Hear this, O priests!
Pay attention, O house of Israel!
Give ear, O house of the king!
For the judgment is for you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah
and a net spread upon Tabor.
2 And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter,
but I will discipline all of them.
3 I know Ephraim,
and Israel is not hidden from me;
for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore;
Israel is defiled.
4 Their deeds do not permit them
to return to their God.
For the spirit of whoredom is within them,
and they know not the Lord.
5 The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt;
Judah also shall stumble with them.
6 With their flocks and herds they shall go
to seek the Lord,
but they will not find him;
he has withdrawn from them.
7 They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord;
for they have borne alien children.
Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.
8 Blow the horn in Gibeah,
the trumpet in Ramah.
Sound the alarm at Beth-aven;
we follow you, O Benjamin!
9 Ephraim shall become a desolation
in the day of punishment;
among the tribes of Israel
I make known what is sure.
10 The princes of Judah have become
like those who move the landmark;
upon them I will pour out
my wrath like water.
11 Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment,
because he was determined to go after filth.
12 But I am like a moth to Ephraim,
and like dry rot to the house of Judah.
13 When Ephraim saw his sickness,
and Judah his wound,
then Ephraim went to Assyria,
and sent to the great king.
But he is not able to cure you
or heal your wound.
14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim,
and like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I, even I, will tear and go away;
I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.
15 I will return again to my place,
until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face,
and in their distress earnestly seek me. Hosea 5 ESV
Hosea 5
Hear this, O priests - He calls out the religious leaders, the political leaders and the king. They have led the people toward a grievous encounter with God. As we have seen in Daniel though, you don't have to do everything the people around you are doing and if the king and priest act the fool, well, God's laws do not change.
…28Keep watch over yourselves and the entire flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood. 29I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30Even from your own number, men will rise up and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them.… Acts 20: 28-30
Their deeds do not permit them - They are heading in the wrong direction, remember obedience is better than sacrifice, but they always prefer and depend upon their religious ceremony, without knowledge and without a right heart. Everyone is in violation of God's law, yet Israel also exceeds her neighbors, in that she is in violation of the covenant, and has rejected knowledge.
…9Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. 10Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 11Cast me not away from Your presence; take not Your Holy Spirit from me.… Psalm 51: 9-11
…29Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination. 30 Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the Man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”… Acts 17: 29-31
i. In many ways today, people think they are seeking God when they really aren’t. It’s just a superficial investigation. For example, a man might say, “I grew up in the Baptist church and couldn’t find God there. So I went to the Methodist church and couldn’t find God there. Then I went to the Pentecostal church, but couldn’t find God there. Now I’m at the Presbyterian church and can’t find God” (paraphrased from Boice). You may imagine you have searched hard after God, but that is an illusion. The truth is that you are running away from God. When He started to get close to you at the Baptist church, you left it and became a Methodist. When He started to get close to you at the Methodist church, you became a Pentecostal. You’ve followed the same pattern – a superficial search for God that backs away when you really start getting close to God. - Enduring Word
With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord - They will come to sacrifice, hoping that will buy God's favor, but they haven't listened, they are truly unrepentant, the sacrifices that should have taught them have become a pretense, the truth belongs to something foreign to them. They read that someone offered a sacrifice and so they emulate, but they haven't the heart of David, nor the gratitude of Abraham. These are things they would like to be linked to if it brings a favorable response, but God is saying, "Repent and be saved." Their pride tells them there is another way, "here God, take a bull and a sheep instead", the things He neither wants nor needs.
…4because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me. 6In burnt offerings and sin offerings You took no delight.… Hebrews 10: 4-6
…11I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are Mine. 12If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and the fullness thereof. 13Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?… Psalm 50: 11-13
They have born alien children - Some see this as they have mixed with the people around them, but it is better understood that they have not taught their children, not disciplined their children, not led. They have raise an immoral lot, like in the last chapter, yes, the women were engaging in adultery, but the fathers are also cheaters. This is what they have to look up to, and when it comes to religion, the priest of the home has stepped down and shared no true knowledge, both mother and father are content with an apostate form of religion, steeped deep in superstition. Make cakes for the queen of heaven and bring God the blood of bulls, but these things do not mix, and God will not share His glory with another. My people die for lack of knowledge, they don't know God, they keep using His name but have substituted Him for something of their own design.
…5Thorns and snares lie on the path of the perverse; he who guards his soul stays far from them. 6Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. 7The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.… Proverbs 22: 5-7
…2For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, 4traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,… 2 Timothy 3: 2-4
…3“that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6: 3-4
8-12 Like those who move the landmark - They used stone markers in that day and to move a marker of stone wall in the night was to steal your neighbor's land. This is not all here though, for Judah is watching his sister's demise, Ephraim has strayed into apostasy, God will judge her by the hand of Assyria, yet Judah is not far behind. Every day they move the line, "this is what God said clearly in Scripture, yet now it doesn't seem to me so clear, we will allow for a little of this," and so the line moves in their heart, little by little they fall away, and the priests do not correct it, the rulers don't care. God's word is the real line, yet seeing they cannot see, for it so far removed from their conscience, alien to their understanding. I look for the priest, the shepherd who will justify what I want to believe, the one who will twist God's word, and say, "hath God said?"
14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. 2 Peter 3: 14-18
…3For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. 4So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.… 2 Timothy 4: 3-5
13-15 But he is not able to cure you - They looked at their problems, and then thought a man could fix it, surely this is the case since his kingdom is fierce and strong. You went to wicked men and told them you were weak, and you refused to go to the Lord God, the Maker of all men. How noteworthy that this very kingdom, Assyria, was the one that took the northern tribes into bondage. You courted your jailer, begged for tyranny. It always amuses me how quick men and women are to make arguments from authority, to assume good when there is wealth or boasting. They are drawn like moths to a flame to those who brag and make big promises, yet there is an actual authority, but oh, you can't stand the thought of that, His word over yours. "I know a doctor who agrees with me. My friend has a degree in this and says that. He is a scientist." None of those things make what anyone is saying true, a piece of paper may tell me that you have studied a matter, passed a test, but it doesn't give you the power to make something true, it either is or is not. God sent the truth by way of prophets that looked like beggars, and everything they said came to pass, but Ephraim is looking to bling, trusting in chariots and horses, pedigree; the king of Assyria won't fix it. You're regarding power, position, politics over the truth. Since you won't repent you end up running to a lesser power, a dying one, and become a slave.
…6Now I know that the LORD saves His anointed; He answers him from His holy heaven with the saving power of His right hand. 7Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. 8They collapse and fall, but we rise up and stand firm.… Psalm 20: 6-8
I, even I - When these kingdoms that you admire and fear so much more than God, Who can destroy not just the body but the soul, when they come it is at His call. He calls them in advance, Assyria, then Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, then Rome, it's all written down, He is over them; everyone will answer to Him.
Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face - Always the call to repent. God does not need to change, but men cannot stand Him for Who He is and they will go to anything or anyone else, all you have to do is tickle their fancy.
…16the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” 17From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew 4: 16-17
1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” 3This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’ ”… Matthew 3: 1-3
…12When the righteous triumph, there is great glory, but when the wicked rise, men hide themselves. 13He who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. 14Blessed is the man who is always reverent, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble.… Proverbs 28: 12-14
…9And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors to say, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost coin.’ 10In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15: 9-10
