Hosea 8:8-14 - Israel has forgotten his maker

8:8-10

Israel would indeed be swallowed up. Assyria would invade and conquer. Many of her people would be dispersed among the nations, and peoples from other nations would be settled in her land. This is how Assyria operated. Israel was selling herself, but wasn’t even attractive to the other nations, so she had to increasingly cheapen herself. Sadly, this is an apt description of the church as well when it seeks to become popular with the world. Israel’s true identity lay in God, and there was no escaping this. She could not be like other nations, so they would waste away among the nations.

8:11,12

There is a deep irony here. “Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning”. The Law had been given to Israel and is specified how and where things should be done, but Israel ignored this and did their own thing. They did this claiming they were seeking to worship God, but the results were anything but pleasing to God. The sins would include general sins in the nation of bloodshed and injustice, but may also have included temple prostitutes and the like which were common at pagan places of “worship”. We seem the same pattern today. Many “churches” claim to be seeking to demonstrate the love of Christ, but the Bible is “regarded as something foreign” and is ignored.

8:13,14

Many of the rituals may have had some superficial resemblance to the statutes of the Law, but they were not pleasing to God. So they would return to Egypt, this may be meant to be taken metaphorically, meaning they would return to captivity.

Israel had forgotten her maker. The kings of Israel and Judah had built palace, and had fortified many towns, but all this would be in vain. Their fortresses would be consumed by the enemy, and this happened with the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions.