Hosea 10: Agricultural Analogies

You can tell a lot about the context of a people based on their literature.  This is no less true when it comes to a biblical example like Hosea and his audience.  Speaking to a farming nation, Hosea uses a number of agricultural analogies to drive his points home.

"Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit" (vs. 1).  Those who tend vines can see where Hosea is going here.  As a living thing, Israel has been fruitful.  But Hosea's words are not ones of praise for them in this.  Instead, the prophet condemns Israel for what her fruit has produced.  "The more his fruit increased the more altars he built...The Lord will break down their altars, and destroy their pillars" (vs. 2-3).

In addition to idolatry, one of Israel's great sins was taking faithless oaths.  Hosea chastises the people for this also, using an agricultural example.  "They utter mere words; with empty oaths they make covenants; so litigation springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field" (vs. 4).  Every farmer hates weeds.  Today we have chemicals and sprays that minimize the weeds that ruin a crop.  But back then the people could appreciate the damage that weeds could do.  Israel's empty promises under oath had wrecked their system of trustworthy covenants; they had made the nation like a land overgrown with weeds.

Hosea ends with a message about plowing and planting.  There are two kinds of crops that the nation may sow.  First, Hosea urges them, "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you" (vs. 12).  The people understood that you reap what you sow.  They also greatly appreciated the rain that fell and how it helped their crops to grow.

However, there is another choice of what to plant.  Hosea points out the error of their ways when he writes, "You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies" (vs. 13).  Even those who do not live in a farming context today should be able to grasp the message of the prophet: Plow and plant with righteousness so that you may grow a good crop!