Hosea 8:1-14--Israel Will Reap the Whirlwind

Hosea 8
English Standard Version

Israel Will Reap the Whirlwind
8 Set the trumpet to your lips!
    One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD,
because they have transgressed my covenant
    and rebelled against my law.
2 To me they cry,
    “My God, we—Israel—know you.”
3 Israel has spurned the good;
    the enemy shall pursue him.

4 They made kings, but not through me.
    They set up princes, but I knew it not.
With their silver and gold they made idols
    for their own destruction.
5 I have spurned your calf, O Samaria.
    My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
6 For it is from Israel;
a craftsman made it;
    it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
    shall be broken to pieces.

7 For they sow the wind,
    and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads;
    it shall yield no flour;
if it were to yield,
    strangers would devour it.
8 Israel is swallowed up;
    already they are among the nations
    as a useless vessel.
9 For they have gone up to Assyria,
    a wild donkey wandering alone;
    Ephraim has hired lovers.
10 Though they hire allies among the nations,
    I will soon gather them up.
And the king and princes shall soon writhe
    because of the tribute.

11 Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
    they have become to him altars for sinning.
12 Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
    they would be regarded as a strange thing.
13 As for my sacrificial offerings,
    they sacrifice meat and eat it,
    but the LORD does not accept them.
Now he will remember their iniquity
    and punish their sins;
    they shall return to Egypt.
14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker
    and built palaces,
and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
    so I will send a fire upon his cities,
    and it shall devour her strongholds.

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The LORD now speaks to the unidentified armies that will be conquering His people.  He tells them to prepare for war and to be ready to be like vultures that feast on the dead bodies of war.  Why does the LORD allow this to happen?  Because His people have transgressed His covenant.  They will claim that God should save them because they know (of) God, but they do not "know" Him in a relational way.  If they did, they would love Him, and if they loved Him, they would obey Him.  Because they love themselves and their sin, it is evident that they do not love or know God as they claim.

They chose wicked men to lead them.  They did not inquire of the LORD as to who should be their king because they rejected the LORD as their King.  The used the wealth that the LORD has blessed them with to make idols and make sacrifices to those idols.  They attributed the salvation and blessing that God provided to these idols of wood, gold, silver and stone.  These images came from the hands and minds of men, not of God, for He had commanded them to not worship any created thing and to never make for themselves any graven images (idols) of any created thing.

You may know this next verse from people using it out of context, especially politicians.  Israel has "sown the wind" and will "reap the whirlwind."  This goes to the Law of the Sower that you will will reap what you sow, in more abundance than what you sow (in this case in more severity) and later than you sow.  Israel is getting the natural consequences of their poor choices and they have no one to blame but themselves.  God will cause the Land to stop producing a fruitful harvest for them.  They will have stalks of grain with no heads.  Any grain which is produced will be stolen by foreigners.  Israel will be swallowed up by the other nations so that its people will be dispersed among the nations of the world.

The LORD now names who He will use to accomplish this judgment He's been speaking of.  He says that the northern kingdom of Israel will be taken into Assyria.  They will be like the wild donkeys that wander in the wilderness.  The image is like that of the people wandering in the wilderness before God gave them a place to call home, but now the LORD has removed them from that place and they are sojourners and wanderers once again.  This time feels very different though because they are not following the Pillar of Cloud and Pillar of Fire and there is no Tabernacle in their midst.  They are not fighting to defeat their enemies--the LORD is with their enemies who are fighting and defeating them.

Israel will try to hire mercenaries from among the other nations to help them fight off the Assyrians, but the LORD will cause Assyria to be successful and all of the people of Israel (the northern kingdom) will eventually be rounded up and dispersed into the lands of Assyria.  Assyria would bring people from other lands to repopulate the land of Israel and some of Israel's neighbors imagined that this was their time to seize the LORD's inheritance for His people for themselves.  They even imagined that by taking they Land they might become the LORD's people and receive the blessings that belonged to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The northern kingdom had altars and idols everywhere, and the LORD sees these as altars to sin.  The people made gods that called their evil good and not only condoned their wickedness and perversion, but demanded it, and called it worship.  The LORD said that if He again wrote the Law for them like He had done for Moses on Mount Sinai, it would be a strange thing to them, because most of them have never seen or heard His commandments (is that not the same today?).  They have separated themselves from the Temple, the Levitical priesthood, and the sacrificial system that comes with it.  They are trying to let everyone act as his or her own priest and make up their own version of god they want to worship in their won way and pretending that God will have to be happy with whatever form of worship they offer to Him, even though He has prescribed very particular worship for them that points them towards the gospel and the coming of Jesus and He said that He would accept nothing else other than this.  He had a reason for making them a peculiar people because He had given them a special place among the nations and in history.  He had chosen them to be a light to the Gentiles and to be the ones to take His Word to the nations and the ones from whom salvation was to come, not just for the children of Israel, but for the whole world.  Yet, they did not understand and they rejected Him and His good plan for them.  Jesus came to be and do all the things that they could not and would not be and do.

There is another hidden prophecy here that "they will return to Egypt," but the nation as a whole did not return to Egypt.  Instead, Jesus, as a substitute for His people was called out of Egypt.  Remember that after the wise men visited Mary and Joseph, Mary and Joseph were told to take the Christ Child and flee to Egypt because Herod was seeking to kill Him.  The LORD is going to destroy everything that they have put their trust in instead of Him and remove every blessing of His covenant form them except for the promise that He will be with them wherever they go, because He will go into Exile with them.  The nations will tear down and devour their strongholds, take all the natural resources of the Land and the Land that was the Beautiful Land will become barren and desolate.  People will wonder how this could be "The Land Flowing with Milk and Honey" that the LORD spoke of.  The Land reflects that condition of His people and because their hearts are spiritually dead, barren and fruitless, that is what the Land will show the nations.  Only when the LORD causes His people to come back to life again spiritually will the Land also respond and start coming alive and producing fruit and a good harvest again.  Until then, the people will need to learn that salvation is found in no one and nothing else other than the LORD, their Rock, Redeemer, Savior, and Defender.