TEXT [Commentary]

  3.   Israel is an unprofitable plant (9:10-17)

10 The LORD says, “O Israel, when I first found you,

it was like finding fresh grapes in the desert.

When I saw your ancestors,

it was like seeing the first ripe figs of the season.

But then they deserted me for Baal-peor,

giving themselves to that shameful idol.

Soon they became vile,

as vile as the god they worshiped.

11 The glory of Israel will fly away like a bird,

for your children will not be born

or grow in the womb

or even be conceived.

12 Even if you do have children who grow up,

I will take them from you.

It will be a terrible day when I turn away

and leave you alone.

13 I have watched Israel become as beautiful as Tyre.

But now Israel will bring out her children for slaughter.”

14 O LORD, what should I request for your people?

I will ask for wombs that don’t give birth

and breasts that give no milk.

15 The LORD says, “All their wickedness began at Gilgal;

there I began to hate them.

I will drive them from my land

because of their evil actions.

I will love them no more

because all their leaders are rebels.

16 The people of Israel are struck down.

Their roots are dried up,

and they will bear no more fruit.

And if they give birth,

I will slaughter their beloved children.”

17 My God will reject the people of Israel

because they will not listen or obey.

They will be wanderers,

homeless among the nations.

NOTES

9:10 fresh grapes . . . first ripe figs. Grapes and figs figure prominently in expressions concerning the covenantal relation between God and his people, especially under the image of the vine and the fig tree (see note and commentary on Joel 1:7). God’s early contact with his people was one of fresh vitality and joy.

Baal-peor. Israel’s flirtation with the fertility god Baal came about as a result of Balaam’s failed attempts to pronounce the doom of Israel (Num 22–24). When the hireling prophet was unable to curse Israel, “[He] showed Balak how to trip up the people of Israel. He taught them to sin by eating food offered to idols and by committing sexual sin” (Rev 2:14; cf. Num 25:1-3; 31:16). Israel’s sin brought about the death of thousands of people (Num 25:4-9).

vile as the god they worshiped. Lit., “detestable as their love.” Israel’s fascination with the Baal rites and the resultant lust in their lives made their capacity to love and their expressions of love debased. “The Hebrew language is hard-pressed to come up with a more degrading term to describe the depths to which Israel’s initial and continued contact with Baal had lowered them” (Hubbard 1989:165).

9:12 Even if you do have children who grow up. Hosea again employed the pseudo-sorites (see note on 8:7). Whatever children managed to survive death in the womb or at birth would die prematurely.

9:13 I have watched Israel become . . . as Tyre. The rendering of the first half of v. 13 is uncertain. Nearly every word in the line has been contested. The problem is as old as the LXX, which envisions Ephraim giving its children over to be like hunted beasts. The Vulgate treats the line in similar fashion to the NLT: “As I saw [it] was founded in beauty.” Great variation exists among the modern translations and commentators, with many proposed emendations. Particularly troublesome is the Hebrew tsor [TH6865A, ZH7450] which has been understood as either the Phoenician city Tyre or as a palm tree (from Arabic tsawr), or has been emended to read tsayid [TH6718, ZH7473] (a hunt) or tsur [TH6697, ZH7446] (rock). Because the line must make tolerable sense for that which follows, the NLT is not without merit, although it too depends on some emendation.

Retaining the consonants of the MT while reading tsur [TH6696, ZH7443] (“to lay siege”; see HALOT 3.1015) rather than tsor (Tyre), and recognizing the parallelism between this word and the lehotsi’ [TH3318, ZH3655] (to lead out) of the next line, it is possible that the intended meaning of the whole verse is something like: “Even as I chose Ephraim [= Israel] to lay siege to that which was planted in pasture land [= the land of Canaan], so I have chosen Ephraim to bring out its sons to the slayer.” So understood, the verse reminds the Israelites that it was God who gave them the land of Canaan and who will also take it from them in bloody warfare.

9:14 what should I request for your people? Hosea responded to the Lord’s oracle with a rhetorical question. He would answer it himself, for he knew what he would do if it were up to him.

wombs that don’t give birth . . . breasts that give no milk. Hosea’s comments amount to a reversal of the ancient blessing for fertility given in Gen 49:25. See the excellent discussion by Krause (1992:191-202). Essentially, God’s prophet came to agree with the divine sentiment. “There had been a hundred last chances but none had done any good; finally the line had to be drawn. And so Hosea changes his prayer: he concurs with the divine words and asks that they be fulfilled” (Craigie 1985:62).

9:15 All their wickedness began at Gilgal. After God’s people clamored for an earthly king rather than having just a God in heaven (1 Sam 8:4-22), Saul was eventually confirmed as king at Gilgal (1 Sam 11:14-15). It was also there that God rejected Saul as king due to his disobedience (1 Sam 15:10-29). The city later became a cult center (cf. 4:15; 12:11). Gilgal thus epitomizes God’s condemnation of Israel: Israel’s political and religious leadership had led the people down a path of irreversible doom.

9:16 The people of Israel. Lit., “Ephraim.”

will bear no more fruit. Stuart (1987:154) suggests a possible literary pun here that plays on the name “Ephraim” and the word for “fruit” (peri [TH6529, ZH7262]): “Ephraim the ‘doubly fruitful’ (cf. Gen 41:52) is now Ephraim the completely fruitless.”

if they give birth. In yet another pseudo-sorites, Hosea reemphasized the terrible pronouncement of 9:11-13.

9:17 My God will reject the people of Israel. Here again Hosea interacted with God’s reiteration of the awful loss of an Israelite generation. Israel’s disobedience would lead them to be dislodged from their homeland so as to live as displaced wanderers in many foreign lands (cf. Gen 4:13-14).

COMMENTARY [Text]

This section contains a dialogue between the Lord and his prophet. The Lord spoke first. He began by resuming his denunciation of the northern kingdom. He reminded them of those earliest days when he and his people lived together in pristine purity. There was a freshness and vitality to their relationship that could be likened to finding grapes in the wilderness unexpectedly or discovering the season’s first ripe figs. How refreshing was their fellowship then!

Yet they soon turned their backs on him for another. At Peor they became fascinated with Baal. When Balaam failed, in four oracles, to curse Israel (Num 23–24), he suggested to Balak, the Moabite king, a way to corrupt the Israelites (Num 31:16). Surely they would respond to the licentious fertility rites associated with Baal. Further, by indulging themselves with Moabite women they would separate themselves even more from the high ethical standards and spiritual purity expected of God’s covenant people. The New Testament writers called this Balaam’s teaching (Rev 2:14); they condemned Balaam’s willingness to earn money by doing wrong (2 Pet 2:15; cf. Jude 1:11).

The people’s embrace of Baal in the northern kingdom had rendered them as corrupt as the misguided souls of that earlier day. Accordingly, God pronounced a terrible sentence: He would condemn the next generation of babies to death, either at the time of birth or within the womb. Some women would not be able to conceive. What few infants did survive would quickly face death in one way or another, with the result that their parents would be left without the joy of their children in their homes. How sad! The people whom God had brought into a land of fruitfulness and then blessed must now face invasion, exile, and the bereavement of their precious little ones.

Israel’s own wickedness had made any other resolution impossible. Hosea could only concur with God’s evaluation. He could pray in no other way than to ask the Lord that the women be unable to bear or nurse their children. Far better would it be not to have children at all than to experience the tragedy of miscarriage, still birth, or the death of a child.

So gravely real was the prospect of the awful sentence upon Israel and its children that God repeated it in the form of a condemnation of Israel’s leadership (9:15-16). Not only at Baal-peor but also at Gilgal, Israel demonstrated its abandonment of God. For there, their demand for a king and their abnegation of the theocracy became realized. There they confirmed their choice of a king who would prove to be inept both as a political leader and spiritual example. After the split between the northern and southern kingdoms, the religious and civil leadership of the northern kingdom proved no better. Although God had blessed the people with a prosperous and fruitful land, all of that would change. The famine that he would bring to the land symbolized the greater dearth of the loss of Israel’s most precious commodity: the children.

Hosea replied in kind (9:17). Because Israel rejected God, refusing to listen to him and obey his laws, God must reject them. In the foreseeable future they would be uprooted and live in exile—outcasts doomed to wander among the nations. Once again (cf. 4:18; 5:8-15; 7:15; 8:1-3, 13-14; 9:5-7) God and his prophet reminded the people that due to their sin, judgment must inevitably come. As Hubbard (1989:168) remarked, “As blood-chilling as this passage is, it serves, perhaps as forcefully as any in Scripture, to remind us of the zeal with which the Lord hates sin and the length to which he will go to purge his people of it.”

Such is the sentence for any nation if, despite God’s forbearance (2 Pet 3:15) and a multitude of opportunities to turn to him and establish righteousness, it fails to honor God and his laws. Such conduct only courts disaster. A message so often given ought not to be taken lightly or ignored. “If, then, God so punished the apostasy of His own elect nation, what guarantee of impunity can any Christian nation, or any individual professors, have, that they shall escape the wrath of God, if they fail to bring forth fruits consonant to their high calling? (Rom. xi, 10, 21)” (Fausset 1948:492).