Hosea 5:1-5

Hosea 5:1 (KJB)

Hear ye this, O priests; and hearken, ye house of Israel; and give ye ear, O house of the king; for judgment is toward you, because ye have been a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor.

 

Here we read that both the religious leaders, the priests and the civil leaders are not exempt from the indictment that God has against them.  The people of Israel are also not exempt since they were named in the fact that judgment will be coming toward them.  The word “toward” focuses on the fact that the judgment they will face will be against them.  There were no innocent bystanders. The snare that the leaders had set for the people was because there was a high place on Mizpah which caused them to be steeped in idolatry by sacrificing to the false gods.  Mount Tabor was a rounded mountain which contained a high place where the people also made sacrifices to false gods.  In other words, the land was permeated with idolatry which was led by the leaders and the people followed without raising one objection.

 

Hosea 5:2 (KJB)

And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have been a rebuker of them all.

 

Isaiah 31:6 (KJV) Turn ye unto him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted.  The word “revolters” carries with it the meaning of departure from the right or them that turn aside.  They are called revolters because they had left the law of God and had taken up worship of the false gods.  The slaughter in view is the fact that they sacrificed cattle and also had made human sacrifices to false gods like Moloch.  God had rebuked them for taking this road which was opposite of his law and even though they were rebuked, they continued to sacrifice to the false gods.

 

Hosea 5:3 (KJB)

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled.

 

Isaiah 29:15 (KJV)   Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?  Israel thought that they could actually conceal their evil practices from the LORD but as it states in Isaiah 29:15 there is a woe pronounced upon anyone who thinks they can sin in secret and get away with it.  Ephraim is mentioned because they were the most prominent of the northern ten tribes and represented the entire nation of Israel.  As much as they tried to dress up their false religions and sacrifices, they were totally defiled by them.  False religion can never bring about salvation but the end is always eternal damnation.

 

Hosea 5:4 (KJB)

They will not frame their doings to turn unto their God: for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known the LORD.

 

Israel would not structure their doings in a way that would turn them back to God instead they were spiritually dead at this point because they did not know the LORD.  The only way any human being on this earth can know the true God is through the Lord Jesus Christ.   This nation claimed God as their true God and yet because they had the spirit of whoredoms, which means that their every move was determined by their false religion, they were walking as if they never knew him.  Their history should have awakened them to the reality that God was their true God and that for centuries he had condemned false religions.

 

Hosea 5:5 (KJB)

And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them.

 

2 Kings 14:9 (KJV) And Jehoash the king of Israel sent to Amaziah king of Judah, saying, The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trode down the thistle.  There was a time that Ephraim was so filled with pride that King Jehoash referred to himself as a cedar and the king of Judah as a thistle.  In their pride they showed they cared more for their sin than they did for coming back to worship the true God.  Since they had decided to stay with their idolatrous ways, they were to fall as the northern kingdom would go into Assyria in 721 B.C never to be returned to the land of Samaria and Judah would also go into captivity in 586 B.C. for 70 years and then in 70 A.D. the Romans would come and destroy Judah and kill thousands of people and take many to Rome as slaves thus losing the land forever because of disobedience.

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