Hosea 9:7, 8 The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad… We are disposed to prefer the view which takes ver. 7 to refer to the true prophet, Hosea himself; and ver. 8 to the prophets Ephraim had set up for himself alongside of the true. - "Ephraim is a watcher with along with, but independently of my God" - prophets who were as "the snare of a fowler" to the people. I. THE TRUE PROPHET. (Ver. 7.) 1. What he saw. "The days of visitation are come, the days of recompense are come." The true prophet saw, and did not hesitate to declare in the ears of all, the fall extent of the ruin which was soon to overwhelm the nation. He did not, like the false prophets, say, "Peace, peace," when there was no peace (Jeremiah 8:11). He told the awful truth. The event verified his words. God's messengers are faithful. 2. What he felt. "The prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad." (Cf. Robertson Smith's 'Prophets of Israel,' p. 157.) The words may express at once: (1) The judgment passed on the prophet by his contemporaries. They thought him "beside himself" (cf. Acts 26:24; 2 Corinthians 5:13). They set down his excited utterances as ravings. (2) The sympathetic anguish which actually made the prophet feel as one beside himself. "Hosea was a stranger among his own people, oppressed by continual contact with their sin, lacerated at heart by the bitterness of their enmity, till his reason seemed ready to give way under the trial." 3. His moral mission. "For the multitude of thine iniquities, and the great hatred." His eye pierced to the moral cause of the judgments that were impending. He read their origin in the people's sin, and in their hatred of what was good. A. true prophet is known by the intensity of his grasp upon moral truth. II. THE FALSE PROPHET. (Ver. 8.) The prophets in whom Ephraim trusted were: 1. Self-constituted. "The watchman of Ephraim was with my God," or, "Ephraim is a watchman," etc. Ephraim was not content with the prophets God gave him. He must have prophets alter his own heart. He must be a "watchman" on his own account. The false prophet thus ran without being sent (Jeremiah 23:21). He was not, like the true prophet, a "man of the spirit." If any spirit was in him, it was a lying spirit. 2. Ensnarers of the people. "The prophet is the snare of a fowler in all his ways." They snared the people to their ruin (1) by their teaching, promising peace and prosperity when there was none; (2) by their example, encouraging the people in their idolatries and follies; (3) by making light of the moral element in conduct. They "strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life" (Ezekiel 13:22). They flattered the people's wishes; felt none of that agonizing sympathy with them which made Hosea seem as one mad; kept away from all denunciation of their sins. They were hirelings, whose own the sheep were not, and who cared not for the sheep (John 10:12, 13). They were a snare "in all their ways" - out and out in everything they did. 3. Themselves as bad as the rest. "Hatred in the house of his God." Professing to speak in God's Name, the prophet was full of malignant hatred of God, and of those who spoke in God's Name (cf. Amos 7:10-13). - J.O. Parallel Verses KJV: The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred. |
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