Hear the Word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
A corrupt people and an expostulating God
In the previous Chapter s the prophet’s language had been highly and somewhat perplexingly symbolical. In this chapter he begins to speak more plainly and in sententious utterances.
I. A corrupt people. The depravity of Israel is represented--
1. Negatively. “There is no truth,” etc. These are the great fontal virtues in the universe; and where they are not, there is a moral abjectness of the most terrible description. A people without reality, their very life a lie. No acts of beneficence performed, and the very spirit of kindliness extinct. The greatest, the holiest Being in the universe utterly ignored.
2. Positively. The absence of these great virtues gives rise to tremendous crimes.
(1) Profanity. Reverence is gone.
(2) Falsehood.
(3) Killing.
(4) Dishonesty.
(5) Incontinence.
(6) Murder.
II. An expostulating God. “The Lord hath controversy.” Of all controversies this is the most awful.
1. It is a just controversy. Has not the great Ruler of the universe a right to contend against such evils?
2. It is a continuous controversy.
3. It is an unequal controversy. What are all human intellects to His? Sparks to the sun. The sinner has no argument to put before Him. He cannot deny his sins. He cannot plead accidents. He cannot plead compulsion. He cannot plead some merit as a set-off, for he has none. This controversy is still going on. It is held in the court of conscience, and you must know of its existence and character. (Homilist.)
Jehovah’s controversy with Israel
In this chapter Israel is cited to appear at God’s tribunal. There the Lord makes the following accusations--
1. Gross violation of both Tables of the Law, both by omission and by commission. God threatens, because of this, to send extreme desolation.
2. Desperate incorrigibleness. He threatens to destroy such, and the false prophets, and the body of the people and Church.
3. God accuseth the priests in Israel, that, through their fault, the people were kept in ignorance. He threatens to cast them and their posterity off. He further accuses the priests of ingratitude towards Elm, for which He threatens to turn their glory into ignominy. And tie even accuses them of sensuality and covetousness, rendering them unfaithful to their calling.
4. He accuses the whole people of gross idolatry, and threatens not to restrain their sin by corrections.
5. He accuses them of the idolatry of the calves, from which He dissuades Judah, as being an evidence of Israel’s wantonness, and the cause of their ensuing exile.
6. He accuses Ephraim, the kingly tribe, of their incorrigibleness in idolatry, their intemperance, filthiness, and corruption of justice through covetousness. For this He threatens sudden and violent destruction and captivity, where they should be ashamed of their corrupt worship. (George Hutcheson.)
The Divine suit with Israel
I. The suit commenced.
1. The knowledge that any truth is the Word of the Lord is a special means to prepare the heart to receive it with reverence and all due respect, even though it be hard and grievous to flesh and blood.
2. The nearness of a people to God does not exempt them from God’s contending with them for sin.
3. The nearer the relationship the more grievous the controversy.
II. The pleading of God. A suit first is entered against a man; when the court day comes, there is calling for a declaration.
1. God contends not with a people without a cause.
2. God contends not against a people for little things. These are not little things “No truth, no mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.”
3. It is in vain for any man to talk of his religion, if he make no conscience of the second table as well as the first.
III. Judgment pronounced (Hosea 4:3, etc.). “Therefore shall the land mourn.”
1. All the glory and pomp of the men of the world is but as a flower.
2. Times of affliction take down the jollity and bravery of men’s spirits, and make them fade, wither, and pine away.
3. The good or evil of the creature depends on man.
4. God, when in a way of wrath, can cause His wrath to reach to those things that seem to be most remote.
5. No creature can help man in the time of God’s wrath, for every creature suffers as well as man.
IV. Exhortation to Judah to beware that she come not into the same condition (Hosea 4:15). The prophet Hosea was sent especially to Israel, to the Ten Tribes, but here we see he turns his speech to Judah.
1. Ministers should especially look to those whom they are bound unto by office, but yet so as to labour to benefit others when occasion offers.
2. When we see our labour lost on those we most desire to benefit, we should try what we can do with others. There were many arguments why Judah should not do as Israel did.
V. Execution, God in his wrath giving up Ephraim to himself (verse 17).
1. Ephraim engaging himself in false worship is now so inwrapped in that sin and guilt that he cannot tell how to extricate himself.
2. The Lord has given him up to his idols.
(1) It is a heavy judgment upon a people when the saints withdraw from them.
(2) The Lord here virtually says to Hosea, “You can do no good to them, it is in vain for you to meddle with Ephraim.” God has a time to give men over to themselves, to say that His Spirit shall no longer strive with them. It is the most woeful judgment of God upon any people, or person, when He saith in His wrath, “Let him alone.” It is a testimony of very great disregard in God for His creatures. Those thus let alone are going apace to misery. God intends by this to make way for some fearful wrath that is to come upon them. It is a dreadful sign of reprobation. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
The Lord’s controversy
The court is set, and both attendance and attention are demanded. Whom may God expect to give Him a fair hearing, and take from Him a fair warning, but the children of Israel, His own professing people? Sin is the great mischief-maker; it sows discord between God and Israel. God sees sin in His own people, and a good action He has against them for it. He has a controversy with them for breaking covenant with Him, for bringing a reproach upon Him, and for an ungrateful return to Him for His favours. God’s controversies will be pleaded, pleaded by the judgments of His mouth before they are pleaded by the judgments of His hand, that He may be justified in all He does, and may make it appear that He desires not the death of sinners; and God’s pleadings ought to be attended to, for, sooner or later, they shall have a hearing. (Matthew Henry.)
There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.
Things that go with the knowledge of God
Truth and mercy are often spoken of as to Almighty God. Truth takes in all which is right, and to which God has bound Himself; mercy all beyond which God does out of His boundless love. When God says of Israel there is no truth nor mercy, He says that there is absolutely none of those two great qualities under which He comprises all His own goodness. “There is no truth,” none whatever, “no regard for known truth; no conscience, no sincerity, no uprightness; no truth of words; no truth of promises; no truth in witnessing; no making good in deeds what they said in words.” “Nor mercy.” This word has a wide meaning; it includes all love to one another, a love issuing in acts. It includes lovingkindness, piety to parents, natural affection, forgiveness, tenderness, beneficence, mercy, goodness. The prophet, in declaring the absence of this grace, declares the absence of all included under it. Whatever could be comprised under love, whatever feelings are influenced by love, of that there was nothing. “Nor knowledge of God.” The union of right knowledge and wrong practice is hideous in itself; and it must be especially offensive to Almighty God that His creatures should know whom they offend, how they offend Him, and yet, amid and against their knowledge, choose that which displeases Him. And on that ground, perhaps, He has so created us, that when our acts are wrong, our knowledge becomes darkened. The knowledge of God is not merely to know some things of God, as that He is the Creator and Preserver of the world and of ourselves. To know things of God is not to know God Himself. We cannot know God in any respect unless we are so far made like unto Him. Knowledge of God being tim gift of the Holy Ghost, he who hath not grace, cannot have that knowledge. A certain degree of speculative knowledge of God a bad man may have. But even this knowledge is not retained without love. Those who “held the truth in unrighteousness” ended (St. Paul says) by corrupting it. Certainly, the speculative and practical, knowledge are bound up together through the oneness of the relation of the soul to God, whether in its thoughts of Him, or its acts towards Him. Wrong practice corrupts belief, as misbelief corrupts practice. The prophet then probably denies that there was any true knowledge of God, of any sort, whether of life or faith, or understanding or love. Ignorance of God, then, is a great evil, a source of all other sins. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
A national duty
No one can fail to acknowledge in this terrible picture a representation of every people which habitually breaks the laws of God; and who, having set themselves free from the restraints of religion, or, through ignorance, being unconscious of their obligation, are delivered up to the working of their own heart’s lusts, and to follow their own imaginations. This consummation of depravity is even found in the chosen people of God. There was no truth where the great Source of all truth had announced the laws of moral perfection: there was no mercy where the prodigies of Divine compassion had been manifested from one generation to another: there was no knowledge of God where alone God could be known, and in the only place in which the principles of His government, and the attributes of His person, had been revealed to man. What rendered the case of Israel desperate, and remedy impossible, was this, that those who had been set apart as the depositaries of Divine knowledge, and who, by their life and doctrine, had been intended by the Almighty to act constantly, as a conservative power, against the corruptions of the mass, had yielded themselves to the popular torrent, and turned rank and station, the dignity of a holy vocation, and the talents of knowledge and intellect to the promotion of those vices which God had given them a solemn commission to withstand. They were weary of resisting the tendencies of the age and the godless spirit which found too complete an echo in their own hearts. So the princes and priests of Israel deserted their post, sealed up the records of God’s Word, and by ceasing to inculcate the awful sanctions of His law, and concealing from the people those oracles in which alone knowledge and wisdom are to be found, filled up to the brim the measure of their iniquity. That measure was filled up because they who had knowledge and had the guardianship of God’s heritage had turned traitors and withheld the Bread of Life from the famishing people. To whatever privileges a people may have been elected, no outward marks of distinction, apart from a corresponding holiness, will avail in the sight of Him who is no respecter of persons, and who trieth the very reins and hearts. The history of Israel is nothing but the annals of those judgments with which tie has visited their abuse of mercies, and their never-ending neglect or perversion of that most awful of all deposits, spiritual knowledge. If men in all times have been made accountable to God for the fate of their fellowcreatures, and most assuredly they have, it behoves us to look well to our own case, and beware how we involve ourselves in the participation of such guilt. Let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that the sins and the sanctions, the moral actions and the moral dealings of the eider covenant are inapplicable to ourselves. Considerable differences there may be, but they are all against us, and an increase of our responsibility. It is known to few of us how vast are the masses of ignorance and vice which undermine the surface of this favoured land. (J. Garbett.)