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Hear this, O priests!
Give heed, O
house of Israel!
Listen, O house of the king!
For the
judgment pertains to you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah,
and a net
spread upon Tabor,
and a pit dug deep in Shittim;
but I will punish
all of them.
The misleaders are laying traps for the people. They are the tempters. They strategize as hunters who set up
snares, who spread nets and lie in wait, who dig pits and cover them with
brush. God is fed up with their
scheming.
Now Hosea extends the condemnation to Judah as well. Israel and Judah are two of a
kind. Although Judah may not have
done all the same things, the sins of both kingdoms are alike. Both are led by people who live in
contradiction to God’s laws. They
both act like adulterous lovers.
The deeper they go into their sinfulness, the more they found themselves
facing external oppressors, harmed and injured by their own plans, and growing
more rotten as each day passes.
Assyria, the hoped-for protector, has its own designs on the future of
Israel and of Judah.
Chapter 6 opens with the voice of Israel saying, “Let us
return to the Lord.” Admitting
that their hardships and judgment may originate in God, they are hoping that
showing more faithfulness may lead to healing. They admit they do not know God as they should. Have they been listening to what Hosea
has said? Do they admit they have
failed in helping the people know God?
Don’t get your hopes up.
Hosea responds in the voice of God, saying, “Your love is
like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.” Even their proposed repentance is
self-serving. They just want to
get relief from their mess. They
are still strategizing. They are
trying to hedge their bets. Maybe
if they play nice with God, they can get back on their feet, get their edge
back, get their mojo working again.
God will have none of it.
Much like Isaiah or Amos, Hosea says that the empty practice of temple
rituals, pretended worship, is of no value to God. One of the most famous lines of the entire Hosea oracle
appears in chapter 6: “For I
desire love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Hosea then begins to list the sins of Israel and Judah. These sins, he says, go all the way
back to Adam, but they are multiplying in this time. The priests and king have broken the covenant and turned to
other protectors, other gods, other laws.
They have been faithless in their dealings. Negotiating in bad faith is just another way to call someone
a liar. Such people never meant to
do what they promised. It is the
way of a colonizing power with the indigenous people: say whatever it takes to gain an advantage, then stab them
in the back at the end. They were
faithless toward God, trying to manipulate God to do them favors. They were faithless in their leadership
duties, twisting their official power for personal gain. All around there was evildoing. Faithlessness implies the promise of
good with covert scheming to undermine it. Evildoing implies overt and direct harm toward others.
Things were so bad that the cities were “tracked with
blood.” Tracking blood means that
pools are on the ground to be stepped in and spread as the violent evildoers
run away. Priests and royal
courtiers are in the midst of this evil.
Priests lie in wait like robbers, using their power to demand payment,
sucking up the livelihoods of people who long to draw near to God. They are like murderers. Their crimes are monstrous. Using the façade of the Temple cultus,
they have created systems and structures of organized crime. The royal family and courtiers have
done the same. Rather than being
servants to the people, they are serving other interests. They sneak around on their
responsibilities to line their pockets and solidify their political power.
Chapter 7 continues to provide a laundry list of
sinfulness. Again, Israel’s king
and court deal falsely. They do
not protect the people. Inside the
city, thieves break into homes with impunity. Outside the city, bandits raid the people in the
countryside. The King, it is
implied, may even get a cut of this widespread criminal activity. Gild the palm of the security
apparatus, and the gold finds its way to the top, thus making the king
glad. Royal officials enjoy all
their treachery. It is the game of
power, fun for all who play. They
are so corrupted and debauched that their duties are dissipated in drunkenness. They drink until they are sick. They get drunk and behave badly. It is no wonder that the dynasties of
the Northern Kingdom continue to end with bloody coups d’etat. Their
evil is so intense it is like a hot oven that burns all day.
Blinded by their self-serving actions, they turn to foreign
alliances for protection and hope.
They can’t see that by trusting in God they would find a path to
peace. Instead, these who have behaved
as hunters scheming to trap their own people will soon become trapped in the
snares and nets of Assyria. Their
actions are senselessly setting themselves up for destruction. They look silly going from one alliance
to another like a weakling, a bird that will easily be ensnared or
entrapped. They reject the ways of
God, but they can’t even tell the truth about who God is or what God expects. Desperate, they whine, cry, cut
themselves, shout with rage, but still rebel against God. As the likelihood of an advancing
imperial army draws ever nearer, they still cannot shut up their corrupt,
raging, rebellious gibberish.
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