Hosea 13:1-8

Justification of the ways of God to man.

Israel had been the cause of their own calamities—another proof that sin is the procuring cause of all human suffering and sorrow. God's character is seen to be everlastingly the same—long-suffering and merciful, ever gracious to penitents, abounding in goodness and truth to all, but by no means clearing the guilty.

I. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS . Most men are fond of power, all men value prosperity; yet few men know the right road, and fewer still pursue it. Righteousness is the right road to success of any kind, and the sure way of elevation; it exalts either nation or individual who practices it.

1. As long as Ephraim worshipped the true God and abstained from idolatry, which subsequently became their besetting sin, they had power and pre-eminence. When they spake, their word was with power and not infrequently inspired terror; it was sure to come with authority and to command respect among the other tribes of Israel. Ephraim had long been the premier tribe, enjoying the credit of great names, Joshua and Samuel; and of great deeds, the defeat of Midian and the death of the two Midianite princes, Oreb and Zeeb; also of great privileges, the national sanctuary having been for three centuries and a half at Shiloh, within the confines of that tribe. Nor were they slow to assert themselves and advance their claims.

2. But the tide turned. They offended in Baal; then came national degradation and political death—they fell by their own hand as moral suicides. Sin brought Ephraim down from his high and exalted position, and laid his honor in the dust. He became like a dead man, despoiled of his authority, deprived of many of his subjects, and on the verge of ruin; his activities and vigor gone and his dignity departed, himself already dead though not yet buried. "When Ephraim forsook God and took to worship images, the state received its death-wound, and was never good for anything after. Note: deserting God is the death of any person or persons."

II. SIN IS A DOWNWARD SLOPE . The sin of idolatry was gradually developed in Israel. It began with the modification of the national worship by Jeroboam, when he changed the place and plan of that worship. When he had audaciously transferred the place of worship from Jerusalem to Dan on the Syrian frontier, and to Bethel on the border of the kingdom of Judah, in order to keep the people away from Jerusalem, the true place of worship and seat of the Davidic dynasty, he proceeded further to introduce the worship of the calves—a relapse, at least as to form, into the idolatry of Egypt. His design was not, indeed, the introduction of a new and rival deity, but the modeling of Jehovah's worship under an external and symbolic form. The sin did not stop here; it progressed until, in the days of Ahab, the Phoenician deity Baal became an object of worship. It was bad enough to make a graven image or material representation of the true God and bow down to it, thus violating the second commandment and neglecting the solemn instruction that the worship of God must be spiritual, not material; but it was still worse to introduce other gods, as the Phoenician Baal, in direct violation of the first commandment of the Law, which requires the exclusive worship of Jehovah. Thus the sin of idolatry progressed in Israel. Nor is this all; along with the worship of Baal the idolatry of the calves, as we learn from this Scripture, still survived two hundred years after its introduction by Jeroboam. Thus they "grew worse and worse; coveted more idols, doted more upon those they had, and grew more ridiculous in the worship of them." Superstition is an expensive thing. Israel used much of the means God had them in making molten images. It is a whimsical thing; men follow their own fancies in carrying it out. It is an unspeakably stupid thing; that image which is man's work, man's wisdom, the product of man's willfulness, becomes the object of man's worship. It is, moreover, a debasing thing; the fervor of their worship is stimulated by an authoritative, perhaps a royal, edict, enjoining reverence and homage to the senseless image of a calf But whether the command proceeds from priests, or people, or prince, the kissing of the calves was in token of "the adoration of them, affection of them, and allegiance to them as theirs." It has been justly remarked by Pusey that "sin draws on sin. This seems to be a third stage in sin. First, under Jeroboam, was the worship of the calves. Then, under Ahab, the worship of Baal. Thirdly, the multiplying of other idols ( 2 Kings 17:9 , 2 Kings 17:10 ), penetrating and pervading the private life, even of their less wealthy people."

III. THE SHORT - LIVED STATE OF SINNERS . They have often the show of prosperity, but their prosperous state is short-lived. "I have seen," says the psalmist, "the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree" (or a green tree growing in its native soil). "Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found." This truth is illustrated by four very striking similitudes. The morning cloud glowing in the early sunshine, assuming phantastic forms and displaying varying hues of beauty, often presents itself as a forerunner of the rain-shower to moisten the dry parched ground; but ere long it vanishes, and the cloudy morning ushers in a clear and rainless day. The early dew, with its pearly drops so bright and beautiful on the grass of a summer morning, which appears as if to promise sufficient moisture to the earth even in the absence of the long looked-for rain, is soon brushed aside by a passing foot, or coal rates before the day has far advanced. Both similitudes had already been employed by the prophet to exhibit the fleeting and transitory nature of Israel's religious profession and the consequent disappointment to the Divine expectations, so they are used here in turn to represent the transient character of sinners' prosperity and their disappointment from worldly things. The two other similitudes, though less pleasing, are equally powerful as representations of what is evanescent: the worthless chaff, which is whirled away in winnowing; and the offensive smoke, which, as has been pithily said, swelleth, welleth, and vanisheth—both soon dissipated and disappearing. "While these four emblems in common," says Pusey, "picture what is fleeting, two, the early dew and the morning cloud, are emblems of what is in itself good, but passing; the two others, the chaff and the smoke, are emblems of what is worthless. 'The dew and the cloud were temporary mercies on the part of God which should cease from them; good in themselves, but, to their evil, soon to pass away.'... Such dew were the many prophets vouchsafed to Israel; such was Hosea himself, most brilliant, but soon to pass away. The chaff was the people itself, to be carried out of the lord's land; the smoke, "its pride and its errors, whose disappearance was to leave the air pure for the household of God."

IV. SIN IS BASE INGRATITUDE TO GOD .

1. God assures Israel that, however far they had degenerated and fallen, however much they had changed, the change had been entirely on their side, not on his; as though he had said, "And I, even I," fur the pronoun is emphatic, "am still Jehovah, the same unchanging and unchangeable Being, the same in mightiness to succor, the same in willingness to help is also thy God, the same in covenant relation, the same in faithfulness to every promise, and the same in ability to fulfill the word he has pledged."

2. He pleads their past experience and the many proofs he had given them of his goodness; he appeals to them in regard to his treatment of the fathers and founders of their race, going back to the period of the Exodus, and thus gently hinting the covenant entered into at Sinai and reminding them of its conditions. In view of God's faithfulness and their own faithlessness, of God's goodness and their ingratitude, of his enduring mercies which they and their progenitors had experienced for centuries, and of the fitful and infrequent conformity of their conduct therewith, they must surely have hung their head in shame and cried out in the language of another prophet, "O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day."

3. The law of reciprocity demands a return on the part of the people of God. He had made himself known to them by his Word and by his works, by his providences and by his prophets; he had made himself known to them as their fathers' God, as their own God in a special relationship, acknowledging them as his peculiar people, he naturally claimed, not only their knowledge, but acknowledgment of himself. It was their bounden duty, in turn, to acquaint themselves with him, to know him to be their God and no other, to acknowledge him in his ineffable perfections, in his glorious attributes, and in the ordinances of his worship, and also to own allegiance to him alone. And if all this was a duty incumbent on Israel, surely it is a duty equally incumbent, yea, much more so, upon ourselves; while neglect of such duty on our part brands us with an ingratitude deeper, blacker, and baser than that of Ephraim when the prophet wrote.

4. He backs all with the assurance of his saving power, and assigns as a special reason for knowing and acknowledging God that there is no Savior besides him. Of this he had given abundant proof by the deliverances he had wrought and the provision he had made for them, as for their fathers before them, under the most trying circumstances, when they were in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. The very idea of God implies saving power on his part, and happiness in time and eternity for all who are his true Israel; and "as where we have protection we owe allegiance, so where we have salvation and hope for it we owe adoration." Now, a friend in need is a friend indeed. Such a Friend was God to Israel, an all-sufficient Friend; and just such a Friend is God to his people still.

V. SIN , BY REASON OF CERTAIN AGGRAVATIONS , BECOMES MORE HEINOUS IN THE SIGHT OF GOD . This is the case specially when the good gifts of his providence are used to the dishonor of God and the neglect of his service. It was thus with Israel, when pride of heart and forgetfulness of God were the return they made him for all his goodness to themselves and their fathers during all the years that had been from their entrance into the land of promise. The Lord himself had been their Shepherd; he had tended them with greatest care, leading them in green pastures and by still waters. But "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked." How often is this conduct of Israel repeated! Prosperity pampers pride, and pride makes men forget God, as if it were men's necessities that kept them mindful of God. "It is sad that those favors which ought to make us mindful of God, and studious what we shall render to him, should make is unmindful of him, and regardless what we do against him. We ought to know that we live upon God, when we live upon common providence, though we do not, as Israel in the wilderness, live upon miracles."

VI. SIN 'S SAD SEQUEL . The sins of the people grew worse and became more aggravated; the Divine judgments are in proportion. In an early verse (third) of the chapter they are threatened with the evanescence of their prosperous condition, but something much worse and more alarming is predicted (verses 7, 8) as ready to follow. Not only was all good to be taken from them, but all evil was to come upon them. The Lord's flock is to lose the Shepherd's care; thus deserted, they will soon fall victims to savage beasts—nay, their former Shepherd not only abandons them to beasts of prey, but does himself assume the character and put forth the fierceness of such beasts. The ferocity of the lion, the fleetness of the leopard, and the fury of the robbed or ravenous she-bear, now represent the means which he employs against them. And as if it were not enough to specify the lion, the leopard, the bear, and the lion a second time, he adds "the wild beast," that is, wild beasts in general. It appears as if the dreadfulness of all wild beasts combined was required to exhibit the power of God's wrath and the fury of his anger. If the sinner escaped from the lion, a leopard overtakes him; or if he escapes the vigilance of the leopard's keen vision, a bear meets him; in a word, the fierceness of all wild beasts together is not equal to that of God's wrath. "All the dreadfulness of ell creatures in the world combined meets in the wrath of God." A sorrowful contrast is here presented. God had once watched over them for good; now, leopard-like, he watches their wanderings, and with lynx-eyed vigilance waits as if to take advantage of them. On the other hand, their heart had been puffed up with pride, as well as hard and closed against the gentlest admonitions and most faithful instructions; now their heart shall be torn open with leonine force and violence . Sinners may shut the remonstrances and warnings of the Divine Word out of their hearts and remain obdurate, but afflictive providences or untoward events of some kind, may at God's pleasure tear away the obstruction, and tear open the hardest heart. Whether the opinion of those who think there is a reference here to the four ancient monarchies is founded in fact, or is only the mere offspring of fancy, we care not to examine. That there is a resemblance between the terrible threats of this passage and the terrible treatment which the people of God experienced at the hands of those monarchies, there can be little doubt. Of the four monarchies represented by beasts in the seventh chapter of Daniel, the Babylonish was the lion, the Persian a bear, the Grecian a leopard, the fleetness of which suitably set forth the rapidity of Alexander's exploits, all of which he performed in the space of twelve years, while he himself at his death had only reached the age of thirty-three years. The Roman empire is not likened to any one beast in particular, but is described as dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, with great iron teeth, devouring and breaking in pieces and stamping the residue with the feet, its ten horns standing for the ten kingdoms into which it was subsequently parceled.