Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Prophet Is Considered a Fool
Hosea 9:7-9
7 The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool, and the man who is inspired to be insane, because of the abundance of your sins, and because your hostility is great. · WEB
Three verses in which the prophet reports what people say about him, and the book lets the insult stand without answering it.
Verse 7 announces the arrival of what the book has been predicting — the days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come — and then, without transition, records the audience's verdict on the man announcing it.
Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool, and the man who is inspired to be insane.
The two terms are the ordinary words for a fool and for a madman. The second phrase is literally the man of the spirit, which is a title of honor turned into an accusation: the very thing that makes him a prophet is what they cite as evidence that he is unwell.
And the book offers no rebuttal. It does not say they were wrong to think it, and it does not defend Hosea's sanity. It states the reason for the hostility — because of the abundance of your sins, and because your hostility is great — and moves on. A man whose life was a demonstration of a broken marriage Hosea 1:2 would have looked exactly like this to his neighbors.
Verse 8 puts him in an odd double position: a prophet watches over Ephraim with my God — a watchman posted with God — and simultaneously walking a path with a fowler's snare on it, with hostility in the house of his God. The trap is in the sanctuary.
Verse 9 reaches back for a comparison: as in the days of Gibeah, the atrocity recorded in Judges, which the book invokes again later Hosea 10:9. The measure of the present is the worst episode in the nation's own memory.
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