Hosea 8:1-14

Threatened Destruction

Hosea 8:1-4 .

"Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law" ( Hos 8:1 ).

The Lord pursues the evildoers, not in a spirit of vengeance, but in a spirit of expostulation, to be followed by such penalty as the evil deeds have provoked and deserved. When he commands the prophet to set the trumpet to his mouth he regards the prophet in the capacity of a watchman, whose function it was to notify the coming of God amongst the children of men in some form of judgment. Isaiah was commanded in similar terms "Cry aloud, spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet." The trumpet called men to war, or alarmed them in periods of danger, or summoned them to concerted action on signal occasions. We are not to look upon the office of watchman as extinct. The term may indeed be applied to all trustworthy and vigilant leaders of society; we look to them to tell us the signs of the times, and to give us the signal either for flight or battle. When ministers of religion keep silent in the presence of social dangers or public calamities, they are not to be flattered as if they were exercising a wise prudence; they are to be condemned as unfaithful watchmen who consult their own interests rather than seek to defend and consolidate the welfare of the community. There is a great temptation to be silent in the presence of the wicked, for oftentimes the wealth of this world is in the hands of ungodly men, or it lies in their power to inflict great injury upon those who oppose their malignant will. It is under such circumstances that ministers of Christ are to show their intelligence, their fortitude, and their self-control. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that neither political nor religious ministers are to unduly excite themselves about trivial subjects, or expend their strength in the consummation of frivolous purposes. There is a sad lack of proportion in any method or economy which expends energy upon objects unworthy of much consideration.

In the case before us it is the house of God that is in peril Strictly speaking, "the house of the Lord" relates to the Temple, because in that place the Lord had been pleased to record his name. We find it pointed out, however, with clearness that the expression "the house of the Lord" is not confined to what we understand by the word temple or sanctuary: for example, in Jer 12:7 the Lord says, "I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies;" and in Jer 11:15 we read, What hath my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many?" In these instances by the "house" of the Lord we are to understand the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. The title "God's house" should be preserved through all generations as peculiarly distinctive of the sanctuary; it is a larger and older title than the term "temple." In describing all his own people the Lord says, "My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house"; by "all mine house" we are to understand the whole Church of God, the whole Israel of the Most High. Even when the ten tribes had no longer any portion in strictly temple worship, when, indeed, they had fallen into a base apostasy, God did not regard them as absolutely detached from his house, for he says, "For the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house."

The image by which the prophet represents the oncoming vengeance of God is most energetic and vivid "as an eagle against the house of the Lord." Primarily the eagle typifies the destructive irruption of Shalmaneser, who came down furiously; and bore away in mocking triumph the ten tribes. The "eagle" includes also Nebuchadnezzar, and, according to some interpreters, it includes the Roman eagle, the ensign of Roman arms. Whatever be the local and particular references as to the eagle, the great principle remains from age to age that God comes to judgment in various forms, always definitely, and, as we shall see, always intelligibly, not only inflicting vengeance as a sovereign whose covenants have been outraged, but condescending to explain the reasons upon which his most destructive judgments are based. Thus we read, "Because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law": the covenant had been broken by idolatry, and the law had been violated by social sins. It is needful to mark this distinction with great particularity, because it shows the breadth of the divine commandment. God is not speaking about a merely metaphysical law a law which can only be interpreted by the greatest minds, and put into operation on the sublimest occasions of life; he is speaking about a law which had indeed its lofty religious aspects, but which had also its social, practical, tender phases, in whose preservation every man, woman, and child in the kingdom ought to be interested.

It is important also to remember that God's law is always man's defence. We are not dealing with an Oriental prince who has made laws for his own preservation, but with a divine Father who never makes a law that has not a distinctly human aspect, and that is not enriched with a distinct redemptive purpose towards the human family. We might suppose that sin was a metaphysical mystery; something, indeed, for which the sinner himself was hardly responsible, because he did not know either the beginning or the end of his action. God, however, has made it clear that sin is always a crime; that is to say, not only a metaphysical offence, but a practical outrage, or a practical loss. Whoever sins against God sins against his own soul, and not only sins against his soul considered as a metaphysical entity, but sins against himself as a person who is environed and governed by beneficent laws. Once let those laws be violated, and the man does not only suffer metaphysically, or go down in some practical quantity or quality, but he actually suffers in body and estate, sometimes apparently, and always really.

"Israel shall cry unto me, My God, we know thee" ( Hos 8:2 ).

The Hebrew has been put thus: To me shall they cry, We know thee; we, Israel, thy people, know thee. A parallel passage may be found in the gospel of Matthew, "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?" Israel always claimed to know God, and they were always rebuked for not really knowing him, but knowing him only in name or pretence or worthless vision. Our Lord was encountered by the declaration on the part of the Jews, "He is our God"; but instead of accepting that testimony Jesus Christ appealed to the moral condition and recollection of the pretenders "It is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God. Ye have not known him:" here we have a common sophism exposed and denounced; here is profession of the most positive and blatant kind condemned as an expression of ignorance, and of something worse than mere intellectual ignorance. Israel professed that God had been accepted as the God of the individual and the nation, and yet Jesus Christ charges Israel with not knowing the God professedly so accepted. The charge applies to all religious profession. Do we understand the meaning of our own profession? Do we comprehend the full purpose of all the religious terms we use? When we recite a creed do we really pronounce a vital faith? This discrepancy between a set of formal words and the real meaning of the heart is the region in which temptation operates with deadliest effect. Everywhere Jesus Christ calls for reality: he will not have any of his people say more than they really believe. Even if part of a faith is spoken with energy, and the other part is spoken with some doubtfulness of tone, he would rather accept such a confession because of its reality, than he would receive a confession fluently uttered that did not rise from the innermost convictions of the heart. Always there has been a difficulty as between the utterance of the lip and the meaning of the soul. For example, in Isaiah we read, "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." This process of hypocrisy still goes on. The creed is read in as loud a voice as ever, but there is no soul in the tone of the reader. God will not be honoured by dead letters, he will not receive literary worship; he looks for the spiritual worshipper, and not for the mechanical form. Here is a test to which every soul may subject itself, here, indeed, is the throne of judgment before which every man may try the reality of his own religious beliefs and utterances.

"Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him" ( Hos 8:3 ).

The word "cast off" does not imply a merely mechanical or even intellectual action; that term is deeply tinged with moral significance, literally meaning, "to cast off with abhorrence." Israel not only cast off God, but abhorred all things good, him who is good, and the thing which is good; for the word here employed includes both the person and the object. When a man rejects God he rejects all things good. He may not know it, he may even deny it; but he must be brought by consideration or by experience to know that to cast off the Fountain is to cast away the stream; to shut out the sun is to shut out the light; to forsake God is to accept the sovereignty of evil and darkness. What is the consequence of such off-casting? The consequence is stated in plain terms "the enemy shall pursue him." The local reference is to the Assyrian, but the general reference is to the spirit of the law, the spirit that has been turned into an enemy by evil behaviour. "The way of transgressors is hard." "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." "Be sure your sin will find you out." "Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him." The Bible is full of the revelation of this doctrine. We are not to consider the doctrine as one of mere retaliation, but as one of natural and inevitable consequence. The punishment which follows sin is a proof of the goodness of the law which would guard men against it. Fearful are the consequences which flow from sin, even in the sense of deprivation. Were there no definite or positive punishment inflicted on account of sin, yet the deprivation of blessing which follows the downfall of the soul would itself be overwhelming. No longer does the soul see light, or hear music, or respond to love, or enter into sympathy with the spirit of progress; doors are shut, lights are extinguished, voices are silent; all that made life a joy and a triumph, a victory and a hope, is taken away, and the sinning soul sits down in darkness, in sackcloth and ashes, mourning an irreparable, an infinite loss.

"They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off" ( Hos 8:4 ).

The whole history of Israel is a history of protest against man-made kings. God declared to Jeroboam by the mouth of Ahijah the prophet that he would rend the kingdom out of the hands of Solomon, and give ten tribes to Jeroboam, and would take him, and he should reign according to all that his soul desired, and he should be king over Israel. After the ten tribes had made Jeroboam king, another prophet said to Rehoboam and the two tribes, "Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel; return every man to his house, for this thing is from me." God has thus overruled human institutions, and made them contribute to the extension and authority of his own kingdom. The desire for kings was not a legitimate desire, yet it was granted, and notwithstanding all the evils which have accrued God has used the regal institution for beneficent purposes.

God was never consulted as to the rules of the kingdom constituted by the ten tribes. The ten tribes were indeed atheistic; as for Jeroboam, he no sooner received the kingdom than he set up a rebellion against God. This contest between the human and the divine is not confined to Judah or Israel, or to any section of the tribes: we read in the Acts of the Apostles, "Against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." A marvellous conjunction of forces this, and yet not without a practical aspect, which our own experience enables us to appreciate. We are not to consider that Deicide was determined upon by the counsel of God, but that it was declared as an outcome or revelation of the human heart. God took no pleasure in the kings of Israel, for they were not from him. With the exception of Jehu and his house, all the kings of Israel may be described as atheistic. The kingdom of Israel lasted 223 years, eighteen kings reigned over it, representing ten different families, and it is on record that no family came to a close except by a violent death. Locally, this is all past and gone, but spiritually the whole action is alive to-day. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous." "If any man love God, the same is known of him." "Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."