For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Hosea 9:1-4

1 Do not rejoice, Israel;
    do not be jubilant like the other nations.
For you have been unfaithful to your God;
    you love the wages of a prostitute
    at every threshing floor.
2 Threshing floors and winepresses will not feed the people;
    the new wine will fail them.
3 They will not remain in the Lord’s land;
    Ephraim will return to Egypt
    and eat unclean food in Assyria.
4 They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord,
    nor will their sacrifices please him.
Such sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners;
    all who eat them will be unclean.
This food will be for themselves;
    it will not come into the temple of the Lord.

A. Find Out:

1. What are Israel not to do and why? v.1a,b
2. Of what are they guilty? v.1c
3. What will happen? v.2
4. What will happen to Israel? v.3
5. What will they no longer do? v.4a
6. What will happen to the sacrificial food? v.4b

B. Think:

1. What have Israel been doing?
2. What will happen to them as a result?
3. How does this explain the first instruction?

C. Comment:

The same message keeps coming to Israel, but in different forms.   Now Hosea brings a harsh warning: don’t rejoice Israel, you have no cause to rejoice! Until judgement comes there is a temptation to think everything is all right and therefore to carry on normally and even be happy in sin. This is total deception! There are two reasons not to be happy in this situation: first because of the present state of the nation and, second, the judgement that is coming.

First the state of the nation. Already we have seen a number of things the prophet has spoken against. Here their idolatry is again highlighted. They have been unfaithful to God, they have set up idols. The threshing floor was a piece of raised ground where the beaten chaff could be blown away. On these raised areas Israel had set up idols.

Second, the impending judgement. They will be taken from the land and taken to Egypt or Assyria by invading conquerors. They will not eat the fruit of the threshing floor or the wine press but will eat the food of aliens in foreign countries. They will not continue offering sacrifices, for in the foreign land food will be so scarce that they will need every bit to stay alive; there will be none spare for sacrifices. Be aware of what the consequences of your actions will be!

D. Application:

1. It is deception to remain happy while living in sin!
2. That state is only temporary. Judgement will come!

Passage: Hosea 9:5-9

5 What will you do on the day of your appointed festivals,
    on the feast days of the Lord?
6 Even if they escape from destruction,
    Egypt will gather them,
    and Memphis will bury them.
Their treasures of silver will be taken over by briers,
    and thorns will overrun their tents.
7 The days of punishment are coming,
    the days of reckoning are at hand.
    Let Israel know this.
Because your sins are so many
    and your hostility so great,
the prophet is considered a fool,
    the inspired person a maniac.
8 The prophet, along with my God,
    is the watchman over Ephraim,
yet snares await him on all his paths,
    and hostility in the house of his God.
9 They have sunk deep into corruption,
    as in the days of Gibeah.
God will remember their wickedness
    and punish them for their sins.

A. Find Out:

1. What does Hosea say will happen? v.6
2. How does he summarize it, and for what reason? v.7a,b
3. How do Israel now view their prophets? v.7c
4. Yet what is the prophet? v.8a
5. But what does the prophet find? v.8b
6. What has happened and will happen to Israel?

B. Think:

1. How does this passage continue on from the earlier verses?
2. How imminent does destruction appear?
3. What is the main sense about Israel conveyed here?

C. Comment:

Hosea has just said that Israel will be carried away and will not have enough food to spare for sacrifices. Now he continues that theme. When you are taken, he says, your treasures, your idols (implied) will be taken from you and you will be able to worship neither them nor follow the Lord’s appointed feasts in the foreign land.

Understand, he continues, these days of punishment are coming soon. The depth of your sin is so great that the Lord cannot put up with it any longer. When He speaks through a prophet you deride him. God’s prophets are Israel’s watchmen who warn you of what they see coming but so great is your sin that you totally refuse to hear what they are saying, and so God’s judgement will come, and soon.

Within this passage there is that sense of the depth of the sin of Israel, that has so permeated their hearts that it seems impossible for them to hear God’s warnings to them. These same warnings have come again and again through Hosea. Israel have no excuse. It is not as if they could say, well we only heard it once and didn’t understand it. They had heard it again and again through Hosea, different slants on the same message: you are in sin, repent otherwise destruction will come. Now it IS coming, there is no alternative. How terrible!

D. Application:

1. Sin has a way of blinding people to the truth.
2. Yet God will warn again and again -and then will come!

Passage: Hosea 9:10-17

10 “When I found Israel,
    it was like finding grapes in the desert;
when I saw your ancestors,
    it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.
But when they came to Baal Peor,
    they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol
    and became as vile as the thing they loved.
11 Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—
    no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.
12 Even if they rear children,
    I will bereave them of every one.
Woe to them
    when I turn away from them!
13 I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre,
    planted in a pleasant place.
But Ephraim will bring out
    their children to the slayer.”

14 Give them, Lord—
    what will you give them?
Give them wombs that miscarry
    and breasts that are dry.

15 “Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal,
    I hated them there.
Because of their sinful deeds,
    I will drive them out of my house.
I will no longer love them;
    all their leaders are rebellious.
16 Ephraim is blighted,
    their root is withered,
    they yield no fruit.
Even if they bear children,
    I will slay their cherished offspring.”

17 My God will reject them
    because they have not obeyed him;
    they will be wanderers among the nations.

A. Find Out:

1. What had Israel been like originally? v.10a
2. But what had gone wrong? v.10b
3. What will happen to Israel? v.11-13
4. What does Hosea pray in line with this? v.14
5. Why was the Lord against them? v.15,16
6. So what does Hosea declare? v.17

B. Think:

1. Read Num 25:1-3 How had Israel gone astray early in its history?
2. What relevance is that to the present time?
3. How does this passage speak about the future?

C. Comment:

God has been saying through Hosea that their future will be in captivity and there they will not have resources or opportunity to either worship false gods or carry out their sacrifices to the Lord. The emphasis in the present passage is twofold. First it is a condemnation of their idolatry and second a warning of their future.

First the condemnation. The Lord reminds them of when He first brought them out of Egypt and met with them in the desert at Sinai. Then they were beautiful, free from idol worship, but within a little while in their wanderings on the way to the promised land they had been led astray by the wiles of Balaam and had mixed with foreign women and worshipped their idols. That same tendency to drift away from the Lord to foreign idols remained with them right up to the present when it had got worse and worse. It will be their downfall!

Second, the future. Again and again here is reference to their children. Children are the next generation, the immediate future. In the Lord’s statement and in Hosea’s prayer (which simply reflects the Lord’s stated will) is this clear warning: you have no future! The sense is that this will be in the near future; you cannot keep on sinning and get away with it. God is going to stop you – soon!

D. Application:

1. Many are the means that the enemy uses to entice us away.
2. It is only our folly to blame if we let ourselves be enticed.