Hosea 7:1-16

Corruption of the Court

In this chapter the tone again becomes despondent. How can Israel be saved when her iniquity is so deep, so glaring, so obstinate? Samaria is especially instanced as the centre of a wicked and corrupt government sustained by a lawless people and false teachers. Hosea dwells chiefly on some plot which ended in regicide and the reliance on foreign powers which meant want of faith in God.

2. They fail to realise how patent in God's sight their iniquity is, while they attempt to combine a profession of religion with sins of the worst type. Now they are 'holden with the cords of their sins' (Proverbs 5:22).

3. They induced their rulers not only to connive at, but to take part with delight in their wicked practices.

4. The fire of lust is likened to a baker's oven. But the simile seems also to include the passion of anger which worked in the heart and produced acts of violence, such as regicide.

5-7. A scene from the palace. The king carouses with his courtiers, who have formed a plot against him, and wait the fitting moment to rise and put him to death. It would appear that Hosea has in his mind the assassination of a king at a feast, or just after a feast, in the early morning. The case is perhaps that of Zechariah, son of Jeroboam II (see Intro.).