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Tuesday 17 July 2018

Hosea 7:3-12 - Silly and without sense

7:3,4
This seems to be addressed to the whole nation of Israel. The people sought to please the king and princes with their wickedness and lies, and the king and princes presumably approved of this, instead of providing moral leadership. The people were inflamed with passion, they had a desire to commit adultery. The allusion to a bakers oven is that nothing needed to be done to inflame these passions, they were always there.

7:5-7
The rulers were just the same,. On royal celebrations they became full of wine and then indulged in all sorts of things. Their evil passions burned at all hours of the day, day and night. In such a land no ruler lasts for long, the country becomes extremely unstable and ungovernable.

7:8-10
After the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom, Samaria became despised by “true Israel”. We see references to this in the New Testament, and the reason was that Assyria had a policy of mixing the ethnicity of the regions it conquered in order to reduce the risk of rebellion. However, this “mixing with the nations” seems to have gone on long before that. This sapped Ephraim’s strength, and the analogy of being half-baked is used of her. Israel was arrogant, but was actually getting weaker, and failed to return to the Lord.

7:11,12

The “insults” continue! She was like a senseless dove. At one moment she would turn to Egypt for help, then to Assyria, then back again. The only path that brings security is to turn to the Lord. All her political intrigue and foreign missions would come to nothing, she would not be able to escape the trap of the Lord.

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