Covenant Amnesia and Rubble Altars Text: Hosea 12:9-11
Introduction: The God Who Introduces Himself
We live in an age of identity politics, which is another way of saying we live in an age of mass amnesia. Men have forgotten who they are because they have forgotten who God is. And when you forget who God is, you will forget who you are in relation to Him, which is the only identity that matters. You will then spend your days frantically trying to construct a new identity out of whatever mud and straw you can find, your sexuality, your ethnicity, your politics, your victimhood. But all such identities are houses built on the sand. They are cosplay. They cannot bear the weight of a single raindrop of divine judgment.
The prophet Hosea is sent to a people suffering from a terminal case of covenantal amnesia. They had forgotten their Maker. They had forgotten their Redeemer. They had forgotten their Husband. And so, God, through His prophet, reintroduces Himself. He does not come to them as a generic deity, a vague higher power, or the spirit of the age. He comes to them with a name and a history. He anchors their reality, and His identity, in a specific, historical act of redemption. And having reminded them of who He is, He then proceeds to remind them of who they are, which is a people playing the harlot with worthless idols. He reminds them of His grace in speaking to them, and He reminds them of His judgment that is coming upon their self-important, man-made religion.
This passage is a collision between divine faithfulness and human faithlessness. It is a confrontation between the God who saves and the people who prefer their trinkets. It is the story of Israel, but it is also the story of every human heart apart from Christ. We are all prone to wander. We are all prone to build our little altars in Gilgal. And God, in His severe mercy, comes to us, as He came to Israel, to remind us of who He is and to knock our pathetic altars down.
The Text
"But I have been Yahweh your God since the land of Egypt;
I will make you settle in tents again,
As in the days of the appointed festival.
And I have spoken to the prophets,
And I made visions abound,
And by the hand of the prophets I gave parables.
Is there wickedness in Gilead?
Surely they are worthless.
In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls;
Yes, their altars are like the stone heaps
Beside the furrows of the field."
(Hosea 12:9-11 LSB)
The Covenant Foundation (v. 9)
God begins by laying down the unalterable foundation of their entire existence.
"But I have been Yahweh your God since the land of Egypt; I will make you settle in tents again, As in the days of the appointed festival." (Hosea 12:9)
Notice how God identifies Himself. "I have been Yahweh your God since the land of Egypt." This is not an abstract philosophical proposition. This is a covenant lawsuit, and God is stating the history of the relationship. He is saying, "I am the one who found you in slavery, in bondage, making bricks without straw. I am the one who broke the back of the greatest empire on earth with ten plagues. I am the one who brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. I am the one who defined myself to you in an act of powerful, gracious, unmerited deliverance."
Their entire national existence, their law, their worship, their land, all of it was predicated on this one historical fact: God had saved them. This is the basis of His claim on them. He is not just God in general; He is their God. The relationship is specific, historical, and covenantal. For them to forget this was not just a minor lapse in memory; it was cosmic treason. It was spiritual adultery of the highest order. It was to forget the day their husband carried them over the threshold.
And because they have forgotten this foundational grace, God promises a radical, disciplinary reset. "I will make you settle in tents again." They had grown comfortable, fat, and complacent in their settled homes, with their permanent temples to their shiny idols. They thought their prosperity was their own doing. So God says, in effect, "You have forgotten what it is to depend on me. Fine. I will take you back to the wilderness. I will strip away your settled comforts and return you to a state of total dependency. You will live in tents again, like your fathers did, and you will remember that I am the one who provides the manna, the water from the rock, the pillar of cloud and fire."
This is not merely punitive. It is redemptive discipline. It is a severe mercy. He is taking them back to the basics of their relationship. The reference to the "days of the appointed festival" likely points to the Feast of Tabernacles, where they were commanded to live in booths for a week precisely to remember their time in the wilderness. God is saying He is going to make that temporary memorial a living reality for them once more. He will crash their economy and their political stability in order to save their souls.
The Abundant Revelation (v. 10)
God then removes any excuse they might have. They cannot plead ignorance. They cannot say they were not warned.
"And I have spoken to the prophets, And I made visions abound, And by the hand of the prophets I gave parables." (Hosea 12:10)
God's charge of covenant infidelity is not brought without cause. He had not been silent. He had not been distant. On the contrary, He had been speaking constantly, graciously, and clearly. He had sent a long line of prophets, men who stood in His council and spoke His words. He had given them visions, pulling back the curtain of history to show them the spiritual realities behind the curtain. He had given them parables, stories that would sneak past their defenses and lodge in their hearts and minds.
In short, God had exhausted the means of communication. He had spoken plainly, He had spoken in pictures, and He had spoken in stories. He had done everything short of forcing their wills. This is crucial. Israel's rebellion was not because of a lack of information. It was a deliberate act of suppression. They heard the truth, and they hated it. They saw the light, and they preferred the darkness because their deeds were evil. This is the state of every sinner. The problem is not that God has not spoken, but that men have stuffed their fingers in their ears. As Paul says in Romans 1, what can be known about God is plain to them, but they "by their unrighteousness suppress the truth."
God's grace in revelation makes their sin all the more heinous. To whom much is given, much is required. They had the living oracles of God, and they preferred the mute, stupid idols of the Canaanites. They had the words of life, and they chose the path of death. This is why judgment must come. It is not arbitrary; it is the righteous response of a holy God to a people who have spurned His abundant grace.
The Worthless Worship (v. 11)
Finally, God puts their specific sins in the dock. He names names and identifies the crime scenes.
"Is there wickedness in Gilead? Surely they are worthless. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls; Yes, their altars are like the stone heaps Beside the furrows of the field." (Hosea 12:11)
The question, "Is there wickedness in Gilead?" is rhetorical and dripping with divine sarcasm. Of course there is. Gilead, a place of refuge and blessing, had become a hotbed of iniquity. Gilgal was even worse. Gilgal was a place freighted with spiritual history. It was where Israel first camped in the promised land. It was where they set up the twelve memorial stones after crossing the Jordan. It was where they renewed the covenant through circumcision. It was where Saul was made king. It was a place of beginnings, a place of covenant faithfulness. And now? Now it was the center of their apostate, idolatrous worship. They were sacrificing bulls there, not to Yahweh, but to their golden calves or some other pagan deity.
They had taken the very places of God's grace and turned them into centers of rebellion. This is what sin always does. It twists and perverts the good gifts of God. And what is God's verdict on this grand religious enterprise? "Surely they are worthless." The Hebrew word is vanity, vapor, nothingness. All their religious activity, all their sacrifices, all their earnest sincerity, was utterly futile. It was a puff of smoke.
And then comes the final, devastating image of judgment. "Their altars are like the stone heaps beside the furrows of the field." A farmer, when plowing his field, would pull out the rocks and pile them up on the edge. These stone heaps were common, useless, and an obstruction. God says that is what their high and holy altars will become. He will demolish their sacred places. He will turn their centers of worship into piles of rubble, as common and profane as the rocks a farmer clears from his field. Their religion, which they thought was so important, so central, will be utterly dismantled and discarded. There is a play on words here as well. The name Gilgal itself sounds like the Hebrew word for a heap of stones. God is saying, "I will make Gilgal a gilgal. I will turn your sacred place into what its name sounds like, a pile of rocks."
Conclusion: From Rubble to Redemption
So what are we to do with this? This is not just a history lesson about ancient Israel. The human heart is an idol factory, and our modern world is just as cluttered with rubble-altars as ancient Gilead and Gilgal.
First, we must recognize our foundation. Our identity, like Israel's, is not in ourselves but in a historical act of redemption. For us, it is not the Exodus from Egypt, but the greater exodus accomplished by Jesus Christ at the cross. He is the one who found us in slavery to sin and death and who, by His blood, brought us out into the glorious liberty of the children of God. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" has been fulfilled and surpassed by "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." To forget this, to build our lives on any other foundation, is to commit the same covenant amnesia as Israel.
Second, we have no excuse. God has not just spoken to us through prophets and visions. Hebrews tells us that "in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." Jesus Christ is the final and ultimate Word of God. He is the perfect prophet, the ultimate vision, the living parable. The entire testimony of Scripture points to Him. To ignore Him is to spurn a revelation far greater than anything Israel ever knew.
And last, we must see our own idolatries for what they are: worthless. Whether our idol is our career, our comfort, our political tribe, or our own religious performance, it is all vanity. It is an altar destined to become a heap of stones. God is in the business of tearing down our false refuges. Sometimes He does this gently, through the preaching of the Word. Other times, He does it through a severe mercy, by making us dwell in tents again, by stripping away our comforts so that we are forced to depend on Him alone.
The good news is that God does not just demolish. He rebuilds. He tears down our rubble altars so that He might build us up as living stones into a spiritual house, with Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone (1 Peter 2:5). He takes us back to the wilderness of repentance so that He can lead us into the promised land of fellowship with Him. He is the faithful husband who, despite our adulterous hearts, pursues us, disciplines us, and brings us back to Himself, not because we are worthy, but because He is Yahweh our God, from everlasting to everlasting.