The Lord's controversy.
God had a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. The essential part of the indictment was that they had forsaken him. "There is no knowledge of God in the land." Hence—
I. A FEARFUL OVERFLOWING OF IMMORALITY.
1. With the knowledge of God there had departed also "truth and mercy" (Hosea 4:1). "Truth" and "mercy," or "kindness," are root-principles of morals. The subversion of them is the subversion of morality in its foundations. These foundation-virtues, however, had been subverted in Israel. Morality has never proved able to sustain itself in divorce from religion. The bond which binds man to God is also the bond which binds him to the practice of the moral virtues. To cut this bond is to set him adrift. He who ignores the primal obligation—that to his Maker—is not likely to have much regard for any other.
2. The result was a fearful overspreading of corruption. "By swearing, and lying, and killing," etc. (Hosea 4:2). Ungodliness ran its course unchecked. It brought forth its natural fruits of rapine, dishonesty, licentiousness, profanity, riotousness, and murder. Society seamed dissolving. Irreligion is the foe, not only of private morality, but of social order. It tends to division, to anarchy, to general disregard of law and rights.
II. SEVERE JUDGMENTS ON THE LAND. "Therefore shall the land mourn," etc. (Hosea 4:3). Man's sin, in its effects, is not confined to himself or to his kind. It overflows on the animate and the inanimate creation.
1. The ground was cursed at first for man's sake (Genesis 3:17).
2. It is degraded in being compelled to sustain the sinner, and to serve as the instrument of his vices.
3. It is visited on his account with plagues, droughts, and famines (Amos 4:6-12).
4. It is despoiled and down-trodden, and suffers from his neglect, his misuse, and his ruthless devastations.
5. The animal creation shares in these calamities, besides suffering much directly from man's cruel treatment. Thus in many ways the creature is made subject to vanity (Romans 8:19-22). The consideration should heighten our sense of sin's enormity.
III. APPROACHING RUIN TO THE NATION. (Hosea 4:4, Hosea 4:5) A nation in the moral state above described cannot long escape punishment. It "is nigh unto cursing" (Hebrews 6:8). Its doom hastens on apace. "Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together" (Matthew 24:28). The judgment which would fall on Israel would be:
1. Sure. "Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another," etc. (Hosea 4:4). The thing for the people to do was, not to strive with one another, but to cease to strive with God. But this was a remedy not likely to be adopted. A headstrong, presumptuous, contumacious spirit had got possession of them; they were "as they that strive with the priest"—a proverbial expression for the highest contumacy (cf. Deuteronomy 17:12). It is useless for the wicked to reprove, rebuke, or reproach one another for the miseries which are overtaking them while repentance toward God stands postponed. That is the first and great necessity.
2. Sudden. "Therefore shalt thou fall in the day," etc. (Hosea 4:5). People and prophet would fall continuously, night and day, till all were destroyed. But there seems allusion also to the swiftness with which the calamity would descend. The "day" of their prosperity (Hosea 2:11) would suddenly terminate; a "night" of terrible blackness would succeed. This night would be a specially dark one for the "prophet"—he who had claimed to be a "seer." His predictions discredited, his repute gone, his charlatanry exposed, his visions extinguished in blood, he and his dupes would perish miserably together. "The blind lead the blind," and both at last "fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14).
3. Complete. The whole nation would be destroyed. "Thy mother" (Hosea 4:5).—J.O.