The Lure of Other Gods

MEMORY VERSE: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” —Exodus 20:3

HOSEA 4:1,2,11,12; 8:4,11-14

IN THIS lesson, as in the previous one, we find the Lord, through the Prophet Hosea, addressing largely the people of the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel and censuring them for their idolatry. Our memory verse, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” is a clear expression of God’s will for those who profess to be his people. This is not because the great Creator is small in mind and for this reason cannot tolerate the devotion of his creatures to rival gods; it is because he knows that complete loyalty to him is the only true way to peace and happiness, and he desires his people to be happy.

Suppose that in the inanimate cosmos the countless millions of heavenly bodies should come under the effective influence of deranging magnetic and gravitational forces. What chaos there would be! These inanimate creations do not, of course, have any choice but to obey the laws by which they are controlled; but man does. He was created a free moral agent and can choose his course. But the Creator knows that a choice to bow down to and serve other gods is, in the long run, disastrous to man’s best interests and must inevitably lead to his destruction; hence the many admonitions of the Scriptures for man not to divide his loyalties between Jehovah and the false gods of the heathen.

The ten-tribe kingdom of Israel was conceived in idolatry. In its very inception, Jeroboam, its founder, in rebelling against the other two tribes of the nation, set up a rival place of worship at Bethel with the expressed intention of luring his subjects away from the worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, and thus preventing them from fraternizing with the people of the two loyal tribes. (I Kings 12:26-33) And the idolatry of the people continued to be encouraged, not only by Jeroboam, but also by all his successors.

Since the righteous laws of God were ignored for so many generations, it is no wonder that in Hosea’s day the sins of the people had reached the full. Hosea wrote, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel: for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.”

In Hosea 4, verse 6, we find the Lord saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me; seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children.” The perishing of the people of the ten-tribe kingdom for lack of knowledge should not be understood as a permanent cutting off from all opportunity to gain life through Christ in the world’s future judgment day, but a cutting off from being God’s nation of priests. The kingdom was about to be destroyed and the people taken captive into Assyria, although a remnant of them did remain in Palestine and associated themselves with the two-tribe kingdom of Judah, which later was taken captive to Babylon.

As chapter 8 verse 4, declares, following the leadership of Jeroboam, the founder of the ten-tribe kingdom, Israel had set up kings and princes to rule over them without consulting Jehovah’s will in the matter. To the extent that they prospered, they used their silver and their gold to make an increasing number of idols—“that they may be cut off.” Their sinful course could lead to nothing else than a cutting off of divine favor.

Verses 11 to 14 of this chapter continue to detail the offenses of this idolatrous people. Ephraim was another name for the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel, and “Ephraim had made many altars to sin.” The Lord says that he had written to Ephraim the great things of his law, but these idolatrous people would have nothing of it—to them the great and good things of God’s law were strange.

Israel preferred to go through certain forms of worship and sacrifice similar to those called for in God’s law, but they did it in the name of their own gods. The Lord did not accept their worship and was determined to punish their obstinate disobedience and idolatry. The statement that they would “return to Egypt” is believed to be figurative language for extreme misery, and such misery did indeed come upon this people.

In verse 14, Judah is included in the Lord’s prophecy of doom. While Judah was far less idolatrous than Israel, the time came when in this little kingdom also iniquity came to the full, and they were carried away captive to Babylon. How different was the attitude of David, who wrote, “The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”—Ps. 19:7-14

QUESTIONS

Why does the Creator demand full obedience to him?

When did idolatry begin in the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel?

When did it end?

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