Hosea condemns the priests and now adds the royal house, the king. “The judgment pertains to you” he says. God has no favorites. No one is exempt from his judgment. The snare and the net of the privileged are more socially disastrous because increased privilege means increased responsibility. The second section of Hosea has three themes- first, Israel’s difficult is moral, faithlessness; second, because of her moral lapses she will experience evil days, in this particular instance, invasion-Ephraim shall become a desolation; third, the resultant tragedies are the direct act of a God who punishes the evildoer-“I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house o Judah.” “Let us press on to know the Lord.” Hosea’s emphasis is on knowing God rather than knowing about God. But, Israel is like the “morning cloud”. Morning clouds are unstable. Hosea pleads for “love and not sacrifice” and “the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”. The prophet urges Israel to reflect. “They do not consider.” Hosea uses the images of baking to make his point. “They are like heated ovens…in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire….a cake not turned.” Their lives are one-sided without any consideration of God. Are we half-baked most of the time? “God strengthened their arms.” Yet, they used their strength to “devise evil against him”. “Set the trumpet to your lips” says Hosea because Assyria is about to swoop down like an eagle on this decadent people. Hosea now sets his aim at idolatry- making idols out of ignorance, making idols out of ignorance with egotism, making idols not out of ignorance but with pride and arrogance. Hosea describes evil that is sown in the wind and reaped in the whirlwind. The whirlwind propagates the seeds of evil to unaffected areas and produce crops in far reaching corners of the earth. “Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built temples.” Certainly, we can have God without a temple, but a temple without God? And, without God “they shall be wanderers among the nations.”
Hosea condemns the priests and now adds the royal house, the king. “The judgment pertains to you” he says. God has no favorites. No one is exempt from his judgment. The snare and the net of the privileged are more socially disastrous because increased privilege means increased responsibility. The second section of Hosea has three themes- first, Israel’s difficult is moral, faithlessness; second, because of her moral lapses she will experience evil days, in this particular instance, invasion-Ephraim shall become a desolation; third, the resultant tragedies are the direct act of a God who punishes the evildoer-“I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house o Judah.” “Let us press on to know the Lord.” Hosea’s emphasis is on knowing God rather than knowing about God. But, Israel is like the “morning cloud”. Morning clouds are unstable. Hosea pleads for “love and not sacrifice” and “the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”. The prophet urges Israel to reflect. “They do not consider.” Hosea uses the images of baking to make his point. “They are like heated ovens…in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire….a cake not turned.” Their lives are one-sided without any consideration of God. Are we half-baked most of the time? “God strengthened their arms.” Yet, they used their strength to “devise evil against him”. “Set the trumpet to your lips” says Hosea because Assyria is about to swoop down like an eagle on this decadent people. Hosea now sets his aim at idolatry- making idols out of ignorance, making idols out of ignorance with egotism, making idols not out of ignorance but with pride and arrogance. Hosea describes evil that is sown in the wind and reaped in the whirlwind. The whirlwind propagates the seeds of evil to unaffected areas and produce crops in far reaching corners of the earth. “Israel has forgotten his Maker, and built temples.” Certainly, we can have God without a temple, but a temple without God? And, without God “they shall be wanderers among the nations.”
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