Hosea 9:7-9

The God of creation will not tolerate placing your idols before Him.

Pray for restoration and the guidance of Holy Spirit for the days are evil! 

Lamentations 2:14 Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captives, but have envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions.

Hosea 9:7-9

7 The days of punishment have come;

The days of recompense have come.

Israel knows!

The prophet is a fool,

The spiritual man is insane,

Because of the greatness of your iniquity and great enmity.

8 The watchman of Ephraim is with my God;

But the prophet is a fowler’s snare in all his ways—

Enmity in the house of his God.

9 They are deeply corrupted,

As in the days of Gibeah.

He will remember their iniquity;

He will punish their sins.

The man of the spirit refers to the prophet who experienced God’s revelation through His spirit. These lines about the prophet being a fool and a madman likely reflect Israel’s reaction to the prophet’s preaching. Israel never repented from iniquity, making the prophet’s conditional message of restoration appear foolish. A prophet, like a watchman, was responsible for giving warnings about danger. Faithlife Bible.

Sinful Israel disdained God’s true prophets, regarding them as raving maniacs. The Hebrew word translated insane is used in 1 Samuel of David when he pretended to be a madman before the Philistine king. Enmity refers to strong resentment that can give rise to violent behavior.

A watchman would look for approaching armies and then warn the people so that they could secure the city and prepare for battle. The prophets were like watchmen because they were sent by God to warn the people of judgment and urge them to repent.

As in the days of Gibeah is a reference to the rape and murder of a young woman by men of Gibeah, an event that started a civil war.  Those who witnessed this violent deed remarked that it was the worst crime committed in Israel’s history until that time. However, the sins of Hosea’s generation rivaled the infamous Gibeah murder. NKJ Bible.

Time had been when the spiritual watchmen of Israel were with the Lord, but now they were like the snare of a fowler to entangle persons to their ruin. The people were become as corrupt as those of Gibeah and their crimes should be visited in like manner. At first God had found Israel pleasing to Him, as grapes to the traveller in the wilderness. He saw them with pleasure as the first ripe figs. This shows the delight God took in them; yet they followed after idolatry. Matthew Henry Commentary.

Isaiah 10:3 What will you do in the day of punishment, and in the desolation which will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your glory?

Jeremiah 10:15 They are futile, a work of errors; in the time of their punishment they shall perish.

Hosea 10:9 “O Israel, you have sinned from the days of Gibeah; there they stood.The battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.