NOTES for Hos 8:1-14
Today’s reading returns once again to the theme of Israel’s apostasy, and here the threat of the country’s defeat and the people’s dispersion is stated directly (vv. 7–8). It should be noted that the threat of military defeat and the absorption of the Northern Kingdom by the rapidly growing Assyrian Empire was quite real at this time. Although nothing of the kind happened during Hosea’s lifetime, soon after his death the Kingdom of Israel was indeed destroyed and its population dispersed throughout the territory of that immense empire.
According to the prophet’s testimony, this dispersion was not an accidental event. It evidently resulted from an entire chain of spiritual events. It all began when God’s people rejected God and the Torah, the Law, essentially ceasing to be God’s people despite all their declarations and ostentatious religiosity (vv. 1–3). In such a situation, repentance and conversion would seem the most natural and logical step, but evidently nothing of the kind takes place. Understanding that with the way of life they had chosen they could expect no support from God, the country’s inhabitants begin arranging things themselves according to their human laws and notions (v. 4). This apparently concerned both spiritual and religious life, the “calves,” and social and political life.
It should be observed that, judging by everything we know about them, the laws of the Northern Kingdom really did correspond very little to the norms of the Torah, while the religious policy of that state’s authorities essentially encouraged the paganism characteristic of most of its population. The result of this choice was that Israel almost ceased to differ from the surrounding nations, at least in matters of spiritual life. God then leaves it to the mercy of its historical fate, which, given the military and political situation developing in the Middle East at the time, was bound to prove very sad.
Of course, the attraction of both authorities and people to paganism was due in no small measure to the fact that paganism was associated in many minds either with the benefits of civilization or with military and political power. It is unsurprising that many hoped to attain both by securing the support of foreign gods (vv. 10–14). God then stands aside, letting His people drink to the full of what had seemed so attractive from afar. Under God’s protection, even the pagan world, cruel and merciless in its essence, could appear reasonable and beautiful to the Jews, because they saw it not in itself but as part of God’s world, in which everything is beautiful. But once God stood aside, all paganism’s beauty disappeared, and the evil that permeated it, as indeed it permeates the entire fallen world, fell upon them when they were utterly defenseless. It then became clear that without God Israel was nothing, that wiping it from the face of the earth would cost nothing, and that all its prosperity and security had been provided by its God, whom the people of the country, alas, so often forgot.