Hosea 4:6-10

ISRAEL'S INGRATITUDEFORGETTING THEIR GOD

TEXT: Hosea 4:6-10

6

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children.

7.

As they were multiplied, so they sinned against me: I will change their glory into shame.

8

They feed on the sin of my people, and set their heart on their iniquity.

9

And it shall be, like people, like priest; and I will punish them for their ways, and will requite them their doings.

10

And they shall eat, and not have enough; they shall play the harlot, and shall not increase; because they have left off taking heed to Jehovah.

QUERIES

a.

Why are the people to be destroyed for lack of knowledge?

b.

Who is feeding on the sin of Jehovah's people?

c.

What does the phrase like people, like priest mean?

PARAPHRASE

My covenant nation is destroyed because they have no knowledge of Me, and so I will reject it from being a priestly nation because it has refused and rejected My law. Since this nation has forgotten My law, I will forget to bless its children. The more the population of My people increased, the more they sinned against Me. I will take all their present glory and turn it into shame upon them. The priests grow fat because of the sins of my people. They set their heart on the people increasing their sins because as a result the sin-offerings which go to the priests for food, will also increase. Therefore, what is going to happen to the people, will also happen to the priests, they will perish with the nation because of their greed, And because they have stopped paying heed to the law of Jehovah, Jehovah will withdraw His blessing from both priests and people so that they may eat butthey shall not be satisfied and they may commit whoredom but they shall not produce off-spring.

SUMMARY

The destruction of the nation of Israel is inevitable. Israel has stopped giving heed to God. God is going to stop blessing Israel. It is just as simple as that. When blessings are deliberately spurned, when the laws of God are purposely disobeyed, disaster inexorably follows. It all comes from a deliberate lack of experiential or covenant-knowledge of God,

COMMENT

Hosea 4:6 MY PEOPLE ARE DESTROYED FOR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE. The knowledge of God which the people lacked was, of course, an experiential knowledge of God. But even an experiential knowledge of God must come from, first, a knowledge of God's existence and God's will as God is pleased to reveal Himself. In other words, there is no way to come to an experiential knowledge of God except first coming to an intellectual knowledge of Him through His verbal and natural revelation of Himself. We must first know that He exists (through the various proofs of His existence in both nature and His Word); then we must know what He is like and what He invites us to be and promises we may be; and then, when we have trusted Him to be what He is and able to do what He promises, and when we have done what He commandswe really begin to know Him as we ought to know Him! Such a knowledge as this brings peace, joy, forgiveness, satisfaction, fulfillment, purpose and eternal life. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent John 17:3. But, conversely, to lack such knowledge of God is to be lost in ignorance, despair, hopelessness, guilt, purposelessness and eternal separation (death) from God. See our comments on the preceding section, Hosea 4:1-5. One is led to think of the terrible condition of the Gentiles described in Romans 1:18 ff when one sees the knowledge of God rejected. They refused to have God in their knowledge. they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. and so God gave them up to serve the enslaving and degrading passions of their bodies. One is also reminded of 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 where those who have no love of the truth are given over by God to self-delusion and to believing a lie. And this is, for all practical purposes, the condition Israel had come toenslaved, degraded, and self-deluded!

And so God has rejected this nation, this nation with which He had covenanted, from being a priestly nation. God had chosen this nation for a special purpose, to be a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation (Exodus 19:6). They stood in a privileged position to both God and the rest of mankind. They were a bridge between God and all of creation over which the rest of mankind would eventually be reached by God through the Messiah. But now they were no longer fit for such a calling and God rejects them until they are purified and cleansed and made fit again for the bringing in of the Messiah.

Hosea 4:7 AS THEY WERE MULTIPLIED, SO THEY SINNED AGAINST ME. As their population increased, so their prosperity and, apparently, their power increased. But, so did their sin! Prosperity and power does not solve the problem of sin, crime and immorality. Prosperity without God only increases the problem! Why? Because prosperous man without God loses spiritual perspective. Affluent man without God deifies man, the flesh and the devil. Prosperous man without God deludes himself into thinking he is self-reliant, self-made and self-contained. That is the crucial problemSELF! Soon, it is every self for self, and the devil take the hindmost! God created man to be more than flesh. So when man concentrates on the flesh to the exclusion of the real manthe spirithe is out of harmony with the eternal purpose and out of harmony with himself, with the world, with his fellow-man, and is thus a true schizophrenic. The man who persuades himself that the physical is the ultimate and refuses to acknowledge the spiritual is the true schizophrenicwithdrawn from reality! He is afraid, he is guilt-ridden, he is neurotic (deep down in his soul), and so he actually goes out of his way to seek self-destruction. He, having itching ears, heaps to himself teachers after his own lusts and is led away into foolish myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

So, what God intended for glory (Israel) or, what Israel intended for her own glory (which we are not certain), would be changed into shame when they should be taken into captivity and slavery by Assyria.

Hosea 4:8 THEY FEED ON THE SIN OF MY PEOPLE. The Hebrew word that is used here for sin chatta-'ath, is also translated sin offering. Evidently the priests of Israel (a mongrel priesthood to begin with) were eager to see the people sin since when they sinned they brought sin-offerings for atonement. The sin-offering was, of course, to go to the priest for a part of his sustenance according to the Mosaic law (Leviticus 6:26; Leviticus 10:17.) Figuratively speaking, then, the priests were feeding on the people's sins. To set the heart on the iniquity of the people means to long for the people to commit iniquity. We are reminded of the 14th century when the Roman Catholic pope Leo X and Tetzel sold Indulgences and used the money to build St. Peter's cathedral. The leaders of religion feeding on the sins of the people.

Hosea 4:9 AND IT SHALL BE, LIKE PEOPLE, LIKE PRIEST. Since the priests were as corrupt and, perhaps, even more debased (longing for the people to commit sin in order that they might profit), they would be destroyed with the nation. The sins of the religious teachers and leaders would certainly not go unpunished, for the one called to such a high responsibility as that must know that he will receive the more severe judgment (cf. Romans 2:1-9; Romans 2:17-25; James 3).

Hosea 4:10 AND THEY SHALL EAT, AND NOT HAVE ENOUGH. Whatever they shall do will not prosper. All their attempts at self-dependency shall end in vanity and emptiness. They will find the same thing Solomon found and about which he wrote in Ecclesiastes. Money, fame, power, sensual indulgenceall is vanityall is unsatisfying without God. The whole of man is to fear God and keep His commandments. When men stop paying heed to God, God's only alternative is to withdraw His proffered blessings. God's blessings are given conditionally, when man refuses those conditions, God will not force His blessings on him. When that happens, man is left frustrated, lost and hopeless. Man cannot hope to defeat God so man, the enemy, is defeated!

QUIZ

1.

What knowledge of God did the people lack and how did it destroy them?

2.

What did their population explosion and prosperity have to do with their sin?

3.

Why did the priests set their heart on the iniquity of the people?

4.

How were they to eat and not have enough?