Hosea 7-10
The Message
Despite All the Signs, Israel Ignores God
7 1-2 “Every time I gave Israel a fresh start,
wiped the slate clean and got them going again,
Ephraim soon filled the slate with new sins,
the treachery of Samaria written out in bold print.
Two-faced and double-tongued,
they steal you blind, pick you clean.
It never crosses their mind
that I keep account of their every crime.
They’re mud-spattered head to toe with the residue of sin.
I see who they are and what they’ve done.
3-7 “They entertain the king with their evil circus,
delight the princes with their acrobatic lies.
They’re a bunch of overheated adulterers,
like an oven that holds its heat
From the kneading of the dough
to the rising of the bread.
On the royal holiday the princes get drunk
on wine and the frenzy of the mocking mob.
They’re like wood stoves,
red-hot with lust.
Through the night their passion is banked;
in the morning it blazes up, flames hungrily licking.
Murderous and volcanic,
they incinerate their rulers.
Their kings fall one by one,
and no one pays any attention to me.
8-10 “Ephraim mingles with the pagans, dissipating himself.
Ephraim is half-baked.
Strangers suck him dry
but he doesn’t even notice.
His hair has turned gray—
he doesn’t notice.
Bloated by arrogance, big as a house,
Israel’s a public disgrace.
Israel lumbers along oblivious to God,
despite all the signs, ignoring God.
11-16 “Ephraim is bird-brained,
mindless, clueless,
First chirping after Egypt,
then fluttering after Assyria.
I’ll throw my net over them. I’ll clip their wings.
I’ll teach them to mind me!
Doom! They’ve run away from home.
Now they’re really in trouble! They’ve defied me.
And I’m supposed to help them
while they feed me a line of lies?
Instead of crying out to me in heartfelt prayer,
they whoop it up in bed with their whores,
Gash themselves bloody in their sex-and-religion orgies,
but turn their backs on me.
I’m the one who gave them good minds and healthy bodies,
and how am I repaid? With evil scheming!
They turn, but not to me—
turn here, then there, like a weather vane.
Their rulers will be cut down, murdered—
just deserts for their mocking blasphemies.
And the final sentence?
Ridicule in the court of world opinion.”
Altars for Sinning
8 1-3 “Blow the trumpet! Sound the alarm!
Vultures are circling over God’s people
Who have broken my covenant
and defied my revelation.
Predictably, Israel cries out, ‘My God! We know you!’
But they don’t act like it.
Israel will have nothing to do with what’s good,
and now the enemy is after them.
4-10 “They crown kings, but without asking me.
They set up princes but don’t let me in on it.
Instead, they make idols, using silver and gold,
idols that will be their ruin.
Throw that gold calf-god on the trash heap, Samaria!
I’m seething with anger against that rubbish!
How long before they shape up?
And they’re Israelites!
A sculptor made that thing—
it’s not God.
That Samaritan calf
will be broken to bits.
Look at them! Planting wind-seeds,
they’ll harvest tornadoes.
Wheat with no head
produces no flour.
And even if it did,
strangers would gulp it down.
Israel is swallowed up and spit out.
Among the pagans they’re a piece of junk.
They trotted off to Assyria:
Why, even wild donkeys stick to their own kind,
but donkey-Ephraim goes out and pays to get lovers.
Now, because of their whoring life among the pagans,
I’m going to gather them together and confront them.
They’re going to reap the consequences soon,
feel what it’s like to be oppressed by the big king.
11-14 “Ephraim has built a lot of altars,
and then uses them for sinning.
Can you believe it? Altars for sinning!
I write out my revelation for them in detail
and they pretend they can’t read it.
They offer sacrifices to me
and then they feast on the meat.
God is not pleased!
I’m fed up—I’ll keep remembering their guilt.
I’ll punish their sins
and send them back to Egypt.
Israel has forgotten his Maker
and gotten busy making palaces.
Judah has gone in for a lot of fortress cities.
I’m sending fire on their cities
to burn down their fortifications.”
Starved for God
9 1-6 Don’t waste your life in wild orgies, Israel.
Don’t party away your life with the heathen.
You walk away from your God at the drop of a hat
and like a whore sell yourself promiscuously
at every sex-and-religion party on the street.
All that party food won’t fill you up.
You’ll end up hungrier than ever.
At this rate you’ll not last long in God’s land:
Some of you are going to end up bankrupt in Egypt.
Some of you will be disillusioned in Assyria.
As refugees in Egypt and Assyria,
you won’t have much chance to worship God—
Sentenced to rations of bread and water,
and your souls polluted by the spirit-dirty air.
You’ll be starved for God,
exiled from God’s own country.
Will you be homesick for the old Holy Days?
Will you miss festival worship of God?
Be warned! When you escape from the frying pan of disaster,
you’ll fall into the fire of Egypt.
Egypt will give you a fine funeral!
What use will all your god-inspired silver be then
as you eke out a living in a field of weeds?
* * *
7-9 Time’s up. Doom’s at the doorstep.
It’s payday!
Did Israel bluster, “The prophet is crazy!
The ‘man of the Spirit’ is nuts!”?
Think again. Because of your great guilt,
you’re in big trouble.
The prophet is looking out for Ephraim,
working under God’s orders.
But everyone is trying to trip him up.
He’s hated right in God’s house, of all places.
The people are going from bad to worse,
rivaling that ancient and unspeakable crime at Gibeah.
God’s keeping track of their guilt.
He’ll make them pay for their sins.
They Took to Sin Like a Pig to Filth
10-13 “Long ago when I came upon Israel,
it was like finding grapes out in the desert.
When I found your ancestors, it was like finding
a fig tree bearing fruit for the first time.
But when they arrived at Baal-peor, that pagan shrine,
they took to sin like a pig to filth,
wallowing in the mud with their newfound friends.
Ephraim is fickle and scattered, like a flock of blackbirds,
their beauty dissipated in confusion and clamor,
Frenetic and noisy, frigid and barren,
and nothing to show for it—neither conception nor childbirth.
Even if they did give birth, I’d declare them
unfit parents and take away their children!
Yes indeed—a black day for them
when I turn my back and walk off!
I see Ephraim letting his children run wild.
He might just as well take them and kill them outright!”
14 Give it to them, God! But what?
Give them a dried-up womb and shriveled breasts.
15-16 “All their evil came out into the open
at the pagan shrine at Gilgal. Oh, how I hated them there!
Because of their evil practices,
I’ll kick them off my land.
I’m wasting no more love on them.
Their leaders are a bunch of rebellious adolescents.
Ephraim is hit hard—
roots withered, no more fruit.
Even if by some miracle they had children,
the dear babies wouldn’t live—I’d make sure of that!”
17 My God has washed his hands of them.
They wouldn’t listen.
They’re doomed to be wanderers,
vagabonds among the godless nations.
You Thought You Could Do It All on Your Own
10 1-2 Israel was once a lush vine,
bountiful in grapes.
The more lavish the harvest,
the more promiscuous the worship.
The more money they got,
the more they squandered on gods-in-their-own-image.
Their sweet smiles are sheer lies.
They’re guilty as sin.
God will smash their worship shrines,
pulverize their god-images.
3-4 They go around saying,
“Who needs a king?
We couldn’t care less about God,
so why bother with a king?
What difference would he make?”
They talk big,
lie through their teeth,
make deals.
But their high-sounding words
turn out to be empty words, litter in the gutters.
5-6 The people of Samaria travel over to Crime City
to worship the golden calf-god.
They go all out, prancing and hollering,
taken in by their showmen priests.
They act so important around the calf-god,
but are oblivious to the sham, the shame.
They have plans to take it to Assyria,
present it as a gift to the great king.
And so Ephraim makes a fool of himself,
disgraces Israel with his stupid idols.
7-8 Samaria is history. Its king
is a dead branch floating down the river.
Israel’s favorite sin centers
will all be torn down.
Thistles and crabgrass
will decorate their ruined altars.
Then they’ll say to the mountains, “Bury us!”
and to the hills, “Fall on us!”
9-10 You got your start in sin at Gibeah—
that ancient, unspeakable, shocking sin—
And you’ve been at it ever since.
And Gibeah will mark the end of it
in a war to end all the sinning.
I’ll come to teach them a lesson.
Nations will gang up on them,
Making them learn the hard way
the sum of Gibeah plus Gibeah.
11-15 Ephraim was a trained heifer
that loved to thresh.
Passing by and seeing her strong, sleek neck,
I wanted to harness Ephraim,
Put Ephraim to work in the fields—
Judah plowing, Jacob harrowing:
Sow righteousness,
reap love.
It’s time to till the ready earth,
it’s time to dig in with God,
Until he arrives
with righteousness ripe for harvest.
But instead you plowed wicked ways,
reaped a crop of evil and ate a salad of lies.
You thought you could do it all on your own,
flush with weapons and manpower.
But the volcano of war will erupt among your people.
All your defense posts will be leveled
As viciously as king Shalman
leveled the town of Beth-arba,
When mothers and their babies
were smashed on the rocks.
That’s what’s ahead for you, you so-called people of God,
because of your off-the-charts evil.
Some morning you’re going to wake up
and find Israel, king and kingdom, a blank—nothing.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
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