The sin is Rebellion – Hosea 8

 

1: Shofar to mouth!

Yehowah comes like an eagle against a house because they have crossed over my covenant and rebelled against my Torah.

2: crying to me “Our God”.

God-strife, We know you:

3: God-strife rejected good.

Foes persecute him.

4: They set up kings – but not from me.

They set up princes – But I knew them not.

They made idols from their gold and their silver so that they are cut off.

 

5: The Watcher’s (Shomron) calf is rejected,

My nostril (temper) angered against them.

How long, when will they not be able to be clean?

6: because in Israel an artisan made it – not God – he! (Sounds like spluttering anger)  So, in splinters is the Watcher’s calf!

 

7: For they sow wind and storm.

Standing grain is cut short.

Never to sprout (Tsemah).

Never to make a meal (Kheema).

Maybe make strangers gobble it up?!

 

8: God-strife  – there they are now!

Gobbled up in the nations.

Like a vessel in which there isn’t anything.

9: For they make aliyah (go up) to Ashur!

 

Covered one – a lone donkey.

Making lovers on hire.

10: Also for hire among the nations

And now, I gather, a little traumatised by the weight of king and princes. (Poignant sarcasm).

 

11: Covered one has made altars great again for sin. Altars for him are for sin!

 

12: 10000 things I write to him from my Torah are considered strange!

 

13: They are sacrificing and eating the flesh of my sacrifices and my gifts.

No! Yehowah was not pleased.

He remembers their guilt and punishes their sin.

They return to Egypt.

 

14: God-strife forgets his Maker and builds temples.

God-Praise makes protected cities increase.

And I sent fire on his cities and it devoured his citadels.

 

Ponder that!

 

Prayer:

Lord, May I never back-slide, cross back over your covenant and rebel against you, taking all that is holy and hiring it out for profit or using it for myself.

I do not want to make a golden calf nor consider your instructions strange and cross back and land up back in Egypt – shattered, empty and burnt-out.

I crossed over to the promised land – no forgetting that.

I want to honour The Covenant.

Amen.