I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame; And they became as detestable as that which they loved.” – Hos 9.10 (NASB)

“They” in this verse is the nation of Israel on its 40-year journey from Egypt to the promised land; “Baal-peor” is likely a reference to Chemosh, a Moabite god known elsewhere as Ashtar. The worship of Chemosh at Peor – a mountain peak in Moab, east of the southern half of the Dead Sea – was where Balak had tried to get Balaam to curse God’s people (Num 23.28). Hosea’s reference, however, is to an episode recorded in Num 25:

1 While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab.
2 “For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.
3 “So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry against Israel.
4 “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.’
5 “So Moses said to the judges of Israel, ‘Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.’
6 “Then behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. [Talk about audacity and high-handed sin! - MR]
7 “When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand,
8 “and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked.”

What is most troubling about Hosea’s words, understood in their context, is his pronouncement about the people who participated in cultic worship of Baal/Chemosh: “And they became as detestable as that which they loved.” This is a statement of being, not merely doing. It was not merely their sin that was vile; they were vile and profane.

Perhaps subconsciously subscribing to Greek dualism, Christians tend to be more comfortable with confessing our sins that confessing our selves. We view the flesh as somehow alien or foreign, something that used to be who we are but no longer is: the responsibility for sin, we reason, is in the weakness of our fallen flesh and not in our selves. We can bend the knee and confess (Gr. homolegeo, to say the same thing, to agree with) that behaviors or deeds in which we have engaged are sinful and unacceptable to God.

But Hosea does not stop with deeds or even attitudes. He goes after us, after who we are. Who we are, the prophet says, is as detestable to God as the object of our love and worship if it is anything or anyone other than Him. “Detestable” in Hebrew is the word siqqus which means – “detestable.”

The prophet Hosea (Hos 9:10) describes how Israel changed from a beloved nation to a . . . detestable nation. The unlikely discovery of grapes in the wilderness and the delicacy of the first figs produced by a fig tree depict the intensity of Yahweh’s delight in his covenant nation. However, after Israel encountered the Moabites, ‘the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women’ (Num 25:1), a possible allusion to the sexual rites commonly associated with fertility cults. Consequently, Yahweh’s delight in the nation of Israel changed to loathing since they participated in worship acts that were reprehensible to him. As is seen in the commanded extermination of the Canaanites, the worshiper in pagan rituals faced the same divine wrath as the idolatrous objects. Before Yahweh, God’s children became just as detestable as the abhorrent immorality of Baal worship.” – Grisanti, in the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology

Certainly this is not an eternal detestation of His children, but it is a strong statement of the temporal unacceptability of believers who sin in this fashion. It not only makes worship of God impossible, but also results in our sanctification and service coming to a screeching halt. When we love anyone or anything more than we love God, we are as unacceptable and vile to Him as whatever it is that we have put in His place. Or, should the object of our idolatry (for so it is) be something loved by God – a spouse or children, for example – we become as detestable as the practice of idolatry.

We must not allow ourselves to think that somehow the flesh or the body is divorced from who we are in our beings. We do, as Paul says, “have this treasure in earthen vessels,” but in this lifetime we are the vessel and the vessel is us. We sin, we rebel, we wander – and we are detestable and vile. It is not just the behavior that is so offensive to God: we, the agents of the sin, are no less reprehensible. We are Chemosh.

Our confession must not be relegated to the words and actions of omission or commission; it is not our behavior that is the heart of the problem. Our confession needs to be of ourselves, of who we are, of our problematic hearts. Christ died for our sins, it is true, but He came to save sinners. We must not for a minute think that we need the grace of God less because we have been declared righteous.

We need to be saved from – not merely our sins – but from our sinful selves. It is who you are, not merely what you do, that needs to be confessed.


2 Cor 1:13