A Diet of Air and Emptiness Text: Hosea 12:1
Introduction: The Politics of Nothing
The book of Hosea is a bracing tonic for a sentimental age. It is a story of covenant infidelity, of a bride who has played the harlot, and a husband who, against all reason and expectation, remains faithful. And because God's dealings with Israel are a living parable for His dealings with His people in all ages, we find that Hosea’s indictments land with uncanny accuracy on the doorstep of the modern American church. We too have sought other lovers. We too have trusted in princes and political solutions. We too have tried to live on a diet of wind.
The prophet Hosea is sent to the northern kingdom, Israel, also called Ephraim after its most prominent tribe. This is in the waning days of the kingdom, just before the Assyrian storm breaks over them and carries them off into exile. The nation is rotten from the head down. Their worship is corrupt, their ethics are nonexistent, and their foreign policy is a disaster. They are a people thrashing about in the final stages of spiritual decay, and in our text today, the prophet gives us a blistering diagnosis of their central problem. It is a problem of profound vanity, of pursuing emptiness and getting exactly what you paid for.
We live in a time when political salvation is preached from every news channel and every blog. We are told that if we just elect the right man, or pass the right legislation, or make the right alliance, then our problems will be solved. We are encouraged to place our trust in the modern equivalents of Assyria and Egypt. But the prophet tells us that this is not just a tactical error; it is a spiritual absurdity. It is an attempt to feed on the wind. It is to fill your belly with that which cannot satisfy, and to pursue a policy that can only lead to destruction. This is not just bad politics; it is a profound theological blunder with catastrophic consequences.
The Text
Ephraim feeds on wind
And pursues the east wind continually;
He abounds in falsehood and destruction.
Moreover, he cuts a covenant with Assyria,
And oil is carried to Egypt.
(Hosea 12:1 LSB)
A Diet of Wind (v. 1a)
The verse opens with a stunning metaphor for futility.
"Ephraim feeds on wind And pursues the east wind continually..." (Hosea 12:1a)
To feed on wind is to seek sustenance from nothing. It is to mistake rhetoric for reality, promises for performance. Imagine a man starving to death, who, instead of eating bread, opens his mouth to the breeze and expects to be filled. This is the picture of Israel. They had abandoned the Bread of Life, the very Word of God which is our true food, and had decided to nourish themselves on political slogans and diplomatic hot air. They were full, but only of emptiness. Their national life was bloated with vanity.
This is the great temptation of any people who have forgotten God. When you abandon the solid food of God's covenant law and promises, you do not stop eating. You simply start eating garbage. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human heart. If you will not be filled with Christ, you will be filled with something else, and that something else, the prophet says, is wind.
But it gets worse. He not only feeds on the wind, he "pursues the east wind continually." The east wind in Palestine was the sirocco, a hot, dry, destructive wind that blew in from the desert. It withered crops, scorched the land, and made life miserable. So Ephraim is not just pursuing emptiness; he is chasing after that which is actively hostile and destructive to him. He is running headlong into ruin, thinking it is his salvation. He is chasing a mirage that promises relief but delivers only desolation.
The Inevitable Harvest (v. 1b)
The prophet then shows us the necessary result of this diet and this pursuit.
"He abounds in falsehood and destruction." (Hosea 12:1b)
When you feed on lies, you become a liar. When your national policy is based on the vain hope that godless nations will save you, your entire public square becomes saturated with falsehood. You cannot pursue the wind without becoming windy yourself. The political discourse becomes all spin, all propaganda, all deception. Ephraim "abounds" in it; he multiplies it. One lie requires another to cover it, and soon the whole nation is wrapped in a suffocating blanket of deceit.
And falsehood always brings destruction. The two are linked. The east wind of their policy does what the east wind always does: it destroys. When you build your house on the shifting sands of political expediency instead of the rock of God's Word, you are inviting collapse. The destruction is not an unfortunate accident; it is the logical and necessary harvest of the seeds they have sown. They sowed the wind, and as Hosea says elsewhere, they will reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).
The Foreign Policy of Folly (v. 1c)
Hosea then gives us the concrete examples of this wind-chasing folly.
"Moreover, he cuts a covenant with Assyria, And oil is carried to Egypt." (Hosea 12:1c)
Here is the specific policy. Israel was caught between two superpowers of the day: Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south. Instead of trusting in the Lord their God, who had delivered them from Egypt once before, they tried to play the great powers off against each other. They would make a treaty, a "covenant," with Assyria, promising loyalty and tribute. But at the same time, they were sending tribute, in this case valuable oil, down to Egypt, trying to curry favor and build a secret alliance there as a hedge against Assyria.
This is the essence of faithless pragmatism. It is trying to serve two masters. It is a foreign policy based on duplicity and fear, not on covenant faithfulness to Yahweh. God had commanded His people not to trust in foreign alliances, and particularly not to go back to Egypt for help (Deut. 17:16). But they thought they knew better. They thought God's commands were naive and that the "real world" required compromise and cunning.
They cut a "covenant" with Assyria. Notice the religious language. They are replacing their covenant with God with a covenant with a pagan empire. This is spiritual adultery. They are seeking security from a predator, hoping the wolf will guard the sheep pen. And they are sending their wealth, the bounty of God's provision, to another pagan power that had once enslaved them. The oil that should have been used to anoint priests and kings in service to God is instead shipped off as a bribe to Pharaoh.
Conclusion: Our Diet of Wind
The application to our own day should be obvious and sharp. When the church in America begins to believe that its primary hope lies in the Republican party or the Democratic party, it is feeding on wind. When we think that a Supreme Court decision can do what only the gospel can do, we are pursuing the east wind. When we trim our biblical convictions to make a political alliance with those who hate the Lordship of Christ, we are cutting a covenant with Assyria.
Our problem is not fundamentally political; it is theological. We have forgotten our first love. We have abandoned the God who is our rock and our fortress and have sought refuge in the crumbling shelters of men. We have been unfaithful to our covenant Husband. And the result is that our public discourse abounds in falsehood and destruction. We are reaping the whirlwind of our own faithlessness.
The solution is not a better political strategy. The solution is repentance. The solution is to turn from the wind and return to the Bread of Life. We must renounce our adulterous covenants with the world's powers and renew our covenant with the living God. We must stop sending the oil of our worship, our energy, and our resources to Egypt, and offer it instead to the one true King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
To trust in Him is to build on solid rock. To trust in anything else is to eat the wind, and to be blown away by the storm that is surely coming.