Hosea 7:1-6

Israel continued in iniquity -- Hosea 7:1-6: God attempted to heal Israel through corrective discipline. To His sorrow God discovered that Israel only became worse and worse. Their sin was so evident and open that He has no choice but to condemn her. His discipline was motivated by love and by His desire for Israel to repent and be saved. He desired Israel to return to Him and be spared. However, Israel became more and more corrupt. In Israel there was no place that you could be safe from thieves and robbers. Israel turned against the will of God and His desire was that they would return again to possess His character. Sadly, they refused to do so!

Israel made the sad choice that living with crime is better than living under God's truth. God said, "they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about; they are before my face." (Hosea 7:2) Somehow that thought that God did not know the wrongs they were doing. The iniquity of Israel was before the face of God. They were wrong and very far from God and now they must pay for their sins.

The king and the princes rejoiced in the wickedness and lies of their people. The rulers were themselves wicked and wickedness kept the people enslaved to the evil government. The entire nation of Israel was in this evil spiritual condition. The baker and the heated oven pictured how that the heat of Israel's corruption had reached a point of deserving severe punishment. The people of Israel were corrupt both in a fleshly sense and in a moral sense. The description given in Jeremiah 5:31 seems so fitting to this occasion. "The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" The evil grew in their hearts, like heat in the oven, as they waited for an opportunity to do evil. When the opportunity to do evil presented itself the pent up heat of evil desires burst out into a flaming, wicked fire.