Hosea 7:2-4
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
2 Yet they do not call to mind
that I remember all their wickedness.(A)
Now their crimes surround them,
present to my sight.(B)
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.
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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