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The Book of Hosea Chapter 5:1–19 Ensnaring the Nation Ensnaring the Nation 5:1-2 Hear this, you priests! Pay attention, you Israelites! Listen closely, O king! For judgment is about to overtake you! For you were like a trap to Mizpah, like a net spread out to catch Tabor. Those who revolt are knee-deep in slaughter, but I will discipline them all. God continues the legal case he began in chapter 4. The priests, the royal family and the whole nation were all to be held guilty. Those in national and moral authority had led the way in corrupting the nation, and would now answer for this before God. Mizpah, Tabor and Shittim were centres of worship for the idolatrous cult of Baalim. Once, God had been worshipped in these places; but the worship of the true God had been replaced by the worship of idols which were supposed to represent God. In a brief time, the significance of these idols had changed so that they had come to represent the gods of nature. The rulers had given their complete consent and support to this degradation of true religion and had given the cult of Baal their full patronage. It was the popular religion of the day; the ‘in thing’ or the trendy thing to do. The example of the leaders had been followed by others, and in this way the leaders were responsible for the spiritual decline of the nation. Not only did they fail to uphold truth, morality and the commandments of God, they had also set a trap to catch the unwary, that is, to entice them into Baal worship. Hosea uses three illustrations to reveal how the people had been taken captive by this idolatrous religion. The snare or trap was used to catch birds one at a time. Thus individuals had been ensnared in Baal worship. Moreover, those who led the way in this backsliding had spread a net by which they had entangled the feet of the whole nation in idolatry. The third illustration is in verse two, which the American Standard Version translates as ‘and the revolters are gone deep in making slaughter.’ The idea is in fact of a deep pit which had been purposely dug to catch the hunted game. The leaders of the religious cult were guilty of forcibly converting people into their false religion. In all three illustrations, the idea conveyed is of the rulers being responsible for leading the people into the spiritual bondage of idolatry, just as a hunter is responsible for trapping an animal; and because of this God vows to punish them for their sin.