Hosea 7:7

7 Burning like an oven, they consume their leaders. They kill their kings one after another, and no one cries to me for help.

Hosea 7:7 Meaning and Commentary

Hosea 7:7

They are all hot as an oven
Eager upon their idolatry, or burning in their unclean desires after other men's wives; or rather raging and furious, hot with anger and wrath against their rulers and governors, breathing out slaughter and death unto them: and have devoured their judges;
that stood in the way of their lusts, reproved them for them, and restrained them from them; or were on the side of the king they conspired against, and were determined to depose and slay: all their kings have fallen;
either into sin, the sin of idolatry particularly, as all from Jeroboam the first did, down to Hoshea the last; or they fell into calamities, or by the sword of one another, as did most of them; so Zachariah by Shallum, Shallum by Menahem, Pekahiah by Pekah, and Pekah by Hoshea; see ( 2 Kings 15:1-38 ) . So the Targum,

``all their kings are slain:''

[there is] none among them that calleth unto me;
either among the kings, when their lives were in danger from conspirators; or none among the people, when their land was in distress, either by civil wars among themselves, or by a foreign enemy; such was their stupidity, and to such a height was irreligion come to among them!

Hosea 7:7 In-Context

5 On royal holidays, the princes get drunk with wine, carousing with those who mock them.

6 Their hearts are like an oven blazing with intrigue. Their plot smolders through the night, and in the morning it breaks out like a raging fire.

7 Burning like an oven, they consume their leaders. They kill their kings one after another, and no one cries to me for help.

8 “The people of Israel mingle with godless foreigners, making themselves as worthless as a half-baked cake!

9 Worshiping foreign gods has sapped their strength, but they don’t even know it. Their hair is gray, but they don’t realize they’re old and weak.