What will ye do in the day of assembly, and in the day of the feast of Jehovah?
Israel was rich, and the feast days were crowded. Hosea interrupts the celebration with a question: what will you do when the feast can no longer be kept?
The warning came at the least likely moment. One writer sets the scene under Jeroboam II, king of the northern tribes:
Under the reign of Jeroboam II Israel enjoyed great prosperity. It seems they had a rich harvest, with grain and wine in abundance. They gave themselves over to feasting and rejoicing. It was at such a time that the Lord sent this warning against their false sense of security. He announces their captivity: there they would eat unclean things, and feast days would no longer be possible.
The verses before this one strip away everything a feast needs: the land, clean food, and the house of the Lord. Then comes the question. One writer draws out a double failure for Ephraim, the northern kingdom — they could not keep the feast, and could not even see why:
Hosea 9 sets out the joyless doom of Israel for their shameless unfaithfulness to their God. They had taken their grain as a prostitute's pay from their false gods... They would not live in the land of Jehovah. Ephraim would go back to Egypt, and in Assyria they would eat unclean food — some fleeing to Egypt by choice, most carried captive to Assyria... Their bread would be for themselves, and none of it would come into the house of Jehovah (verses 1-4). "What will you do on the day of the appointed festival, and on the day of the feast of the LORD?" They would not only be unable to keep the feast in the way the law prescribed. Sadly, their heart and conscience would not be stirred either. They would see man's power, not their own sin or God's judgment.
The verse names two occasions, and both go back to set feasts in the law of Moses. Another prophet uses the same word when he warns that feasts will turn to mourning:
In the same way Amos says (Amos 8:10), "I will turn your feasts into mourning." The Hebrew word behind "feasts" is used especially of the Passover, Exodus 34:25, and of the feast of Tabernacles, Leviticus 23:34. He uses the same word again in Amos 5:1, together with that distinctive word for the "day of the solemn assembly."
So the question is not vague. It asks what becomes of Passover and Tabernacles once exile carries the people away from God's house.
The next verse answers the question with a burial instead of a feast. They fled south to escape the invader, and one writer traces where that flight ended:
"For behold, they are going away from destruction; but Egypt shall gather them; Memphis shall bury them" (Hosea 9:6). We know from Jeremiah 43 - 44:1 that the fugitives of Judah fled from the king of Babylon. They found refuge in Egypt, at Noph (Memphis) among other places. They forced the prophet to go with them, and there he prophesied against them while they thought they were safe from their oppressor.
The question is a warning, but not a cold one. One writer hears two notes at once in this chapter:
In Hosea 9 we have that touching mixture of affection and judgment which we find again and again in this prophet. Ephraim would not stay in the land which was Jehovah's, for God would not give up His rights, whatever the sin of the people. They would go into captivity, and come no more into the house of Jehovah.
The appointed feast is not cancelled for good. The same book comes back to it later as a promise, and as one feast rather than many:
And again, Hosea 12:9: "I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast" — not "feasts" as in some English Bibles.
- Feast in hand. The warning came while grain and wine were plentiful and the nation was rejoicing. Plenty, not want, was the setting.
- Feast in question. Exile would leave them unable to keep the appointed day. Worse, they would not feel why. They would see only human power, not their own sin.
- Feast defined. The two terms point to set feasts in the law: Passover and Tabernacles. Another prophet uses the same word when feasts turn into mourning.
- Feast replaced by a grave. Those who fled south from the invader never reached home. Egypt gathered them and Memphis buried them.
- Feast restored. God speaks this judgment with affection. Later the same book promises tents again "as in the days of the appointed feast" — one feast, given back.
For behold, they are gone away because of destruction Egypt shall gather them up, Moph shall bury them their pleasant things of silver, nettles shall possess them; thorns shall be in their tents.
Ephraim will not stay in the LORD's land, so Hosea watches them run south, away from the Assyrian and toward Egypt. What happens when people flee the judgment God sends instead of turning back to Him?
These people are already on the move. No one is marching them off as captives. They are running, and the road they choose decides who buries them.
"For look, they are gone because of destruction." To avoid the Assyrian they escaped to the south. But "Egypt shall gather them, Memphis shall bury them [not the land of their fathers]; as for their desired silver, nettles shall inherit it — thorns in their tents." Impatience had long dulled their minds. They would wake to suffering, if not to repentance.
The sting is in the bracket. They will have a grave, but not in the land of their fathers. Older translations read "gone away because of destruction," which is how Kelly takes it: the ruin at home is what drives them south.
Where did they run to? Not to some border village.
The Hebrew of this is Moph, Hosea 9:6, and is judged to be the capital of lower or northern Egypt. It is called NOPH in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It was denounced in the prophets and given over to destruction.
They chose the best address in Egypt. It was already on the same list as the danger they fled.
The second half of the verse leaves the refugees and looks at the homes they left behind.
Nettles are mentioned in scripture as a sign that a place was deserted and given up to desolation. In Job the poor outcasts take shelter under them. Job 30:7; Proverbs 24:31; Isaiah 34:13; Zephaniah 2:9.
What they treasured most is the first thing they lose.
Commentators differ on the exact group in view. Kelly reads it of Israel, escaping south to avoid the Assyrian. Another writer traces the same flight in a later record.
The prophet constantly ties Judah's sin to Ephraim's. That helps us understand that "They shall return to Egypt" applies to Judah, morally tied to Israel. What proves it even more is this: "For behold
after, they are gone away because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Moph (Noph, that is Memphis) shall bury them." Now we know from Jeremiah 43 – 44:1 that the fugitives of Judah fled before the king of Babylon and found refuge in Egypt, at Noph among other places. They forced the prophet to go with them, and there he prophesied against them when they thought they were safe from their oppressor.
A whole company sheltered at Memphis, sure they had outrun the sword. A prophet stood among them, telling them they had not.
The land had an owner, and it was not Israel. (These writers use Jehovah for the name the ESV prints as "the LORD.")
Ephraim was not to remain in the land, for the land was Jehovah's, and God would not give up His rights, whatever the sin of the people. They were to go into captivity, and come no more into the house of Jehovah… God is patient, but He still takes note of everything. Ephraim would now be a wanderer among the nations.
Why Egypt, of all places? The same choice returns in a later crisis, and ends the same way.
In rebellion against God, some would have liked Egypt as a refuge from the Assyrian. In the time of Jeremiah, Egypt served the same purpose: a way to avoid submitting to Babylon. God commanded the king and the people to submit, but they would not. They kept close to Egypt, which was near enough for escape. It was useless. They perished, and God humbled Egypt under His hand… It was not that Israel had reason to love the iron furnace they had come out of. Egypt was their house of slavery until God delivered them by Moses. But man is always perverse. Even Egypt, which displeases God and which He will judge after Israel, looks to their blind unbelief like a good shield from the sword of the Assyrian when it comes — and come it will. What we run from in opposition to God's will becomes our severest scourge.
- Flight. They run from the destruction God sent instead of turning back to Him. They run the wrong way.
- Refuge. Egypt "gathers" them. But the prophets had already denounced Memphis and marked it for ruin, so the shelter stood under the same sentence.
- Grave. Egypt takes them in, and Memphis buries them — far from the land of their fathers. That is the sting.
- Loss. Nettles and thorns inherit the silver they prized — scripture's sign of a place deserted and left to ruin.
- Lesson. What we run from against God's will becomes our worst punishment. Only unbelief mistakes the old house of slavery for a shield.
The days of visitation are come; the days of recompence are come Israel shall know [it] the prophet is a fool, the inspired man is mad, because of the greatness of thine iniquity, and the great enmity.
Hosea speaks to a nation still enjoying full barns, and tells them the account has come due. It also carries an insult: the prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad — but whose voice is that, and who does it really fit?
The warning did not land on a people in distress.
Under the reign of Jeroboam II Israel enjoyed great prosperity. It seems they had a rich harvest, with grain and wine in plenty. They gave themselves over to feasting and celebrating. It was at such a moment that the Lord sent this warning against their sense of security. He announces their captivity, in a land where they would eat unclean food and where feast days would no longer be possible.
Israel had drifted along unmoved for years. The blow would finally wake them. But waking up to pain is not the same as turning back to God.
Impatience had long dulled them. They would wake to suffering, if not to repentance. "The days of punishment have come; the days of recompense have come; Israel shall know it" — but they would not yet know themselves, nor the LORD.
The word for what God repays here turns up again in the New Testament.
Luke 21:22 — "Vengeance." The Greek word (ekdikesis) is the same as the one in Hosea 9:7.
God did not invent the words "The prophet is a fool." They were the people's sneer at the man who told them the truth. Now the same words fall back on the men who told them lies.
This had been Israel's taunt against the true prophet, and now it fell back on the false prophets. Of these deceivers it was true.
The phrase is not a compliment for a godly Israelite. One writer calls the older rendering "spiritual man" a mistranslation. The state the New Testament calls spiritual did not exist yet.
So to be spiritual in the true sense means to be marked by the Holy Spirit of God, whom our ascended Head and Lord has given us. That is why we do not find this state in the Old Testament; Hosea 9:7 is translated wrongly. We read of men who did mighty acts by the power of the Spirit, such as Samson, but no one could call their own state spiritual.
Prophecy was Israel's connection to God. Cut that link, and the very thing meant to guide them leaves them confused.
The prophet and the spiritual man would no longer be a link between the people and the LORD. God would confuse them by the very thing that should have enlightened and guided them. The prophet would even become a trap for their soul, though he had once been a watchman from God. Ephraim's corruption ran as deep as in the days of Gibeah, whose story is told at the end of the book of Judges; and God would visit them in judgment.
One writer applies the verse to any easy-going religious age, where people treat earnestness as an embarrassment.
Sadly, it is a day of lukewarmness. Many are at ease among God's people. The prophet is a fool; the spiritual man is mad. "Don't be too righteous" is the general cry. But Christ in you is the hope of glory. In the glory true values will be declared. The crowning day is coming. Christ will be vindicated; so will His own.
- Plenty. The warning came in a time of plenty and celebration under Jeroboam II. Full barns prove nothing.
- Mockery. Calling the prophet a fool and the man of the spirit mad was Israel's own taunt against God's true messenger. The words fall back on the deceivers, where they fit.
- Silence. Prophecy had been the link between the people and God. Cut it, and the thing that should have enlightened them confuses them instead. The old watchman becomes a trap.
- Reckoning. The days of punishment wake a dulled people to suffering, though not to repentance. The same word for what God repays turns up again in the New Testament.
- Warning. Wherever people write off earnestness as madness and "don't be too righteous" is the mood, this verse is alive again. The crowning day will declare the true values.
Is Ephraim a watchman with my God? [nay] the prophet is a fowler's snare on all his ways, enmity in the house of his God.
A watchman's job was to spot danger early and shout the alarm, and that was the prophet's place with God for Ephraim. This verse turns the picture inside out: the same man becomes a trap, and God's house fills with hatred.
The prophet stood between the people and the Lord. That link is what God now removes, and the removal is itself part of the judgment.
The prophet and the spiritual man should no longer be a link between them and Jehovah. God would confound them by means of that which should have enlightened and guided them. The prophet should even be a snare to their soul, although formerly a watchman from God.
A fowler is a bird-catcher. In Scripture the snare usually belongs to Satan, and God is the one who breaks it.
Used as a symbol for Satan, from whose snares God delivers His saints. Psalm 91:3; Psalm 124:7; Proverbs 6:5. In the punishment of Israel their prophets became like the snare of the fowler. Hosea 9:8.
A snare only works because the bird never sees it. That danger did not stop with Israel.
Does a snare not represent evil hidden under a fair exterior? The apostle Paul warns us not to be deceived by "plausible arguments" (Colossians 2:4). He also tells us that in the professing Christian circle some will be caught "in the snare of the devil" (2 Timothy 2:26)... We may think we can escape snares and be kept from heresies by our own intelligence and knowledge of the truth. But whatever our knowledge and gifts, unless we are in secret communion — abiding in Christ — there is no snare into which we cannot fall.
The verse puts the hatred in the one place it should never appear — God's own house. Faithful men have met it again and again.
Many of God's prophets have sealed their ministry with their lives. Men hated, slandered, and persecuted them for fearlessly exposing evil, and for the godly lives that backed the warning up. Think of John the Baptist, the Elijah of the New Testament! And our Lord Jesus Himself could say in prophetic language, "More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause" (Psalm 69:4).
This chapter pleads with Ephraim. But the evil it names is old, and the writers trace it back to Gibeah.
Yet in Hosea 9 what tender pleading over Ephraim, about to become a wanderer, in which the prophet was a snare! It was no new evil, but had been so since Gibeah.
One writer measures how deep that old rot ran, and traces the drift back further still — to Baal-peor, an idol Israel followed before they ever reached the land.
The corruption of Ephraim was as deep as in the days of Gibeah, the story of which is told at the end of the book of Judges; and God would call them to account. God had chosen Israel from among the nations to be His delight, and they had gone after Baal-peor, even before they came into the land. If God is patient, He still takes notice of everything.
The God who judges is not cold about it. That shapes how we warn people today.
He who wept over Jerusalem is the same Person who spoke in Hosea's day: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? ... My heart recoils within me." If judgment must come, it still grieved the heart of God to carry it out... As faithful witnesses for God, it is our duty to warn an evil world of the judgment appointed. Woe to us if we neglect to sound the warning! But how do we do it? Is it in the stern spirit of denunciation, or is it with trembling lips and compassionate hearts?
- Watchman. The prophet's place was to stand with God and warn Ephraim — a living link between the people and the Lord.
- Snare. When God judges that link, the gift reverses. What should have enlightened and guided now confuses and traps the soul.
- Hidden. A snare works by looking harmless. Evil wears a fair exterior, and knowledge alone will not keep you out of it — only abiding in Christ will.
- Hatred. The hatred sits in God's own house. John the Baptist met it, and so did Christ, hated without cause.
- Warning. God's judgment is real, yet it grieves His heart. So sound the alarm with trembling lips and a compassionate heart, not stern denunciation.
They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins.
Hosea does not compare his own generation with the nations around it. He measures it against the darkest night in Israel's own past, and then says God will remember and act.
"Gibeah" was shorthand for one recorded event in Israel's history.
The story of lust and bloodshed in the last three chapters of Judges (19 — 21) shows how common moral corruption and violence had become among the children of Israel. A Levite and his concubine from Bethlehem were on their way to the house of Jehovah. On the way he became caught up in the shameful immorality of the men of Gibeah, in the tribe of Benjamin. The men of Gibeah practised the foul habits of the men of Sodom. A bloody tribal war followed. The children of Benjamin, that fierce, wolf-like tribe (Gen. 49:27), defended the "vile lusts" of the men of Gibeah. Tens of thousands died in battle, and the tribe of "little Benjamin" was almost wiped out. Scripture treats this shocking event as a starting point of national wickedness in Israel. Later, in the days of the kings, the prophet Hosea reminded the nation, "From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel" (Hosea 10:9).
Hosea is not accusing Ephraim, the northern kingdom, of that particular crime. He is saying its state has sunk just as low. God's patience is not the same as forgetting.
The corruption of Ephraim was as deep as in the days of Gibeah, the story told at the end of the book of Judges; and God would punish them... Though God is patient, He still takes account of everything. Ephraim would now be a wanderer among the nations.
The story in Judges is not only about the men of the town. When the crime came to light, the whole nation reacted — and one writer points out what was absent from their outrage.
A horrible sin had taken place at Gibeah. It was not a hidden failure, as Achan's had been, but a sin committed openly before God and man. God uses the sin of Gibeah, as He did the sin of Achan, to expose their moral condition, to humble them, and to awaken in them a sense of what is due to God... They are angry at the wrong done to themselves, and they completely overlook the wrong done to God. They speak of the folly Gibeah committed in Israel, and of the wickedness done among the tribe of Benjamin, but they say not a word about the dishonour brought on the Lord's name.
After Gibeah the ark — the chest that marked God's presence among Israel — vanishes from the record until Samuel's day.
It was a time the nation never forgot — a "black-letter day," remembered for its lesson about how deeply corrupt man can be. Six hundred years later the prophet Hosea recalled it: "They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah" (Hosea 9:9; 10:9). From that dark day of lust, terrible vengeance and slaughter, right down to the time of Samuel, the "ark of God's testimony" is never mentioned. It is as if God hid Himself after that deed of darkness, done by the people who bore His name, until they would return to Him.
The chapter around this verse spells out what remembering and punishing would mean in practice.
God announces their captivity. There they would eat unclean food, and feast days would no longer be possible... The day of reckoning was at hand. God remembers their iniquities, and He will punish their sins.
The prophets repeat this charge again and again. One writer shows what it cost Israel, and what believers receive instead.
Peter was writing to people once connected with a nation of whom the prophets say over and over, "They have corrupted themselves." "They have deeply corrupted themselves" (Hosea 9:9). As a result scattering and breakdown marked them, and they could not enjoy their earthly inheritance... With what joy these believers would welcome the good news that assured them of an inheritance in a resurrection realm marked by "life and incorruptibility."
- Benchmark. Gibeah is the measuring stick — one night of lust in Judges, and a war that almost destroyed a tribe. Scripture treats it as where national wickedness began.
- Depth. Hosea does not say Israel repeated the crime. He says its corruption had sunk just as low, so the same punishment would follow.
- Blind spot. At Gibeah Israel was loud about the wrong done to itself and silent about the dishonour done to God. God used the crime to expose what they really were.
- Silence. After that day the ark disappears from the record until Samuel, as if God withdrew from a people who bore His name.
- Cost. Deep corruption brought scattering and breakdown, and Israel could not enjoy the inheritance God had given it. The good news holds out an inheritance corruption cannot touch.