Hoseachapter 13
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Speaks with:Deuteronomy 32×3Deuteronomy 8×2Jeremiah 2×2Hosea 11×1Luke 14×1Joshua 3×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Ephraim once spoke and men trembled; he offended in Baal and died. Now they sin more and more, casting molten images by their own skill and kissing calves. So they shall be as the morning cloud, as the early dew, as chaff whirled from the threshing-floor, as smoke out of the chimney. 'Besides me there is no saviour.' Fed in the wilderness, they were filled; being filled, they forgot him. So he comes as a lion, a leopard by the way, a bear bereaved. 'It is thy destruction, O Israel, that thou art against me, against thy help.' Then a taunt Paul remakes into gospel: 'O death, where are thy plagues?' (1 Corinthians 15:55).
Context
Prophecy · Hosea — Hosea overview
- A. 1–3 Exalted once, then dead through Baal — gone like morning mist
- B. 4–8 They were filled and forgot me; I will meet them like a bear
- C. 9–11 I gave you a king in my anger and took him away in wrath
- D. 12–16 O death, where are your plagues? Samaria bears her guilt
The outline
A.Exalted once, then dead through Baal — gone like morning mistvv. 1 to 3
Read vv. 1 to 3 →B.They were filled and forgot me; I will meet them like a bearvv. 4 to 8
Read vv. 4 to 8 →C.I gave you a king in my anger and took him away in wrathvv. 9 to 11
Read vv. 9 to 11 →D.O death, where are your plagues? Samaria bears her guiltvv. 12 to 16
Read vv. 12 to 16 →
The world behind this chapter
Hosea 13The history
Men kissing calves describes an act of worship people actually performed. Kissing an image, or kissing the hand toward it, was the ordinary gesture of homage across the region, and the same practice lies behind the seven thousand in Elijah's day whose mouths had not kissed Baal. Hosea's contempt is aimed at grown men bowing to something a silversmith had made that year.
The four animals in the middle are the predators of that country, and they are listed in the order a shepherd feared them. A lion in the open, a leopard watching a path, a bear robbed of her cubs — herders knew that a bear whose cubs were taken was the single most dangerous animal in the hills — and then a wild beast tearing.
The childbirth image is medical and grim. A child who does not present at the mouth of the womb at the right moment is a labour going wrong, and in that world it usually killed both mother and child. Israel is called an unwise son who will not come at the proper time.
The atrocity named at the end was standard Assyrian practice, boasted about in their own royal inscriptions and carved on their palace walls: cities put to the sword, pregnant women ripped open, children dashed against stones. Hearers were not being shown a nightmare. They were being shown the newsreel of what happened at the last city that resisted.
What it meant to them
The heart of the charge is deceptively gentle: when they had fed, they were satisfied; being satisfied, their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me. Prosperity, not persecution, is what ended the relationship.
And then, in the middle of the darkest chapter in the book, comes the sentence Paul would later quote over an empty grave: I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death — death, where are your plagues? The promise is planted in the exact spot where the nation dies.
Sources cited
- James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the 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 13. 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.