Hosea 9:7 - Meaning and Application

For their further warning, the prophet says that the threatened destruction will come quickly. They have no reason to expect a long delay, because God’s judgment does not sleep. It is already at the door (Hosea 9:7): the days of punishment have arrived, and there will be no more delay. These are the days of repayment, the very judgment they were often warned to expect. Their prophets had told them destruction would come, and now it has come. God’s patience has run out.

This teaches two things. First, the day of God’s judgment is both a day of examination and a day of payment. In that day, people’s sins are searched out and brought into the light, and then each person receives what his works deserve. Strict investigation comes before fair repayment. Second, this day is moving quickly toward us. It is certain, near, and as good as already here.

This judgment will also shame them for what they thought about their prophets. When the day of punishment comes, Israel will know it by hard experience, even though they would not learn by instruction. Then they will see what a bitter thing it is to turn from God, and how fearful it is to fall into his hands. When God lifts his hand in judgment, they will no longer be blind to it. They will also learn the difference between true prophets and false ones.

Then they will see that the men who claimed to speak for God, but flattered them in their sins and lulled them into false security, were fools and madmen, not true prophets. They promised peace while the people kept on sinning, much like Ahab’s prophets did (1 Kings 22:24). Why did God allow Israel to be misled by such false prophets? Because of the great number of their sins, their contempt for God’s law, and their strong hatred of the true prophets who rebuked them in God’s name. When people refuse the love of truth and instead hate it, God may give them over to a strong lie. Then they will not be corrected until the day of punishment exposes both the deceivers and those who let themselves be deceived.

They will also learn then that the true prophets, the ones they had called fools and madmen, were in fact the wise men of their day and God’s faithful messengers. When Israel saw that none of Samuel’s words failed, they knew the Lord had established him as a prophet (1 Samuel 3:20). In the same way, when God brings to pass the words his messengers spoke about the coming judgment, those who mocked them and thought they belonged in a madhouse will be ashamed of their own great sin. Mocking the Lord’s messengers was one of the sins for which they were punished, and it will be one of the things that shames them most.

God will also uncover the wickedness of the false prophets themselves, to their disgrace (Hosea 9:8). The watchman of Ephraim, Israel’s lookout and guide, had once been with my God. In former days they had ministers who kept close to God and lived in fellowship with him. But now they have a whole line of corrupt and hostile prophets who lead the way in evil. Or the sense may be that this watchman pretends he has been with my God, and begins his lies with, “Thus says the Lord,” but he is really a snare for catching birds, trapping the simple and bringing trouble on the upright. He is so full of hatred toward goodness and good people that he has become hatred itself in the house of God, or against the house of God.

Wicked prophets are some of the worst people alive. Their sins against God are especially serious, and their schemes against religion are especially dangerous. They may boast that they are watchmen and seers, and in some outward sense they may have knowledge. But look at their lives, and they are snares in every way, catching others and taking advantage of them. Look into their hearts, and they are full of hatred in the house of God, bitter against good ministers and good people. Woe to the land, and woe to the church, that has such watchmen and prophets, men who see but do not obey. Corrupted excellence becomes the worst kind of evil.

God will now deal with them for the sins of their fathers, sins they have followed in (Hosea 9:9, Hosea 9:10). They were just as bad as their ancestors. They have deeply corrupted themselves. They are rooted and fixed in sin, far gone into the depths of Satan (Isaiah 31:6). Their stain is deep and hard to remove, like scarlet or crimson, or like the marks of a leopard. This is their own doing. They have corrupted themselves, polluted their own hearts, and hardened themselves, just as in the days of Gibeah, when the Levite’s concubine was abused to death and the tribe of Benjamin defended the crime. That was a time of deep corruption, and these present days were like it. Lewdness and wickedness were now as shameless and bold as they had been then. So what else could they expect except the same kind of judgment that came on Gibeah? Every tribe was now as bad as Benjamin had been then, and therefore all could expect to be brought as low.

So God will call them to account for their fathers’ sins. He will remember their guilt and visit their sins, the guilt they have inherited and carried on, the sin that runs in the blood. The father’s sin will now be visited on the children. This gives the prophet reason to shame them for the sin and faithlessness of their ancestors, their treachery, and their ingratitude (Hosea 9:10).

God first honored Israel greatly when he formed them into a nation. “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness.” He took delight in them the way a poor traveler would rejoice to find grapes in a desert, where he needed them most and least expected them. Or, when they were in the wilderness, he found them as grapes, not precious in themselves, but precious to him, as the first ripe grapes are precious to the owner of the vineyard. They were valuable in his sight and honored by him (Isaiah 43:4). He planted them as a choice vine, a true seed (Jeremiah 2:21), and found them no better than he himself had made them, good grapes at the beginning.

I saw them with pleasure, like the first ripe figs on a fig tree (Jeremiah 24:2). Good people are compared to the first ripe and best fruits, because one such person is worth more than many who come later. This shows the delight God took in Israel and the good he did for them, not because they deserved it, but because he loved their fathers. He guarded them carefully, as a man keeps the first and choicest fruits of his vineyard.

When God gave them such honor and they stood so well for favor, one would expect them to keep their good character. But instead, they brought great shame on themselves. God set them apart for himself as his special people, but they went to Baal-peor and joined the Moabites in sacrificing to that filthy false god (Numbers 25:2-3). They gave themselves over to that shame, and if, as seems likely, their sexual sin with the daughters of Moab was part of that worship, the shame was even greater.

Anything people separate themselves to, when they turn away from God, will end in shame sooner or later. Their sins are said to have been "as they loved," meaning the practices that were hateful to God were the very things their hearts liked best. Or, when they had once left God, they went on adding more and more abominations, making idols and practicing more and more idolatry as they pleased. This was the pattern of their fathers. God had dealt well with them, but they responded with ingratitude, and the present generation had badly corrupted itself in the same way.