The Gospel of Hosea, Ch. 7: On Israel as an Oven, a Pancake, a Dove and a Bow

The Gospel of Hosea, Ch. 7: On Israel as an Oven, a Pancake, a Dove and a Bow. 

“Whenever I long to make my people prosperous again, whenever I desire to heal Israel, I am confronted by Ephraim’s guilt, and all I can see is Samaria’s sin.” (Hosea 7:1; Ephraim and Samaria represent Israel because Ephraim is Israel’s largest and most powerful tribe, and Samaria is the capitol city of Israel).

Word-Pictures Galore. Prophet Hosea went full steam ahead in following his poetic instincts in this chapter. It’s almost like he couldn’t help himself as he tried to describe Israel’s unfaithfulness and the depths to which Israel had fallen… an overheated oven; a half-baked cake; a foolish dove; an unreliable bow. Inspired by Yahweh, Hosea does not hold back as he continues to indict Israel for its spiritual idolatry and the breaking of the holy covenant with Yahweh. Because of their arrogance and rebellion, Israel is filled with moral anarchy, political instability, inner corruption, international weakness, and spiritual blindness. Israel is spiraling downward, and Hosea continues to warn Israel that they are doomed if they stay on this spiritual track.

A Short Memory. “They never pause to consider, somehow it never occurs to Israel, that I remember all their wicked deeds; and now their own sins surround them and stare me in the face.” (Hosea 7:2). Israel’s foolishness even blinded them to the obvious fact that God has a flawless memory and perfect eyesight. Israel forgot that God is the ultimate Watchman and remembers everything he sees.  The writers of Scripture repeat this theme frequently… God keeps watch over the whole world of mankind, over the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad (Prov. 15:3). Our Creator is not one who sits passively on His throne as a distant or uninterested observer of His creation. God’s eyes are observant like any good watchman, only He is watching over the whole universe and every person on earth (Jer. 32:19). His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth (2 Chron. 16:9), acutely aware of every deed, every step. God’s ears are attentive to prayers (1 Peter 3:12), to the cries of the brokenhearted. Creator God keeps watch over each of us, from the moment we are conceived (Ps. 139:16) to our dying breath. God is the perfect watchman who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121:3), always looking out over His creation. “Not a creature exists that is concealed from God’s sight, nothing is hidden. Everything is naked, uncovered, stretched fully open to the eyes of the One to whom we must give account of ourselves.” (Hebrews 4:13). Our God is the best kind of watchman, a Good Shepherd who is able to keep His eye on everything and everybody as He remains the Guardian of our souls and of nature. Oh, and one more important point about God’s character… God remembers the sins that are not confessed, but He forgets the sins that are. “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25). “Who is a God like You, who pardons sin and forgives the rebellious crimes of His precious people? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; You will trample our sins underfoot and cast all our wrongdoings into the bottom of the sea.”  (Micah 7:18-19).

(1.) An Overheated Oven. “You are like an oven that burns so hot it doesn’t need to be stoked… Like an oven that burns all night long… You are all as hot as an oven, ready to consume…” (Hosea 7:4-7). Could Hosea have been any clearer? As he states in this chapter, between Israel’s lust for sex-worship, lust for power, lust for international protection, lust for political intrigue, lust for wine, they have all but lost any semblance of self-control. And as history has shown, when a nation loses God, they also lose control of themselves. By the end of Hosea’s prophetic ministry, Israel had murdered seven different kings, and the royal courts were filled with blood and instability. Israel’s overheated wood stoves had indeed consumed their government. They had developed a national habit of adultery, drunkenness, and spiritual compromise through pagan idolatry and blending Yahweh-Worship with Baal-worship. Self-control is a basic quality of a follower of God, and Proverbs has some interesting ways of putting that…

• An evil man is held captive by his own sins; they are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self-control; he will be lost because of his great foolishness.” (Proverbs 5:22-23, NLT).
• “Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” (Proverbs 16:32, NLT).
• “A person without self-control is like a house with its doors and windows knocked out.” (Proverbs 25:28, MSG).

With Self-Control, It Takes Two to Tango. On the one hand this, on the other hand that. Both can be true. And this is one way to approach the topic of self-control. We do have an interesting question to address here: Who is in charge of self-control? God, or the individual person? Who is doing the actual work of self-control? God or me? Does self-control invite a “let go and let God” approach, or does the individual have a hand in this as well? On the one hand, we treat self-control like all the other fruit of the Spirit and ask God to go to work, to be the source of this virtue. We put God in charge of self-control, because divine help and power is obviously needed to produce this fruit. But, on the other hand, we can’t forget the self in self-control. We each need to exercise self-discipline. Self-restraint requires a strength of will. Each person has work to do, effort that God can’t do for us as if we were remote-control robots. Somehow each person needs to generate a certain amount of energy and control to “nail the passions and desires of our sinful nature to the cross of Jesus.” (Galatians 5:24). We need to decide with our free will to crucify our self-destructive and self-indulgent appetites, to resist our sinful impulses and rebellious desires. And with the power of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer slaves to our sinful nature, we can actually die to that and live in freedom. Through Christ, we no longer have to submit to our “passions and desires.” But that takes work on our part. But it also takes work on God’s part. So how do we characterize our working relationship with God regarding our self-control? Are we simply cooperating with God? Are we participating with Jesus in His self-control? Are we somehow sharing duties with God despite our spiritual frailty and human weaknesses? On the one hand, God is producing self-control in us. On the other hand, God is strengthening each of us to exert our own efforts towards self-control. On the one hand, God’s power. On the other hand, our will power. Teamwork.

(2.) A Bad Pancake. “Yahweh says, ‘Ephraim mixes with the nations. My people are like half-done cake.” (Hosea 7: 8). Depending on the translation, Hosea’s poetic image here is that of Israel being like a half-turned piece of flatbread, something half-baked and thus inedible. Because Israel blends its worship of Yahweh with that of Baal, because they have intermarried with pagan peoples, because they have forged alliances with foreign powers, they’re like a cake that is burnt on one side and raw dough on the other side. Israel is not even edible to the Lord because it is half-hearted in their devotion to Yahweh. And just like the compromised, lukewarm Christian church in Laodicea much later, Yahweh will take one quick taste of the bad pancake and spew it out of His mouth. (Rev. 3:16).

(3.) A Foolish Dove. “Ephraim is like a silly dove, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. As they go, I will spread over them my net; I will bring them down like birds of the heavens; I will discipline them for the evil they have done. They are doomed for having fled from Me.” (Hosea 7:11-13). Yahweh simply cannot accept the fact that Israel seeks to make alliances with foreign pagan powers instead of faithfully turning to Him for protection and prosperity. The various translations recount Hosea’s colorful descriptions of Israel for rejecting their dependence upon Yahweh… gullible; senseless; naive; unaware; fickle; foolish; thoughtless; fluttering around; flying back and forth. And why did Hosea choose the dove as opposed to other birds of that era? For one thing, the dove was thought of as being particularly vulnerable to anything that would wish it harm. One translation put it this way, with Hosea pleading with the people not to be “like an innocent dove, too easily seduced.” So Yahweh seems to see His people Israel in a weakened state, not particularly shrewd in its foreign agreements, and too easily lured into foreign arrangements that will keep them distracted from their dependence upon Him.

(4.) An Unreliable Bow. “Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they plotted evil against Me. They turned in the wrong direction, outward but not upward. They are like a dangerous bow.” (Hosea 7:15-16). Israel has turned into something that cannot be relied upon, like a faulty bow that doesn’t shoot straight, a warped bow that will miss the mark. An unreliable bow is of course a useless bow, and that’s what Yahweh thinks of Israel at this sorry point in their history.