Hosea 7:3-7
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Israel’s Domestic Politics[a]
3 With their wickedness they make the king rejoice,
the princes too, with their treacherous deeds.
4 They are all adulterers,[b]
like a blazing oven,
Which the baker quits stoking,
after the dough’s kneading until its rising.
5 On the day of our king,
they made the princes sick with poisoned wine;
he extended his hand to the scoffers.
6 For they draw near in ambush
with their hearts like an oven.
All the night their anger sleeps;
in the morning it flares like a blazing fire.
7 They are all heated like ovens,
and consume their rulers.
All their kings have fallen;
none of them calls upon me.
Footnotes
- 7:3–7 This passage perhaps refers to a conspiracy at the royal court. Between the death of Jeroboam II (743 B.C.) and the fall of Samaria (722/721), nearly all the kings were murdered (2 Kgs 15:10, 14, 25, 30).
- 7:4 Adulterers: the unfaithful nobles who kill the king. Their passion is compared to the fire of the oven. The point of the metaphor is that, like this oven whose fire is always ready to blaze up again, the conspirators are always ready for rebellion.
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