of the things of the world and a society which ridicules and demeans those who confront them about their sinful lusts from truth from above.

Well, here in verse 7 we see not only God’s divine assessment of the situation in Israel, we also see His identification of the cause. Look at those words again, “The prophet is a fool.” Here what that’s saying is the prophet is thought of, considered to be, and therefore called by the people of Israel a fool. The “inspired man is demented,” meaning this spiritual man is thought of, considered to be, and called by, the people of Israel demented. And why? Well, it tells us. “Because of the grossness of your iniquity, and because your hostility is so great.” The depths to which the people of Israel had slid and the depths of their depravity are described in full color with these words. They were marked not just by iniquity but by “gross iniquity.” They were not just hostile. Their hostility was “great.” This is intense language. And their iniquity and their hostility specifically toward the true prophets and inspired men which God had sent them to warn them were yet another reason for the judgment which was about to befall them.

As we turn to verse 8, we see these words, “Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet; yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways, and there is only hostility in the house of his God.” Watchmen were responsible for warning a city of an approaching enemy. We know from Ezekiel 33:6 that blood was on the hands of the watchman if they failed to blow the trumpet in a timely fashion. In the same way God’s prophets were responsible for warning the people of the judgment that was to come in light of their sin. Ezekiel 3:17 “Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me.”

What we appear to have here in verse 8 is that Israel itself, Ephraim, the holy nation, the kingdom of priests, was itself supposed to be the “watchman with my God,” tending to the spiritual care and needs of each of its people. But then we see these words, “Yet the snare of a bird catcher is in all his ways.” Meaning Israel wasn’t supporting the prophets who spoke truth to them about their need to repent from sin and to turn to God. Rather, Israel was at odds with the prophets who sought to speak truth so much so that they were seeking to ensnare the prophets that God had placed over them as watchmen over the nation. And they did so, as we’ve just seen in verse 7, by saying things like “the prophet is a fool, the inspired man is demented.” And they did so it says, the end of verse 8, because “there is only hostility in the house of his God.” Here “the house of his God” is a reference to the land, meaning there is only hostility in the land.

The statements of judgment keep on piling up though. Look at verse 9, it says, “They have gone deep in depravity as in the days of Gibeah; He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins.” The depths of the people’s sin against God are emphasized by Hosea’s reference here to the days of Gibeah. The phrase recalls the events that involved the brutal rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine by certain wicked men in Gibeah. That whole scene is recorded in Judges 19. The story, you’ll recall, essentially goes like this. A Levite was staying in the hills of Ephraim and he took a woman from Bethlehem to be his concubine. But she “played the harlot against him,” [verse 2]. That’s the text, what it says in the text there in Judges 19. She returned, it says, in shame, to her father’s house for four months only for the Levite to go and fetch her again and bring her back from her father’s house. On the way home the couple stays in Gibeah, on their way back to the hills of Ephraim, where some “worthless fellows” [verse 22] it says surround the house they were staying in and they were seeking to have homosexual relations with the Levite himself. Well, courageous guy that he is, to save his own hide, he hands his concubine to these sexual savages outside and the men of Gibeah go on to rape her and beat her throughout the night. The next morning, the Levite goes out, you know he’s huddled up all night and he goes out the next day and sees her on the doorstep and says to her “get up and let’s go,” [verse 28]. But there is no answer. She’s dead. So he takes his knife and he cuts her into twelve pieces and sends all of those pieces to the various parts of Israel as a way to visit the sins of Gibeah upon it.

It’s an awful account. It’s a terrifying account. It’s a morbid account. And while we encounter that story we naturally think of things like how messed up was this Levite to do all the things he did or how messed up where these men in Gibeah to do the things that they did. But actually the focus of the account in Judges 19 is not so narrow. The story is actually designed to draw attention to the corruption that was through all of Israelite life. Israel as a whole had become so morally debased and blind and perverse that a Levite, a priest, could do such a thing.
And the account of Judges 19 ends with these words, Judges 19:30, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day.”

Well, fast forward to the days of Hosea several hundred years after that incident at Gibeah and Yahweh here through Hosea is saying that that black mark on Israel’s history, the incident at Gibeah was now rivaled by Israel’s blatant sins against the Lord in Hosea’s day. In other words, rampant wickedness had so thoroughly seeped into the culture of Israel at the time of Hosea that the Israel of Hosea’s day could rightly be compared to Gibeah in the days of the judges. You know, in our day we sometimes talk about America being like Sodom of old. In Hosea’s day, the people of Israel would compare what was happening there to the Gibeah of old. They truly had, as it says in verse 9, “gone deep in depravity.”

And then look at the consequence. Still in verse 9, it says, “He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins.” God will remember their sins, all of them, the entire catalogue of them that have been listed in nearly nine chapters of this book. And He will attend to them. We’re not at the part of the story yet where God says, in places like Jeremiah 31:34, that He’ll remember their sin no more. No, at this point in Israel’s history He’s saying, “I will remember your iniquity. I will punish your sins. You won’t escape My divine judgment and wrath which you’ll experience most directly in the exile and the slavery that you’re about to face in Assyria.”

As we turn to verse 10, we’re coming upon not only a new verse, but really a whole new section in chapter 9, and really a whole new section break in the book of Hosea as a whole. And we here see Yahweh giving this first person retrospective account of Israel’s origins. Look at verse 10. He says, “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness;” this is God speaking, “I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season.” We read that, and it’s moving, it’s gripping. God here is speaking of those earliest days of His covenant relationship with Israel when He took extreme delight in the nation. When He first set His love upon her like we see in Deuteronomy 7. And that phrase, that first phrase “like grapes in the wilderness,” it’s speaking to finding something unexpected and it’s a source of surprise, delight. It’s a rare and refreshing find. And the reference to “the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season” which Hosea is linking to the “forefathers” of this current generation, is a reference to the irresistible and delicious nature of that earliest fruit. So putting it all together, what verse 10 is saying is that Israel first brought delight and joy to the heart of the Lord.

And Hosea now is saying that was then, this is now. Because look at the next few words here in verse 10, it says “But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, and they became as detestable as that which they loved.” That didn’t take long. It reminds me of reading Genesis 1-2 on January 1, and on January 2 already getting into Genesis 3 and seeing things sharply decline from there. Here in verse 10, we see these fond, earlier memories being recalled by Yahweh as He found Israel “like grapes in the wilderness” only to have the Lord refer to these same people as “detestable” just a few sentences later.

And what’s this event at Baal-peor that’s being referred to here in verse 10? It takes us back to the early days of Israel’s wilderness wanderings, specifically in the book of Numbers, Numbers 25. There we see the people of Israel arriving at Peor and engaging in sexual immorality with the Moabite and Midianite women there as part of the fertility rites of the local tribes and gathered people. Those events happened all the way back in the days of Moses. Well, that event in Moses’ day is mentioned here in Hosea’s day as having set the pattern for Israel’s subsequent history which was characterized by false worship and spiritual adultery and general unfaithfulness. The sin of Israel at Peor stood as this archetype of Israel’s infidelity. And in Hosea’s day Israel still found herself engaging in the same types of sinful and compromised worship practices. In other words, Israel hadn’t learned from their wicked ways. They had “devoted themselves to shame.” And, as a result, as it says at the end of verse 10, “they became as detestable as that which they loved.” Well, “that which they loved” was not Yahweh.
Instead, “that which they loved” was their competing sources of worship, namely, idols and false gods. And those idols were detestable. And Israel herself had become just as detestable in the sight of God. Harsh words, but deserved words as Israel had become like the idols they worshiped. From this one verse, by the way, with its highs and its lows it’s clear that as God is looking back reflectively on the history of His own chosen people, what He sees disgusts him. From grapes that He saw in the beginning to people He detests now.

Now, as we turn to our next four verses we’re going to see one specific consequence of the sins of Israel that are being brought to the forefront. Let’s look at Hosea 9:11-14. He says, “As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy and no conception! Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Yes, woe to them indeed when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, is planted in a pleasant meadow like Tyre; but Ephraim will bring out his children for slaughter. Give them, O Lord—what will You give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.” As a consequence for its sin Israel was going to face famine. And as we have seen, Israel is going to face destruction of its land, and loss of its liberties as it went into a foreign land, and loss of its religious rituals, and loss of its wealth and property back in the homeland. Next, what we are going to see here is that Israel was going to face this crisis of infertility, as well as the loss of young, innocent lives. All of which would make it highly difficult for Israel to repopulate and replenish and to ensure its future existence.

Now, interestingly, you’ll note that in these four verses, Hosea 9:11-14, Yahweh doesn’t refer to Israel as “Israel.” Instead He refers to the people as “Ephraim.” We’ve seen that elsewhere in the book of Hosea as He toggles back and forth between the two names. But here the use of that term “Ephraim” to identify them is especially significant because the word “Ephraim” is a word that was typically associated with fertility and fruitfulness. In fact, Ephraim in Hebrew sounds like “twice fruitful” or doubly fruitful. Keep that in mind as we work through this passage here. First in verse 11 it says: “As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird.” Ephraim’s glory here is a reference to having multiple or numerous offspring, multiple children. Well, it was not to be for them because “their glory will fly away like a bird.” All those wishes of a large family, the productive household with lots of children running around, were dashed.

And then the end of verse 11, “No birth, no pregnancy and no conception!” The words of judgment though on Israelite families doesn’t end there. Not only would there be difficulty in conceiving children, many already-born children would be lost in the coming Assyrian invasion. That’s what we see in verses 12 and 13. It says, “Though they,” this is talking about a different class of people, “though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them until not a man is left. Yes, woe to them indeed when I depart from them! Ephraim, as I have seen, is planted in a pleasant meadow like Tyre; but Ephraim will bring out his children for slaughter.” Children would be raised in these Israelite homes in a community which “like Tyre,” it says, had been “planted in a pleasant meadow.” Tyre, by the way, was a city which like the nation of Israel had a blessed beginning but which faced a similarly destructive end. We see that in the book of Amos. But what’s being painted here is this picture of domestic serenity and tranquility. But then things change as the Israelite children are ultimately brought out for slaughter, meaning they would be slain by the Assyrian soldiers. Now in this context I don’t take this necessarily to be the slaughter of one’s own children for purposes of cannibalism. We do see that predicted and recorded elsewhere in the Old Testament. I believe the sense here is more like the people of Ephraim in their own state of depravity and guilt leading their own sons to the front line of battle to the slaughter at the hands of the enemy and losing their lives. And the result was that parents are now left in this status of mourning and bereavement and this state of woe.

And then, in verse 14 the speaker shifts from Yahweh to Hosea. Note that in verses 10 through 13, it’s been Yahweh speaking directly to Israel, “I found Israel,” “I saw your forefathers,” “I will bereave them,” “I will depart from them.” But now it’s Hosea speaking in verse 14 and the sense here is somewhat like an imprecatory psalm. He’s literally asking Yahweh here in the form of prayer to give it to them. To give them what they deserve. He says, “Give them, O Lord—what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.” In other words, as he is taking down what Yahweh is revealing to Him in verses 11-13 about this coming crisis of infertility and child death coming to Israe,l it’s as though here in verse 14 Hosea is giving his own human commentary, still under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, mind you, as he’s affirming and amen-ing the judgment that’s about to come. “Take their children away from them, Lord. Render them infertile, Lord. Give them what they deserve, Lord.” You know, nine chapters into this book you can sense this sanctified frustration that’s flowing through Hosea’s pen! Well, God was no longer going to multiply this apostate nation. Rather, depopulation was about to be visited upon Israel. He was removing His hand of protection and guidance from them and shrinking them down at the same time.

Well, God wasn’t through with them yet. We have a few verses yet to go and we still have some of Hosea’s most powerful and cutting statements yet. Look at verse 15, which shifts back to the first person, meaning God Himself is speaking here. It says, “All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds, I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.” Two words jump right off the page in verse 15, love and hate. He says “I came to hate them.” And He says “I will love them no more.”

And this would be as good a time as any to remind us all that this whole book is set in the context, the whole prophecy of Hosea is set in the context, of marriage, this marriage between Yahweh and Israel, this covenant bond of fidelity between the groom and his bride with Yahweh being the groom and Israel being the bride. And the language here in verse 15 very much fits that context. Israel is God’s chosen people, His original chosen people, the apple of His eye, the recipient of His many blessings and promises, some of which have been fulfilled and some of which have yet to be fulfilled. Yahweh, with that context and that backdrop, will never turn His back on Israel. He’ll never completely abandon Israel or break His promises to Israel. To do so would be inconsistent with His character as an eternally faithful and covenant-keeping God. While it’s true that Yahweh has turned His attention and His focus toward or in the direction of the Church today, that’s not because He has forsaken or forgotten Israel. Far from it.

We have to remember these truths about God’s ongoing love for Israel if we’re going to understand what He’s saying here in verse 15 about hating them and loving them no more and driving them out of His house. Are these true statements that we see here on the pages of Hosea 9:15? Sure they are, as is the case with all of Scripture but we need to understand them in their context. And here the context is Yahweh as groom expressing His divine displeasure toward His spiritually wayward bride, Israel. The Lord had become displeased with His wife, unfaithful Israel, and such displeasure is termed hatred. And He was prepared to drive her from the household, meaning from the land, as He withdrew His protective care over her as her Husband. That’s quite the plot twist when you think about it because Israel was the nation which had driven out the Canaanites which had first occupied the land when it took possession of that land. But now it was about to suffer the same fate as those same Canaanites as a consequence of having embraced Canaanite practices and beliefs. And it’s in this verse the Lord traces the development of His hatred, His displeasure toward Israel, back to Gilgal. It says “All their evil is at Gilgal.” Yet another historical episode is being drawn upon here to highlight the evil tendencies of Israel. First it was Gibeah in Judges 19 then it’s Baal-peor and now it’s Gilgal.

Gilgal was located between Jordan and Jericho in the area of Samaria. It was right across the Jordan River from Baal-peor. It was once a holy place to God established as a memorial location by Joshua as he led the people into the Promised Land. However, by Hosea’s day it had become desecrated by the idol worship that was taking place there and was a center of idol worship. In other words, this is just the latest of many references in the book of Hosea to Israel adopting the pagan practices of the surrounding nations. Serving not the Lord but their own sinful desires to be like those nations who were around them. And those sinful attitudes and those sinful practices rose all the way to the top. Look at the end of verse 15, He says, “All their princes are rebels.” It wasn’t just the people, it wasn’t just the priests. It was the princes as well, from top to bottom. The entire society was plagued with sin and rebellion.

And in the final two verses in our text for tonight things are drawn to this sad conclusion.
First in verse 16 it is Yahweh speaking and then in verse 17 it’s again the prophet Hosea speaking. Verse 16, it says, “Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up, they will bear no fruit. Even though they bear children, I will slay the precious ones of their womb.” Now ironically because the meaning of Ephraim is doubly fruitful or twice fruitful, because of widespread now sterility and infant mortality, Ephraim once this symbol of fruitfulness would now be compared to this withering plant, a root which “is dried up.” And then it says, “even though they bear children.” I think a better translation of that actually is, “even if they were to bear children” as we see it in the NKJV. And then he says “I will slay the precious ones of their womb.” Or as other translations have it “the desirable ones of their womb” or “the darlings of their womb.” The idea is even if they were to conceive children notwithstanding this general curse of fertility, Yahweh would take those children away. He would “slay” them, they would “bear no fruit,” the root would be “dried up.” The picture here is of a plant that has been smitten and cursed and is no longer able to produce fruit. And all of this for Israel, again, was a consequence for their sin.

And then Hosea steps in, in verse 17 and says this, “My God will cast them away because they have not listened to Him; and they will be wanderers among the nations.” Because of Israel’s disobedience they would be cast away, removed from God’s presence, sent off, as an ultimate consequence of His displeasure with them and His rejection of them. And he gives us the reason here, “Because they have not listened to Him,” though they were given ample opportunity to do so. They were given plenty of prior warnings but they simply did not heed the warnings, they simply didn’t tune their ear to His threats, they simply didn’t listen to Him. They had tuned Him out.

And now, these final words and these are chilling words. Last line, “and they will be wanderers among the nations.” That word “wanderers” comes from the same word as the verb “strayed.” We saw back in Hosea 7:13 where it says “Woe to them, for they have strayed from Me!” And now He’s using a word with a similar root when He describes them as wanderers in Hosea 9:17. Punishment again fits the crime. They had willfully strayed from the path of obedience to Yahweh and so now they were condemned to wander aimlessly among the nations, like Cain after he killed his brother Abel. As one commentator puts it, “Yahweh’s house was no longer home to Israel.”

Again, this is a very dark passage as I mentioned earlier. And likely the darkest passage or chapter in the entire book of Hosea. But even then we can’t lose sight of the forest for the trees, right? We can’t read a passage like this without keeping an eye on what God’s word says about the future hope for Israel and the hope that we share with Israel as Christians on this side of the world, on this side of the cross. Turn with me to Hosea 14. Hosea 14, just a few verses here, Hosea 14:4. Here’s Yahweh speaking and He says, “I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like the lily, and he will take root like the cedars of Lebanon. His shoots will sprout, and his beauty will be like the olive tree and his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Those who live in his shadow will again raise grain, and they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon.” See, a future day of restoration is still coming to Israel. A day in which God heals them and shows His love for them and turns the anger we see here in the book of Hosea away from them and causes them to take root and sprout and flourish like the olive tree. And we know that that day is yet future in the coming Millennial Kingdom reign of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Where we as the church, who as Paul says in Romans 11:17, have been “grafted in among them and have become partakers with them of the rich root of the olive tree,” we are commissioned to rule and reign and worship along with believing Israel. What a joyful privilege and period of time that’s going to be, to which we say with eagerness and anticipation, “Lord Jesus, Your kingdom come.”

Let’s pray. Gracious God thank you so much for the full meal this evening from Hosea 9, a chapter of part of the book that is especially dark and has some knots we need to untie. But I thank you for Your Spirit which allows us to read the Word and study the Word and teach the Word. And even in a totally different context, in a totally different day and age, in a totally different part of the world, that we can understand what You were attempting to communicate to Israel, what You did communicate to Israel and by extension what You are communicating to us. Help us to take the truths of this part of this book, whether it just be the simple reminders of Your hatred for sin and Your divine plans to restore all things in Christ. Help us to remember those truths and hang on to those truths and be encouraged by those truths. At the same time help us to see the flaws and the sinful behavior of Israel and may that be the thing that causes us to examine our own lives and our own hearts where as we saw even this morning where we may be spiritually adrift, where we may be at risk of becoming adulteresses, harlots, spiritually speaking. And may we turn back to You with the conviction of Your Spirit, with the power of Your Spirit, as we seek to live upright, holy, and godly lives in Christ Jesus. Thank you for this wonderful Lord’s Day. Thank you for the privilege that we’ve had today to be together. We simply ask that You would go before us this week and give us grace as we engage with the lost and dying world. We love You and thank you. In Jesus’ name, amen.