Bird's-eye view
In these opening verses of Hosea 7, the Lord pulls back the curtain on the spiritual state of the northern kingdom, Israel. The diagnosis is grim. God's intention is one of grace; He desires to heal His people. But the moment His healing hand comes near, it doesn't encounter a patient ready for a cure, but rather a festering wound of such corruption that the very attempt at healing reveals its depth. The central problem is a profound dishonesty, a pervasive falsehood that has rotted the nation from the inside out. This is not a matter of isolated sins, but a systemic corruption. The iniquity of Ephraim and the evil of Samaria are not hidden things, but are brazenly on display, both in the secret dealings of thieves and the public violence of raiders. Yet, in a stunning display of self-deception, the people refuse to acknowledge that God sees and remembers it all. Their sin is not just an occasional misstep; it has become the very atmosphere they breathe, surrounding them completely and standing as a constant offense before the face of a holy God.
This passage is a powerful illustration of the biblical doctrine of total depravity. The problem is not that Israel is sick and needs a little medicine. The problem is that Israel is spiritually dead and loves its own decay. God's grace is the light that exposes the cockroaches; it doesn't create them. The people are caught in a web of their own making, oblivious to the divine accounting that is taking place. Their refusal to "say to their hearts" that God remembers is a willful blindness, a deliberate suppression of the truth in unrighteousness. This sets the stage for the judgments that Hosea will continue to pronounce, judgments that are not arbitrary but are the natural and just consequences of a people who refuse to be healed.
Outline
- 1. Divine Diagnosis of a Deceitful People (Hosea 7:1-2)
- a. The Occasion: God's Gracious Intent to Heal (v. 1a)
- b. The Revelation: Healing Exposes the Sickness (v. 1b)
- c. The Evidence: Pervasive Falsehood and Lawlessness (v. 1c)
- d. The Root Problem: Willful Amnesia Concerning God's Justice (v. 2a)
- e. The Unavoidable Reality: Sin's Constant Presence Before God (v. 2b)
Context In Hosea
This section follows directly from the preceding chapters where God, through the prophet Hosea, has laid out the covenant lawsuit against Israel. The foundational metaphor of Hosea's marriage to the unfaithful Gomer has already been established, graphically illustrating Israel's spiritual adultery. Chapter 6 ended with a fleeting and superficial repentance from the people, a repentance God dismissed as being "like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away" (Hosea 6:4). They wanted the benefits of God's blessing without true heart change. Chapter 7, therefore, begins with God's response to this shallow piety. He shows why their repentance is false. It is because they have not yet grappled with the sheer extent of their corruption. This chapter delves deeper into the specifics of their sin, moving from the general charge of unfaithfulness to a detailed indictment of their political intrigue, social decay, and spiritual blindness. These verses serve as the thematic introduction to the chapter, establishing the core problem: God wants to heal, but their unconfessed and pervasive sin makes this impossible apart from a radical, heart-level work that they are currently resisting with all their might.
Key Issues
- God's Initiative in Salvation and Healing
- The Sin-Exposing Nature of Grace
- The Nature of Corporate and National Sin
- Willful Self-Deception
- The Doctrine of Divine Remembrance
- The Omnipresence and Omniscience of God
The Light that Exposes
There is a common misconception that when God draws near, everything should immediately feel better. We think of God's presence as a comforting blanket. But here, and throughout Scripture, we see that the approach of a holy God to a sinful people is first and foremost an act of exposure. When you are sitting in a filthy room, you might get used to the mess in the dim twilight. But when someone throws open the curtains and lets the noon sun stream in, the first thing you notice is not the warmth of the sun, but the dust, the grime, and the cobwebs everywhere. This is what is happening to Israel. God says, "I would heal you," which is an expression of pure grace. But the immediate effect of that grace is that "the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered."
This is a critical principle for understanding how God works with us. When God begins a work of grace in a person's life, or in a church, or in a nation, the first result is often a greater awareness of sin. Things seem to get worse, not better. But they are not actually getting worse; they are simply being seen for what they have been all along. The healing light of God's grace is also an X-ray. It reveals the fractures and the cancer that were hidden in the dark. Israel's problem was that when the light came on, instead of confessing the mess, they tried to convince themselves that God was blind or forgetful.
Verse by Verse Commentary
1a when I would heal Israel, Then the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered, And the evil deeds of Samaria,
The verse opens with God's gracious intention. The divine desire is restorative: "I would heal Israel." This is the heart of the Gospel. God does not delight in the death of the wicked. His disposition toward His covenant people is one of healing and life. But there is a terrible "then" that follows. The very move toward healing reveals the depth of the sickness. The "iniquity of Ephraim" and the "evil deeds of Samaria" are brought out into the open. Ephraim was the dominant tribe of the northern kingdom, and Samaria was its capital city, so the two are used here as parallel terms for the entire nation. Their sin is not a surface scratch; it is a deep, systemic infection. And God's grace, in its initial approach, acts as the diagnostic tool that exposes the full extent of the disease.
1b For they work falsehood; The thief enters in; Raiders ransack outside,
Here the general charge of iniquity is specified. The root of their problem is that "they work falsehood." The Hebrew word here for falsehood, sheqer, means deceit, lies, and fraud. It describes a society where honesty has been completely abandoned. Truth is no longer the currency of the realm. This internal corruption has immediate, practical, and violent consequences. Internally, "the thief enters in." Secretly, behind closed doors, people are defrauding and stealing from one another. Trust has broken down. Externally, "raiders ransack outside." Publicly, in the streets, there is open violence and plunder. The nation is rotting from the inside out, and breaking apart from the outside in. The secret sin of falsehood and the public sin of violence are two sides of the same coin of godlessness.
2a And they do not say to their hearts That I remember all their evil.
This is the crux of the matter. This is the engine of their entire sinful enterprise. The problem is not a lack of information. They had the law and the prophets. The problem is a willful, deliberate refusal to consider the character of God. "They do not say to their hearts" is a Hebrew idiom for refusing to meditate on or take something seriously. They will not allow the truth of God's omniscience to take root in their inner being. They have talked themselves into a practical atheism. They live as though God is either senile or morally indifferent. They act as if He isn't keeping records. This is the great lie that every sinner must tell himself in order to continue in his sin: "God does not see, or if He sees, He does not care, or if He cares, He will not act." But Hosea is here to tell them that God remembers everything.
2b Now their deeds are all around them; They are before My face.
Their self-deception is contrasted with the stark reality. While they refuse to remember God, their sins have created the very environment they live in. "Their deeds are all around them." They are swimming in the consequences of their own choices. They are trapped. But more than that, their deeds are not hidden from God. "They are before My face." This is covenantal language. To be "before the face" of a king was to be in his immediate presence, under his direct scrutiny. Israel may have turned their backs on God, but God has not taken His eyes off of them. Every lie, every theft, every act of violence is an open offense committed in the very throne room of the universe. There is no hiding place. The charge is read, the evidence is presented, and the Judge sees it all.
Application
This passage from Hosea is a bucket of cold water in the face of our therapeutic, feel-good modern sensibilities. We want a God who heals without confronting, who forgives without requiring repentance, and who accepts us without demanding change. But that is not the God of the Bible. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a God who loves us enough to tell us the truth. And the truth is that our sin is far worse than we like to admit, and His holiness is far more brilliant than we can imagine.
The first step toward true healing is an honest diagnosis. We must stop telling ourselves that God doesn't remember our sins. He does. Every single one of them is "before His face." The only way for those sins to be dealt with is for them to be covered by the blood of Christ. The good news of the gospel is not that God has become forgetful, but that He has become propitiated. In Christ, God can be both "faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). He is just, because the penalty for our sin was paid in full by His Son. Our evil deeds were placed upon Jesus at the cross, and He was judged for them there.
Therefore, we must not be like Israel. When the light of God's word exposes some dark corner of our hearts, our response must not be to shut our eyes and pretend God isn't looking. Our response must be to run to the cross, to confess what He has revealed, and to plead the blood of Jesus. It is only when we agree with God about our sickness that we can begin to experience His healing. We must be the kind of people who "say to our hearts" that God remembers all our evil, and then in the next breath, "say to our hearts" that in Christ, He chooses to remember them no more.