Hosea 8:1 - Meaning and Application

The warnings here begin with an order for the prophet to put the trumpet to his mouth (Hosea 8:1). He must sound an alarm and call a solemn meeting, so everyone will pay attention and take warning. In God’s name, he must announce war against this rebellious nation. An enemy is coming fast and fiercely to take their land, and the prophet must wake them up to that danger.

In this, the prophet acts like a watchman, the kind of guard who blew the trumpet to tell a city under siege to grab its weapons when the attackers came near (Ezekiel 33:3). He must lift up his voice like a trumpet (Isaiah 58:1), and the people must listen for the trumpet blast (Jeremiah 6:17). God is giving a public warning because the danger is real and near.

Here is the first charge against them as sinners, rebels, and traitors against their rightful Lord. They have broken God’s covenant, not just his command, which every sin does, but the covenant itself. They have violated the bond they entered into with him, like unfaithfulness in marriage, and in effect they have said they do not want to be his people or have him as their God. That is what it means to transgress the covenant.

They have also trespassed against God’s law in many specific ways. God’s law is the rule for our lives, and sin is evil because it crosses the boundaries he has set. They have also cast off what is good. Some take this to mean they have rejected God himself, which fits well, because he is good, does good, and is the source of all good. God never gives people over to ruin until they have first cast him off.

It can also mean they have thrown away the worship and service of God, which is the same as rejecting God in practice. They have cast off what makes people truly good, such as the fear of God, respect for others, and all sense of honesty and virtue. This shows the path of falling away from God. People first abandon what is good, then they begin to commit open sins, and repeated sins finally lead them to reject God’s covenant altogether.

When people give up prayer, hearing God’s word, keeping the Sabbath, and other good things, they are already on the road to turning away from God completely. That is how apostasy grows. It starts with small neglects and ends in open rebellion.

The result is judgment. The enemy will come like an eagle against the house of the Lord, and he will pursue them (Hosea 8:3). If this points to the temple at Jerusalem, then the eagle may be Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who had already taken Judah’s fortified cities and besieged Jerusalem, or Nebuchadnezzar, who later burned the temple and carried off its treasures. If it points to the destruction of the ten tribes, then “the house of the Lord” means the whole people of Israel, who belonged to him by covenant.

They thought that being God’s people would protect them. But the prophet warns them that, since they had lost the life and power of true religion, they were only like a dead body to which birds of prey gather. The enemy would come like an eagle, swift, strong, and fierce. Those who break friendship with God make themselves easy prey to every danger around them, and their old name as God’s people will not save them.

The people will still cry out to God when trouble comes (Hosea 8:2). When they are warned of judgment, they will try to excuse themselves. When the judgment falls, they will pray for relief and claim that they know God and that his name is great among them (Psalm 76:1). In their distress, they will pretend to know his ways, even though in prosperity they did not want them and despised them.

Many people do this. They live in a way that denies God, yet when it serves their purpose, they profess to know him better than others. But it is of no use to say, “My God, I know you,” if a person cannot also say, “My God, I love you,” “My God, I serve you,” and “My God, I hold to you alone.”

The prophet then asks, in God’s name, “How long will it be before they are innocent?” (Hosea 8:5). He does not mean they can become completely sinless, since guilty people cannot reach that by themselves. He means, how long will it be before they repent and reform, and become innocent in this matter by turning away from idolatry? They are tied to their idols, and the question is how long it will be before they are weaned from them and freed from them.

This shows how hard it is to part with a sin that has become a habit. It is difficult to cleanse away filth, whether of body or spirit, after a long time in it. God speaks as though the delay is long to him, until sinners cast away their wrongdoing and begin to live anew. Their stubbornness keeps his anger burning, and that anger would soon turn aside if only they became innocent of the sins that stirred it.

When they are in trouble, they ask, “How long before God returns to us in mercy?” But they do not ask, “How long before they return to God in duty?” That is the true question.

The prophet then turns to some of their specific sins, shows the folly of them, and warns of the ruin they bring. One of those sins was in their civil affairs: they set up kings without God and in contempt of him (Hosea 8:4).

So they did when they rejected Samuel, in whom the Lord was their king, and chose Saul so they could be like the nations. They did the same when they turned from the house of David and set up Jeroboam, even though they were still carrying out God’s secret plan. Yet they were not seeking God’s glory. They did not ask his guidance, pray for direction, or pay attention to his providence. Instead, they were led by their own will and pushed by their own passions.

They did the same in Hosea’s time, when it seems to have become common to set up kings and then remove them again, depending on which side could gather enough support (2 Kings 15:8, etc.). We should not expect peace or success in our affairs when we act without consulting God or acknowledging him in all our ways. “They set up kings, and I knew it not” means, “I did not know it from them. They did not ask my advice about whether they could do it lawfully, or whether it was best.” They had prophets and messages from God, but they did not use them. They did not look to the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 31:1). The princes also did not act like Jephthah, who, before taking rule, spoke all his words before the Lord at Mizpah (Judges 11:11). Those who handle public matters, especially the choice and appointment of rulers, should take God with them by asking for his direction and seeking his honor.

In religious matters they did much worse, because they set up calves against God, in rivalry with him and against him. Of the silver and gold God had given them and increased for them, so they could serve and honor him, they made idols. They called them gods (1 Kings 12:28), saying, “Behold your gods, O Israel!” But God calls them idols. The word also suggests griefs or troubles, because idols offend God and bring ruin to those who worship them. Their silver and gold became their idols, especially the images made from gold and silver, like the golden calves at Dan and Bethel. Idolaters spare no expense in worshiping their idols, but these words also fit the spiritual idolatry of the greedy, whose silver and gold become the gods they trust for happiness and security.

To show them how foolish this idolatry was, God points out where their gods came from. If you trace them back, you find they are only the product of human ideas and human hands (Hosea 8:6). The calf they worshiped is called the calf of Samaria, probably because, when Samaria became the capital in Ahab’s time, a calf was set up there near the royal court, besides those at Dan and Bethel. Or perhaps one of the others was moved there, because people who want new gods keep wanting newer ones. They should think about what gave this god its rise and existence. It came from Israel, not from the God of Israel, who had clearly forbidden it. It was their own invention, and their own sin. Even its material came from Israel, since the gold and silver were gathered from the people by a collection. It was a poor god indeed, made by donations.

It was also the work of a craftsman (Deuteronomy 27:15). “The workmen made it, therefore it is not God” (Hosea 8:6). This is a strong and clear argument, so plain that their own thoughts should have made them ashamed of their idolatry. What could be more foolish than worshiping as God something that people themselves gave shape to, even though they could not give it life? A made god is no god. This is obvious, yet Paul was accused as a criminal for teaching that things made by hands are not gods (Acts 19:26). What should have turned them away from idols instead made them cling to them more tightly. Since the idol came from themselves, they could not come to innocence, because they wanted gods they could control, so they could do as they pleased.

God also shows what their gods would become. If they are not gods, they will not last. More than that, if they claim to be gods, they will be judged. The calf of Samaria will be broken to pieces, and those who need the earlier argument will be convinced by this that it is not God, only an useless idol, as the Chaldee calls it. It will be shattered like a potter’s vessel, even if it is a golden calf. It will become chips or sawdust, or a spider’s web, as Jerome says. This likely points back to Moses grinding the golden calf in his day to powder. This one will be treated the same way. Sennacherib boasted about what he had done to Samaria and her idols (Isaiah 10:11). Making any creature divine only prepares the way for its destruction. If they had made vessels or ornaments from their silver and gold, those things might have remained. But when they make gods of them, they will be broken.

The breaking of their idols will disappoint those who trusted in them. But that is not all. They made idols for themselves so that they might be cut off (Hosea 8:4), or so that their gold and silver, which they misused, might be cut off, and even they themselves may be cut off from God, from their land, and from the land of the living. Their idolatry will lead to their destruction just as surely as if they had planned it that way. When that happens, what help will they find in the gods they trusted? None at all. “Your calf, O Samaria, has cast you off.” It cannot help them in their trouble, and the pleasure they now take in it will disappear. Those who were justly sent to the gods they chose found them to be miserable comforters (Judges 10:14).

If people will not give up the love and practice of sin, they will still lose all its pleasures and benefits. If Samaria had stayed faithful to the God of Israel, he would have been a ready and powerful help to her. But the calf she preferred instead became a broken reed. The same will happen to those who make their silver and gold their god. It will cast them off and do them no good in the day of wrath (Ezekiel 7:12).

Those who let themselves be led into idolatry will surely find that they have been fooled by it. Cardinal Wolsey admitted that if he had served God as faithfully as he had served his prince, he would not have been cast off in his old age. Hosea 8:7 pictures this disappointment with a comparison that also points to the ruin God brought on the people because of their idolatry.

First, they got no true good from worshiping idols. “They have sown the wind” means they worked hard and spent much to make and honor their idols, just as a farmer works to sow seed. They expected a rich harvest of help, success, and victory, like the nearby nations that worshiped idols. But it was all empty. It was like sowing wind, which can never produce a crop, and like laboring for something that is nothing at all (Ecclesiastes 5:16; Habakkuk 2:13).

Second, their idolatry brought ruin on them. “They shall reap the whirlwind” means they would gather a great storm that would sweep them away and crush them. They did not gain the help of their false gods, and they set the true God against themselves. The favor of idols was useless, but God’s anger would do far more harm. As a person sows, so that person will reap.

Dr. Pocock explains the image this way: if someone were to sow the wind and keep it shut up for a time, it would only gather strength and then burst out with greater force. In the same way, the people expected plenty, peace, and victory from idolatry, but their hopes came to nothing. What they sowed never came up, or if it did, strangers would take it away. Their idolatry only became an invitation for enemies to invade and plunder them.

So the service of idols is useless service, and the works of darkness produce nothing good. In the end, they do harm. “The end of those things is death” (Romans 6:21). Those who sow sin reap emptiness, and those who sow for the flesh reap decay. The hopes of sinners will fool them, and what they gain will trap them.