CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hosea 5:13. Sick.] Not civil war between the two kingdoms, for both were wounded. Apostasy with its train of moral corruptions was the disease of the body politic (Isaiah 1:6). Eph.] with whom the prophecy has chiefly to do, sought help and found none from Assyria.
Hosea 5:14. Lion] A fierce, roaring lion. Young lion] An emblem of strength and ferocity. They can no more defend themselves from God’s judgments than from fierce lions which attack. Tear] to pieces. Go away] leisurely back into its cave with its prey.
Hosea 5:15. Acknowledge] i.e. feel the guilt and punishment of sin; repent and return to God. The Heb. includes the idea of suffering. Afflict.] awakens the need of mercy, and urges to God. Seek] most earnestly and urgently (cf. Hosea 2:9; Deuteronomy 4:29-30).
HOMILETICS
NATIONAL SICKNESS AND SPURIOUS REMEDIES.—Hosea 5:13
At length Ephraim saw the sickness within and felt the wounds inflicted from without. But instead of returning to God, they sought help from Assyria, “sent to King Jared,” but were grievously disappointed. Idolatry and corruption, apostasy from God, could not be cured with earthly bandages. The whole head was sick, and the heart faint. The wounds and bruises and putrefying sores could not be closed, bound up, nor mollified with worldly alliance. God had stricken them, and he only could cure them, but they refused to return (cf. Isaiah 1:6; Jeremiah 5:3). In the moral condition of Israel we have a picture of humanity.
I. Men are morally sick. The heart is depraved, “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Sin impairs the energy of the mind, and robs the soul of enjoyment and bliss. The political head and the moral heart of nations are sick and wounded. The politics, the philosophy, and the religion of the world require moral purity and spiritual health. Ceaseless activity without and unspirituality within crave for satisfaction and God. The life-blood is impure, the very heart is diseased, and the evils of the day are the expressions, the signs of its moral maladies. Everywhere we have sighs of the heart, efforts of the mind, and strivings for forms of liberty, states of life, and conditions of happiness which are considered the true harmony of moral being, the panacea for moral ills.
1. This sickness must be seen. Ephraim did not at first discern his condition. Men are often insensible to disease, take little warning of Divine judgments, until they are roused by some sudden stroke. Men may fancy themselves healthy because insensible; but apathy may suppress the natural feeling and cravings of the heart. A sound body suffers pain, if injured; but a frame benumbed by sickness or death has lost all feeling. “Health has no feeling of sickness,” says Augustine, “but yet it feels pain when it is wounded. But stupidity feels no pain; it has lost the feeling of pain; and the more insensible, so much the worse.”
2. This sickness must be seen in its true light. According to our view of afflictions so we think and act. They are designed to teach reflection and humility; to strengthen penitence, faith, and patience; to promote the health and sanctification of the soul. But if we see the distress and not the causes of it; if we feel no guilt, no need of a physician; then our temper is soured, our lot embittered, we forsake the true remedy, and pine away and die.
II. Men morally sick often seek wrong remedies. “Then sent Ephraim to the Assyrian.” This only invited the enemy into their kingdom and increased their distress. After they had paid money and spent all they had they were no better, but worse. Mark 5:26.
1. Individuals often fly to wrong sources. Music and merry company, novels and scenes of amusement, are tried in vain, and found to be miserable comforters with all their attractions. Impressions remain, the conscience is still wounded and disappointment is the result.
2. Nations suffering heavy calamities trust to impotent remedies. Commercial prosperity, military prowess, political liberty, and intellectual culture, may uphold the outward show, but can never cure the inward disorders of a kingdom. In national judgments, amid general dissolution of manners, reliance on arts and arms, wealth and allies, will not save us. The experience of Ephraim will be the result of all application to an arm of flesh. “Yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.”
III. When men in moral sickness apply to wrong means for relief they will be disappointed. Human aid will be useless when God is slighted; the philosopher and the legislator, the warrior and the poet, will not avail. “Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous.” Scripture is emphatic on this point. “Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it” (Isaiah 36:6; Ezekiel 29:6-7). “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isaiah 2:22.) “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” “Put not your confidence in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” History gives warning sufficient. Nations that have relied upon human genius, arms and confederacies, have failed in efforts to remedy their evils. Unholy alliance with Egypt and Assyria could not preserve Israel from their doom. Policy without principle, alliance without God, shall be broken. Moral maladies can only be cured by moral means. There is but one physician, all others are physicians of no value. “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”
DESTRUCTION OPEN AND VIOLENT.—Hosea 5:14-15
God, who had been as a “moth” gradually eating away and destroying the nation, would now change his procedure, and attack as a fierce lion, tear to pieces, and none could rescue. If nations take no heed to small judgments they cannot escape great ones. The lion, an image of strength, seizes its prey, and carries it away in safety (Isaiah 5:29). As the lion withdraws into its cave, so God withdraws his help, and retires from Israel until they repent and seek his face.
I. God’s judgments are often severe. “I, even I will tear.” Here are no soft metaphors. The destruction is most painful and severe. Like a lion or an eagle God tears to pieces; tears the garment, tears body and soul. Punishment sometimes falls upon men like wild beasts upon their victims, to crush and destroy. The lion is cruel and ferocious; rends its prey (Deuteronomy 33:20; Psalms 7:2); and carries it in triumph to its den (Nahum 2:12). This is not an overdrawn picture of danger and the anger of God against presumptuous sins. “Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.”
II. God’s judgments are often irresistble. “None shall rescue him.” The shepherd can neither defend nor interfere. In a trial of strength God is omnipotent and cannot be overcome. Assyria was no protection to Israel. In national calamity none can plead. At the day of wrath no hope, no refuge can be found without God.
III. God’s judgments are often irrevocable. “I will go and return to my place.” None can ward off Divine judgments; none can bring back when God retires from men. When God deserts a society or a people, the mightiest and most learned are no defence. Noble institutions, religious ordinances, and great men, wealthy citizens and abundant revenues, are not the chief strength, the real power of a nation. God can consume these like a flower, and no fasting nor penitence can purchase favours once withdrawn. Riches melt, power decays, and happiness turns to misery before the wrath of God. Nothing can revive a nation when God destroys it; nothing can change his purpose when carried out in his providence. To be forsaken of God at any time is awful woe; but in trouble to have his countenance turned from us and against us, to have frowns instead of smiles, must be hell, and not heaven. “When distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hosea 5:13. Man cannot have two objects of trust—God and himself, or fellow-man. Half of salvation cannot be ascribed to one and half to the other. To put confidence in man, and expect him to do what God alone can do, is idolatry or departure from God, cleaving to the cistern and forsaking the fountain, leaning upon a broken reed which will fail and pierce the hand. The power, the kindness, and the faithfulness of man are helpless. God alone should be our hope and trust (Jeremiah 17:7).
Hosea 5:14. When we strengthen ourselves in sin by outward helps against the providence and corrections of God, we challenge him to a trial of strength, turn the “moth” into a “lion,” and bring greater judgments upon ourselves. God can tear a nation to pieces by sword, famine, and civil discord. “What is stronger than a lion?” “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Hosea 5:15. God’s retirement from men. I. The cause. Offended at sin, driven away by men forgetting and forsaking him. Sin separates between God and man, and hides his face from us. II. The design. “Till they acknowledge their offence,” &c.
1. To lead to repentance, sorrow, confession and forsaking of sin.
2. To bring back to God. “In their affliction they will seek me early.” The desertion is not always final nor total. God withdraws his aid in duty and his comforts in life not to cast off entirely, but to beget penitence and hope, to induce return and amendment of life. “We smart under dreadful desertions. Some of us have had to cry with the Master on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ We know why he has forsaken us: it is because we have forsaken him, and therefore he has hidden the light of his countenance from us until we could scarcely believe ourselves to be his children at all. We have turned to prayer, and found words and even desires fail us when on our knees. We have searched the Scriptures with no consolatory result: every text of Scripture has looked black upon us; every promise blockaded its ports against us. We have tried to raise a single thought heavenward, but have been so distracted under a sense of the Lord’s wrath, which lay heavy upon us, that we could not even aspire for a moment; we could only say, ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me?’ Such suffering of soul will often be to the erring Christian the very best thing that could befall him. He has walked contrary to his God, and if his God did not walk contrary to him he would be at peace in his sin; and remember, no condition can be more dangerous, not to say damnable, than for a man who is no longer agreed with his God to believe that all is well, and go on softly and delicately in the way which tends to destruction” [Spurgeon].
True repentance, in its first step, leads to conviction of sin, confession of guilt, and acceptance of punishment as due to our sin. Then to seek the face of God. “Without the latter, despair, not repentance, would be the result, as in the case of Judah’s remorse. Without the former step, to seek God’s face would be presumption.” Unsanctified affliction only hardens, but blessed, will lead the chastened penitent earnestly and diligently to seek and serve God.
True seekers after God.
1. They seek him, sensible of their distance and their guilt.
2. They seek him when they do not enjoy him. 3 They seek him (a). early, i.e. diligently. Former negligence is followed by double diligence; (b) earnestly intent on finding God; (c) perseveringly, though he has withdrawn from them. They seek until they find him. “All these duties required in right seeking of God ought to be especially set about in sad times. Times wherein affliction press men hard on all hands ought to be times of seeking God indeed, and ought to put an edge on diligence and duties, otherwise it may draw to a sad account” [Hutcheson].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Hosea 5:11-14. Vice is sometimes punished instantly and sometimes gradually. This seems to be the method of Divine procedure. We have slow and rapid consumption in the bodies of men. We have the gradual decay and the sudden overthrow of empires, the seed-time of evil and the harvest of judgment. The changes of circumstances are so various and frequent, so great and sudden, that the same person, the same people, afford an example of the greatest prosperity and the greatest misery. Henry the Fourth of France was despatched by a sacrilegious hand in his carriage, in the midst of popular applause and the triumphs of peace. Like Herod, the grandson of Herod the Great, he found but one step between adoration and oblivion. The ruin which God inflicts upon the impenitent and presumptuous sinners is often beyond precedent most sudden and most fearful. What folly, then, to trust in man, when God can easily destroy him!
Hosea 5:15. To afflictions, instrumentally, many have to date the awakening and conversion of their souls. “Happy is that condition which forces us to trust in God only, and to be in the hand of his providence. Afflictions dispose us to pray; and we are sure to want nothing if we find God in prayer” [Bishop Wilson].