Hosea 7

Heads up. There’s a measure of educated guessing that goes in trying to interpret some Bible chapters. More so than normal in Hosea 7. We can get a sense of this quickly by comparing Bible versions. We’d like to know more than we can, and the curiosity is good. But there’s a limit to scholarly interpretation of odd words and odd combinations of words written perhaps some 2,700 years ago. It might be hard to live in the Land of I Don’t Know. But it’s an honest place to hang our hat from time to time.

It’s not clear who the subject is in this verse. Some versions make the people the subject, as in: Kings love seeing how evil the people are.

There may not be a sexual pun going in the Hebrew, but it’s hard to miss in English: adulterers hot with lust don’t need to worry about keeping the fire going while waiting for the dough to rise. Come on, now. We’re left to wonder if Hosea intended this as a way of expressing how spiritually unfaithful the kings and leaders were at the time. God was the last thing on their minds.

Scholars take this mystifying verse in various directions, all of which seemed to be guesses. Examples: The kings and officials are drinking with atheists or infidels. They’re making treaties with non-Jews. They’re getting drunk with enemies who ridicule and insult them. They welcomed traitors. Whatever they’re doing, it’s not good to God.

There were over 40 kings and one queen in Israel and Judah. Fifteen were murdered. In Israel alone, there were 19 kings. Seven were assassinated and replaced by the person who killed them.

It’s unclear what Hosea is talking about. However, Israel did make a mess of the politics. Concerned about their safety, they skipped God. They went straight to making alliances with foreigners. King Hoshea in 732 BC bailed on his alliance with several neighbors: Egypt, Philistia, and Damascus. He jumped into a treaty with Assyria, bad guy terrorists of the ancient Middle East. They impaled captives and bragged about it with stone engravings on their palace walls (now in the British Museum). A few years later, he bailed on Assyria and asked Egypt to take them back into the alliance. That could seem more than mixed up. It might be flaky.

People who worshiped Baal, a popular god of fertility in family, flock, and field, sometimes cut themselves to get his attention (1 Kings 18:28). Or in this case they might have been cutting themselves to express to God their desperation, much like some people do today when they fast and pray.