3. THE EFFECTS OF EXILE
Hosea now turns to describe the effects of exile upon the social and religious habits of the people. It must break up at once the joy and the sacredness of their lives. Every pleasure will be removed, every taste offended. Indeed, even now, with their conscience of having deserted Jehovah, they cannot pretend to enjoy the feasts of the Ba'alim in the same hearty way as the heathen with whom they mix. But, whether or no, the time is near when nature-feasts and all other religious ceremonies-all that makes life glad and regular and solemn-shall be impossible.
"Rejoice not, O Israel, to" the pitch of "rapture like the heathen, for thou hast played the harlot from thy God; a harlot's hire hast thou loved on all threshing-floors. Threshing-floor and wine-vat shall ignore them, and the new wine shall play them false. They shall not abide in the land of Jehovah, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat what is unclean. They shall not pour libations to Jehovah, nor prepare for Him their sacrifices. Like the bread of sorrows shall their bread be; all that eat of it shall be defiled": yea, "their bread shall be" only "for their appetite; they shall not bring" it "to the temple of Jehovah." He cannot be worshipped off His own land. They will have to live like animals, divorced from religion, unable to hold communion with their God. "What shall ye do for days of festival, or for a day of pilgrimage to Jehovah? For lo," they "shall be gone forth from destruction," the shock and invasion of their land, only "that Egypt may gather them in, Memphis give them sepulcher, nettles inherit their jewels of silver, thorns "come up" in their tents." The threat of exile still wavers between Assyria and Egypt. And in Egypt Memphis is chosen as the destined grave of Israel; for even then her Pyramids and mausoleums were ancient and renowned, her vaults and sepulchers were countless and spacious.
But what need is there to seek the future for Israel's doom, when already this is being fulfilled by the corruption of her spiritual leaders?
"The days of visitation have come, have come the days of requital. Israel" already "experiences them! A fool is the prophet, raving mad the man of the spirit." The old ecstasy of Saul's day has become delirium and fanaticism. Why? "For the mass of thy guilt and the multiplied treachery! Ephraim acts the spy with My God." There is probably a play on the name, for with the meaning a "watchman" for God it is elsewhere used as an honorable title of the prophets. "The prophet is a fowler's snare upon all his ways. Treachery-they have made it profound in the "very" house of their God. They have done corruptly, as in the days of Gibeah. Their iniquity is remembered; visitation is made on their sin."
These, then, were the symptoms of the profound political decay which followed on Israel's immorality. The national spirit and unity of the people had disappeared. Society-half of it was raw, half of it was baked to a cinder. The nation, broken into fractions, produced no man to lead, no king with the stamp of God upon him. Anarchy prevailed; monarchs were made and murdered. There was no prestige abroad, nothing but contempt among the Gentiles for a people whom they had exhausted. Judgment was inevitable by exile-nay, it had come already in the corruption of the spiritual leaders of the nation.
Hosea now turns to probe a deeper corruption still.