Hosea 9:1–17

9:1–2 Having left their one true lover, Israel—whom God still calls “my people”—beds every available god and pagan nation (v. 1). Hosea calls on them to stop reveling in the abundance they have enjoyed from their harvest, since the threshing floors, their corn and wine, will not “feed” them (v. 2). They live at the Lord’s mercy, and he will soon cause their abundance to disappear.

9:3–6 In light of such unfaithfulness, the Israelites “shall not remain in the land of the LORD” (v. 3), which was not to be defiled by such wickedness (Lev. 18:24–30). Because they failed to “return” to the Lord (again the verb shub, which implies repentance), they will “return” to Egypt—as if they had never left or come to know the Lord. It is a punishment that fits the crime. The same is true with regard to eating “unclean food in Assyria”: by failing to be people of purity in the Lord’s land, they will be exiled to a land in which they will be forced to eat impure food, becoming just like the nations in their diets (as they had become in their practices as well). Their addiction to deviancy renders them despicable to their divine husband, and he will annul his union with them.

Nothing they will do in exile will relate to Yahweh (Hos. 9:4). None of the practices they were able to perform to the service of the God who brought them out of Egypt will be allowed. They will not pour out drink offerings for him. They will eat bread because they are hungry, but none will be reserved for “the house of the LORD.” Yahweh’s “house” (v. 4) could be a reference to the “land of the LORD” (v. 3) or to a religious center in it—the shrine in Bethel, for example. The point is that they will be unable to enjoy whatever “appointed festival” or feast days that previously connected them to God (v. 5). Their end is damnation. They will die unredeemed and be buried in a foreign land devoid of Yahweh (v. 6). The Lord had once saved them from Pharaoh, but now he will give them back to an oppressor, and nature—nettles and thorns—will destroy their property in judgment (v. 6; cf. Isa. 5:6; 7:23–25).

9:7–9 Hosea proclaims that the “days of punishment have come”—judgment is imminent; the time for repentance is now or never (v. 7a). And what of Israel’s response? The text momentarily gives voice to the rebellious people: they accuse Hosea of being out of his mind and at odds with the community (v. 7b). They call him mad.¹ They seem to be accusing Hosea of great hatred toward them, and of great sin.

Prophets are supposed to be watchmen, ready to warn of danger at the behest of God (v. 8). But the people would not listen. Their enmity (“hatred”) toward their God and his prophet in the land caused their “ways” to be so ensnared that it is the people of Israel who are revealed in the end as fools and madmen, for they are the ones who embraced a misleading spirit.²

The word translated “corrupt” (v. 9) first appears in Scripture at Genesis 6:11–13, where we read that the world was corrupt and filled with violence. The corruption Hosea mentions is that of Gibeah. Perhaps Hosea alludes to Judges 19–21, where we read that the Gibean citizenry gang-raped a Levite’s concubine to death (Judges 19). The rest of the tribes (except for Benjamin) gathered to bring judgment against the people of Gibeah for this great wrong. Here it is the Lord who will remember the great wrongs the Israelites of Hosea’s day have committed and will punish them for their sins.

9:10–12 The identity of the speaker shifts from Hosea to Yahweh, who speaks again in the first person. God remembers Israel when they first met: she was like a savory, delicious, attractive vine in the desert. Rescuing her was like finding the first fig of the season (v. 10a). His relationship to the previous generation was fondly remembered, as they went together through the wilderness. He was their one God, and they were his people.

But this monogamous harmony was disrupted when Israel went to the Baal of Peor (the “thing of shame”; v. 10b). Like Hosea’s citation of Gibeah, Yahweh now reminisces about an even earlier event. While still led by Moses, Israel encountered Moabites and joined in worship of their god, Baal of Peor (Num. 25:1–3). This took place in Shittim (cf. comment on Hos. 5:1–2). Israel easily and eagerly abandoned the covenant between themselves and Yahweh there, and since that time, says the Lord (9:10), things have never been the same between them. They became as ugly as the thing they loved.

Thus Ephraim’s “glory” will “fly away like a bird” (v. 11). Their glory in this case is primarily their progeny: they will be left childless. This is a fitting judgment, since Baal was credited with, among other things, fertility. They sow to Baal for fecundity, but they reap childlessness. Whatever children they do have will be taken through violence (v. 12). They will die off as a people. If they will not be the people of God, they will be no people at all.

9:13–17 Verse 13 is difficult. Most commentators follow the ancient Greek translation or assume a transmission error and reword it. McComiskey translates, “Just as I have chosen [judgment] for Tyre, planted in [its] place, so [I have chosen for] Ephraim to lead forth its sons to the murderer”³ (cf. ESV mg.). However the verse is intended, the judgment is clear: the present generation of Ephraim is the final generation.

Apparently the prophet interjects a prayer in verse 14, asking the Lord to indeed bring the people to an end. The Lord’s speech then resumes. Having mentioned their faithlessness at one place in the past (Baal-Peor; v. 10), he now mentions their sin somewhere else in the present: at Gilgal (v. 15), which has already been identified in Hosea with illicit worship (4:15). Their evil is so great that it has led the Lord to “hate” them, a word used elsewhere to describe the attitude of a husband seeking divorce (Deut. 22:13; 24:3), not necessarily because visceral hatred is involved but because he rejects his wife. The point is that God will no longer show his love to Israel. Like a wife he is divorcing, he will “drive them out” of his “house” (the land; cf. Hos. 8:1). He also makes clear that some of the blame rests with Israel’s leaders, those who should have been leading them in righteousness but in reality were leading them to rebellion.

Israel’s Lord repeats: whatever children they manage to bear will be killed (9:16). This is the last generation of Israel. Their time is up. It’s over.

Finally, Hosea again clarifies (v. 17). Although not every last child will be killed, and the population will not be completely exterminated, they will be integrated with the nations and will aimlessly wander, banished from the land of Yahweh. They will be lost, as good as dead.