Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Luxuriant Vine
Hosea 10:1-6
1 Israel is a luxuriant vine that produces his fruit. According to the abundance of his fruit he has multiplied his altars. As their land has prospered, they have adorned their sacred stones. · WEB
Prosperity is described as the thing that fed the idolatry, and a divided heart is named as the diagnosis.
Israel is a luxuriant vine that produces his fruit. The opening is a compliment and the next clause turns it: according to the abundance of his fruit he has multiplied his altars.
The correlation is the point. More fruit produced more altars, and as their land has prospered, they have adorned their sacred stones. Good harvests funded the shrines, and the shrines existed to secure good harvests — a loop in which success confirms the practice that supposedly caused it. The book has made this observation twice already Hosea 4:7 Hosea 8:11.
Verse 2 gives the diagnosis in three words: their heart is divided. Not turned away, not hardened — halved, which is the condition the whole book describes. Israel is keeping Sabbaths and burning incense to the Baals, saying we acknowledge you while paying a workman for a calf Hosea 8:2 Hosea 8:6.
Verse 3 quotes what they will say when the throne fails: we have no king; for we don't fear Yahweh; and the king, what can he do for us? The reasoning is candid — no king, because no fear of God — and the last clause is the shrug of people who have discovered what a monarchy is worth.
Verse 4 describes public life as broken promises, and the image is agricultural in the book's way: judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field. Verdicts grow like weeds — unplanted, everywhere, and inedible.
And verses 5 and 6 send the calf of Beth Aven to Assyria for a present to a great king. The god is deported as tribute.
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