Hosea 2:11

"I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies."

The regular sabbaths and annual festivals, such as Tabernacles, Pentecost, and Passover, could not possibly be observed during the period of Israel's slavery in either Assyria or Babylon, except in some extremely abbreviated token form. Slaves would in no case have been exempted from work on a "sabbath" instituted by the God of the slaves! Thus, the sabbaths, etc., may be supposed to have ceased during the captivity; but there is more than that in this verse. It also has a prophecy of the ultimate removal of the sabbath day altogether, as indicated by the apostle Paul (Colossians 2:15-17) who used some of the exact terminology of this verse to describe how "the sabbath," etc., had been taken out of the way, Jesus our Lord "nailing it to his cross."

"Her ... her ... her ..." Despite the truth that the observance of the sabbath and certain solemn assemblies had long been established as legitimate parts of the worship of the true God, "Hosea reckons them here as the feast days of Baal (Hosea 2:13)."[33]

"The possessive "her," repeated after each festival, emphasizes that they now belonged, not to Yahweh, but to Israel in her own mad pursuit of the gods of fertility."[34]

This verse is significant in the light shed upon the nature of Israel's religion. Not even those portions of it which might have been derived from the true religion were at that time, in any sense, valid.

"What Hosea was faced with was not two distinct religions, co-existing in the same land, each with its own festivals and holy days, but a single religion which had incorporated practices both from Israel's old national religion and from the Baalism of the Canaanites."[35]