The Prophetic Wisdom Of HoseaSýnishorn

First Call for Alarm: Hosea 7:1-16

Idolatry was a fundamental violation of the loyalty God required of his people because it represented Israel’s treasonous submission to the false gods of other nations. According to 1 Kings 12:28, Jeroboam I established the worship of a golden calf when he founded the kingdom of Israel. And Hosea knew that this rebellion against God had only increased as the Israelites continued to mix their own worship with the idolatry of Canaanite religions. Idolatry also increased every time Israel made an alliance with another nation because international alliances in the ancient world required acknowledging the gods of other nations.

When modern readers notice in the book of Hosea that he condemns the alliances that Israel made with other nations, we sort of scratch our head and wonder what is going on there. Because when we think of forming international alliances, we think that’s a good thing. I mean, that’s what one country does with another in order to establish peace and safety and power and all those kinds of things. So, we think of it as something good. But you have to understand that in the days of the Old Testament that when one nation formed an alliance with another nation, that also involved forming associations of their gods, so that one nation would accept gods from the other and the other nation would accept gods from the one. And so, when Israel, or Judah for that matter, made alliances with foreign kingdoms, then they were de facto accepting the gods of those kingdoms. And this was a great rebellion against the God of Israel, because God demanded loyalty only to himself from his people, and he required them to depend on him only. But as soon as they made alliances with other kingdoms, that meant that they had to at least give nominal acknowledgement to the other kingdom’s gods. And in addition to that, they actually began to depend on those gods and to pray to those gods. – Dr. Richard L. Pratt, Jr.