Hosea 8:8 - Meaning and Application

It was Israel’s honor and joy that they had only one God to trust, and he was enough in every trouble. They also had only one God to serve, and he was fully worthy of all their worship. But it was their sin, folly, and shame that they did not know when they were blessed. They abandoned their own mercy for false empty things.

First, they multiplied their alliances (Hosea 8:9). They “hired lovers,” or, as the margin says, they “hired loves.” In other words, they spent heavily to buy the friendship of the nations around them, who otherwise had no real love for them. Those nations cared only for gain, like the Shechemites in Genesis 34:23, asking, “Will not their cattle and their property be ours?”

If Israel had kept the honor of being God’s special people, surrounding nations would have admired them as a wise and understanding people. But when they dishonored their own standing, their neighbors looked down on them. They had no real influence except what they paid for. People who have no friends or affection except what they can purchase among their neighbors are in a sad state.

Here is the contempt Israel came under among the nations (Hosea 8:8). Israel is swallowed up, devoured by strangers. Their land is eaten up too (Hosea 8:7), and they themselves are ruined as well. Once they were rich and respected, but now they have lost both wealth and reputation, like a merchant who has gone bankrupt. They are among the Gentiles like a vessel no one wants, a broken and dishonored vessel (2 Timothy 2:20; Jeremiah 22:28).

This is often true of people who profess religion but then grow worldly and ungodly. They become the most despised of all people. If salt loses its taste, it is fit only to be trampled underfoot. Or this may point to their captivity and scattering among the nations. They would be among them as poor people and prisoners, and who takes pleasure in such a sight?

Yet Israel kept courting the nations anyway (Hosea 8:9). They went to Assyria to win the king of Assyria as their helper. In this, they acted like a wild donkey alone by itself, foolish, stubborn, and unruly. They would have their own way, and nothing would hold them back, not even God’s law or God’s warnings. They set out on a path of their own, and that would make them easier prey for the lion. See Job 11:12 and Jeremiah 2:24.

This is a picture of human nature. In nothing are people more like a wild donkey’s colt than in seeking help and satisfaction from creatures instead of from God alone.

Their foreign alliances would also bring trouble, not rescue (Hosea 8:10). Though they hired help among the nations and hoped to avoid ruin, God says, “Now I will gather them.” He will gather them as sheaves are gathered on the threshing floor (Micah 4:12). What they arranged for their safety would only make them easier prey for their enemies. There is no defense against God’s judgments when they come with his authority. The very things people hire to protect themselves often help bring about their destruction. See Isaiah 7:20.

The king of Assyria, whose friendship they wanted, boasted as a king over princes, as in Isaiah 10:8. He laid heavy burdens on Israel and taxed them heavily (2 Kings 15:19-20). “They shall sorrow a little,” or perhaps, “They have begun to be diminished.” Either way, this burden was only the start. It was small compared with what still lay ahead, or else they were not taking it seriously enough.

God often sends his judgments gradually on a stubborn people. In that way, he shows how slow he is to anger and gives them room to repent. But if people are only made to sorrow a little and do not turn to godly sorrow, they will one day sorrow much more, even forever.

Second, they multiplied their altars and temples. They denied the power of true godliness and pushed it aside. God says, “I wrote for him the great things of my law” (Hosea 8:12). This reminds them of their privilege. They had God’s statutes and judgments made known to them, and they were trusted with his living words.

The things of God’s law are truly great things. They show the greatness of the Lawgiver, and they are of great use and importance to us. They concern our life and our eternal well-being. If we use them rightly, they make us great. They are also things God himself will honor.

It is a great privilege to have God’s law written down. Written truth is clearer, spreads farther, lasts longer, and is less likely to be lost or twisted than spoken words alone. These things are written by God’s own hand in the sense that Moses and the prophets wrote as God guided them by the Holy Spirit. And for those in the visible church, these great things were written for their instruction, so they must receive them. What was written in earlier times was written for our learning and is useful to us.

If those people were happy who had the great things of God’s law written to them, how much happier are we who have the gospel written to us? Yet Israel treated this privilege lightly. They counted these great things of the law as something strange, as if they were unclear and unreasonable, or as if they were foreign and had nothing to do with them. They treated them like strangers and did not know how to welcome them. They said, in effect, “We do not want to know your ways.”

So when God writes the great things of his law to us, we should make them familiar, like close family. We have them written so they may speak with us (Proverbs 6:22, Proverbs 7:3-4). But we make nothing of God’s law if we treat it as strange, as if it does not concern us.

They also kept up the outward form of religion, but it did them no good. They multiplied their altars (Hosea 8:11). Ephraim made many altars to sin.

God had appointed that there should be only one altar for sacrifice (Deuteronomy 12:3, 12:5). But the ten tribes had turned away from that command and still wanted to seem very devout and eager for God’s honor. As if they were making up for the insult they had shown to God’s altar, they built many altars and said they were for the God of Israel. Yet that did not excuse their clear disobedience to God’s command, and the example of the patriarchs, who lived before Moses’ law and had many altars, did not justify them either.

In truth, they made many altars for sin, meaning their actions became sin to them, and those altars would become a record of sin against them. God would count it as a serious offense and charge them with the very thing they hoped would cover their guilt. Or the altars would lead them into even more sin. Once they started multiplying altars to the God of Israel, they would soon go on to altars for other gods. It is a great sin to corrupt the worship of God, and it will be counted as sin, however fair the excuse may sound. The path of sin goes downhill. Those who step away from God’s fixed command will keep wandering farther.

They also multiplied their sacrifices, as Hosea 8:13 says. Their altars smoked with offerings. They sacrificed meat, and they held feasts over the sacrifices. They spent a great deal on their religion, and like many who replace God’s commands with their own ideas, they were very eager in their own way. It was as if they thought that imposing hardships on themselves could make up for dishonoring God’s great sacrifice, and that keeping a made-up ceremonial law could excuse them from obeying all God’s moral commands.

But how did they fare? God did not accept their service. How could he, when they did not offer their sacrifices on the altar that alone made the gift holy, and when they brought only the flesh, not the spiritual sacrifice of a repentant, believing heart? Only those services are pleasing to God that follow his Word and are offered through Jesus Christ, the one who brings us to God (1 Peter 2:5).

God also used their sacrifices as a reason to call them to account for their sins. Instead of pardoning their guilt and wiping away their sins, as they hoped, he would remember their guilt and punish their sins. The sacrifices of wicked people are so hateful to the Lord that they lead him to deal with all their other evil as well. When people think they can use sacrifices to bribe the Judge of heaven and earth into overlooking their sin, that is the greatest insult they can offer him, and it becomes the sin that fills up the measure of judgment. Asking permission to sin is really asking for the curse that comes with sin, and that is how God answers them, according to the many idols among them. “I will punish their sins, for they shall return to Egypt.” They would be carried away captive into Assyria, which would become a house of bondage to them, just as Egypt had been to their fathers. Or this points back to Deuteronomy 28:68, where returning to Egypt marks the final misery of that sinful nation.

They also multiplied their temples, and they claimed these too were in honor of the true God. In reality, they were showing contempt for God’s choice of Jerusalem as the place where he had put his name. “Israel has forgotten his Maker” (Hosea 8:14). They claimed to know him, yet they forgot him, because they did not want to keep God in their thoughts when remembering him would check their sinful desires. It makes their sin worse that they forgot the one who made them (Deuteronomy 32:15, 32:18; Job 35:10), since nothing should remind us more strongly of God than the fact that he created us (Ecclesiastes 12:1). They may have seemed mindful of their Maker by building temples, but they had really forgotten him because they had thrown off the fear of him.

Some take “temples” here to mean palaces, since the word can mean that too. Then the sense is this, they had forgotten their Maker and had become so secure and proud that they dared God to judge them, like Nebuchadnezzar when he said, “Is not this great Babylon that I have built?” Judah is also blamed for multiplying fortified cities and trusting them for safety while God’s judgments were near. It was fine to strengthen their cities if this was done in submission to God. But to fortify them in opposition to God, with no regard for him or his providence (Isaiah 22:11), showed a heart hardened by sin’s deceit.

No one ever hardened his heart against God and prospered, and neither shall they. God will send fire on his cities, on the cities of both Judah and Israel, not only on Jerusalem and Samaria, but on all the other cities of both kingdoms. The fire will consume not only the small houses but also the palaces. However strong they are, the fire will overcome them. However grand and costly they are, the fire will not spare them. This was fulfilled when the king of Assyria laid all the cities of Israel in ruins, and the king of Babylon did the same to the cities of Judah. The fires they kindled were sent by God, and when he judges, he will prevail.