Project 119: Hosea 6:11-7:16
| Project 119
“Everywhere But Heaven”
We humans are famous for turning to God after we have exhausted all other options. Clearly, that is not what God desires to see from us. When we treat God as an afterthought, we show how little we value His presence in our lives. What we fail to understand is that our reluctance to make God a priority keeps us from experiencing the salvation we yearn to know.
This section of Hosea’s prophecy lists the many ways in which Israel’s actions show her inability to make covenant faith the priority it should have been. Oblivious to God’s presence, Hosea assures the people that God sees them, and He is not pleased with the results. Indeed, their lack of attention to the things of God puts them in a place where they set themselves up for “a harvest of punishment” (Hosea 6:11, NLT). This divine retribution was not God’s original intention but was instead the natural consequence of the nation’s desire to take matters into her own hands.
Life in Israel during this time was chaotic and unsettling. Hosea makes references to the king making a fool of himself and bringing disrespect upon the throne. The fact of the matter is that during Hosea’s ministry there were three assassinations of Israelite kings (2 Kings 5:8-26) that led to political instability. Instead of turning to God, these kings had turned to foreign powers instead of God, a show of faithlessness that opened the door to idolatrous worship (Hosea 6:8-10).
The irony of the situation was that all along God had been providing for their needs, in spite of the fact that they had assumed it was Baal who had been blessing them (Hosea 6:11-14). The people were guilty of looking everywhere but to God (Hosea 6:15), never realizing that such transgression would bring them to the point of ruin.
God is an all-knowing God. Nothing takes God by surprise and He misses nothing. Sometimes we forget this fact. But we shouldn’t. When we find ourselves facing a difficult situation, remembering that our distress doesn’t escape God can lead us to make Him our first priority so that we might be delivered from our calamities and be made strong in His grace.
Hosea 6:11-7:16 (ESV):
For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed,
when I restore the fortunes of my people.
When I would heal Israel,
the iniquity of Ephraim is revealed,
and the evil deeds of Samaria;
for they deal falsely;
the thief breaks in,
and the bandits raid outside.
2 But they do not consider
that I remember all their evil.
Now their deeds surround them;
they are before my face.
3 By their evil they make the king glad,
and the princes by their treachery.
4 They are all adulterers;
they are like a heated oven
whose baker ceases to stir the fire,
from the kneading of the dough
until it is leavened.
5 On the day of our king, the princes
became sick with the heat of wine;
he stretched out his hand with mockers.
6 For with hearts like an oven they approach their intrigue;
all night their anger smolders;
in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
7 All of them are hot as an oven,
and they devour their rulers.
All their kings have fallen,
and none of them calls upon me.
8 Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples;
Ephraim is a cake not turned.
9 Strangers devour his strength,
and he knows it not;
gray hairs are sprinkled upon him,
and he knows it not.
10 The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
yet they do not return to the LORD their God,
nor seek him, for all this.
11 Ephraim is like a dove,
silly and without sense,
calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.
12 As they go, I will spread over them my net;
I will bring them down like birds of the heavens;
I will discipline them according to the report made to their congregation.
13 Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!
Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!
I would redeem them,
but they speak lies against me.
14 They do not cry to me from the heart,
but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
they rebel against me.
15 Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
yet they devise evil against me.
16 They return, but not upward;
they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt.