The Book of Hosea
The Book of Hosea
By Richard St.James
Bible 1611.Com / Old Paths Baptist Mission © 2023
Hosea, chapter eight:
Verse one:
“Set the trumpet to thy
mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the
house of the LORD, because they have transgressed my
covenant, and trespassed against my law.”
Set the trumpet to thy
mouth.
There is something eerie
about “the sound of a trumpet”.
Take note of this, we see
God has a “voice” [in Genesis 3:8], which
“voice” forms a sound as a wind
instrument. [Pause here for just a moment.
We need to notice something that is very important.]
The “trumpet” is
also, a wind instrument used by God to
sound alarms throughout the Bible, and
which appears sixty times in the Authorized
Version of the Bible of 1611 [A.V. 1611].
[Trumpet = 60 times]
- Hear
with the ear of faith the sound of the
“trumpet”:
- Hear the
“trumpet,” the alarm of God,
which is “the alarm of war”! “Thy
way and thy doings have procured these things
unto thee; this is thy wickedness, because it is
bitter, because it reacheth unto thine heart.
My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very
heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot
hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my
soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of
war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for
the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents
spoiled, and my curtains in a moment. How long
shall I see the standard, and hear the sound of
the trumpet?” [Jeremiah 4:18-21]
- Hear the
“trumpet”, the directive of God!
“There shall not an hand touch it, but he
shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether
it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the
trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the
mount.” [Exodus 19:13]
- Hear the
“trumpet,” the calling of
God! “And if they blow but with one trumpet,
then the princes, which are heads of the
thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves
unto thee.” [Numbers 10:4]
Further, it is shown that
the prophets of God did “lift up” their
voices “like a trumpet” to show the people
their sin. Read for this in the book of
Isaiah this:
“Cry aloud, spare not,
lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people
their transgression, and the house of Jacob their
sins.” [Isaiah 58:1]
The “trumpet” is
God’s chosen wind instrument to signify to
man the timing of some of the most important events
of God. Such it is with the soon coming
“translation” of the body of Christ [the
Church], which thing is prophesied in the book of
First Corinthians, chapter fifteen:
“In a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the
trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
[1 Corinthians 15:52]
To see how God
communicates to man with a “trumpet” we
need to go to the book of Revelation, chapter one.
It is the Apostle John, who heard a voice
“as of a trumpet”:
“I was in the Spirit
on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great
voice, as of a trumpet,”
[Revelation 1:10].
Now, God has shown a
particular love for the trumpet! We can
see this in Revelation chapter four, verse one:
“After this I looked,
and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the
first voice which I heard was as it were of a
trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither,
and I will shew thee things which must be
hereafter.” [Revelation 4:1]
We see this again in the
book of Revelation, chapter eight, that God
communicates to angels, and to men [the
inhabitants of the earth] with the “other voices
of the trumpet” [of the three angels].
“And I beheld, and
heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the
inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other
voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are
yet to sound!” [Revelation 8:13]
He shall come as an
eagle.
This is a fast forward
projection [or prophecy] to a time [after
the loss and captivity of Ephraim] when Judah is now
targeted. This eagle identified
represents Babylon. Babylon is rising as a
world power. Babylon’s king is
Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar comes as an
eagle. Nebuchadnezzar comes
against the house of the LORD as it is shown
in the prophecy of Habakkuk, chapter one, verses
five through eleven:
“Behold ye among the
heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for
I will work a work in your days, which ye
will not believe, though it be told you.
For, lo, I raise up
the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation,
which shall march through the breadth of the land,
to possess the dwellingplaces that are not
theirs.
They are
terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their
dignity shall proceed of themselves.
Their horses also are
swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than
the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread
themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far;
they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to
eat.
They shall come all
for violence: their faces shall sup up as the
east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as
the sand.
And they shall scoff
at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto
them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they
shall heap dust, and take it.
Then shall his
mind change, and he shall pass over, and offend,
imputing this his power unto his god.”
[Habakkuk 1:5-11]
Verse two:
“Israel shall cry unto me, My God,
we know thee.”
This real scary! Is
this even in the realm of possibility? Now,
remember what the LORD Jesus Christ said while He
was on this earth concerning these Pharisees in the
Gospel of Matthew, chapter seven, in verse
twenty-three:
“And then will I
profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me,
ye that work iniquity.” [Matthew
7:23]
Verse three:
“Israel hath cast off the thing
that is good: the enemy shall pursue him.”
Rejecting the goodness
of God will be only to your own hurt.
The LORD says through his prophet
Jeremiah concerning Israel:
“Yet ye have not
hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might
provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to
your own hurt.” [Jeremiah 25:7]
It is to your own
hurt.
Jeremiah 6:19:
“Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this
people, even the fruit of their thoughts,
because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor
to my law, but rejected it.”
Throwing away the good
leaves you only with the bad!
Verse four:
“They have set up kings, but not by
me: they have made princes, and I knew it
not: of their silver and their gold have they made
them idols, that they may be cut off.”
Since Israel had
divorced themselves from the LORD, they were
totally free now to run their own lives.
This divorce freed them to pursue their
own utopia. Thus, they became their own
gods.
Comment: There is a propensity within men for men to join together in order to seek a utopia without God. Now, this has been going on ever since the days soon after the world-wide flood of Noah’s day.
Verse five:
“Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast
thee off; mine anger is kindled against them:
how long will it be ere they attain to
innocency?”
Question: Who are the
gods of the nations?
The answer for us
is in the BOOK of the True God. We have it
here in the book of the Psalms, in Psalm
ninety-six, verse five:
“For all the gods of
the nations are idols: but the LORD made the
heavens.” [Psalm 96:5]
The gods of the
nations are idols! All the Gentile
nations worship the works of their own hands.
These are IDOLS. This is what the
harlot, Israel in their rebellion always
reverted back to the worshipping of the
gods of the nations. Recall that Aaron had
taken out his tools, and lo and behold, with his
hands he had fashioned a golden calf.
This is all recorded for us in the Second book of
Moses, called Exodus, in chapter thirty-two.
Read verse four:
“And he received
them at their hand, and fashioned it with a
graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf:
and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel,
which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”
[Exodus 32:4]
Now Jeroboam took what
Aaron had done, and ran with it, to seduce
Israel [or Samaria] to buy into his invention
of a religious cult. To see this,
open the BOOK to the First book of Kings,
chapter twelve, and see this thing, which was
conceived in Jeroboam’s heart in a scheme to prevent
Israel from ever returning to the sacrifice of
the house of the LORD at Jerusalem:
Verse twenty-six through
verse thirty:
“And Jeroboam said in
his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house
of David:
If this people go up
to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at
Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn
again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam
king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again
to Rehoboam king of Judah.
Whereupon the king
took counsel, and made two calves of gold,
and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up
to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And he set the one in
Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.
And this thing became
a sin: for the people went to worship before
the one, even unto Dan.” [1
Kings 12:26-30]
So, this whole thing
became a sin for them while confounding them
with the absolute non-performance of
Jeroboam’s idol calf.
Here is the question?
“What profiteth the
graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it;
the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the
maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb
idols?” [Habakkuk 2:18]
Conclusion: A dumb
idol will do nothing for you!
Solution: The nation of
Israel can achieve “innocency” by
receiving their Messiah as Savior.
Verse six:
“For from Israel was it also:
the workman made it; therefore it is not God:
but the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.”
Every idol is
going to be smashed. Guaranteed!
Have you ever noticed something? Anything
man makes does not last, all that man makes is
destined for the trash.
Do you want to end up
with nothing at the end of your life?
Look at verse seven.
Verse seven:
“For they have sown the wind, and
they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the
bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the
strangers shall swallow it up.”
Lesson: For
anything to last, the LORD God must be the
maker of it.
Verse eight:
“Israel is swallowed up: now shall
they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is
no pleasure.”
Everyone around them will
think of them as a cursed people. The
Gentile nations will mark them, and
classify them as an off-scouring fit for
destruction. We find this astonishment
plainly described in the book of Jeremiah the
prophet in chapter twenty-nine, verse eighteen:
“And I will persecute
them with the sword, with the famine, and with the
pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to
all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, and an
astonishment, and an hissing, and a reproach, among
all the nations whither I have driven them:”
[Jeremiah 29:18].
Verse nine:
“For they are gone up to Assyria, a
wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath hired
lovers.”
The northern ten
tribes of Israel went into captivity in the year
B.C. 721. This is Israel, a wild ass alone
by himself.
This is all chronicled
in the Second book of Kings, chapter seventeen.
Read verse seventeen:
“In the ninth year of
Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried
Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah
and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in
the cities of the Medes.” [2 Kings
17:6]
Now, it did not have to
happen this way. Why, oh why?
Verse ten:
“Yea, though they have hired among
the nations, now will I gather them, and they shall
sorrow a little for the burden of the king of
princes.”
There comes a point in
time when it is time to stop warning
wayward people of a certain destruction if
they persist to keep up the mindset of always
trying to buy themselves out of all the trouble that
comes from their own wrong actions. For
them, hiring other nations to get them out
their troubles was not the answer. Israel
needed to listen, and to heed, the prophets that God
had sent them in all his goodness and in all
his mercy. They wanted man-made
solutions and not God-made solutions to all
the problems of life. Does this sound
familiar?
Turn to God!
Now it was time for them to pay the piper, and for them to sorrow a little till they repent, and learn their lessons. There is way out of all of this: Turn to God, and God will turn to you. But they would not turn to God!
Verse eleven:
“Because Ephraim hath made many
altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin.”
Notice the many altars.
Israel [and Judah] multiplied their altars,
and their groves, on every high hill to
neglect the one altar they were told to bring their
sacrifices, which was at the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD
[according to the Second book of Moses called
Exodus, chapter twenty-nine, verse forty-two].
“This shall be a
continual burnt offering throughout your generations
at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation
before the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak
there unto thee.” [Exodus 29:42]
Altars by the green
trees upon the high hills became sin.
Now, read in the book
of Jeremiah the prophet in chapter seventeen, verse
one and two:
“The sin of Judah
is written with a pen of iron, and with
the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the
table of their heart, and upon the horns of your
altars;
Whilst their children
remember their altars and their groves by the green
trees upon the high hills.”
[Jeremiah 17:1-2]
What became sin
for them ended up with sacrifices being made in
tears, and with weeping, that could not please
God.
This was the situation
Israel found herself in the book of Malachi, chapter
two, in verse thirteen:
“And this have ye done
again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears,
with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he
regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth
it with good will at your hand.”
[Malachi 2:13]
Altars shall be unto
him to sin.
Though Israel would
cry and weep over their altars of their
sacrifices the sky over them would be as brass.
God would not hear
them.
Verse twelve:
“I have written to him the great
things of my law, but they were counted as a
strange thing.”
The further we get from
God, the harder it gets to hear God. It
all eventually will come to a point that when we do
hear the words of God spoken to us, it will sound
as a strange thing. The estrangement
from God has come to Israel. They had the
oracles of God but they grew to despise
the words of God. This is sad, sad
place to be.
Verse thirteen:
“They sacrifice flesh for the
sacrifices of mine offerings, and eat it; but
the LORD accepteth them not; now will he remember
their iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall
return to Egypt.”
All there remains now is
judgment for them.
Verse fourteen:
“For Israel hath forgotten his
Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath
multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire
upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces
thereof.”
It had become so long
since they heard from God that they had forgotten
God. It is as it says in the book
of the prophet Jeremiah, chapter two, verse two:
“Can a maid forget her
ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my
people have forgotten me days without number.”
[Jeremiah 2:32]
Blessed or cursed:
What shall it be?
In the Fifth book of
Moses called Deuteronomy is a list of blessings
and of curses. The people of God [Israel]
were given the LORD a clear choice to make.
Deuteronomy,
twenty-eight:
Verse one: “And it
shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently
unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe
and to do all his commandments which I command
thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee
on high above all nations of the earth:”
Verse two: “And all
these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake
thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the
LORD thy God.”
In verses three through
fourteen are the blessings that would accrue
to them if they would hearken unto
the voice of the LORD thy God.
The LORD wanted to bless the people
with twelve blessings!
But now we come to verse
fifteen:
Verse fifteen: “But it
shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto
the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all
his commandments and his statutes which I command
thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon
thee, and overtake thee:”
In verses sixteen through
sixty-eight are the curses that would
befall the people of God if they
would not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy
God.
We can learn from
history by what has happened to Israel.
They have been suffering [for the nearly two
thousand years] under the curses that are contained
here in these verses. All of these
fifty-two curses have come down upon their pates.
We will end here in our
commentary of Hosea, chapter eight.
Friend
If you
know the Bible Is True,
And you
never received
Jesus
Christ as your personal Lord and Savior...
And you
want to come to Him for Salvation now ... Then:
1. Admit
... To God that you are a Sinner...
Deserving Hell Fire...
2. Believe ... that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God...
Who died on the Cross for
You! ...
3. Repent! ... Ask
Him to Forgive You of Your Sin...
4. Receive Him... By
Asking Him to come into Your Heart...
And You
Will Receive the Gift of Eternal Life!
Born of God! You
Are in The Narrow Way ... To HEAVEN!