Hosea 7:3-7 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

Bible Comments

Wickedness Encouraged in High Places. King and princes gladly share in the prevailing wickedness adultery, drunkenness and the court itself is the scene of treachery, conspiracy, and assassinations. The text is corrupt, and contains allusions to events of the details of which we are ignorant.

Hosea 7:3. Read with a slight emendation (yimshç hû): In their wickedness they anoint kings, and in their falseness princes (cf. Hosea 8:4).

Hosea 7:4. Read, they are like a glowing oven a figure for lust. Read Hosea 7:4 b (? a gloss on Hosea 7:6), whose baker ceaseth from kneading, etc.

Hosea 7:5. Perhaps the king's birth-or coronation-day is meant. Hosea 7:5 b (probably corrupt) as it stands can only mean that the king made scorners his associates.

Hosea 7:6. Text corrupt. Read, their inward part is like an oven, and for baker read anger (mg.), omitting whiles they lie in wait as a gloss.

Hosea 7:7. The root-cause of the political and social unrest is the people's passion and irreligion. With the murder of king Zechariah (2 Kings 15:10), the period of anarchy, depicted by Hosea, began.

Hosea 7:3-7

3 They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.

4 They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened.

5 In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottlesc of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners.

6 For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait: their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire.

7 They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me.