"When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree." (Hosea 9:10a) Imagine how wonderful it would be, when traveling across a dry and dusty desert, to find a fruitful grapevine. Imagine what a welcome sight the early figs would be to a weary traveler going down a roadway. When the Lord first called Israel to be a nation, He called her through Abraham. Abraham believed in God and forsook the idols of his ancestors, choosing instead to trust God and go wherever He said to go. Abraham's descendants ended up in Egypt but the Lord never forgot them; they prospered greatly in number and it's estimated that perhaps as many as two million people emerged in the exodus. They could have been a fruitful blessing, like the finding of fruit, but instead they sinned against the Lord as He points out below.
"But when they came to Baal Peor, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved." (Hosea 9:10b) A large number of the men of Israel sinned against the Lord at Baal Peor during the wilderness years. Moabite women set out to seduce them and lure them into idolatry, in hopes that God would destroy Israel. The men who allowed themselves to fall into this temptation accompanied the women to a pagan feast, where sacrifices were made to false gods, and they "ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods". (Numbers 25:2b) It's highly likely that the men engaged in occult sexual rituals with the women as well, for later in that same chapter an Israelite man brought a Midianite woman (the Midianites had allied themselves with the Moabites in this plot against Israel) right into the Israelite camp in the sight of everyone and took her into his tent. The Lord says that those who engaged in idolatry in Numbers 25 "became as vile as the thing they loved"---they became as unholy as the idols to which they bowed. Idolatry led them into sin, sin they probably never pictured themselves committing, and 24,000 men died in a plague of judgment for having fallen into idolatry and sexual immorality.
Idolatry has plagued the nation since then up until Hosea's day. Time and time again the people have fallen into idolatry in one form or another. In some cases they've blended idolatry with their worship of the Lord, such as bringing offerings and sacrifices to the golden calves intended (wrongly) to represent Him or by sacrificing to Him on the old high places which He commanded to be torn down (although they never tore them all down) when the temple was built. In other cases they repudiated Him altogether in favor of foreign gods. But in all the cases of those who chose these routes, they drifted from a right relationship with Him and drifted more and more into sins---into bigger and bigger sins---until at last He is going to have to bring about the calamities He warned them about.
"Ephraim's glory will fly away like a bird---no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of every one. Woe to them when I turn away from them! I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place. But Ephraim will bring out their children to the slayer." (Hosea 9:11-13) The people have always increased. Even when they were slaves in Egypt, you'll recall from our study of the exodus that the Egyptians bewailed the fact that the Israelites in their midst were so fertile. They feared they would become so large in number that they could stage a successful revolt, and although some of the wicked people in the Bible suffered from unfounded paranoia (for the wicked flee when no one pursues, as Proverbs 28:1 says), the Israelites apparently really were far more fertile than the Egyptians and their numbers were growing by leaps and bounds. But now, as judgment for idolatry, the Lord is going to allow their fertility to decrease so their numbers will decrease. And He is going to allow an invader to come, causing many Israelite males to fall in battle, causing many people of all ages to be carried away captive, and causing those left in the land to deal with the deprivations of famine.
As we close I want to point out again that judgment can fall on any nation in the world today that forgets God. We can't look back at ancient Israel and point our finger or shake our heads over their waywardness when there are people in our own nation who are just as wayward. Sometimes we go a bit astray ourselves, in spite of having already accepted the Lord as our Savior. We must remain steadfast in our own faithfulness and we must pray for revival in our country.
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