Tue, 31 October, 2006: Today’s Bible readings.
1 Hear this, O priests!
Pay attention, O house of Israel!
Give ear, O house of the king!
For the judgment is for you;
for you have been a snare at Mizpah
and a net spread upon Tabor.
Hosea has been confronting the sin in the northern tribes of Israel. He has confronted the priests in chapter 4, charging them with their guilt for having lead the people astray. But here at the beginning of chapter 5, we see that there is plenty of blame to spread around. The priests are guilty of leading the people astray. But the people of Israel bear their own responsibility for having followed the false spiritual leaders. And the political leaders (the house of the king) also are to blame for not administering justice.
What do we learn from this?
False teachers bear much guilt for the fact that they lead people astray. And our political leaders also bear guilt if they do not see that justice is administered. God holds accountable those who have been granted positions of political and spiritual leadership. They must be very careful to carry out their duties faithfully and well as those who will be called to give account.
But the people will also be held accountable. The leaders might bear the greater guilt, but no one is exempted from responsibility because they followed the example of bad leadership. We must do what is right, even if our leaders are leading us into wrong. We can’t just blindly follow our leaders, but we must carefully consider what they are teaching and what they are telling us to do. Does it match up with what God commands us to do in the scripture, or does it contradict God’s word? If God tells us in His word to do one thing, and our leaders tell us to do something different, we must obey God, not man. We will have to bear the consequences of disobeying our leaders, but realize that violating God’s law will also have consequences.
Where is Christ in this passage?
God’s specific complaint against Israel is that they have instituted pagan worship on all the hilltops (see 4:13). That is probably the significance of Mizpah and Tabor in today’s reading. These were places of religious significance, and they had become places of pagan worship. The people had replaced true worship with the worship of idols.
The true worship could only take place in Jerusalem. They were to bring their animal sacrifices to the temple to offer them as a substitution for their sin. They were to perform this ritual in order to show that they were looking for God’s perfect substitute who would bear the penalty for their sins. This act of sacrifice pointed them to the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ that was to come. But they polluted all this by instead offering animals to pagan deities on every high hill, and particularly at Mizpah and Tabor. Thus God was angry with them. They were blaspheming the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by offering animals to idols, and so God has promised to bring judgment against them.
