The Lord Will Punish Israel
My God will cast them away, because they did not hearken unto him: and they shall be wanderers among the nations. Hos. 9:17
cast them away... This is something that God said He would do because of the sins of Ephraim, even though they were one time in grace (Exo. 33:17; Jer. 31:2; Gal. 3:8; Heb. 4:2; Jude 1:4-5). See Hos. 9:8; 9:17; 2Kgs. 23:27; 24:20; 1Ch. 28:9; 2Ch. 7:20; Jer. 7:15; 15:1; 23:39; 31:37; Mat. 5:13. There is no excusing of sin or passing over it by God; even angels who were one time sinless and, in His grace, and who later sinned, will be damned (Mat. 25:41; 2Pet. 2:4; Jude 1:6-7). All God can and will do is to forgive when sin is duly confessed and repented of (1Jhn. 1:9).
they shall be... Of whom was the prophet speaking here? Ephraim, the 10-tribe kingdom, as proved in other passages of this book where the name is used no less than 37 times. They were to be wanderers among the nations; so the theory that they would be given a new promised land in England or America and that Judah, or the southern kingdom of David would be the only ones dispersed among the nations is false. God promised global dispersion for disobedience (Lev. 26:33; Deut. 28:64-65).
They are scattered throughout many nations, because of God's great anger toward them.
The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt; the languor of the Greek cities; the deep weariness and sated lust which in Imperial Rome made human life a hell; the decay which overtook Italy after the renascence of Paganism without the Pagan virtues; the strife and anarchy that have rent every court where, as in the case of Henri Quatre, the king set the example of libertinage; the incompetence, the poltroonery, the treachery, that have corrupted every camp where, as in French Metz in 1870, soldiers and officers gave way so openly to vice; the checks suffered by modern civilization in face of barbarism because its pioneers mingled in vice with the savage races they were subduing; the number of great statesmen falling by their passions, and in their fall frustrating the hopes of nations; the great families worn out by indulgence; the homes broken up by infidelities; the tainting of the blood of a new generation by the poisonous practices of the old, -have not all these things been in every age, and do they not still happen near enough to ourselves to give us a great fear of the sin which causes them all? Alas! how stow men are to listen and to lay to heart! Is it possible that we can gild by the names of frivolity and piquancy habits the wages of which are death? Is it possible that we can enjoy comedies which make such things their jest? We have among us many who find their business in the theater, or in some of the periodical literature of our time, in writing and speaking and exhibiting as closely as they dare to limits of public decency. When will they learn that it is not upon the easy edge of mere conventions that they are capering, but upon the brink of those eternal laws whose further side is death and hell-that it is not the tolerance of their fellow men they are testing, but the patience of God Himself? As for those loud few who claim license in the name of art and literature, let us not shrink from them as if they were strong or their high words true. They are not strong, they are only reckless; their claims are lies. All history, the poets and the prophets, whether Christian or Pagan, are against them. They are traitors alike to art, to love, and to every other high interest of mankind.
It may be said that a large part of the art of the day, which takes great license in dealing with these subjects, is exercised only by the ambition to expose that ruin and decay which Hosea himself affirms. This is true. Some of the ablest and most popular writers of our time have pictured the facts, which Hosea describes, with so vivid a realism that we cannot but judge them to be inspired to confirm his ancient warnings, and to excite a disgust of vice in a generation which otherwise treats vice so lightly. But if so, their ministry is exceeding narrow, and it is by their side that we best estimate the greatness of the ancient prophet. Their transcript of human life may be true to the facts it selects, but we find in it no trace of facts which are greater and more essential to humanity. They have nothing to tell us of forgiveness and repentance, and yet these are as real as the things they describe. Their pessimism is unrelieved. They see the corruption that is in the world through lust; they forget that there is an escape from it. (2Pet. 1:1-21) It is Hosea’s greatness that, while he felt the vices of his day with all needed thoroughness and realism, he yet never allowed them to be inevitable or ultimate, but preached repentance and pardon, with the possibility of holiness even for his depraved generation. It is the littleness of the art of our day that these great facts are forgotten by her, though once she was their interpreter to men. When she remembers them the greatness of her past will return.
Because of her disobedience Israel would be rejected by God (cf. Hos. 4:6). In exile Israel’s people would become wanderers among the nations. Wanderers translates the same Hebrew word (nāḏaḏ) as strayed in Hos. 7:13. Again the punishment fit the crime. Those who willfully strayed from the path of covenant loyalty were condemned to wander aimlessly among those outside the covenant (foreign nations). As in Hos. 9:15, the language in Hos. 9:17 may also allude to the Genesis account. The same verb (nāḏad) is used with respect to Cain (Gen. 4:12).
0 comments:
Post a Comment