Hosea 7:7

"They are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me."

This is the third usage of the oven metaphor, as follows: (1) They are like the banked fire ready to flare up at the slightest chance, Hosea 7:4. (2) They were an oven fire, waiting while preparations are being completed, using the occasion to plan new evil, Hosea 7:6. (3) They "are hot as an oven"; their evil passions are a vicious, burning lust. Commenting on this multiple use of such a figure of speech, McKeating wrote:

"Hosea's exploitation of metaphor is masterful, though the Hebrew technique of using the same metaphor, in the same context, to make different and sometimes unrelated points is unfamiliar to us, and to our minds often confuses more than it clarifies. But like most literary conventions it makes sense once one realizes what the writer is doing."[7]

"They ... devour their judges ... all their kings are fallen ..." This is Hebrew parallelism, both expressions referring to the rapid failures of the central government during this anarchic period of Israel's history. Concerning that era: Pusey, as quoted by Butler, has this:

"The kingdom of Israel, having been set up in sin, was throughout its whole course, unstable and unsettled. Jeroboam I's house ended in his son Baasha. Baasha killed Jeroboam's son Nadab, and Baasha's house ended in his son Elah; Omri's ended in his son, God having delayed the punishment of Ahab's sins for one generation, on account of his partial repentance: then followed Jehu's in whose house God, for his obedience in some things, continued the kingdom for four generations. With these two exceptions, in the houses of Omri and Jehu, the kings of Israel either left no sons, or left them to be slain. Nadab, Elah, Zimri, Tibni, Jehoram, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah were put to death by those who succeeded them. Of all the kings of Israel, Jeroboam, Baasha, Omri, Menahem alone, in addition to Jehu and the three next of his house, died natural deaths. Therefore, God's Word said of Israel, "all their kings have fallen." The captivity was the tenth change after they had deserted the house of David. And yet such was the stupidity and obstinacy both of kings and people, that, amid all these chastisements, none, either people or king, turned to God and prayed him to deliver them. Not even distress, amid which almost all betake themselves to God, awakened any sense of religion in them. "There is none among them that calleth unto me!"[8]

When Israel rebelled against God and demanded a king like the nations around them (1 Samuel 8:7), it was the beginning of the end for Israel. In the bloody affairs of the northern Israel during the days of Hosea, the final dissolution of Ephraim was at hand; but it took several centuries more for the end to come for the southern Israel, Judah. They indeed continued until the times of the Messiah, but it was their inordinate desire for an earthly king that continued to blind their eyes, resulting in their rejection of their true Lord and Messiah and the judicial hardening of the apostate nation. (Romans 11:25).