Breaking up fallow ground: The time is now
Hos 10:9-15
My grandmother was born into a well-to-do family and married my grandfather who had an influential job. She had both wealth and prestige and was an immensely proud woman. However, during the siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-45, something happened that changed her forever. The family was staying with others in the cellar of the block of apartments that acted as their bomb shelter. My Dad woke up one day with a premonition that something was going to happen and looked for the safest place, which was an inner boiler room in the cellar. He persuaded his dad to move in there, but his mum refused to join them – she thought she knew better! It was a quiet winter morning, no alarms, just gentle sunshine. My grandmother was standing in the open doorway of the cellar when a stray plane dropped a bomb that exploded by the entrance. She was taken to hospital with horrific injuries and at one point, her pain was so unbearable that she wanted to kill herself. By God’s grace, a nun (one of the nurses at the hospital) talked her out of it. Although pride remained a temptation, that experience left her a softer, more understanding woman.
Israel’s fallow ground
In our reading, Israel is similarly facing horrors that will break them. Hosea calls it the ploughing of fallow ground because the people are steeped in sin as badly as in the days of Gibeah (Hos 10:9). The reference (also in Hos 9:9) is to the gang-rape of the Levite’s concubine (Judg 19:15-30).[1] Although Israel’s sins are not exactly the same in Hosea’s day, but the sexual connotations and the sense of moral-spiritual chaos in his time evoke that earlier dark era. At that time, the woman’s death triggered a civil war in which Israel attacked the tribe of Benjamin who refused to give up the perpetrators for justice so that the tribe was almost wiped out (Judg 20:1-48). Now, God will bring other nations against His people whose sexual immorality and idolatry cry out for justice (Hos 10:9-10).[2]
The ploughing of hardened hearts
Hosea compares Israel’s life to a threshing heifer’s (Hos 10:11), which involved treading out grain from the sheaves in an enclosed area while feeding on the grain. It was easy work. The people, however, will receive a yoke on their back to plough fallow ground. The yoke carries associations of hardship, even slavery; something Israel will experience in captivity. It also speaks of spiritual labour that they need to do, the metaphorical breaking up of their heart’s fallow ground (Hos 10:12). So far, their record in that department was sowing wickedness and reaping injustice and enjoying the fruit of their lies (Hos 10:13). The latter may mean deception in matters of justice (leading to material gain) but also self-deception that they are a great and glorious people whose warriors are strong enough to withstand attack (v.13). We do not know what historic incident is behind Hosea’s reference to Beth-arbel (Hos 10:14),[3] but the description of dashing mothers and babies in pieces points to the harsh brutality of war that Israel will experience at Assyria’s hands.
It is time to seek the LORD
As so often in Scripture, we see an issue and a principle outlined in dramatic terms. Israel was called to break up their own fallow ground, to repent of their sin instead of remaining hard-hearted and resistant to God’s ways. Because they did not, God would have to break them through their circumstances and the terrible experience of captivity. While our Christian lives may be on a more pedestrian level, the principle is the same. Unless we seek the Lord and amend our ways when He confronts us with sin, He may have to do the correcting in ways that are much more painful. Yet, the good news is that we do not have to wait until things get so desperate. Repentance now is an option. As Hosea calls the people, ‘it is time to seek the LORD’ (Hos 10:12). God does not relish disciplining us, but He cares enough for our welfare not to leave His children in a hardened state. May we respond and sow right and godly behaviour and be able to reap the benefits of covenant loyalty to the Lord (v.12).
[1] Judges tells the story in such a way that the parallels with Sodom’s sin are also evident (Gen 19:1-11). Evoking Sodom to characterise sin is like evoking the horrors of Auschwitz in our time to describe the depravity of an action. Thus, the comparison of Israel’s sin in Hose’s time with the sin of Gibeah carries accumulated associations that make it particularly heinous.
[2] What Israel’s ‘double guilt’ denotes is uncertain. Given the immediate context, it may be the rampant sexual immorality implied in the sin of Gibeah (Hos 10:9) and idol-worship (Hos 10:5, 8). However, injustice (Hos 10:4, 13) and trust in one’s own strength (Hos 10:13) may also qualify. At the end of the day, it may simply be an emphatic way of saying ‘their great guilt’.
[3] The Shalman in the passage may be a reference to Shalmaneser I. who invaded Israel during Jehu’s reign. Others suggest Shalmaneser V, who may have demolished Beth-Arbel, a town in Gilead (in the Transjordan) on the way to destroy Samaria in 722 BC. Yet another suggestion is that Shalman is Salmanu, a Moabite king who reigned in the second half of the 8th century BC.
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