Hoseachapter 10
15 verses · BSBHosea book hub →
Speaks with:Hosea 10×5Hosea 4×3Hosea 13×2Hosea 9×2Hosea 5×2Hosea 8×1
Summary
Chapter summary
'Israel is a luxuriant vine', and the more fruit, the more altars; the better the land, the better the pillars. A divided heart is now found guilty. The calf of Beth-aven will be crated off to Assyria as tribute, its priests wailing over departed glory, and Samaria's king will vanish like foam on water. Thorn and thistle will grow over the altars, and men will say to the mountains, 'Cover us', the cry Jesus and Revelation both take up. Then the plea in farming terms: 'break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek Jehovah' (10:12), for they had plowed wickedness and reaped iniquity.
Context
Prophecy · Hosea — Hosea overview
- A. 1–4 A luxuriant vine that only multiplied altars
- B. 5–8 The calf of Beth-aven carried off to Assyria
- C. 9–11 Ephraim, a trained heifer who loved to thresh
- D. 12–15 Sow righteousness, break up your fallow ground
The outline
A.A luxuriant vine that only multiplied altarsvv. 1 to 4
Read vv. 1 to 4 →B.The calf of Beth-aven carried off to Assyriavv. 5 to 8
Read vv. 5 to 8 →C.Ephraim, a trained heifer who loved to threshvv. 9 to 11
Read vv. 9 to 11 →D.Sow righteousness, break up your fallow groundvv. 12 to 15
Read vv. 12 to 15 →
The world behind this chapter
Hosea 10The history
The opening image is agricultural and exact. A luxuriant vine that produces heavily also puts out enormous leaf growth, and the more it produced the more standing stones and altars Israel built. Wealth had not made them faithful; it had funded better shrines.
The calf being carried off to Assyria as tribute was the ordinary fate of a defeated nation's gods. Assyrian reliefs show soldiers carrying divine images out of captured cities in procession — the standard way of announcing that a people's god had lost. Hosea says Bethel's calf will go the same way, and the priests who profited from it will wail over it.
The farming instructions in the middle are technical. A trained heifer used for threshing had the easiest job on the farm and was allowed to eat as she worked; being put to the yoke for ploughing was harder labour on a heavier neck. Breaking up fallow ground means driving the plough through soil left unworked, where the crust has hardened and thorn roots have taken hold. It is the slowest, most punishing work in the farming year, and it is what Hosea calls seeking the LORD.
Shalman's destruction of Beth-arbel is referred to as something everyone remembered and nobody today can identify with certainty; it was probably a recent atrocity in one of the campaigns rolling through the region, and the detail that mothers were dashed in pieces with their children fits Assyrian and Moabite warfare as it is described in their own records.
What it meant to them
Sow righteousness, reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground — the whole chapter turns on that instruction. Repentance is described not as an emotion but as the hardest field work of the year, undertaken because it is time to seek the LORD until he comes and rains righteousness.
The alternative is spelled out just as physically. You have ploughed wickedness and reaped injustice, because you trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors. A kingdom with a strong army had put its confidence exactly where every other kingdom put it.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: The Minor Prophets
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Hosea 10. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.