When we left off yesterday we learned that many of the people of the northern kingdom considered the Lord's prophets to be insane. They didn't believe their message. The land was currently prospering and they couldn't imagine that a day of reckoning for their sins was coming. After all, they'd already been engaging in pagan religious practices for a long time and nothing had happened yet. But they failed to understand that this was the mercy of the Lord! The Lord is giving them opportunities to repent; that is why He has not yet allowed the nation to fall. But the time for action is almost at hand and, if the Lord is holy and righteous, He must judge sin. The delay in judgment has been because He's taken pity on them. The Apostle Peter, in New Testament times, made an observation about what people consider the Lord's slowness to act; the slowness, if they wanted to call it that, was a merciful delay. "The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
I am sure there must have been some souls saved during the many decades the Lord held back from causing judgment to fall. After all, men like Hosea were born during that time period. At some point in his life he made a conscious decision to follow the Lord rather than idols. Other prophets and priests did the same, as did average citizens. Although sin and idolatry were practiced by a large majority of the people by Hosea's day, not everyone was lost. The Lord knows ahead of time who will accept His message and who will not. His delay in bringing judgment allowed those who would be willing to hear Him to have an opportunity to hear Him and accept His word.
But a lot of people despised the Lord's message, as we learned yesterday when He said: "The prophet is considered a fool, the inspired person a maniac." This is where we pick up today with the next portion of our text: "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. They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins." (Hosea 9:8-9)
Not only are the people rejecting the Lord's word through Hosea, but they are actively waiting for an opportunity to do harm to Hosea, according to the passage above. Hosea isn't the first prophet in the Bible that people despised and he won't be the last. Even the Lord Jesus Christ had enemies who wanted to kill Him and who took every opportunity to try to trap Him by His words in order to accuse Him of speaking against the Roman government or against the law of Moses.
The reference to Gibeah in verse 9 is a reference to lawlessness and the absence of concern for one's fellow man. In Judges 19, while a Levite and his wife were lodging in Gibeah at the home of a man who had kindly invited them to stay the night on their journey home to the hill country of Ephraim, a large band of wicked men surrounded the house and demanded that the men send the Levite's wife out to them so they could all have sexual relations with her. This incident was similar to the one that happened in the region of Sodom and Gomorrah during the days of Lot, although in that case the men were demanding males inside the household be sent out to them. The homeowner in Judges 19 begged the men to go away and do no harm to anyone under his protection but the men would not listen. They had their way with the woman all night, resulting in her death. When the Lord says the northern kingdom of Israel has "sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah", He means they have sunk into utter depravity.
As we continue on through Chapter 9 in our next study session we will find the Lord referring to other incidences of wickedness. The people have sunk to depths no one could ever have imagined when they first entered the promised land. They have become just like the tribes who inhabited the land before them---the tribes the Lord removed due to their sin. He is about to do the same thing to the nation that has become as sinful as the ancient tribes of Canaan.
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