Hosea 6:4-9

Israel's inconstant.

The Lord had just comforted the truly godly portion of the people; he now turns aside and expostulates with the ungodly. Judah as well as Ephraim—the two tribes and the ten—fell far short, unspeakably short, of the picture of penitence, with the annexed promises, which he had just placed before them. Their state had become so desperate that destruction had become their desert, not because of his severity, but their own sin, themselves being judges.

I. THE COMPLAINT OF THEIR INCONSTANCY .

1. God here speaks as if all remedies had proved futile, and as if he were at a loss to know how to deal towards them or what to do with them. Various means had been tried, diverse methods resorted to: he had sent them precious promises of mercy and alarming threatenings of wrath; means and expedients had been exhausted; but they had gone from bad to worse. And now, as though resourceless, the Almighty puts the question as if to their own conscience, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?"

2. Or perhaps we may rather understand such questions as a lamentation over their case, so deplorable had it become. Thus our Lord wept over Jerusalem and the desperate state of its doomed inhabitants. Nor was it a few tears he dropped ( ἐδάκρυσε ), as at the grave of Lazarus; his eyes brimmed over with tears ( ἔκλαυσε ), while his lips uttered the touchingly pathetic words, "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace{but now they are hid from thine eyes."

3. The picture of their inconstancy is sadly appropriate. The morning cloud is an attractive object as it floats sublimely overhead on a summer's morning; but it is as evanescent as conspicuous, suddenly fading away into the "azure deep of air." Still more lovely is the dew which lies copiously on the herbage in the early morning, glistening on every blade of grass and flower petal, and beautifying with its pearly drops the lawns and pasture-grounds. Soon, however, the footstep of man or beast brushes it aside, and it disappears; or it is exhaled, and vanishes by the heat of the advancing day. Thus it was with the goodness of the Hebrew people, both north and south, at the time referred to. Several cases of reformation had taken place in Judah; revivals of religion had occurred, as in the days of Hezekiah, and subsequently in the time of Josiah; and even in Israel we read of the humiliation of Ahab and the zeal of Jehu; but these were to a large extent transient and temporary. So, too, it often happens in times of awakening, sorrow for sin may becloud the brow of the penitent and tears of contrition bedew his eyes; but ere long the excitement dies away, and that sorrow and those tears have passed away, and all serious impressions and gracious influences have vanished with them.

II. CONSEQUENCES OF THE INCONSTANCY COMPLAINED OF . These consequences are enumerated with some detail in Hosea 6:5-7 , though the fifth verse is differently understood by some, as though it contained two different kinds of messages sent by God to Israel—messages of coming wrath to arouse and awaken them, thus hewing them by the prophets and slaying them by the words of his mouth; and messages of mercy, bright as the light and beautiful as the sunbeams, to encourage them, thus causing his judgments to go forth as the light. But this latter sense does not suit the context.

1. First of the consequences is denunciation of wrath, when God denounced their destruction with severity by his messengers the prophets, and the words of his mouth which constituted the message which they delivered; while the justice of the judgments thus visited on them was positively demonstrated and plainly proved, so that it was seen to be and must have appeared even to the guilty sufferers clear as the light.

2. The second consequence is degeneracy in religion. It had degenerated into mere formalism. In place of mercy came sacrifices, and for the knowledge of God burnt offerings were substituted. Outward observances took the place of inward devotion. Instead of piety towards God and charity to man, a tedious round of services was performed. Ritualism was substituted for religion; ceremonialism for clean hands and a pure heart. Obedience to the commandments of God, whether prescriptive or prohibitory, was neglected; morality was dissociated from religion; mere rites supplanted moral or religious duties.

3. But a third consequence was declension of spiritual life in general; this was additional evidence of the religious degeneracy just referred to. Covenant-breaking and treacherous dealing are specified. Like the most reckless of men, they were truce-breakers, bound by no compact, and regardless of the truth of promises. Besides being thus practically dishonest, they were altogether unreliable and faithless. Their sin in this respect, though declared to be against God, involved a fortiori similar conduct in relation to their fellow-men.

III. CONFIRMATIONS OF ISRAEL 'S GUILT . Two places are specified as instances, and their inhabitants singled out as specimens of the wickedness of the times—Gilead on the east and Shechem on the west of Jordan. If Gilead be a city—Ramoth-gilead, perhaps—a city of refuge and a Levitical city, the sin of its inhabitants was something shocking. When men, who by profession should be an example and pattern to others, descend to practices directly opposed to that profession, and degrade themselves by criminal actions of the worst and basest kind, religion is evil spoken of, a stumbling-block is cast in the way of the weak, the Master himself is stabbed in the house of his professed friends. The people of this highly favored place had set themselves to work iniquity, and that of no ordinary kind; the blood of murdered innocence clave to their hands. Shechem was even worse in this respect. In this other city of refuge the privilege of asylum was profaned. Either guilty persons were admitted and protected for a bribe, when they should have been delivered up to death; or, in addition to thus screening the guilty, those who had committed homicide unwittingly, but who were too poor to offer bribes, were ruthlessly given up to the blood-avenger; or, worst of all and vilest of all, the priests who had got settled in the place formed themselves into robber-gangs or common banditti to rob, and in case of resistance murder, the travelers who were so luckless as to journey that way, or from a bloodthirsty spirit of revenge they waylaid and assassinated the objects of their displeasure. In one way or other blood was defiling the land and crying to Heaven for vengeance. Long before a bloody deed had been done in this very place, when Simeon and Levi in cruel wrathfulness put the defenseless Shechemites to the sword; history in a still worse form now repeated itself.

IV. COMMUNITY IN CRIME . The proverbial expression of" Like priest, like people," was fully verified in the case before us. When priests perpetrated such atrocities, what could be expected from the populace? When religious teachers distinguished themselves as ringleaders in wickedness, what could be hoped for among the less privileged of the population? There was, in fact, a community in crime. In the house of Israel, or main body of the people in the northern kingdom, there was wickedness so horrible as to make one shudder or the hair stand on end. However men might attempt concealment, God's eye detected and discovered their horrid iniquity, while his justice denounced vengeance against it. Ephraim is again foremost and first in the present iniquity, as previously in the idolatrous calf-worship and original revolt. Their whoredom, whether literal or figurative, exercised a contaminating effect on the rest of the ten tribes. How baneful the effects of evil influence! How great the responsibility connected with the exercise of influence! Judah also, from whom better was to be expected, with the ancient sanctuary among them and a purer ritual, had been seduced to sin; the example and influence of their brethren in the north had, no doubt, helped their depravation, evil communications corrupting good manners. Be this as it may, they had sown the wind and must in consequence reap the whirlwind. As they had sown and what they had sown, they must by-and-by reap. The general judgment is likened to harvest; so also are special judgments. (For the time specified, see Exposition) The Judahites who had been made captives by Israel had been set at liberty through the interposition of the prophet Oded ( 2 Chronicles 28:8-15 ). God had spared them then, but set them a harvest at another time; as it has been remarked, "Preservations from present judgments, if a good use be not made of them, are but reservations for greater judgments."

HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN