Hosea 1:1-3

The sin of Israel sharply reproved.

The great sin, the root-sin we may call it, of Israel at this time was idolatry. But that sin was not alone; it was aggravated, as usual, by accompanying abominations. All along, from the period of the disruption, idolatry had been their besetting sin. The oft-repeated statement that Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, "made Israel to sin" has a special significance in this regard. As long as Jerusalem remained the gathering-place of the tribes, arid Solomon's temple remained the national sanctuary, Judah must have retained the supremacy. To undermine that supremacy, or rather to transfer it to Israel, required a stroke of bold, unscrupulous policy; but the audacity, or rather godlessness, of Jeroboam was quite equal to the occasion. Under pretence of facilitating the religious service of his subjects, as though it was too much for them to go up to Jerusalem, but in reality to prevent the people turning again in their allegiance to the dynasty of David, he changed the place of religious worship, appointing Dan and Bethel at the northern and southern extremities of his kingdom—the one on the Syrian and the other on the Judaic frontier. But this change of place necessitated other changes in keeping therewith. The mode of worship had to be changed from that of the true God to that of the calves, symbolical representations of the true God. With such symbolic representation of Deity he had, no doubt, become familiar in Egypt, as previously Aaron and the Israelites had carried it with them on their emancipation from that land. There was something very insidious in this change; it was only a half-measure, but a preparation for the whole. It was not the introduction of new gods, such as Baal and Ashtaroth, the dual deities of Phoenicia, of which sin Ahab was guilty; it was the worship of Jehovah under an external form. It was not the violation, at least directly, of the first commandment, which forbids the having of other gods; it was the transgression of the second, which condemns the making a graven image; so that Stanley says of Jeroboam that "to keep the first commandment he broke the second." The people took far too kindly to the change, and clung to it with fatal tenacity for two hundred years, subsequently even in the time of the Prophet Hoses, as we learn from several passages in this very book the calves were still objects of idolatrous worship. In our study of these verses we have for consideration the following.

I. THE PERSON OF THE PROPHET . He introduces himself to us by his name and surname, or patronymic. His name, Hosea or Savior, is one of good omen and happy augury, at least in his case; his patronymic of Ben-Beeri, "son of my well," has also a pleasing significance of its own. By the former we are reminded of that Savior to whom the prophet pointed and to whom he bore his testimony, and thus became an instrument of salvation; while the surname may call to mind him who is the Well-spring of salvation and the Fountain of living water, according to his own words, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." Or if the name have reference to the function of the prophet himself, it may denote his pouring out the water of life from the Divine Fountain of life.

II. THE POWER WITH WHICH HE WAS INVESTED . This, of course, touches on his Divine commission, and the corresponding inspiration which qualified him for the proper execution Of that commission. Like the apostles in after times, he claims to hold his commission from God, and to be charged with the commands of God. Thus in Luke 3:2 we read that "the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness;" and in Galatians 1:1 we find the apostle of the Gentiles speaking of his commission in the following terms: "Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead." Thus in the case of Paul, his apostolic authority was not from ( ἀπὸ ) men, as the source of that authority by whom it is conferred, nor by ( διὰ ) man , the single representative of any body of men, as the channel of that authority through whom it is conveyed. It was through the two Persons of the blessed Trinity—Son and Father, agent and origin, medium and source—a direct Divine commission. So with the prophet in this introductory passage. But he not only held his commission from God, he had his instructions from God. His position was like that of a diplomatist or ambassador sent out by an earthly sovereign, who is commissioned to represent his sovereign, and in that capacity to adhere faithfully to the instructions he has received, correctly interpreting the will and wishes of his monarch and scrupulously communicating the same. Three several times is the source of Hosea's instructions insisted on. There is the first general statement of the word of the Lord coming to him; then there is the notification of the beginning of the word of the Lord being in Hosea; and next we learn that the Lord spake to him. The conveyance of these instructions is presented under a threefold aspect. They come to him from the Lord and so with Divine authority; they reach him by direct communication, for the Lord himself spoke to him; and they are in him, reflected on his mind and retained in his memory, and ready for present and practical use. God made him a depositary of his truth and thus fitted him for declaring it to others; he revealed his will to him, and by the inspiration of his Spirit qualified him to record it without error for the benefit of present and succeeding generations. Though not possessing or presuming to possess this special inspiration of prophets under the Old and apostles under the New Testament, the preacher of the gospel is truly commissioned and strictly commanded to declare the whole counsel of God, not with wisdom of words, not with enticing words of man's wisdom, not handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

III. THE PERSEVERANCE OF THE PROPHET . The official life of Hosea reached the length of an ordinary lifetime, falling little short of the ordinary three score years and ten. The summer's heat and winter's cold of all those long and weary years still found him at his post, as a prophet of the Lord. Many a dynastic change had taken place during that period: sovereigns might rise or sovereigns fall; men might come and men might go, but he went on as ever. Faithful to his God, faithful to his king and country, alike pious and patriotic, he persisted in the work to which God had caned him. To most men work long continued at last becomes irksome; the performance of duties in incessant round and for a lengthened period disposes men to seek respite or release; age itself, with its weight of years, brings manifold infirmities; but however it may have been with the prophet, he does not plead age, or infirmity, or length of service, or exhausted energies, or enfeebled strength, or failing powers either of mind or body, in order to obtain exemption from further service, or to secure in the evening of his days that ease or rest which he had so well earned; nay, unceasingly as uncomplainingly he persists in his onerous duties, and plies the task which Providence assigned him.

IV. THE PATIENCE OF THE PROPHET . If our work be pleasant, and especially if it prove successful, we are greatly encouraged thereby, and in some sort enabled to persevere. Want of success, on the other hand, too often paralyzes men's powers and puts an end to their exertions. Not so with Hosea. His efforts for the spiritual amelioration of his people were ineffectual; his labors in that direction were not crowned with the desired success. Yet in shadow as in sunshine, through evil report as good report, whether his work was appreciated or despised, with fruit or wanting it, he had learnt to possess his soul in patience. Many an untoward event, many a froward or perverse action on the part of those to whom he ministered, many a hard speech, discouraged his heart, we are sure, from the history of those evil days and the godless generation among whom he lived and wrought. His patience was tried—sorely tried, yet triumphed over all What a lesson to all who are engaged in work for God!

V. THE PECULIARITY OF THE PERIOD AT WHICH HE PUBLISHED HIS PREDICTIONS , That peculiarity consists in the fact that it was a period of unwonted prosperity. Had it been otherwise; had it been a time of positive decline or partial disorganization; had disintegration actually and obviously set in as at a later period, it might have been said that coming events were so casting their shadows before that a sagacious calculator of probabilities might readily predict the coming catastrophe. But in the reign of Jeroboam II ; son and successor of Joash, and largely by his prowess, the power of Israel was revived. During his reign of forty-one years he had enlarged his kingdom beyond all preceding limits from the time of its separation item Judah; he had recovered Damascus, the capital of Syria, though that city had been lost even in the days of Solomon, together with Hamath on the Oronte; the key of Eastern Syria, thus checking if not crushing that hostile power. The northern kingdom had reached an unprecedented height of wealth and power; the sovereign had been triumphant in war, and his subjects were now happy and prosperous in peace. But at this very period of material wealth and military glory, after he had " restored the coasts of Israel from the entering of Hamath [the lower part of the Coelo-Syrian valley, from the gorge of the Litany to Baalbek] to the sea of the plain," amid the splendor of his achievements and the opulence of his subjects, the prophet foretold, not merely the decline, but the actual downfall, of the kingdom of Israel. An important lesson connects itself with this. It is not only the truth of the prediction, so contrary to all calculation, so opposed to all seeming probability, but the warning thus furnished against mistaking temporal prosperity for a proof of Divine favor, or reckoning and resting on the permanence of earthly possessions. In the case before us, however, a worm was at the root of the gourd. The moral progress of the nation was in the inverse ratio of its material prosperity.

VI. THE PAINFUL DECLARATION OF THE NATIONAL SIN . That sin was more than ordinary apostasy, bad as such a state of things assuredly is; it was idolatry which is spiritual adultery. This was expressed by the symbol of the prophet, whether in reality, vision, or parable, wedding an unchaste woman, a wife of whoredoms, by name Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. If such a union, even in symbol, was humiliating to the pure spirit of the prophet, how dreadful for a people to be in a condition so disgustingly loathsome and fearfully sinful, exposed to the deserved wrath of the Almighty, and obnoxious to the doom he has pronounced against such, "Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from thee!" If such relationship is repulsive in the extreme to every man of proper sentiments and virtuous feeling, how unspeakably hateful to the infinitely holy God to stand in the position of husband to a people so abominably faithless and impure! Yet their Maker had been their Husband, even the Lord of hosts, which is his adorable name.