Hosea 9

Hosea warns Israel (Ephraim) that the harvest feasts, which should be times of thanks, have become times of unfaithfulness. Because the people have chased idols and silenced the prophets, exile is coming and their fruitfulness will fail. The chapter looks back at God’s early love for Israel and ends with sorrow over a people who would not listen.

Hosea 9:1

Israel is told not to celebrate as the pagan nations do. The harvest should have been a time to thank God. Instead the people credited their grain to other gods and treated the threshing floor like a place of hired love, unfaithful to the Lord who gave it.

BSA: played the harlot (“been unfaithful, committed spiritual adultery”): God sees idolatry as a broken marriage, not just a wrong religious habit. love for hire (“loved a reward, been motivated by selfish gain”): Their worship was driven by the wish for crops and profit, not by love for God.

See also: Hosea 2:8.

Hosea 9:2

The very places that promised plenty will fail. Grain and wine were what Israel hoped idols would give. God says the floor and winepress will not feed them. What was trusted in place of God cannot deliver.

BSA: fail (“deceive, be untrue to their expectations”): The new wine will prove a false friend, letting down those who counted on it.

Hosea 9:3

Exile is announced. The land belonged to the LORD, and Israel was only a tenant in it. Having lived like the nations, they will be sent among them. Egypt, the old place of slavery, stands for returning to bondage, and Assyria is where they will eat unclean food.

BSA: unclean (“spiritually impure, defiled”): Food in a pagan land could not be offered to God, so the exiles would lose even the daily sign of being his people.

See also: Deuteronomy 28:68.

Hosea 9:4

In exile there will be no temple, so no offerings can be made. Even the meals they eat will be like food at a funeral, which made a person unclean. Their bread will only keep them alive. It cannot be brought to God’s house as worship.

BSA: bread of mourners (“food eaten in sorrow”): Contact with death made people unclean, so such food was joyless and unfit for worship.

See also: Numbers 19:14.

Hosea 9:5

God asks a sharp question. When the great feast days come and there is no temple, no altar and no homeland, what will they do? Something they took for granted will be gone, and nothing they have can replace it.

BSA: feast (“sacred assembly, festival”): These were meant to be holy gatherings with God, and the question shows how empty they will become.

Hosea 9:6

Even those who escape the invasion will not find safety. Egypt will take them in only to bury them near Memphis, the great city with its famous tombs. Back home, their treasured silver will be lost and weeds will grow where their tents stood.

BSA: thistles (“wild, unwanted plants, a type of thorny growth”): Wealth they stored up will be overgrown by wild plants, a picture of ruin and abandonment.

Hosea 9:7

The time of reckoning has arrived. Israel will know it, though the people have mocked the very prophets who warned them. They call the man of God a fool and mad. Their hostility to God’s messengers shows how great their sin is.

BSA: inspired (“having the Spirit of God”): The man they call insane is the one carrying God’s own Spirit and word.

Hebrew: מְשֻׁגָּע (meshugga’, H7696) — “mad, raving.” The Hebrew word is the same one used of a frenzied madman. People dismissed the prophet as unhinged because his message was unwelcome.

See also: Jeremiah 29:26.

Hosea 9:8

A prophet is meant to be a watchman who warns of danger, standing with God over his people. Instead, traps are set along the prophet’s path, and even God’s house is full of hatred toward him. The warning voice is treated as the enemy.

BSA: watchman (“watchman, one who observes and warns”): The prophet’s job is to protect the people by warning them, not to harm them. snare (“net, trap”): Like a bird catcher, enemies lay hidden traps for the prophet.

See also: Ezekiel 3:17.

Hosea 9:9

Israel has sunk as deep as in the days of Gibeah, a terrible story of cruelty and lawlessness told in Judges 19. God has not forgotten. He will remember their guilt and deal with it. Sin once seen as old and buried is still on the record.

BSA: corrupted (“ruined, destroyed”): Their sin was not only wrong but self-destroying, wrecking the people themselves.

See also: Judges 19:22-30; Hosea 10:9.

Hosea 9:10

God recalls his early joy in Israel. Finding them was like coming upon sweet grapes in a barren desert, or the first fig of the season. But at Baal-peor they gave themselves to a false god and to shame. They became as ugly as the idol they loved.

BSA: found (“like a treasure, a precious discovery”): God found delight in Israel when he first called them, before they turned away. Shame (“a state of disgrace”): The name stands for the idol itself, which brought only disgrace.

See also: Numbers 25:1-3; Jeremiah 2:2.

Hosea 9:11

Ephraim’s name means fruitful, and its glory was a large population. Now the glory will fly off like a bird. The curse falls on the very thing they prized: births, pregnancy and conception will all stop.

BSA: glory (“great honor, splendor”): Ephraim’s pride in its numbers and standing will vanish.

Hosea 9:12

Even if some children grow up, God will take them. The loss will be complete. The greatest sorrow of all is when God himself turns away from them. Everything else can be borne better than his absence.

BSA: bereave (“deprive, make childless”): The judgment leaves homes emptied of their sons and daughters.

See also: Deuteronomy 31:17.

Hosea 9:13

God had seen Ephraim, like the strong, well-placed city of Tyre, planted in a pleasant place and thriving. But the promise ends in grief. Their sons will be led out to be killed, perhaps by the invading army.

BSA: planted (“transplanted, rooted”): Ephraim looked secure and well-rooted, which makes the coming loss more shocking.

Hosea 9:14

The prophet cries out to the LORD on behalf of the people, and asks what he should request. His answer is a hard one: wombs that miscarry and breasts that run dry. It is better that children not be born than be born to slaughter. The prayer shows his anguish over the judgment.

BSA: dry up (“shrivel, wither away”): The nursing mother’s breasts would give no milk, which is part of the picture of barrenness.

Hosea 9:15

Gilgal was an early holy place where Israel first camped in the land, but it had become a center of false worship. God says he hates what is done there and will drive them out of his house. His love is withdrawn because the leaders have rebelled.

BSA: hated (“felt intense dislike, was displeased with”): God’s hatred is a firm rejection of their evil deeds, spoken by one who once loved them. rebellious (“revolters, disobedient, turning away from Me”): The leaders were not just mistaken but openly turned from God.

See also: Hosea 4:15; Amos 4:4.

Hosea 9:16

Ephraim is pictured as a tree whose root has dried up, so it cannot bear fruit. If a child is born, God will take the child most loved. The picture shows a people cut off from the source of life.

BSA: root (“source, foundation”): Without a living root nothing grows, so Israel’s lack of fruit comes from being cut off from God. darlings (“beloved, desired ones”): The children most treasured by their parents are the ones the judgment will take.

See also: Isaiah 5:24.

Hosea 9:17

The chapter ends on the cause of it all: they did not listen to God. So he will cast them off, and they will wander among the nations with no home. Disobedience, not bad luck, brought the exile. The sad ending leaves the door of mercy to be opened in later chapters.

BSA: wanderers (“nomads, fugitives”): A people once settled in the land will have no place to rest. obeyed (“hearkened to, listened to”): To obey is first to listen, and their trouble began with ears closed to God.

Hebrew: שָׁמַע (shama’, H8085) — “to hear, listen, obey.” The same Hebrew word means both hearing and obeying. To refuse to obey is to refuse to truly listen.

See also: Deuteronomy 28:64.