Hosea 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~745-725 BC, when four Israelite kings were assassinated within about two decades
Location
Samaria, the fortified hilltop capital of the northern kingdom, and the royal court there
Audience
Israelites in the north, especially the political class
Situation
God exposes court intrigue: officials inflamed like a baker's oven, kings falling one after another, and no one calling on God through any of it. Israel is pictured as a half-baked flat cake and a silly dove flapping between Egypt and Assyria for help.
Key Background
The assassinations are not metaphor. Between 752 and 732 BC Israel ran through Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah, most of them killed by their successors. Village baking used a domed clay oven heated overnight, so a loaf left on one side came out burnt underneath and raw on top, an exact picture of a nation half absorbed into foreign ways. The seesaw between Egypt and Assyria describes real foreign policy, since small states survived by picking a great power to pay tribute to, and Israel kept switching.
Whenever I want to Israel, the of is laid bare and the evil of exposed — they practice deception, thieves break in, bandits raid in the streets.
It never crosses their minds that I all their evil. Now their actions have them surrounded — they are right in front of my face.
They make the happy with their evil, and the officials with their
They are all — like an heated by a baker who stops stoking the fire only from the time he kneads the dough until it rises.
On the day of our king's celebration, the officials become sick with the of wine. He reaches out his hand to join the
They draw near with like an oven, full of scheming. Their anger smolders all night — by morning it blazes like a roaring fire.
All of them burn hot as an oven and their rulers. All their — not one of them calls out to me.
Ephraim in with the nations. Ephraim is a
Foreigners strength, but he doesn't even know it. Gray are scattered across head, but he doesn't even know it.
Israel's testifies right to his face, but they do not to their God or look for him through any of this.
Ephraim has become like a dove, easily fooled and senseless — calling out to Egypt, then running to
When they go, I will throw my over them. I will bring them down like birds from the sky. I will them, just as their own community has heard me warn.
Devastation is coming for them because they have from me! Destruction is coming for them because they have against me! I wanted to them, but they speak lies about me.
They do not out to me from their — they just wail on their beds. They for grain and new wine but turn away from me.
I them and their strong, but they plot evil against me.
They — but not upward. They are like a that misfires. Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their tongues. This will be their humiliation in the land of