Ephraim thought that, because the wounds were inflicted by Assyria, it
was the source to which to apply for bandages and balm. If it had
realised that Assyria was but the battle-axe wherewith the hand of God
struck it, it would have learned that from God alone could come healing
and health. The unrest which betrays the presence in our souls of a
deep-seated sin, is a divine messenger. We terribly misinterpret the
true source of all that disturbs us when we attribute it only to the
occasions which bring it about; for the one purpose of all our
restlessness is to drive us nearer to God, and to wrench us away from
our Assyria. The true issue of Ephraim's sickness would have been the
penitent cry, 'Come, let us return to the Lord our God, for He hath
smitten, and He will bind us up.' It is in the consciousness of loving
nearness to Him that all our unrest is soothed, and the heaving ocean in
our hearts becomes as a summer's sea and 'birds of peace sit brooding on
the charmed waves.' It is in that same consciousness that conscience
ceases to condemn, and loses its sting. The prophet from whom our text
is taken ends his wonderful ministry, that had been full of fiery
denunciations and dark prophecies, with words that are only surpassed in
their tenderness and the outpouring of the heart of God, by the fuller
revelation in Jesus Christ: 'O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God.
Take with you words, and return unto the Lord, and say unto Him: Assyria
shall not save us, for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy.' The divine
answer which he was commissioned to bring to the penitent Israel--'I
will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely; if Mine anger is
turned away from Me'--is, in all its wealth of forgiving love but an
imperfect prophecy of the great Physician, from the hem of whose garment
flowed out power to one who 'had spent all her living on physicians and
could not be healed of any,' and who confirmed to her the power which
she had thought to steal from Him unawares by the gracious words which
bound her to Him for ever--'Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go
in peace.'
'FRUIT WHICH IS DEATH'
'Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself:
according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the
altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly
images. 2. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty:
He shall break down their altars, He shall spoil their images. 3.
For now they shall say, We have no king, because we feared not the
Lord; what then should a king do to us? 4. They have spoken words,
swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up
as hemlock in the furrows of the field. 5. The inhabitants of
Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Beth-aven: for the
people thereof shall mourn over it, and the priests thereof that
rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from
it. 6. It shall be also carried unto Assyria for a present to king
Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of
his own counsel. 7. As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam
upon the water. 8. The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel,
shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on
their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to
the hills, Fall on us. 9. O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days
of Gibeah: there they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the
children of iniquity did not overtake them. 10. It is in my desire
that I should chastise them; and the people shall be gathered
against them, when they shall bind themselves in their two furrows.
11. And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread
out the corn; but I passed over upon her fair neck: I will make
Ephraim to ride; Judah shall plow, and Jacob shall break his clods.
12. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up
your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come
and rain righteousness upon you. 13. Ye have plowed wickedness, ye
have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou
didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men. 14.
Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy
fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shalman spoiled Beth-arbel in the
day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
15. So shall Beth-el do unto you because of your great wickedness:
in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.'--HOSEA
x. 1-15.
The prophecy of this chapter has two themes--Israel's sin, and its
punishment. These recur again and again. Reiteration, not progress of
thought, characterises Hosea's fiery stream of inspired eloquence.
Conviction of sin and prediction of judgment are his message. We trace a
fourfold repetition of it here, and further note that in each case there
is a double reference to Israel's sin as consisting in the rebellion
which set up a king and in the schism which established the calf
worship; while there is also a double phase of the punishment
corresponding to these, in the annihilation of the kingdom and the
destruction of the idols.
The first section may be taken to be verses 1-3. The image of a
luxuriant vine laden with fruit is as old as Jacob's blessing of the
tribes (Gen. xlix. 22), where it is applied to Joseph, whose descendants
were the strength of the Northern Kingdom. Hosea has already used it,
and here it is employed to set forth picturesquely the material
prosperity of Israel. Probably the period referred to is the successful
reign of Jeroboam II. But prosperity increased sin. The more fruit or
material wealth, the more altars; the better the harvests, the more the
obelisks or pillars to gods, falsely supposed to be the authors of the
blessings. The words are as condensed as a proverb, and are as true
to-day as ever. Israel had attributed its prosperity to Baal (Hosea ii.
8). The misuse of worldly wealth and the tendency of success to draw us
away from God, and to blind to the true source of all blessing, are as
rife now as then.
The root of the evil was, as always, a heart divided--that is, between
God and Baal--or, perhaps, 'smooth'; that is, dissimulating and
insincere. In reality, Baal alone possesses the heart which its owner
would share between him and Jehovah. 'All in all, or not at all,' is the
law. Whether Baals or calves were set beside God, He was equally
deposed.
Then, with a swift turn, Hosea proclaims the impending judgment, setting
himself and the people as if already in the future. He hears the first
peal of the storm, and echoes it in that abrupt 'now.' The first burst
of the judgment shatters dreams of innocence, and the cowering wretches
see their sin by the lurid light. That discovery awaits every man whose
heart has been 'divided.' To the gazers and to himself masks drop, and
the true character stands out with appalling clearness. What will that
light show us to be? An unnamed hand overthrows altars and pillars. No
need to say whose it is. One half of Israel's sin is crushed at a blow,
and the destruction of the other follows immediately.
They themselves abjure their allegiance; for they have found out that
their king is a king Log, and can do them no good. A king, set up in
opposition to God's will, cannot save. The ruin of their projects
teaches godless men at last that they have been fools to take their own
way; for all defences, recourses, and protectors, chosen in defiance of
God, prove powerless when the strain comes. The annihilation of one half
of their sin sickens them of the other. The calves and the monarchy
stood or fell together. It is a dismal thing to have to bear the brunt
of chastisement for what we see to have been a blunder as well as a
crime. But such is the fate of those who seek other gods and another
king.
In verse 4 Hosea recurs to Israel's crime, and appends a description of
the chastisement, substantially the same as before, but more detailed,
which continues till verse 8. The sin now is contemplated in its effects
on human relations. Before, it was regarded in relation to God. But men
who are wrong with Him cannot be right with one another. Morality is
rooted in religion, and if we lie to God, we shall not be true to our
brother. Hence, passing over all other sins for the present, Hosea fixes
upon one, the prevalence of which strikes at the very foundation of
society. What can be done with a community in which lying has become a
national characteristic, and that even in formal agreements?
Honey-combed with falsehood, it is only fit for burning.
Sin is bound by an iron link to penalty. Therefore, says Hosea, God's
judgment springs up, like a bitter plant (the precise name of which is
unknown) in the furrows, where the farmer did not know that its seeds
lay. They little dreamed what they were sowing when they scattered
abroad their lies, but this is the fruit of these. 'Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap'; and whatever other crop we may hope to
gather from our sins, we shall gather that bitter one which we did not
expect. The inevitable connection of sin and judgment, the bitterness of
its results, the unexpectedness of them, are all here, and to be laid to
heart by us.
Then verses 5 and 6 dilate with keen irony on the fate of the first half
of Israel's sin--the calf. It was thought a god, but its worshippers
shall be in a fright for it. 'Calves,' says Hosea, though there was but
one at Beth-el; and he uses the feminine, as some think, depreciatingly.
'Beth-aven' or the 'house of vanity,' he says, instead of Beth-el, 'the
house of God.' A fine god whose worshippers had to be alarmed for its
safety! 'Its people'--what a contrast to the name they might have borne,
'My people'! God disowns them, and says, 'They belong to it, not to Me.'
The idolatrous priests of the calf worship will tremble when that image,
which had been shamefully their 'glory,' is carried off to Assyria, and
given as a present to 'king Jareb'--a name for the king of Assyria
meaning the fighting or quarrelsome king. The captivity of the god is
the shame of the worshippers. To be 'ashamed of their own counsel' is
the certain fate of all who depart from God; for, sooner or later,
experience will demonstrate to the blindest that their refuges of lies
can neither save themselves nor those who trust in them. But shame is
one thing and repentance another; and many a man will say, 'I have been
a great fool, and my clever policy has all crumbled to pieces,' who will
only therefore change his idols, and not return to God.
Verse 7 recurs to the political punishment of the civil rebellion. The
image for the disappearance of the king is striking, whether we render
'foam' or 'chip,' but the former has special beauty. In the one case we
see the unsubstantial bubble,
'A moment white, then melts for ever';
and in the other, the helpless twig swept down by the stream. Either
brings vividly before us the powerlessness of Israel against the roaring
torrent of Assyrian power; and the figure may be widened out to teach
what is sure to become of all man-made and self-chosen refuges when the
floods of God's judgments sweep over the world. The captivity of the
idol and the burst bubble of the monarchy bid us all make Jehovah our
God and King. The vacant shrine and empty throne are followed by utter
and long-continued desolation. Thorns and thistles have time to grow on
the altars, and no hand cuts them down. What of the men thus stripped of
all in which they had trusted? Desperate, they implore the mountains to
fall on them, as preferring to die, and the hills to cover them, as
willing to be crushed, if only they may be hidden. That awful cry is
heard again in our Lord's predictions of judgment, and in the
Apocalypse. Therefore this prophecy foreshadows, in the destruction of
Israel's confidences and in their shame and despair, a more dreadful
coming day, in which we shall be concerned.
Verses 9 to 11 again give the sin and its punishment. 'The days of
Gibeah' recall the hideous story of lust and crime which was the
low-water mark of the lawless days of old. That crime had been avenged
by merciless war. But its taint had lived on, and the Israel of Hosea's
day 'stood,' obstinately persistent, just where the Benjamites had been
then, and set themselves in dogged resistance, as these had done, 'that
the battle against the children of unrighteousness might not touch
them.'
Stiff-necked setting oneself against God's merciful fighting with evil
lasts for a little while, but verse 10 tells how soon and easily it is
annihilated. God's 'desire' brushes away all defences, and the obstinate
sinners are like children, who are whipped when their father wills, let
them struggle as they may. The instruments of chastisement are foreign
armies, and the chastisement itself is described with a striking figure
as 'binding them to their two transgressions'; that is, the double sin
which is the keynote of the chapter. Punishment is yoking men to their
sins, and making them drag the burden like bullocks in harness. What
sort of load are we getting together for ourselves? When we have to drag
the consequences of our doings behind us, how shall we feel?
The figure sets the Prophet's imagination going, and he turns it another
way, comparing Israel to a heifer, broken in, and liking the easy work
of threshing, in which the unmuzzled ox could eat its fill, but now set
to harder tasks in the fields. Judah, too, is to share in the
punishment. If men will not serve God in and because of prosperous ease,
He will try what toil and privation will do. Abused blessings are
withdrawn, and the abundance of the threshing-floor is changed for
dragging a heavy plough or harrow.
Verse 12 still deals with the figure suggested in the close of the
previous verse. It is the only break in the clouds in this chapter. It
is a call to amendment, accompanied by a promise of acceptance. If we
'sow for righteousness'--that is, if our efforts are directed to
embodying it in our lives--we 'shall reap according to mercy.' That is
true universally, whether it is taken to mean God's mercy to us, or ours
to others. The aim after righteousness ever secures the divine favour,
and usually ensures the measure which we mete being measured to us
again.
But sowing is not all; thorns must be grubbed up. We must not only turn
over a new leaf, but tear out the old one. The old man must be slain if
the new man is to live. The call to amend finds its warrant in the
assurance that there is still time to seek the Lord, and that, for all
His threatenings, He is ready to rain blessings upon the seekers. The
unwearying patience of God, the possibility of the worst sinner's
repentance, the conditional nature of the threatenings, the possibility
of breaking the bond between sin and sorrow, the yet deeper thought that
righteousness must come from above, are all condensed in this brief
gospel before the Gospel.
But that bright gleam passes, and the old theme recurs. Once more we
have sin and punishment exhibited in their organic connection in verses
13 and 14. Israel's past had been just the opposite of sowing
righteousness and reaping mercy. Wickedness ploughed in, iniquity will
surely be its fruit. Sin begets sin, and is its own punishment. What
fruit have we of doing wrong? 'Lies'; that is, unfulfilled expectations
of unrealised satisfaction. No man gets the good that he aimed at in
sinning, or he gets something more that spoils it. At last the
deceitfulness of sin will be found out, but we may be sure of it now.
The root of all Israel's sin was the root of ours; namely, trust in
self, and consequent neglect of God. The first half of verse 13 is an
exhaustive analysis of the experience of every sinful life; the second,
a penetrating disclosure of the foundation of it.
Then the whole closes with the repeated threatening, dual as before, and
illustrated by the forgotten horrors of some dreadful siege, one of the
'unhappy, far-off things,' fallen silent now. A significant variation
occurs in the final threatening, in which Beth-el is set forth as the
cause, rather than as the object, of the destruction. 'They were the
ruin of him and of all Israel.' Our vices are made the whips to scourge
us. Our idols bring us no help, but are the causes of our misery.
The Prophet ends with the same double reference which prevails
throughout, when he once more declares the annihilation of the monarchy,
which, rather than a particular person, is meant by 'the king.' 'In the
morning' is enigmatical. It may mean 'prematurely,' or 'suddenly,' or
'in a time of apparent prosperity,' or, more probably, the Prophet
stands in vision in that future day of the Lord, and points to 'the
king' as the first victim. The force of the prophecy does not depend on
the meaning of this detail. The teaching of the whole is the certainty
that suffering dogs sin, but yet does so by no iron, impersonal law, but
according to the will of God, who will rain righteousness even on the
sinner, being penitent, and will endow with righteousness from above
every lowly soul that seeks for it.