Hoseachapter 7
16 verses · KJVHosea book hub →
Key verse
Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not.
It stands in A cake not turned, and gray hairs he never noticed, verses 8 to 10.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Ephraim's sin is exposed the moment God moves to heal. The court is an oven the baker need not stir, passion banked all night, blazing at morning, princes made sick with the heat of wine. Foreign alliances have hollowed the nation out: 'Ephraim is a cake not turned' (7:8), scorched one side and raw the other; strangers devour his strength and he does not know it; gray hairs are on him and he does not know it. He flutters between empires: 'Ephraim is like a silly dove, without understanding: they call unto Egypt, they go to Assyria.' They return, but not to the Most High.
Context
Prophecy · Hosea · Hosea overview
The world behind this chapter
Hosea 7The history
The oven picture is drawn from a village kitchen. A baker banked the fire in a clay oven at night, left the dough to rise, and slept; in the morning he stirred the coals and the whole oven was suddenly roaring. Hosea says the conspirators worked that way, hot inside all night, smouldering, and flaring at dawn when the king was drunk.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
This was not a metaphor reaching for effect. After Jeroboam II died, the northern kingdom went through six kings in roughly thirty years, and four of them were assassinated by the men who replaced them. Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, and Pekah all died that way. The state was eating itself.
The cake not turned is flat bread cooked on a hot stone or in the ashes. Leave it and it is charred black on the underside and raw dough on top, useless either way, and a fair description of a country burnt on one side by Assyria and half-baked on the other.
The silly dove is a diplomatic cartoon. Israel's foreign policy in these years genuinely did flutter between Egypt and Assyria, sending gifts to one while paying tribute to the other. Assyrian records name Israelite kings paying up; the Bible records the approaches to Egypt. Both patrons ended up hunting the bird.
What it meant to them
The saddest line is that grey hairs are sprinkled on him and he does not know it. A nation was ageing out of its strength and could not see it, because the palace was busy and the trade was good.
For hearers, the charge was that in all this scheming and travelling, nobody called on the LORD. Israel was doing everything a small state under pressure does, except the one thing the covenant asked of it.
Sources cited
- Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
Where the chapter sits
Hosea 7 falls in The LORD's controversy with Israel (chapters 4–14). Oracles against the northern kingdom's idolatry, political faithlessness, and corruption, closing with the great call ‘O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God’ (14:1).
Before it: The marriage and the children, chapters 1–3.
The whole shape of Hosea→The structure of this chapter
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
A. Hearts hot as an oven the baker need not stir
1. (vv. 1-3)
Hosea 7:1
“Political, as well as moral, healing is meant. When I would have healed Israel in its calamitous state, then their iniquity was discovered to be so great as to preclude hope of recovery. Then he enumerates their wickedness: "The thief cometh in (indoors stealthily), and the troop of robbers spoileth without" (out-of-doors with open violence).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Hosea 7:1
“When I wanted to heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim was revealed, and the malice of Samaria: for they have wrought falsehood, and a thief is come in to spoil, a robber without. The Septuagint likewise. Often has Israel received wounds of idolatry, and especially that one, when in the desert they fashioned a calf's head, and said: 'These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt' (Exod. XXXII, 4).”
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:1patristic
Hosea 7:2
"And lest perhaps they should say in their hearts: all their wickedness (all wickedness Vulg.) I have remembered, they have encompassed me in the inventions of their own thoughts, before my face they are made." LXX: "That they may sing as it were a new song in their hearts, all their wickedness I have remembered." "Now their own devices have encompassed them about, they have been executed in my sight."
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:2patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:2
“This is the sinner's atheism; as good say that there is no God as say that he is either ignorant or forgetful, that there is none that judges in the earth as that he remembers not the things he is to give judgment upon.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hosea 7:3
"In their malice, they made the king rejoice, and in their lies, the princes." LXX: "In their wickedness, the kings rejoiced, and in their lies, the princes." It explains what they did before Him: In their wickedness, they made King Jeroboam rejoice, and in their lies, the princes who led the people under Jeroboam. Heretics also rejoiced the devil as their king in the wickedness of their deeds, and the princes of perverse doctrines in their lies, without a doubt, of this world, whose false wisdom God destroys.
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:3patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:3
“They make the king glad with their wickedness - Wicked sovereigns and a wicked people are a curse to each other, each encouraging the other in sin. Their king, being wicked, had pleasure in their wickedness; and they, seeing him to be pleased by it, set themselves the more, to do what was evil, and to amuse him with accounts of their sins. Sin is in itself so shameful, that even the great cannot, by themselves, sustain themselves in it, without others to flatter them. A good and serious man is a reproach to them.”
When I would have healed Israel: The healer is refused before he can finish his work: when the Lord would have healed Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim only came into fuller view, a thief working within the walls and a troop of robbers ranging outside them. Verse two turns from the public crimes to the hidden ledger, they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness, their own doings surrounding them and standing before God's face whether they notice or not. Even the throne is implicated, princes made glad with lies rather than warned by truth, so no rank in the nation stands outside the corruption the prophet is describing.
2. (vv. 4-7)
Hosea 7:4
“Their adulterous and idolatrous lust is inflamed as the oven of a baker who has it at such a heat that he ceaseth from heating it only from the time that he hath kneaded the dough, until it be leavened; he only needs to omit feeding it during the short period of the fermentation of the bread. Compare 2Pe 2:14, "that cannot cease from sin" [HENDERSON].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:4
“As an oven heated by the baker - Calmet’s paraphrase on this and the following verses expresses pretty nearly the sense: Hosea makes a twofold comparison of the Israelites; to an oven, and to dough. Jeroboam set fire to his own oven - his kingdom - and put the leaven in his dough; and afterwards went to rest, that the fire might have time to heat his oven, and the leaven to raise his dough, that the false principles which he introduced might infect the whole population.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 7:5
“In the day of our king, the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine - (Or, “with heat from wine.”) Their holydays, like those of so many Englishmen now, were days of excess. “The day of their king” was probably some civil festival; his birthday, or his coronation-day. The prophet owns the king, in that he calls him “our king;” he does not blame them for keeping the day, but for the way in which they kept it.”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:5
"The day of our king: the princes began to rage from wine: he stretched out his hand with the mockers." LXX: "The days of your kings. The princes began to rave from wine: he stretched out his hand with pestilences." A dark place and in need of the attentive reader's sense, so that we may first understand the history.
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:5-7patristic
Hosea 7:6
“As it conceals the lighted fire all night while the baker sleeps but in the morning burns as a flaming fire, so they brood mischief in their hearts while conscience is lulled asleep, and their wicked designs wait only for a fair occasion to break forth [HORSLEY]. Their heart is the oven, their baker the ringleader of the plot.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Hosea 7:7
“They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges - Plans of sin, sooner or later, through God’s overruling providence, bound back upon their authors. The wisdom of God’s justice and of His government shows itself the more, in that, without any apparent agency of His own, the sin is guided by Him through all the intricate mazes of human passion, malice, and cunning, back to the sinner’s bosom. Jeroboam, and the kings who followed him, had corrupted the people, in order to establish their own kingdom.”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:7
“Devoured - As a fire destroys, so have these conspirators, destroyed their rulers. Their kings - All that have been since Jeroboam the second's reign, to the delivery of this prophecy, namely, Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, Pekah, fell by the conspiracy of such hot princes. That telleth - Not one of all these either feared, trusted, or worshipped God.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
as an oven heated by the baker: The nation's appetite for evil is pictured as a baker's oven, banked low through the night so that it needs no fresh stoking before it blazes at dawn, wickedness so habitual it feeds itself. Verse five briefly leaves the figure for a court scene, the day of our king, princes made sick with wine and the king himself joining hands with scorners, before the oven returns in verse six to devour judges and topple king after king. The bench connects the rapid turnover of thrones here to Israel's last chaotic decades, several kings removed by conspiracy and the sword within a single generation, and the unit closes on its own refrain, there is none among them that calleth unto me.
B. A cake not turned, and gray hairs he never noticedvv. 8-10
a cake not turned: Ephraim mixed himself among the peoples, court and cult both looking outward for security, and the prophet's image for the result is a cake not turned, burned on one side and raw dough on the other, fit for nothing. Strangers devour his strength while gray hairs mark him as an old man who does not know it, a nation aging into weakness without noticing its own decline. Israel's pride testifies to his face, yet for all of it they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him, the chapter's recurring diagnosis that the coming judgment answers a settled refusal rather than mere ignorance.
Hosea 7:8
"Ephraim mingled himself with the people. Ephraim is become as bread baked under the ashes, that is not turned." LXX: "Ephraim was mingled with his own people: Ephraim is become as ashes, which is not returned." The kingdom of ten tribes has been made, like all nations, because they have departed from the Lord: and like ashes of bread, which does not return, that is, does not do penance.
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:8-10patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 7:8
“Ephraim - The kingdom of Israel. Mixed himself - With the Heathens by leagues and commerce and by imitation of their manners. Not turned - Burnt on one side, and dough on the other, and so good for nothing on either: always in one extreme or the other.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Hosea 7:8
“A cake not turned - In the East having heated the hearth, they sweep one corner, put the cake upon it, and cover it with embers; in a short time they turn it, cover it again, and continue this several times, till they find it sufficiently baked. All travelers into Asiatic countries have noted this.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 7:9
“Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not - Like Samson, when, for sensual pleasure, he had betrayed the source of his strength and God had departed from him, lsrael knew not how or wherein his alliancs with the pagan had impaired his strength. He thought his losses at the hand of the enemy, passing wounds, which time would heal; he thought not of them, as tokens of God’s separation from him, that his time of trial was coming to its close, his strength decaying, his end at hand.”
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 7:9
“Their regardlessness of these warnings: He knows it not; he is not aware of the hand of God gone out against him; it is lifted up, but he will not see, Isa. xxvi. He does not know how near his ruin is, and takes no care to prevent it. Note, Stupidity under less judgments is a presage of greater coming.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hosea 7:9
“Strangers--foreigners: the Syrians and Assyrians (2Ki 13:7; 17:3-6). gray hairs--that is, symptoms of approaching national dissolution. are here and there upon--literally, "are sprinkled on" him. yet he knoweth not--Though old age ought to bring with it wisdom, he neither knows of his senile decay, nor has the true knowledge which leads to reformation.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Hosea 7:10
"And the pride of Israel shall be humbled before his face: and they have not returned to the Lord their God, nor have they sought him in all these." LXX: "And the pride of Israel shall be humbled before his face: and they have not returned to the Lord their God, nor have they sought him in all these."
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:8-10patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:10
“And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face - His pride convicted him. All the afflictions of God humbled him not; yea, they but brought out his pride, which “kept him from acknowledging and repenting of the sins which had brought those evils upon him, and from “turning to God and seeking to Him” for remedy” .”
C. A silly dove flying to Egypt and to Assyria
1. (vv. 11-12)
Hosea 7:11
“Ephraim also is like a silly dove, without heart,.... Or understanding; which comes and picks up the corns of grain, which lie scattered about, and does not know that the net is spread for it; and when its young are taken away, it is unconcerned, and continues its nest in the same place still; and, when frightened, flees not to its dove house, where it would be safe, but flies about here and there, and so becomes a prey to others.”
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 7:11
“Ephraim is - (become) like a silly dove “There is nothing more simple than a dove,” says the Eastern proverb. Simplicity is good or bad, not in itself, but according to some other qualities of the soul, good or evil, with which it is united, to which it opens the mind, and which lead it to good or mislead it to evil.”
Hosea 7:11
“As this prophecy was written in the reign of Hoshea, the allusion is probably to the alliance with So or Sabacho II (of which a record has been found on the clay cylindrical seals in Koyunjik), which ended in the overthrow of Hoshea and the deportation of Israel (2Ki 17:3-6).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Hosea 7:12
“When they shall go - To those nations for help: - I will spread my net upon them - I will cause them to be taken by those in whom they trusted. I will bring them down - They shall no sooner set off to seek this foreign help, than my net shall bring them down to the earth. The allusion to the dove, and to the mode of taking the fowls of heaven, is still carried on.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
a silly dove without heart: Ephraim's foreign policy is pictured as a dove without sense, fluttering between Egypt and Assyria for help instead of trusting the Lord who could have kept either power at a distance. The two empires the kings courted for alliance are the very net the Lord will spread, bringing Israel down like birds caught out of the air, a chastisement fitted exactly to the sin it answers. As their congregation hath heard points back to warnings already given and already ignored, so the coming judgment is not a surprise but a promise finally kept.
2. (vv. 13-14)
Hosea 7:13
“Note, The woes of God's word have real effects; destruction makes them good. The judgments of his hand shall verify the judgments of his mouth. Those whom he curses, and pronounces woeful, they are cursed, they are woeful indeed.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 7:13
“Pretending to be My worshippers, when they all the while worshipped idols (Ho 7:14; Ho 12:1); also defrauding Me of the glory of their deliverance, and ascribing it and their other blessings to idols [CALVIN].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Hosea 7:14
“They have not cried unto me with their heart - They say they have sought me, but could not find me; that they have cried unto me, but I did not answer. I know they have cried, yea, howled; but could I hear them when all was forced and hypocritical, not one sigh coming from their heart? They assemble themselves for corn and wine - In dearth and famine they call and howl: but they assemble themselves, not to seek Me, but to invoke their false gods for corn and wine.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 7:14
"They muttered about wheat and wine: they separated themselves from me." LXX: "Over wheat and wine they were being cut to pieces." On account of the abundance, they said, they have fallen because of their own foolishness. Which Ezekiel also mentions was done in Sodom and Gomorrah (Ezek. XIX), that they chewed on nothing other than food and lust: for which reason the Seventy translated, "they were sliced over grain and wine," as an example of the prophets of Baal, who, with Elijah present, prayed for rain by cutting off the members (III Kings. XVIII).
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:14-16patristic
Hosea 7:14
“To pray is to lift up the soul to God, this is the essence of prayer. If this be not done, words, though ever so well chosen, are but wind; but, if it be, it is an acceptable prayer, though the groanings cannot be uttered.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Woe unto them!: A double woe falls on a people who fled rather than stayed and who spoke lies against the very God who had redeemed them, the exodus history itself turned into an accusation of ingratitude. Verse fourteen names the shape of their worship, howling on their beds instead of crying with the heart, ritual noise without relationship, gathered for corn and wine and still counted as rebels. The bench reads the howling as the borrowed grief of Baal's ritual mourning, an old form of religion performed toward the wrong God.
3. (vv. 15-16)
Hosea 7:15
“Though I have bound - Rather, (as in the E. M) “And I have chastened, I have strenghened their arms, and they imagine mischief against Me.” God had tried all ways with them, but it was all one. He chastened them in love, and in love He strengthened them; He brought the enemy upon them, (as aforetime in the days of the Judges,) and He gave them strength to repel the enemy; as He raised up judges of old, and lately had fulfilled His promise which He had made to Joash through Elisha. But it was all in vain.”
Hosea 7:16
"They turned back, so as to be without a yoke: they became as a deceitful bow: their princes shall fall by the sword, by the rage of their tongue: this their derision in the land of Egypt." LXX: "they were turned into nothing, they became like a tense bow, their rulers shall fall by the sword because of their lack of understanding; this is their derision in the land of Egypt."
Jerome· written before 420· Commentary on Hosea 7:14-16patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 7:16
“They return, but not to the Most High - They go to their idols. They are like a deceitful bow - Which, when it is reflexed, in order to be strung, suddenly springs back into its quiescent curve; for the eastern bows stand in their quiescent state in a curve; and in order to be strung must be beaded back in the opposite direction.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 7:16
“Such were their essays towards repentance and reformation. (2.) The sin of the princes of Israel. That which is charged upon them is the rage of their tongue, quarrelling with God and his providence and with all about them when they are crossed.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
yet do they imagine mischief against me: The Lord had bound and strengthened Ephraim's arms himself, in mercy and in past deliverance, and the return on that strength is plotted mischief rather than gratitude. They return, but not to the most High turns the covenant word return into a bitter play on words, motion without direction, a bow that looks drawn true yet throws its arrow wide of the target. The chapter's last picture is national rather than private, princes falling by the sword for their own raging tongue, and derision waiting for them in the very Egypt they had once courted for safety.
This page carries no textual note on Hosea 7. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.