Hosea 9:7

"The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come; Israel shall know it; the prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad, for the abundance of thine iniquity, and because the enmity is great."

In a word, the judgment is to fall upon Israel for their sins; and the reason for this is spelled out line by line in 2 Kings 17:7-18. That sacred account of what they had done to incur the awful judgment about to fall includes the following;

They worshipped the female sex-goddess, Asherim, under every green tree in Israel.

They forsook all the commandments of God.

They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire to the pagan god Molech.

They worshipped all the pagan gods of the Canaanites.

They secretly indulged in the vile rites of the heathen.

They made images, set up pillars, and worshipped the host of heaven.

They practiced divination, rhabdomancy, and all kinds of black magic and witchcraft.

They refused to believe their God.

They rejected his statutes.

Etc., etc., etc.

"The prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad ..." Note that in this parallelism, the second clause does not speak of the Holy Spirit. The prophet and seer in view here are therefore false. As Hailey said, "The deceitfulness of the false prophet and the iniquity of the people go hand in hand."[17] We believe that the finding of scholars to the effect that these words represent some kind of audience response to the denunciations of the prophet is incorrect. The words here are not the denunciation of the true prophet by the Ephraimites, but the denunciation of them by the true prophet Hosea. This is made perfectly clear in Hosea 9:8, following; and the reason that so many of the commentators cannot understand what verse 8 means is that they have missed the meaning here.

Keil, and a number of the older writers properly understood the reference in this verse as a citation against false prophets: "Israel will learn that its prophets who only predicted prosperity and good were infatuated fools."[18] There are extensive references in the Old Testament to these false prophets who only prophesied lies. See Jeremiah 5:13; Ezekiel 13:10; 1 Kings 22:22; and Micah 2:11. Despite the popular understanding of this place as the people's denunciation of Hosea, there is no evidence at all to support such a notion; and furthermore the acceptance of it makes the understanding of the very next verse impossible. As Harper said of Hosea 9:8, "This verse is almost hopelessly confused."[19] We would like to suggest instead that it is the commentators who are confused.