Year 3, Day 210: Hosea 10

Luxuriant

I’m a math guy.  English is not naturally my strong suit.  Being a pastor and blogging every day has helped me compensate for my weakness.  But every once and a while I hit a word like luxuriant in verse 1 of the ESV.  Since I believe in being transparent, I am confessing that I had to look it up.  Here’s what the word means:

1. yielding abundantly : fertile, fruitful
2. characterized by abundant growth : lush

Here’s why I decided to open with this.  You see, this word sets the tone for the whole chapter.  Through Hosea, God is declaring that the Hebrew people in Israel were very fruitful.  They were prosperous.  They were successful.  They multiplied not only in population but in geopolitical influence.   They became important and significant.  They were once outcasts in Egypt; they were now significant members of the Middle East.

But what does the rest of verse 1 say?  They more successful they became, the more they increased their altars.  The more fruit they yielded, the more they turned their attention to anything but God.  Their success did not bring gratitude towards God.  Their hearts are false.

I can’t help but wonder something.  Throughout the course of human history, how many nations have gone through this pattern?  How many nations were granted prosperity from God yet the more they became successful the less they were humble before God?  How many nations grew more dependent on their own abilities rather than growing in their gratitude towards the Creator?  I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb by suggesting that this is actually a fairly common dynamic among human civilization.

Carried off to Assyria

Pushing through to the verses that comprise the first major section of this chapter we come across the rebellious attitude of the people of Israel.  The people utter false promises.  They don’t keep their words and the covenant.  They are actively worshiping false idols.  In fact, the biggest and most reputable of these idols was in Bethel (Beth Avon).

What does God say will happen?  The idol will be carried off to Assyria.  It will be set before the king of Assyria as a tribute to his grandeur.  Historically, we know that this was quite a common practice among the Assyrians.  They would bring the idols and altar pieces of conquered lands and place them before the king.  It was their way of saying that the Assyrian king and the Assyrians gods were more powerful than the gods of the people that they conquered.

Here’s the interesting thing.  When those idols are carried off, Assyria will make God’s point for Him.  Assyria will demonstrate that the false gods to whom the Hebrew have turned are nothing.  They are worthless and unable to protect the Hebrew people.  Those who rejoiced when the false altars were built will be put to shame.

Again, I can’t help but turn this back around to my own culture.  How many of us rejoice over things that are built by human hands – the very things that we turn into idols.  We rejoice at how great they are.  Maybe they make our life easier.  Maybe they make our life more entertaining.  Maybe they increase our wealth and prosperity.  Yet how many of these things only serve to enslave us when we are not looking?  Like the Hebrew people of Israel, we will become enslaved by the idols that we make which lead us away from God.

Farming Analogies

In the last third of this chapter we have several farming analogies.  Ephraim (a symbolic name for the northern kingdom of Israel) is compared to a cow that loved to thresh.  Threshing is the process of removing the edible parts of a grain from the inedible chaff.  It was often done by having a donkey or a cow walk in a circular path over the grain.

Compared to pulling a plow, threshing was easy work.  Usually the cow was free to eat from among the grain that it was threshing.  Therefore, what God is saying here is the people of the northern kingdom of Israel loved doing the easy work.  They loved having a soft, comfortable life.

However, in their comfortable life they were not righteous.  So God says that He is going to put a yoke on their neck.  If they will not be His people when He prospers them and causes them to be luxuriant, then they will work.  They will break up fallow ground.  They will learn to plant righteousness.

In fact, God goes on further to say that instead of being content doing the easy work of threshing the harvest that God was making, the people of Israel were more interested in sowing a harvest of sin.  They were more interested in plowing iniquity.  Instead of being content eating the fruit off God’s threshing floor, they ate the fruit of lies in their sinfulness.

Therefore, judgment will come to them.  War will come to their doorstep.  They chose war instead of peace with God.  So they will get war.  The Assyrians will come to them and put the yoke around their neck.  The Assyrians will come and show them what the alternative to working the threshing floor of God really feels like.  So often we choose rebellion from God not really understanding the full consequences of such a decision.

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