How Dare You Celebrate?
Imagine these words being uttered by the prophet at a festival as Hosea contemplates the revelry, the eating and the drinking, and reflects on the state of the nation. From where he stands these people have lost touch with the world they inherited from their forbears. ‘The world has turned round’, they say, 'and there is no going back’. Some may be suffering and faithful purists may be sad, but this a new day when some people are enjoying themselves, doing very well and making the most of their opportunity.
In this new society the sacred and the secular have become indistinguishable. The threshing floor and the wine presses that produced the bread and the wine for sustenance produce it also for pleasure, much as in western society church buildings, the use of Sunday, rites of passage and even the sacraments can cross the barriers of the sacred and the secular to provide a service to both.
But such was their blindness (or self-confidence) that they had come to imagine it all belonged to them and they could do with it as they liked. What was always secular and potentially sacred has been reduced to the level of the bare necessity — ‘for their hunger only’ (v 4). Cf 1 Cor 11: 17ff. For Hosea this was more than the breaking of a commandment because what had been so abused could no longer fulfill its holy purpose. The vehicle for the spiritual had been destroyed and once that damage has been done it is very difficult to repair it. Here we have the very essence of prostitution which goes much wider than sexual relationships.
This time they have gone too far and even if they change course now Egypt will either destroy them or make life very uncomfortable (v 6). The reference to Gibeah is to the Levite’s concubine and a particularly dark patch in their history when there was no king because ‘every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (Judges 10-21). It is as if they were returning to Egypt — to slavery — and to the level and attitudes from which Yahweh had delivered their fathers when he found them ‘like grapes in the desert’ (v 10) unable to rear their children (v 12). No wonder they try to dismiss Hosea as a fool (v 7) but Hosea knows that you don’t annul the message by shooting the messenger.