THE BOOK OF HOSEA
Part Two: Lesson 8
Chapters 10 - 11
The land will not be sold absolutely, for the land belongs to me, and you are only strangers and guests of mine. Leviticus 25:23
Hosea and the other prophets saw Yahweh as the possessor of the land that Israel occupied, with the right to allow the covenant people to dwell on it as a reward for covenant obedience or to dispossess them of the land for covenant infidelity (Hos 2:10, cf. Jer 7:12-15; 12:7).
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The Past Brings Judgment on the Present Continued (9:10-10:15)
Hosea 10:1-10 ~ From luxuriant vine to thorn and
thistle
1 Israel was a luxuriant vine yielding plenty of
fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; the richer his
land became, the richer he made the sacred pillars. 2 Theirs is a
divided heart; now they will have to pay for it. He himself will hack down
their altars and wreck their sacred pillars. 3 Then they will say,
‘We have no king because we have not feared Yahweh, but what could the king do
for us?’ 4 Speeches are made, oaths sworn to no purpose, agreements
concluded, and so-called justice spreads like a poisonous weed along the furrows
of the fields! 5 Samaria’s citizens will tremble for the calf of
Beth-Aven; the people there will mourn for it, so will its idol-priests, as
they exult in its glory once it has been carried away! 6 It will be
carried off to Assyria as tribute to the Great King. Ephraim will reap the
shame, and Israel blush for his intentions. 7 Samaria has had her
day. Her king is like a straw drifting on the water. 8 The high
places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed; thorns and thistles will
grow over their altars. Then they will say to the
mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’ 9 Since the
days of Gibeah, Israel, you have sinned. There they have taken their stand, and
will not war overtake the guilty at Gibeah? 10 I am coming to punish
them; nations will muster against them to punish them for their two crimes.
Chapter 10:1-10 discusses the destruction of Israel’s cultic objects. Verses 1-2 summarize the passage’s focus using the symbolic image of Israel as a fruitful vine that was often used by the prophets.1 The more prosperous Israel grew, the more corrupt the people became and the more they failed to be grateful to God for His blessings. They had a “divided heart” (verse 2) because they offered their worship to both Yahweh and pagan gods. The words “we have no king” (verse 3) and “like a straw drifting on the water” (verse 7) refer to the instability and ineffectiveness of the monarchy.
Between 747 BC, when King Jeroboam II died, and 722 BC, when the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians, six kings were assassinated by usurpers or were puppets of the Assyrians. Therefore, Hosea assessed the situation correctly when he wrote that they had no true king to rule them. The result of this situation is revealed in verses 4-8:
The result would be that the Assyrians would tear down Israel’s altars, like the one to the golden calf at Beth-Aven (“the house of wickedness” at Bethel), the monarchy would cease to exist, and the unfaithful people and their illicit priests would despair as the Assyrians carried them away into exile with their idols as a tribute to the Assyrian king. Verse 5 is the third mention of Beth-Aven in Hosea in association with the golden calf at Bethel (see Hos 4:15; 5:8; and 10:5). It is another reference to events in Jacob-Israel’s life in the Book of Hosea (see Gen 28:19; 31:13; 35:1-16).
8b Then they will say to
the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’
In their despair, the people would call out for the mountains
to hide them from the Assyrians but to no avail. When the Assyrians devastated the
kingdom, the Israelites would lose the will to live (verse 8b). When the
Assyrians led the final assault in 722 BC, the Samarian population and their
government didn’t even have the will to defend themselves. The Assyrians laid
siege to Samaria for three years. In the ninth year of King Hoshea of Israel,
the city fell to its enemies. Archaeological surveys of Samaria discovered no
evidence of fire or mass destruction at the time of the Assyrian assault. The
Assyrians even took over the king’s intact palace, making it their administrative
center for the Assyrian Province of Samaria.2
9 Since the days
of Gibeah, Israel, you have sinned. There they have taken their stand, and will
not war overtake the guilty at Gibeah?
The reference to Gibeah probably refers to when the Israelite
tribes turned against the tribe of Benjamin to avenge the crime of sexual violence
against a defenseless woman committed at Gibeah, almost wiping out the tribe (cf.
Judg 19:1-20:48). Evidently, Hosea saw the Israelites’ cruel response to the
sin of a family tribal member as a terrible crime of violence that
unfortunately became the norm in the divided kingdom.
10 I am coming
to punish them; nations will muster against them to punish them for their two
crimes.
Yahweh would deliver divine justice to the Israelites for
their crime of infidelity using the Assyrians and the nations they controlled
who served in their army. Perhaps the two crimes Hosea refers to are the
current sexual misconduct of the people indulging in pagan fertility rites on
the hill of Samaria and the earlier sexual violence at the elevation of Gibeah
(in Hebrew, gibeah means hill).
Jesus quoted Hosea 10:8 when He met the women of Jerusalem on His way to His crucifixion at Golgotha in Luke 23:30. Part of the same verse was quoted again in Revelation 6:16 when the sixth seal was opened: They said to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us away from the One who sits on the throne and from the retribution of the Lamb. For the Great Day of his retribution has come, and who can face it?” The Hosea passage is a reminder that reliance on material progress can also have negative consequences.
Hosea 10:11-15 ~ From Well-trained Heifer to the Fruit
of Lies
11 Ephraim is a well-trained heifer that loves to tread the
grain. But I have laid a yoke on her fine neck, I shall put Ephraim into
harness, Judah will have to plough, Jacob must draw the harrow. 12 Sow
saving justice for yourselves, reap a harvest of faithful love; break up your
fallow ground: it is time to seek out Yahweh until he comes to rain saving
justice down on you. 13 You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped
iniquity, you have eaten the fruit of falsehood. Because you have trusted in
your chariots, in your great numbers of warriors, 14 turmoil is
going to break out among your people, and all your fortresses will be laid
waste. As Shalman laid Beth-Arbel waste on the day of battle, dashing mothers
to pieces on their children, 15 so it shall be done to you, Bethel,
because of your great wickedness; at dawn, the king of Israel will be no more.
In the second stanza, Hosea uses a parable that recalls the use of domestic animal imagery in the symbolic images of the prophets (see the handout for this lesson). Israel has disappointed Yahweh’s hope. He had trained Israel to be obedient to the divine Master and the path He had set for them and Judah to sow “saving justice” and “reap a harvest of faithful love (hesed).” Instead of trusting in Yahweh, they trusted in their military, and as a result, they “plowed wickedness,” “reaped iniquity,” and ate “the fruit of falsehood” in their false sense of security. The result of their stubbornness would result in:
14b As Shalman laid Beth-Arbel waste on the day of battle,
dashing mothers to pieces on their children, 15 so it shall be done
to you, Bethel, because of your great wickedness; at dawn, the king of Israel
will be no more.
Beth-Arbel means “house/place of ambush.” Biblical
scholars disagree on the identity of Shalman. The name may refer to Shalmaneser
V, the son and successor of Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III. He besieged Samaria
for three years before conquering the city and bringing about the fall of the
Northern Kingdom of Israel (2 Kng 17:1-41; 18:1-12). It was the main event of
his reign; however, some historians credit the final capture of the city to his
successor, Sargon II.3 Or, he may be Shallum son of Jabesh who plotted
against and murdered king Zechariah of Israel in 743 BC, destroying the “house
of Jeroboam” (2 Kng 15:10). The Greek Septuagint of this passage has
Beth-Jeroboam for Beth-Arbel. However, when Shallum murdered King Zechariah, there
was no wholesale slaughter as mentioned in verse 14b, as there was in the
conquest of Samaria and the destruction at the shrine of Bethel.
Hosea 11:1-6 ~ Ephraim’s Judgment for Despising God’s Love
1 When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt.
2 But the more I called, the further they went away from me; they
offered sacrifice to Baal and burnt incense to idols. 3 I myself
taught Ephraim to walk, I myself took them by the arm, but they did not know
that I was the one caring for them, 4 that I was leading them with
human ties, with leading strings of love, that, with them, I was like someone
lifting an infant to his cheek, and that I bent down to feed him. 5 He
will not have to go back to Egypt; Assyria will be his king instead! Since he
has refused to come back to me, 6 the sword will rage through his
cities, destroying the bars of his gates, devouring them because of their
plots.
Verse 1 is a reminder of the Exodus liberation when God called the Israelites out of Egypt. However, despite repeated evidence of God’s protection, they immediately turned to the false gods they learned to worship. At Sinai, while Moses was absent for forty days, they built a golden calf and offered it worship, just as in the Divided Kingdom, they turned to Baal worship.
5 He will not have to go back to Egypt; Assyria will be his
king instead! Since he has refused to come back to me, 6 the sword
will rage through his cities, destroying the bars of his gates, devouring them
because of their plots.
The return to Egypt elsewhere in Hosea is a metaphor for
slavery or the loss of freedom and autonomy with Assyria as the new location of
the upcoming exile. The oracle may coincide with a time when King Hosea had
appealed to Egypt for help (2 Kng 17:4). His request resulted in an angry
response from Assyrian King Shalmaneser V. It is also possible to see the verse
as a rhetorical question: Will they not return to slavery as in Egypt with
Assyria ruling over them? Throughout their history, Israel struggled (sara) with
God and men (Gen 32:28). Verses 5-6 warn of divine judgment: Israel despises God’s
love, so she will reap His vengeance.
Hosea 11:7-11 ~ God’s Love is Stronger than His
Vengeance and the Promise of a Return from Exile
7 My people are bent on disregarding me; if they are
summoned to come up, not one of them makes a move. 8 Ephraim, how
could I part with you? Israel, how could I give you up? How could I make you
like Admah or treat you like Zeboiim? My heart within me is overwhelmed, fever
grips my inmost being. 9 I will not give rein to my fierce anger, I
will not destroy Ephraim again, for I am God, not man, the Holy One in your
midst, and I shall not come to you in anger.
10 They will follow Yahweh; he will roar like a lion, and when he
roars, his children will come fluttering from the west, 11 fluttering
like sparrows from Egypt, like pigeons from Assyria, and I shall settle them in
their homes—declares Yahweh.
God accuses His people of being intent on turning away from Him. The poetry of verse 8 has six clauses structured in three consecutive pairs of parallel expressions. The first two pairs are questions, but they are not rhetorical because Yahweh is not asking questions with expected or obvious answers. He is making a statement. God declares His resolve to exercise compassion despite the judgment the Israelites deserve. The historical analogy in verse 8 refers to Israel’s historical situation during Hosea’s day compared to Admah and Zeboiim, two cities near the infamous Sodom and Gomorrah that were destroyed in the act of divine judgment as well as the cities near them (Gen 19:25, 28; also see Dt 29:23/22).4
In verses 10-11, God promises to call His people back to Him and “settle them in their homes.” Interestingly, the location from which they will come back is from the west—Assyria was to the north. West was across the Mediterranean Sea. Many see the fulfillment of this prophecy in the great return to the newly established homeland of Israel at the end of World War II.
Endnotes:
1. See the list of the repeated symbolic images of the prophets
in the handout or at charts/Symbolic Images of the Old Testament Prophets.
2. Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2017, pages 28-29.
3. King Shalmaneser is also mentioned in the Book of Tobit 1:2, 13, 15, 16).
4. Admah and Zeboiim occur together five times in the Old Testament (Gen 10:19; 14:2, 8; Dt 29:23; Hos 11:8).
A question for reflection or group discussion:
People often ask, what about the justice of the loss of
life of the innocent when God allowed foreign powers to conquer and kill His
covenant people? In those cases, innocent lives were consecrated to Yahweh.
Before the mission of Jesus, no persons were subjected to the judgment of the
Hell of the damned. God’s judgments didn’t become eternal until after the
Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. Before that time, all souls, the
righteous and the wicked went to Sheol (Hades in Greek), where they awaited the
coming of the Redeemer-Messiah. The wicked suffered punishment in atonement for
their sins, and the righteous banqueted with father Abraham. See Jesus’s
description of Sheol in His story of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16:19-31
and St. Peter’s explanation of Jesus’s liberation of the souls in Sheol in 1
Peter 3:18-22. Also, see CCC 632-33.
Catechism references (* indicates Scripture quoted
or paraphrases in the reference):
Hosea 11 (CCC 219*);
11:1-14 (CCC 370*);
11:1 (CCC 219, 441*, 530*);
11:9 (CCC 208)
Michal Hunt, Copyright © 2022 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.