INIQUITY
UNCOVERED
Ephraim,
he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned.
Hos. 7:8
he
hath mixed... By his alliances with the heathen, and by imitation of
their manners, he is himself become one of them. He has thrown off
all the distinctions and forfeited the privileges of the chosen
race.
cake not
turned... Referring to the destructive effect of foreign influences.
Ephraim was consumed by the unhallowed fire of Baal-worship, with all
its passion and persistent or excessive pursuit of sensual pleasures
and interests. A cake burnt on one side to a cinder, and on the other
left in a condition utterly unfit for food. So, the activity of
foreign idolatries and foreign alliances, and the consequent
unfaithfulness to Israel’s God, are the nation’s ruin.
This is
speaking of God's people mixing with the heathen people around them.
It also is speaking of a cake that had been cooked with uneven heat.
It was well done on the one side, and the other side of the cake was
raw. This is speaking of a person whose life is not consistent. He
proclaimed to love God and to live for God, but he played around with
the worship of false gods at the same time. He was unstable in all of
his ways.
Instead, Ephraim launched a futile foreign policy (Hos. 7:8-12). The baking
metaphor continues in Hos. 7:8 (cf. Hos. 7:4, 7:6-7). Israel had
formed alliances with foreign nations (cf. Hos. 7:11; 8:9). This is
compared to the mixing of flour with oil to form cakes (bālal,
mixes, is frequently used in this sense). This policy had proven
self-destructive. Israel had become like an unturned cake on hot
stones — burned and soon to be discarded.
cake
not turned... A thin pancake burned
on one side and uncooked on the other—therefore, not fit to eat.
Thirty
Similitude's of Israel
1.
Whore (Hos. 1:2)
2.
Divorcee (Hos. 2:1-13)
3.
A divorcee remarried (Hos. 2:14-23; 3:1-5)
4.
A backsliding heifer (Hos. 4:16)
5.
Troops of robbers (Hos. 6:9)
6.
Heated oven (Hos. 7:4-7)
7.
An unturned cake (Hos. 7:8)
8.
A silly dove (Hos. 7:11)
9.
A deceitful bow (Hos. 7:16)
10.
A dishonored vessel (Hos. 8:8)
11.
A wild ass (Hos. 8:9)
12.
Wild grapes (Hos. 9:10)
13.
A first-ripe fig
14.
An empty vine (Hos. 10:1)
15.
A working heifer (Hos. 10:11)
16.
Fallow ground (Hos_. 0:12)
17.
A bird out of Egypt (Hos. 11:11)
18.
A dove out of Assyria
19.
A morning cloud (Hos. 13:3)
20.
Early dew
21.
Chaff
22.
Smoke
23.
A lily (Hos. 14:5)
24.
Lebanon (Hos. 14:5-6)
25.
An olive tree (Hos. 14:6)
26.
Corn (Hos. 14:7)
27.
Wine
28.
Wind
29.
A vine
30.
A green fir tree (Hos. 14:8)
THE
CONFUSION OF THE NATION
Hosea
begins by summing up the public aspect of Israel in two epigrams,
short but of marvelous adequacy:-(Hos.
7:8)
"Ephraim-among
the nations he mixeth himself:
Ephraim
has become a cake not turned."
It
is a great crisis for any nation to pass from the seclusion of its
youth and become a factor in the main history of the world. But for
Israel the crisis was trebly great. Their difference from all other
tribes about them had struck the Canaanites on their first entry to
the land; (Num.
23:9 b; Jos. 2:8) their own earliest writers had emphasized their
seclusion as their strength; (Deut. 33:27)
and their first prophets consistently deprecated every overture made
by them either to Egypt or to Assyria. We feel the force of the
prophets’ policy when we remember what happened to the Philistines.
These were a people as strong and as distinctive as Israel, with whom
at one time they disputed possession of the whole land. But their
position as traders in the main line of traffic between Asia and
Africa rendered the Philistines peculiarly open to foreign influence.
They were now Egyptian vassals, now Assyrian victims; and after the
invasion of Alexander the Great their cities became centers of
Hellenism, while the Jews upon their secluded hills still stubbornly
held unmixed their race and their religion. This contrast, so
remarkably developed in later centuries, has justified the prophets
of the eighth in their anxiety that Israel should not annul the
advantages of her geographical seclusion by trade or treaties with
the Gentiles. But it was easier for Judaea to take heed to the
warning than for Ephraim. The latter lies as open and fertile as her
sister province is barren and aloof. She has many gates into the
world, and they open upon many markets. Nobler opportunities there
could not be for a nation in the maturity of its genius and loyal to
its vocation: -
"Rejoice,
O Zebulun, in thine outgoings:
They
shall call the nations to the mountain.
They
shall suck of the abundance of the seas.
And
of the treasure that is stored in the sands." (Deut.
33:18-19)
But
in the time of his outgoings Ephraim was not sure of himself nor true
to his God, the one secret and strength of the national
distinctiveness. So, he met the world weak and unformed, and, instead
of impressing it, was by it dissipated and confused. The tides of a
lavish commerce scattered abroad the faculties of the people and swept back upon their life alien fashions and tempers, to subdue
which there was neither native strength nor definiteness of national
purpose. All this is what Hosea means by the first of his epigrams:
Ephraim-among the nations he lets himself be poured out or mixed up.
The form of the verb does not elsewhere occur; but it is reflexive,
and the meaning of the root is certain. Balal is to pour out, or
mingle, as of oil in the sacrificial flour. Yet it is sometimes used
of a mixing which is not sacred, but profane and hopeless. It is
applied to the first great confusion of mankind, to which a popular
etymology has traced the name Babel, as if for Balbel. Derivatives of
the stem bear the additional ideas of staining and impurity. The
alternative renderings which have been proposed, lets himself be
soaked and scatters himself abroad like wheat among tares, are not so
probable, yet hardly change the meaning.
Ephraim
wastes and confuses himself among the Gentiles. The nation’s
character is so disguised that Hosea afterwards nicknames him Canaan
(Hos.
12:8)
their religion so filled with foreign influences that he calls the
people the harlot of the Ba’alim.
If
the first of Hosea’s epigrams satirizes Israel’s foreign
relations, the second, with equal brevity and wit, hits off the
temper and constitution of society at home. For the metaphor of which
this epigram is composed Hosea has gone to the baker. Among all
classes in the East, especially under conditions requiring haste,
there is in demand a round flat scone, which is baked by being laid
on hot stones or attached to the wall of a heated oven. The whole art
of baking consists in turning the scone over at the proper moment. If
this be mismanaged it does not need a baker to tell us that one side
may be burnt to a cinder, while the other remains raw. Ephraim, says
Hosea, is an unturned cake.
By
this he may mean one of several things, or all of them together, for
they are infectious of each other. There was, for instance, the
social conditions of the people. What can better be described as an
unturned scone than a community one half of whose number are too
rich, and the other too poor? Or Hosea may refer to that unequal
distribution of religion through life with which in other parts of
his prophecy he reproaches Israel. They keep their religion, as Amos
more fully tells us, for their temples, and neglect to carry its
spirit into their daily business. Or he may refer to Israel’s
politics, which were equally in want of thoroughness. They rushed
hotly at an enterprise but having expended so much fire in the
beginning of it, they let the end drop cold and dead. Or he may wish
to satirize, like Amos, Israel’s imperfect culture-the pretentious
and overdone arts, stuck excrescence-wise upon the unrefined bulk of
the nation, just as in many German principalities last century
society took on a few French fashions in rough and exaggerated forms,
while at heart still brutal and coarse. Hosea may mean any one of
these things, for the figure suits all, and all spring from the same
defect. Want of thoroughness and equable effort was Israel’s
besetting sin, and it told on all sides of his life. How better
describe a half-fed people, a half-cultured society, a half-lived
religion, a halfhearted policy, then by a half-baked scone?
We
who are so proud of our political bakers, we who scorn the rapid
revolutions of our neighbors and complacently dwell upon our equable
ovens, those slow and cautious centuries of political development
which lie behind us-have we anything better than our neighbors,
anything better than Israel, to show in our civilization? Hosea’s
epigram fits us to the letter. After all those ages of baking,
society is still with us an unturned scone: one end of the nation
with the strength burnt out of it by too much enjoyment of life, the
other with not enough of warmth to be quickened into anything like
adequate vitality. No man can deny that this is so; we are able to
live only by shutting our hearts to the fact. Or is religion equally
distributed through the lives of the religious portion of our nation?
Of late years religion has spread, and spread wonderfully, but of how
many Christians is it still true that they are but half-baked living a life one side of which is reeking with the smoke of sacrifice,
while the other is never warmed by one religious' thought. We may have
too much religion if we confine it to one day or one department of
life: our worship overdone, with the sap and the freshness burnt out
of it, cindery, dusty, unattractive, fit only for crumbling; our
conduct cold, damp, and heavy, like dough the fire has never reached.
Instead, Ephraim
launched
a futile foreign policy (Hos. 7:8-12). The baking metaphor continues
in Hos. 7:8 (cf. Hos. 7:4, 7:6-7). Israel had formed alliances with
foreign nations
(cf.
Hos. 7:11; 8:9). This is compared to the mixing of flour with oil to
form cakes (bālal,
mixes,
is
frequently used in this sense). This policy had proven
self-destructive. Israel had become like an unturned cake
on
hot stones - burned and soon to be discarded.
