Hosea 7

This chapter is part of the indictment of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that begins in chapter 4 of the Book of Hosea. Hosea 6 ends with the call "Come, and let us return unto the LORD" and with a lament over a people whose goodness is "as a morning cloud." Chapter 7 continues by declaring that when God "would have healed Israel," their sin was instead laid bare.

Outline

• Verses 1–2 When God seeks to heal, the sins of Ephraim and Samaria are exposed. The people deal falsely, steal, and plunder, and they do not consider that God remembers all their wickedness.
• Verses 3–7 The people make the king glad with their wickedness and the princes (officials) with their lies. They are compared to a heated oven. The princes are made sick with wine, and the crowd, hot as an oven, devours its judges and brings down its kings. Yet none of them calls upon God.
• Verses 8–10 Ephraim has mixed himself among the nations and become "a cake not turned." Foreigners have devoured his strength, and gray hairs are upon him, yet he does not perceive it and does not return to God.
• Verses 11–12 Like a silly dove, Ephraim calls to Egypt and goes to Assyria. God declares that He will spread His net over them and bring them down like birds.
• Verses 13–16 God pronounces woe upon them. He would have redeemed them, but they have spoken lies against Him; they do not cry to Him from the heart but howl upon their beds, and they assemble themselves for grain and new wine. They are like a deceitful bow, and their princes will fall by the sword and become a derision in the land of Egypt.

Key Verses

• Hosea 7:8 "Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned." This well-known image of bread burned on one side and raw on the other depicts the compromised, in-between state of a people mingled with the nations.
• Hosea 7:11 "Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart" censures a foreign policy that relied on great powers instead of God.
• Hosea 7:14 "And they have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds" exposes the difference between insincere crying out and genuine repentance.

People and Places

• Ephraim: A tribal name derived from the name of Joseph's son. In the Book of Hosea it refers to the Northern Kingdom of Israel as a whole.
• Samaria: The capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
• The king and princes: The text does not name them.
• Egypt and Assyria: The two great powers on which the Northern Kingdom sought to lean.

Points for Reflection

• The words "all their kings are fallen" in verse 7 are commonly read in connection with the series of royal assassinations recorded in 2 Kings 15. Many interpreters see the background of verse 11 in the account of the last king, Hoshea, who paid tribute to Assyria and then allied himself with Egypt (2 Kings 17). The text of Hosea 7 itself, however, does not identify any specific event.
• The term "adulterers" in verse 4 may be read either as spiritual harlotry referring to idolatry or as political betrayal.
• Some ancient and modern translations render "they assemble themselves" in verse 14 as "they cut themselves." Read this way, the verse connects to the practices of Baal worship.
• This chapter is not directly quoted in the New Testament.

In the Korean Church

The phrase "a cake not turned" is said to be frequently cited in sermons warning against a half-baked faith caught between the world and devotion to God.