The Lord's land for the Lord's people.
This chapter may fall in the interval between the Assyrian invasions of B.C. 743-738, and the invasions ending in the overthrow of Pekah, B.C. 734-730 (cf. 2 Kings 15:29, 2 Kings 15:30; 2 Chronicles 28:16-21, and Assyrian monuments). The interval seems to have been one of revived prosperity (2 Chronicles 28:6-15).
1. A glimpse of prosperity. Israel had been rejoiced with a bounteous harvest. Land and people had previously suffered sore from the Assyrian. For a moment judgment pauses. It would be interesting if we could connect this gleam of prosperity with the momentary gleam of better feeling in the nation, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 28:1-27. God tries all methods with the sinner. He varies judgment with mercy. He pauses, as it were, to give space for repentance. He tries, having humbled by application, again to melt by goodness (Romans 2:4).
2. Goodness abused. Israel knew not the meaning of this grace. The momentary softening led to no good results. The people, reassured by the heaped-up corn-floor and the full wine-press, fell into the old error of attributing their prosperity to the idols (Hosea 2:5), and renewed their assiduity in their service. Our joy in the use of God's good gifts becomes sinful when,
3. The disappointed expectation. "The floor and the wine-press shall not feed them," etc. One swallow does not make a summer, and the sinner errs if he supposes that one returning glimpse of prosperity means the reversal or collapse of God's threatenings. God punishes the abuse of his gifts:
II. DECREED EXPULSION. (2 Chronicles 28:3) The glimpse of prosperity did not mean much. The sinner, notwithstanding passing appearances to the contrary, abides under wrath (John 3:36). The decree of judgment stands unrepealed. "They shall not dwell in the Lord's land," etc.
1. The Lord's land only for the holy. Canaan was chosen by God as the seat of his majesty, the place of his abode. His presence sanctified it. Israel possessed it as his people. They held it on condition of obedience. Their first work in it was to purge it of the impurities which had formerly desecrated it (Deuteronomy 7:1-6). Now that Israel themselves had become unholy, they must, in turn, be expelled from the land. God could not allow them to remain in it. The "holy land" is for a holy people. So it is said of heaven that into it "shall in no wise enter anything that defileth" (Revelation 21:27).
2. The Lord resuming his own from the wicked. The land was the Lord's, and, when Israel proved incorrigible, the Lord took his own from them, They had not owned him in the possession of what he gave, and he now resumed his gift. The sinner, who depends on God for "life, and breath, and all things," would fain keep the gifts, while declining all recognition of the Giver. This God refuses to permit. The day is coming when he will strip the sinner of all he has. The Lord has given, and the Lord will take away.
3. Egypt-bondage. "Ephraim shall return to Egypt." The people were to sink back into the state of oppression, misery, and mixture with the heathen in which they were when God took pity on them in Egypt. The Exodus gave them a national existence, a calling, and a land. They were now to become a "no people" to God, and be sent back, as it were, to Egypt again. Rejection by God means the loss of distinctive being, of life-aim, of sphere, of liberty, and subjection to the hard tyranny of sin, Satan, and the world.
III. UNCLEANNESS IN ASSYRIA. (2 Chronicles 28:3-5) "They shall eat unclean things in Assyria," etc. Israel's condition in exile would be marked by:
1. Privation of privilege. They would be cut off from the sanctuary ("house of the Lord"), and prevented from observing their feasts, and bringing their usual offerings (cf. Hosea 3:4). Their worship, as it stood, was not acceptable to God. They, however, attached importance to their sanctuaries, altars, wine offerings, sacrifices, etc. And it would be part of their punishment that they would be deprived of them.
2. Legal uncleanness. The prophet speaks here also from the standpoint of the people. Their outward life, even in Canaan, had no right sanctification in it. Now, however, their food, sacrifices, etc; would become even formally unclean. Uncleanness would arise
3. An end of joy. (2 Chronicles 28:5; cf. Hosea 2:11)
IV. DESOLATE HABITATIONS. (2 Chronicles 28:6)
1. Exile as burial. "Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis [a noted place of burial] shall bury them." The allusion is still to Assyria figured as a second Egypt. The tribes would be lost in it as in a grave. Hence recovery is described as resurrection (Hosea 6:2). Sin is death. Those shah-cloned to sin are as the dead in graves.
2. Deserted dwellings. "Their pleasant places for their silver [or, 'valuables of silver'], nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their habitation." The present state of the Holy Land is the best commentary on this prediction. Sin leaves behind it rank desolation. Look at man's own soul! What desolation there! Nettles, thorns, a temple in ruins.—J.O.
Prophet and prophet.
We are disposed to prefer the view which takes Hosea 9:7 to refer to the true prophet, Hosea himself; and verse 8 to the prophets Ephraim had set up for himself alongside of the true.—"Ephraim is a watcher with along with, but independently of my God"—prophets who were as "the snare of a fowler" to the people.
I. THE TRUE PROPHET. (Verse 7)
1. What he saw. "The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come." The true prophet saw, and did not hesitate to declare in the ears of all, the fall extent of the ruin which was soon to overwhelm the nation. He did not, like the false prophets, say, "Peace, peace," when there was no peace (Jeremiah 8:11). He told the awful truth. The event verified his words. God's messengers are faithful.
2. What he felt. "The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad." The words may express at once:
3. His moral mission. "For the multitude of thine iniquities, and the great hatred." His eye pierced to the moral cause of the judgments that were impending. He read their origin in the people's sin, and in their hatred of what was good. A. true prophet is known by the intensity of his grasp upon moral truth.
II. THE FALSE PROPHET. (Verse 8) The prophets in whom Ephraim trusted were:
1. Self-constituted. "The watchman of Ephraim was with my God," or, "Ephraim is a watchman," etc. Ephraim was not content with the prophets God gave him. He must have prophets alter his own heart. He must be a "watchman" on his own account. The false prophet thus ran without being sent (Jeremiah 23:21). He was not, like the true prophet, a "man of the spirit." If any spirit was in him, it was a lying spirit.
2. Ensnarers of the people. "The prophet is the snare of a fowler in all his ways." They snared the people to their ruin
3. Themselves as bad as the rest. "Hatred in the house of his God." Professing to speak in God's Name, the prophet was full of malignant hatred of God, and of those who spoke in God's Name (cf. Amos 7:10-13).—J.O.
Gibeah and Baal-peor.
From this point the mind of the prophet reverts largely to the past. He sees mirrored in it both God's love and the people's sins. Allusion is made Lore to God's early love for Israel, and to the sins of Gibeah and Baal-peor.
I. THE EVIL OF SIN IS SEEN BY COMPARISON WITH FORMER SINS, THE HEINOUSNESS OF WHICH ALL ADMIT. Two such outstanding sins of the past were those of Gibeah, and, at a still earlier period, of Baal-peor. The former (cf. 19:1-30; 20:1-48) was a sin revealing depths of corruption in Israel such as had not previously been heard of ( 19:30). It shocked the national conscience. It led to fierce vengeance being taken on the transgressors, and on the Benjamites who sided with them. The latter was a sin of wider scope, and scarcely less heinous in its character (Numbers 25:1-18). It combined idolatry with whoredom in a peculiarly daring and offensive manner. It led to the destruction of twenty-four thousand in the camp of Israel by a plague, and to the after extermination of the Midianites. These were the "deep corruptions" which were now reproducing themselves in Israel. The people might refuse to give the right name to the iniquity as practiced by themselves, but they could scarcely fail to reprobate it when presented in these earlier instances. It was a peculiarity of these sins that they had been judged by Israel itself. It was the tribes that pronounced sentence on the evildoers at Gibeah; and Phinehas had executed judgment on Zimri, as afterwards the men of war did on the Midianites. This, accordingly, was a case to which Paul's principle applied, that ability to judge of an offence in another renders one inexcusable if he does the same thing (Romans 2:1). We are often, however, willing to condemn in others sins which we inconsistently tolerate in ourselves.
II. THE EVIL OF SIN ONLY BECOMES FULLY APPARENT AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF DIVINE LOVE. This is brought out in Hosea 9:10 in the case of Baal-peor. The enormity of that sin was only fully seen when set against the manifestations of Divine love which had preceded. "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her first time." There is indicated here:
1. God's choice of Israel. He "found" them "in the wilderness; ' he "saw" them there, and chose them.
2. God's delight in Israel. The nation was pleasant to him as grapes in the desert, or as the first-ripe fig. His choice and his affection were both manifested in many wonderful ways. It was this love shown to Israel which made such acts as the making of the golden calf, and, again, the shameful apostasy of Baal-peor, so inexcusably wicked. To see sin in its full enormity we must count up the mercies of God against which we are offending—must reflect, above all, on God's love to us as displayed in Christ.
III. THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY IN SIN. Israel's apostasy, Hoses seeks to show, was no new thing. It began at a very early period (cf. Hosea 10:9). The strain of it bad continued in the blood of the people ever since. It was proved to be a constitutional disorder which no mild treatment would eradicate. We gain insight into the virulence of depravity by studying its hereditary manifestation.—J.O.