Ephraim Is Joined to Idols – Hosea 4:7-19

Worldliness is living like the majority of the world, those who do not follow Christ.  Living like the world is justified by the fact that so many live this way.  It must be okay, if everyone is doing it.  Christians can easily fall into this way of thinking.  It becomes natural to live like everyone else in regard to attitudes and behaviors.  We watch the same TV shows, buy the same products, and sin the same sins.  Yahweh was accusing Israel of doing this very thing.

The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame.  They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity.  And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.  They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding.  My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles.  For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore.  They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good.  Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your brides commit adultery.  I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.

Though you play the whore, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty.  Enter not into Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-aven, and swear not, “As the LORD lives.”  Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn; can the LORD now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture?

Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone.  When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring; their rulers dearly love shame.  A wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.  (Hosea 4:7-19 ESV)

The more the priest’s “children” have increased, those in Israel who follow their idolatry, the more they have sinned against Yahweh.  At the very beginning of the formation of Israel as a nation when they left from under the Davidic king Rehoboam, they set up places of worship in the north to discourage people from going back to Jerusalem for worship as Yahweh required.  They became spiritual whores by selling themselves to Baal and other gods to get wine and the other crops.  The found locations on mountains to set up shrines, something God forbid.  And their worship often consisted of having sex with shrine prostitutes in imitation of Baal’s impregnating the earth to make crops grow.

Judah, the southern kingdom, should not follow Israel in its idolatry at places like Gilgal and Bethel (“house of God” but here called Beth-aven, “house of evil”), which had also become idolatrous shrines, even if they are claiming to worship Yahweh there (“as Yahweh lives”).  Ephraim, the main tribe of the northern kingdom of Israel (Judah is in the south) must be left to themselves because their judgment is coming and they will find themselves ashamed for what they have done.

We too can be lured into idolatry by the people around us who worship money, power, sex, and anything else they think will make them happy.  We must stay faithful to God.