Bible Strands
Hosea 9:1
Do not rejoice, O Israel, with exultation like the nations, for you have played the harlot against your God; you have made love for hire on every threshing floor.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet Hosea addresses the northern kingdom of Israel, commanding them to halt their national celebrations. This occurs during a period of covenant violation where religious and agricultural festivals have become intertwined with idolatrous practices.
The words — The Hebrew verb זָנִיתָ (za.Ni.ta) literally means "you have prostituted yourself" [H2181], and the imperative תִּשְׂמַ֨ח (tis.Mach) commands "you rejoice" [H8055]. These terms establish Israel's covenant violations as transactional infidelity rather than mere ritual error.
The thread — The motif of agricultural failure following idolatrous celebration appears in Hosea 9:2, where the threshing floor and winepress will no longer sustain the people. Similar warnings about harvest vanishing despite human effort appear in Isaiah 17:11, while Jeremiah 44:17 records the people's defiant vow to continue burning incense to the Queen of Heaven.
Why it lands — The text demands that a reader recognize how communal celebration becomes complicit when it masks systemic covenant betrayal. It requires the cessation of joy that relies on compromised alliances rather than faithful obedience.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy, as other people: for thou hast gone a whoring from thy God, thou hast loved a reward upon every cornfloor.
Cross-references
- Hosea 10:5 The people of Samaria will fear for the calf of Beth-aven. Indeed, its people will mourn over it with its idolatrous priests—those who rejoiced in its glory—for it has been taken from them into exile.
- Isaiah 17:11 though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout—yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.
- Jeremiah 44:17 Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and good things, and we saw no disaster.
- Hosea 4:12 My people consult their wooden idols, and their divining rods inform them. For a spirit of prostitution leads them astray and they have played the harlot against their God.
- James 4:16 As it is, you boast in your proud intentions. All such boasting is evil.
- Isaiah 22:12 On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
- Lamentations 4:21 So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. Yet the cup will pass to you as well; you will get drunk and expose yourself.
- Ezekiel 16:47 And you not only walked in their ways and practiced their abominations, but soon you were more depraved than they were.
- Ezekiel 20:32 When you say, ‘Let us be like the nations, like the peoples of the lands, serving wood and stone,’ what you have in mind will never come to pass.
- Ezekiel 21:10 it is sharpened for the slaughter, polished to flash like lightning! Should we rejoice in the scepter of My son? The sword despises every such stick.