The Lord accused the Israelites of being ungrateful for His many blessings in the past and therefore being disloyal to Him and His covenant with them. The section primarily enumerates and illustrates these accusations, but it closes with an announcement of coming judgment (7:12-13, 16).
This section stresses Israel's covenant disloyalty to Yahweh.
6:4 The Lord twice asked rhetorically what He would do with Ephraim and Judah. The questions express frustration, helplessness, and despair more than inquiry. The loyal love (Heb. hesed, cf. 2:19; 4:1) of these elect nations, expressed in their obedience to Yahweh's covenant, was as short-lived as the morning fog or as dew. Both disappear quickly especially in the hot Palestinian sun.
6:5 Therefore the Lord had sent messages of condemnation through His prophets that had the effect of mowing His people down. These messages had been as destructive as lightning bolts (cf. Amos 4:6-11).
6:6 God's preference is that His people love Him faithfully more than that they offer Him other types of sacrifices. He wanted the Israelites to acknowledge (know) Him rather than bringing burnt offerings to their altars (cf. 2:20; 4:1, 6). Sacrifices were meaningless, even offensive, unless offered out of a heart of love that demonstrated obedience to God's Word (cf. 1 Sam. 15:22; Isa. 1:11-17; Amos 5:21-24; Mic. 6:6-8; Matt. 9:13; 12:7).
6:7 Like Adam, the first and typical man in an endless stream of human beings, the Israelites had violated God's loving directions even though His blessings had been abundant.50The covenant that Adam transgressed was not the Mosaic Covenant, which the Israelites and Judahites had violated. It was the arrangement with Adam that God had specified for life within the Garden of Eden, the Adamic Covenant (Gen. 2:16-17). Ever since Adam, all people, including God's people, have dealt treacherously with Him by trying to seize the sovereignty from God because they doubted His love for them.
6:8 The Lord viewed Gilead, the region of Israel east of the Jordan River, as a city. Perhaps He meant that the whole area was similar to a city in which violence and murder were so widespread that one could see bloody footprints in the streets. He may have been referring to a particular city named Gilead (Ramoth-Gilead?) in Gilead where those conditions prevailed (cf. Gen. 31:47-48; Judg. 10:17). In any case, the point is clear. Evidence of gross violence against one's neighbors demonstrated lack of love for Yahweh and lack of respect for His covenant.
6:9 Whether priests were really murdering travelers as they approached the Israelite town of Shechem is uncertain. Perhaps they were. Shechem was a major religious and political center in Israel. On the other hand, this may simply be another way of describing the perverse behavior of even those who should have been closest to God. Shechem and Ramoth-Gilead were cities of refuge where people could supposedly flee for safety (cf. Josh. 20:1-2, 7-8). Shechem stood on the route between Samaria and Bethel, so many pilgrims traveled through Shechem. The Hebrew word translated "crime,"(zimmah) refers to the vilest sexual sins elsewhere (e.g., Lev. 18:17; 19:29; Judg. 20:5-6; Job 31:9-11). Such behavior by priests, who should have been serving the people by leading them to Yahweh, was vile to God.
6:10 The Lord had observed a horrible thing. The Israelites as a whole had practiced harlotry by going after pagan gods and had thus made themselves unclean. Religious apostasy involved sexual immorality, so both forms of harlotry are doubtless in view.
6:11 Judah also had sinned horribly and could anticipate a harvest of judgment. This would come when the Lord paid back His people for their sins. Yet the hope of eventual restoration was clear. This would be another type of harvest, a harvest marked by blessing and restoration, and that is the one primarily in view here. Reference to restoration concludes this brief message as it does the major series of messages on judgment.
The mention of Judah at the beginning and at the end of this message proves again that both kingdoms were guilty of disloyalty to God, though Israel was the worse offender.
This section focuses on Israel's domestic sins.
7:1 The Lord longed to heal Israel, but when He thought about doing so new evidences of her sins presented themselves. The prophets He sent to them were mainly ineffective in stemming the tide of rebellion. Most people's reaction to their messages was rejection and further heart-hardening. The people lied to one another and stole from each other. These two crimes are a synecdoche for civil and social injustices in general.
7:2 The Israelites apparently hoped that the Lord would not hold some of their sins against them, but He remembered all their wickedness. Their evil deeds surrounded them like a wall, so they were constantly before His eyes. They reminded Him of their sins whenever He looked in their direction.
7:3 Their political leaders rejoiced in the wickedness of the people because that made it easier for them to get away with sinning. These leaders, of course, should have opposed all forms of ungodliness since they were Yahweh's representatives on earth.
7:4 The Israelites as a whole were all adulterers, both physically and spiritually. Their passion for wickedness was like the fire in a baker's oven, very hot and constantly burning.
"The oven was so hot that a baker could cease tending the fire during an entire night--while the dough he had mixed was rising--and then, with a fresh tending of the fire in the morning, have sufficient heat for baking at that time."51
7:5 Verses 5-7 describe the assassination of one or more of Israel's kings, an example of the passion for wickedness just illustrated. The political leaders became drunk on a particular festive occasions that honored the king. The king himself joined in scoffing what was holy.
7:6 The princes eagerly plotted to overthrow the king. Their anger with him smoldered for a long time and was not obvious to him, like a fire hidden in an oven (v. 4), but at the proper time it flared up and consumed him and his supporters. Hosea saw this happen four times. Shallum assassinated Zechariah, Menahem assassinated Shallum, Pekah assassinated Pekahiah, and Hoshea assassinated Pekah (2 Kings 15:10, 14, 25, 30).
7:7 All of Israel's past kings had fallen. All the Israelite kings who followed Jeroboam II suffered assassination except Menahem. A continuing dynasty, as existed in Judah, never succeeded in the North. The reason was that none of the Israelites sought the Lord.52
"Like every revolutionary state that has no faith in anything beyond itself, Israel was burning up in its own anger."53
This pericope condemns Israel's foreign policy.
7:8 Ephraim had mixed itself with the pagan nations, like unleavened dough mixed with leaven. She had done this by making alliances with neighbor nations as well as by importing heathen customs and pagan gods into Israel.
"Hosea's lurching foreign policy is illustrative. In 732 B.C., Hoshea, after killing Pekah, suddenly shifted from alliance with Egypt, Philistia, and Aram-Damascus to alliance with Assyria. A few years later he broke that alliance, and coming virtually full circle, again sought alliance with Egypt. These confused policies are caricatured in the figurative sense of mixed up.'"54
Ephraim had become like all the other nations rather than distinctive, as Yahweh intended (Exod. 19:6). To use another figure, Ephraim was similar to a pancake that the cook had not turned over, all burnt and black on one side and soggy and runny on the other. In other words, she was only half baked, worthless, not what God intended or what could nourish others. She was crusty toward Yahweh but soft toward other nations.
7:9 Foreign alliances had sapped Ephraim's strength rather than adding to it, but the Israelites were ignorant of this. They thought they were as strong as ever. Tribute payments to allies constantly drained the nation's wealth and weakened its economy (cf. 2 Kings 15:19-20; 17:3). Israel was unaware of its real condition, as when a person's hair becomes gray but he does not notice it. Others can sense the approach of death, but he does not. Israel was dying in the late 730s and early 720s, but its own people did not know it.
7:10 Despite Israel's weakness, the nation was too proud to return to Yahweh and seek His help. Israel seems to have been living in the past glory days rather than in the present. The years following the reign of King Jeroboam II saw the weakening of Israel that this whole section of the book pictures.
7:11 Ephraim was behaving like a dove, a bird known for its silliness and naiveté (cf. Matt. 10:16). Expediency and human wisdom marked by vacillation had guided Israel's foreign policy for years rather than the will of God. This was "bird-brained"diplomacy. Emissaries had fluttered off to Egypt (2 Kings 17:3-4) and Assyrian (2 Kings 15:29) seeking aid without realizing the danger that these nations posed (cf. 11:11). Finally, because Israel turned from Assyria to Egypt for help against Assyria, Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom.
7:12 Yahweh promised to bring Israel under His control and to subdue it, as when a hunter throws a net over birds. He would chasten them in harmony with what He had earlier proclaimed to His people when He gave them the Mosaic Covenant (cf. Lev. 26:28).
"Vv 8-12 would appear to refer to Hoshea's desperate, inconsistent attempts at foreign alliances. He came to power submitting to Assyrian hegemony, paying tribute, and thus preserving the central-southern portions of the nation not yet controlled by Assyria. Within a few years (i.e., sometime in the mid-720s) he stopped tribute payments to Assyria and appealed for support to a temporarily resurgent Egypt (1 Kgs 17:2-4). This was the mixed up' foreign policy among the nations' (v 8) of a dying people (v 9)."55
7:13 The Lord pronounced doom on the Israelites because He would judge them for straying from Him like sheep from their Shepherd. Destruction would be their punishment because they rebelled against Him. His desire was to redeem them from destruction, but they only spoke lies about His desire and ability to redeem them. That is why they made foreign treaties: to defend themselves since they thought Yahweh would or could not.
"The God of the Exodus is unchanged in His will, but because of Israel's lies there will be no exodus' from the Assyrian danger."56
7:14 When the people cried out, it was not in prayer to God but out of self-pity over their miserable condition. These tears did not impress Him. They assembled (or gashed themselves, maybe both) to obtain food and drink from their idols. Crying out, wailing, and slashing oneself were all aspects of the Canaanite worship style that the Israelites adopted (cf. 1 Kings 18:28). They turned away from Yahweh, the only one who could provide their needs, like stubborn children.
7:15 It was Yahweh who had taught His people how to be strong. He had also made them strong militarily (cf. Ezek. 30:24-25), for example during Jeroboam II's reign (cf. 2 Kings 14:25-28). Yet they had used what He had given them to sin against Him (cf. Gen. 50:20). They treated Him as their enemy. This was further evidence of their ingratitude.
7:16 They had looked around to other nations for help, but they had not turned their hearts and eyes to heaven to seek the Lord's help. They had become like a warped bow in Yahweh's hands. Rather than shooting His enemies, they shot their own leaders and slew them (e.g., Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah). In the days of Jeroboam II the Israelites had also boasted insolently about not needing Yahweh to the Egyptians. But the Egyptians, their treaty partner on several occasions, would deride them for their weakness.
