More Stupid than Wicked
Could it be that these people are not so much inherently wicked as plain stupid? Ephraim in particular is described as ‘a silly dove’ (v 11). If so, in what does their stupidity consist? Hosea gives several hints.
One, they appear to be more interested in living with their problems (v 1) than in asking questions about causes or trying to make changes and so pre-empt disaster, preferring to run away from consequences rather than face them and search for explanations. Even more worrying, they seem utterly oblivious to the fact that Yahweh knows full well what is going on; in other words, that there is an ultimate authority to which they must give account.
Two, they appear to be more interested in pleasing their masters (kings and officials) than they are in pleasing Yahweh. What ‘goes' is ‘what works’ rather than ‘what is right’. Politics before principles. Short-term solutions rather than long-term objectives. Long-term goodness sacrificed for short-term gain. Is this what is now understood as ‘the art of politics’, ‘living in the real world’ or ’responding to market forces’? Add to this the ‘oven' metaphor (v 4) and that seems to suggest that things have now gone far beyond simply ‘trying to please’; they are in fact in a situation which has got totally out of control. They are little more than puppets on a string.
Three, how stupid can you get when you obviously need no encouragement to turn to the kings, all of whom have let you down, yet refuse to call upon Yahweh who never has? (v 7).
Sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. Stupidity, no less than weakness and outright sinfulness, brings its own reward. Those who live by plotting will die by plotting, only this time it will be Yahweh who is in charge and if they are indeed as Hosea describes they will they never understand what brought them down any more than they appear to have understood who created and fortified them in the first place. (v 15; 8:14).