Read Hosea 3 and 4 at Bible Gateway.
Hebrew paragraph divisions
Hos 3:1-5 {p} Hosea takes his adulterous wife back as the LORD will take adulterous Israel back, when she seeks Him
Hos 4:1-19 {p} Charge against Israel: You have forsaken Law + Me therefore the fruit of your deeds will come upon you
Hos 4:1-19 {p} chiastic structure
This passage is the charge of YHVH against Ephraim, the central part of which is:
Harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart. My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff informs them. For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God. Hos 4:11-12
It is this lack of knowledge – that dead wood has no power to counsel or inform (much less live wood) that will destroy them. Their hearts are enslaved to harlotry, which is idolatry. They do not have the power to free themselves.
How interesting, we might say, but that has no bearing on us in the modern world. Oh? Hearts are still enslaved to idolatry in our day, even if the idols have changed. Men worship long- dead fish skeletons and proclaim darwinsim their god by their thoughts and actions, and men worship printed paper and proclaim money their god by their thoughts and actions. Skeletons and paper likewise have no power to counsel or inform, and yet men who are enslaved still go after them.
So the Lord’s solution for Ephraim’s stubbornness and rebellion? Let him alone – let him go. When a body has been disciplined and disciplined and still refuses to see reason, then the only thing left with the power to get through to a stubborn and rebellious heart, is to let the consequences of their folly come upon them.
It is up to parents to take preemptive action on behalf of their children, and do not let them forget the Law of God (Hos 4:6, Deu 6:6-7).
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