Hosea 8 - Bible Study, Explanation, and Application

Hosea 8 Bible Study

HOSEA CHAPTER REVIEW:

• Hosea 1 – God told Hosea to marry a wife of whoredom as a picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him. Hosea married Gomer, and together they had 3 children together. Their names were “Jezreel,” “No Mercy,” and “Not My People.” Though Israel had acted very wickedly, God promised them hope for a positive future, but judgement was coming first.

• Hosea 2 – Hosea’s wife returned to her sins and committed adultery, just as Israel had turned its back on God repeatedly. God warned Israel to repent or suffer severe consequences. Israel didn’t realize all of its blessings came from God and God could take them all away. God would punish Israel, but Hosea foretold a day when God would restore His wife (Israel) to Himself by grace.  

• Hosea 3 – God told Hosea to buy his wife back after she was unfaithful to him. This was a picture of God’s grace to Israel after their unfaithfulness. Israel’s immediate future was going to be spend enduring the consequences of their sins, but God promised He would show them grace in the “latter days” when they were reunited under “David their king.”

• Hosea 4 – Hosea described the sorry sinful state of the people of Israel. They were decaying as a nation because they lacked knowledge of the law of God. The priests were piranhas that fed on the sins of the people. Hosea described their unfaithfulness to God as whoredom and adultery.

• Hosea 5 – This chapter continues listing the sins of the people of Israel and includes the unfortunate prophecy that Judah would fall into the same sins. God was tearing down the power of Israel and Judah little by little. He would eventually pour out His wrath on them and withdraw from them for a time, leading them to repentance.

• Hosea 6 – God was frustrated with the sacrifices of the people. Though they made sacrifices, they made them without truly loving God in their hearts. It was just an empty ritual, and God informed them of its meaninglessness. Judah and Israel’s love for God was like the morning dew. It would reappear for a short time only to quickly vanish away.  

• Hosea 7 – Israel looked to Egypt and Assyria for help, but no ally, no matter how strong, could save them because God was their enemy. God compared them to “silly doves” that He would catch in His net and destroy. God didn’t want that to be Israel’s fate, He wanted to redeem them, but they refused to repent of their rebellion against Him.

TIMELINE:

• The first verse of the book informs the reader that Hosea lived during the reigns of Uzziah (Azariah), Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah in Judah, and the reign of Jeroboam II in Israel.

• Uzziah’s (Azariah’s) reign began around 815 B.C.

• Hezekiah’s reign ended sometimes around 695 B.C.

• Jeroboam II reigned ended in the mid-700s B.C.

• This puts Hosea’s prophetic work squarely in the 700s B.C. The text indicates he did most of his teaching prior to 721 B.C. That was the year God punished Israel by bringing the Assyrians against them and exiling them from the Promised Land.

OUTLINE:

• “ISRAEL HAS FORGOTTEN HIS MAKER” (8:1-14):

  • The king of Assyria was flying like a vulture over Israel, ready to devour.

  • The people of Israel cried out to God, hoping their association with Him would save them, but He rejected their cries because they had spurned everything good and embraced everything evil.

  • Israel had thrown off God and established alternative leaders, evil princes, bad kings, and false gods.

  • God wasn’t going to save them from the destruction their new leaders were leading them into.

  • God mocked their “calf” (idol in Samaria) and told them it would be broken to pieces.

  • All their works were like “sowing the wind,” a proverbial phrase for uselessness and emptiness. Their harvest would be a field of wheat without heads (only stocks, the useless part). All of their national efforts, the appointing of kings, the alliances they attempted to make, their devotion to idols, and the mustering of military forces would be as useless as harvesting a field of wheat that had no heads.

  • God was against them and He made sure all their works were vanity. They were like useless vessel (8:8).

  • They had hired lovers, allies who they hoped would save them, but God was going to bring those alliances to nothing.

  • The things of God were so foreign to the people that God said, “Were I to write for Him [Israel] my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing” (8:12).

  • God did not want or welcome any of their sacrifices to Him.

  • He told them they would “return to Egypt” in the sense that He was going to give them back into the captivity He had saved them from in Egypt during the days of Moses.

  • God’s people had forgotten the Maker, and become makers of palaces and fortified cities, trusting in their own creations, but God was going to tear down everything they had made.

APPLICATION:

• There are those who have heard God’s laws 10,000 times and yet they remain a “strange thing” to them.

• People who sit in the pews year after year but never absorb the hundreds of sermons and thousands of Bible classes they sit through.

• They are there in body but not in mind or heart.

• They can’t be bothered to give God their attention to absorb His words. The repetition of God’s instructions is to them something to be endured until the church service ends and they can get back to the things they care about.

• What excuse will they have when God asks them why they didn’t obey?

• Don’t let it be said of you that you heard God’s words a thousand times but didn’t care to pay attention.