Chapter 8
God's grievances against Israel are continued in this chapter. Interesting language in vs 1:
1 Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law. [Hos 8:1 ESV]
Like a vulture. Surviving on the dead? Living off the meat sacrificed to God? Not sure if it is to be this specific, but it surely indicates that the religious elite are not a good example! 2020- No. MSB says this is a symbol for the eagle that represented Assyria. I guess it is kind of sarcastic by implying that the great conquering eagle that symbolizes the Assyrian nation is in fact just a carrion eater, surviving on the demise of other nations. That makes it pretty picturesque. I think this is at least the second time an eagle/vulture has been mentioned. I looked for the Assyrian eagle before and didn't find it...but apparently I was on the right track, it is a real thing.
God says they appointed their own Kings on their own, they have made their own idols. He talks about the calf that they worship. He says it will be broken in pieces.
This verse is the result of the choices they are making.
7 For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it. [Hos 8:7 ESV]
This sounds a lot like the US. Sowing the wind = eliminating law enforcement. Believing that over reacting to bad things will result in good things. Who could ever think that? So many idealists who think they can find their way through. They aren't thinking things through, they nothing about a functioning government. They are trying to turn us into survival of the fittest/strongest/best armed. A nation ruled by the most powerful, not by the elected representatives. What will happen to the whole world when the restraint the US has always demanded of despots is no longer present? The whole world will become more chaotic, less just, more abusive of the powerless. And the ones bringing it all to pass are the very ones that will be powerless.
In this chapter, it is Israel that is losing her future, her peace, her prosperity. Israel is already, by this time, considered a small nation, a vassal state. They try to hire allies but to no useful end. And soon the tribute they are paying will become unbearable, unsustainable to them. (vs 10 - they will writhe because of the tribute...)
God is no longer accepting their sacrifices, and would not, even if they were to try and get it right. Doing right in worship has become an awkward, strange, and unfamiliar thing to them. (vs 12).
2022 - This seems similar to those in our day, under the New Covenant, who do not have the Holy Spirit within them to translate God's words and leadings to them. There are things that become understandable only through the Holy Spirit. Otherwise they are mysterious, incomprehensible and I think laughable to the lost. Surely what is described here in vs 12 is the Old Covenant's equivalent of that. Here is that whole verse:
"Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing." [Hos 8:12 ESV]
This verse:
13 As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt. [Hos 8:13 ESV]
I would suppose this is only figurative language. It is Assyria to the north that is going to conquer them, not Egypt In a real sense, I suspect those who could ran the other direction, away from the invaders, and resettled in Egypt. Maybe that is why in the end times it won't just be the highway from Assyrian that is crowded but they will also be coming from the south. But the implication here seems less a resettlement and more a return to slavery - or at least they will be sojourners in a foreign land. Maybe that is the right phrase.
2022 - This verse:
"For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds." [Hos 8:14 ESV]
The nation, with whom God made the covenant, has forgotten. The nation is somehow unsaved. God has judged that a line has been crossed, and he will now keep his side of the covenant, as promised, and destroy them as a nation. It is hard for us to comprehend God's criteria for this. The nation is made of people. It is individuals who are abandoning God and worshiping other Gods. Yet this is a national condemnation, that has individual results. If Israel falls, it people - individuals - will be killed, murdered, and carried off into slavery. What happens to these when they die, these individuals? Surely we don't believe that any significant number of them goes to heaven? The whole nation is condemned, how many good and righteous people could be there?
The last verse condemns both Israel and Judah. These prophets were seeing 150 years into the future.