Hosea: Unfaithfulness (X)

A Charge, A Complaint, And A Call (10:1-15)

Neal Pollard

The unfaithfulness of the people is further highlighted by a metaphor of a vineyard (1-4), a picture of their idolatrous worship (5-8), a description of their guilt (9-11), and a command to repent (12-15). Much like the previous chapter, Hosea writes about how the people had thoroughly forsaken the God who blessed them for the influences of the world around them. God is heartbroken, but He is also omnisciently aware of how they forsook Him to His face. Notice the content of the chapter.

The Charge (1-8). At the top of the list is ingratitude (1). The more their fruit and the richer their land, the more steeped in pagan practices the became. Why? Their heart is faithless (2). They are also charged with misplaced confidence, ignoring God but saddled with a weak and helpless king (3). They are charged with empty oaths (4). They are devoted to their worthless idols and they pour out their hearts to them (5). Their mourning would turn to shame and sorrow when, only too late, they realize the consequences of their sin as it causes their captivity (6-8). In fact, they would be horrified. Everything they relied on would not only fail them, but they would be destroyed alongside them. They would beg for the hills and mountains to fall on them and cover them (8). 

The Complaint (9-11). God looks back (9) and sees a pattern of apostasy that goes back at least as far as the Period of the Judges. Gibeah, mentioned first in 5:8 and again in 9:9, is associated with some of the “deepest depravity” anyone, much less God’s people, ever committed (see Judges 19-20).  Duane Garrett also associates it with Saul’s military fortress, a king more devoted to the military than to the Lord (NAC, 214). They will be overtaken in this infamous city. He says they bear “double guilt” (10). He says they are a trained heifer that loves to thresh (11), and God will allow them to do so in the yoke of captivity and punishment (11b). They were a fruitful vine, but yielded only poisonous fruit. They were an industrious heifer, but threshed that unfit produce. God’s patience with such hardhearted rebellion was exhausted. 

The Call (12-15). Yet, He does not simply throw up His hands at this point. He renews His plea to this stubborn people. Staying with the farming analogy, He calls for them to sow righteousness, reap kindness, break up their fallow ground (be genuinely penitent, not just on the surface), seek the Lord, and wait for the rain of righteousness (12). Yet, their misplaced trust and malevolent decisions (13-14) had them on course for tumult, destruction, and being cut off. 

God’s anger seems hot and His judgments pointed. If there is any question about whether He is moved only by wrath and not also unrequited love, keep reading. The next chapter will prove His steadfast love, even in the face of all of this. How tragic that Israel refused to see it. As tragic is when the world (1 Tim. 2:4-5) or I (Heb. 2:3) refuse to see such love and respond in faithful obedience!