Hosea 9:1-17--The LORD Will Punish Israel

Hosea 9
English Standard Version

The LORD Will Punish Israel
9 Rejoice not, O Israel!
    Exult not like the peoples;
for you have played the whore, forsaking your God.
    You have loved a prostitute's wages
    on all threshing floors.
2 Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them,
    and the new wine shall fail them.
3 They shall not remain in the land of the LORD,
    but Ephraim shall return to Egypt,
    and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria.

4 They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the LORD,
    and their sacrifices shall not please him.
It shall be like mourners' bread to them;
    all who eat of it shall be defiled;
for their bread shall be for their hunger only;
    it shall not come to the house of the LORD.

5 What will you do on the day of the appointed festival,
    and on the day of the feast of the LORD?
6 For behold, they are going away from destruction;
    but Egypt shall gather them;
    Memphis shall bury them.
Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver;
    thorns shall be in their tents.

7 The days of punishment have come;
    the days of recompense have come;
    Israel shall know it.
The prophet is a fool;
    the man of the spirit is mad,
because of your great iniquity
    and great hatred.
8 The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God;
yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways,
    and hatred in the house of his God.
9 They have deeply corrupted themselves
    as in the days of Gibeah:
he will remember their iniquity;
    he will punish their sins.

10 Like grapes in the wilderness,
    I found Israel.
Like the first fruit on the fig tree
    in its first season,
    I saw your fathers.
But they came to Baal-peor
    and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame,
    and became detestable like the thing they loved.
11 Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird--
    no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
12 Even if they bring up children,
    I will bereave them till none is left.
Woe to them
    when I depart from them!
13 Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow;
    but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.
14 Give them, O LORD--
    what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
    and dry breasts.

15 Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal;
    there I began to hate them.
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.

16 Ephraim is stricken;
    their root is dried up;
    they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
    I will put their beloved children to death.
17 My God will reject them
    because they have not listened to him;
    they shall be wanderers among the nations.

---

The LORD has been judging many of the other nations already and been telling the Prophets to tell His people that they should not rejoice over the downfall of these nations, because the LORD is using them as an example of what He should do to Israel.  They are just as wicked and deserve to be destroyed, but the LORD will preserve them for the sake of His covenant and His holy name and for the sake of the gospel.  However, they still should not gloat, because judgment is coming upon them.  They have acted like a whore and they will now be treated like one (they have been unfaithful to their covenant with the LORD like an unfaithful woman who doesn't care about her marital vows).  They will be exiled from the Land, be forced to eat unclean food by the people that take them into exile, and they will not be permitted to make sacrifices to the LORD.

They will have only enough food and drink to feed themselves, they won't have anything extra to give as food or drink offerings to the LORD.  They will not celebrate the feasts or festivals that remind them of who they are, and of the gospel message that would give them expectation and hope.  Many of them would and up in Egypt once again, but they would die there (a sign of returning to slavery to sin and dying in their sins, because the LORD had set them free from their slavery in Egypt which was symbolic to them of their slavery to sin, though many of them missed the symbolism).

The believe the prophets of the LORD who have the Spirit of the LORD to be fools and madmen.  The LORD is getting ready to punish them again like He did at Gibeah and Baal-peor (where they engaged in idolatry and sexual immorality with the Midianite and the last of the rebellious generation were slain in the wilderness before the next generation was ready to inherit the Promised Land).  What Baalam was not able to do to them with a curse, the people did to themselves when they engaged in idolatry and sexual sin, and they have failed to learn those lessons of the past and are repeating the same mistakes again that will lead to similar judgment.

The LORD will drive them out of the Land and will no longer pour out the blessings of His covenant on them, making people believe that He no longer loves them.  They are like spoiled children whose only definition of "love" is how much stuff that their parents give to them and they start believing they deserve and are entitled to all of it though they are rude, disobedient and act as a snob.  Have you ever met a "trust fund kid" who thought they were above the law or wrecked their nice sports car and said, "It's okay, mom and dad will just buy me another one."?  Israel is acting much like this and the LORD is cutting them off.  He's going to give them some tough love and let them feel the consequences of their bad choices.  He's no longer going to protect or insulate them.

No longer will they be fruitful and numerous on the earth.  Those who have children will see their children die before them.  They will return to those times of being like the wilderness--physical and spiritual hunger, thirst, and barrenness.  Those who were once mighty and strong will be brought down to nothing.  They will be taken to the brink of destruction.  Because they have rejected the LORD and His Word, He has rejected them to make them wanderers and sojourners among the nations--a people without a home and being tempted at all times to give up whatever remained of their identity as His people to become just like all the other nations (which is what they said they wanted, and the LORD finally is giving them what they asked for).