But Not By Me

EXEGESIS · HOSEA 8:3–4

The kings and the images Israel made for itself

Hosea 8:3–4 charges Israel with making its kings and its gods for itself. We read it in Brenton’s Septuagint, show that the American order makes its rulers the same way, and name the answer Scripture gives.

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01

The text

Hosea brings four charges and one verdict. Israel turned from the good, chased an enemy, set up rulers without asking God, and made gods out of its money. The verdict is the last clause, “that they might be destroyed,” written as though destruction were the goal. Israel made both the kings and the images for itself, “for themselves” and “to themselves,” and God owns neither.

02

The setting

Hosea prophesied from the reign of Jeroboam II into the reign of Hezekiah of Judah (Hos. 1:1), and in those years the northern throne changed hands by murder. Six kings followed Jeroboam, and four of them were killed by the man who reigned next: Zechariah by Shallum, Shallum by Menahem, Pekahiah by Pekah, and Pekah by Hoshea (4 Kingdoms 15:8–30 [2 Kings]). Hosea described it a chapter earlier: “They are all heated like an oven, and have devoured their judges: all their kings are fallen; there was not among them one that called on me” (Hos. 7:7).

Thrones were bought as well as taken. Menahem paid the king of Assyria a thousand talents of silver to have Assyria’s power on his side, and raised it by charging every man of wealth in Israel fifty shekels (4 Kingdoms 15:19–20 [2 Kings]). The images had a political origin too. Jeroboam I set up the calves at Bethel and Dan so his people would stop going up to Jerusalem, where he feared their hearts would turn back to Rehoboam and the house of David (3 Kingdoms 12:26–29 [1 Kings]). The calf of Samaria that Hosea attacks next (Hos. 8:5–6) was a religion built to protect a throne.

03

What the verses say

“Turned away from good things.” Verse 2 has Israel crying, “O God, we know thee,” and verse 3 answers the claim. Israel did not lose God through ignorance. It kept his name and walked away from what he gave. Hosea had already named the giver: “she knew not that I gave her her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied silver to her: but she made silver and gold images for Baal” (Hos. 2:8). He had also said where the good would be found again, when Israel “shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall be amazed at the Lord and at his goodness” (Hos. 3:5). The good comes with the true God and the true king, and Israel turned from both.

“They have pursued an enemy.” Israel did not drift. It chased. Verse 9 names the enemy and the result: “they have gone up to the Assyrians: Ephraim has been strengthened against himself.” The power Israel courted for protection was the power that carried it off (4 Kingdoms 17:6 [2 Kings]).

“They have made kings for themselves, but not by me.” The law had settled who chooses: “thou shalt surely set over thee the ruler whom the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 17:15). Israel kept the office and threw out the choice. The next clause, “they did not make it known to me,” says the same thing from the other side. God was not consulted, before or after.

“Of their silver and their gold they have made images to themselves.” The same law told the king, “he shall not greatly multiply to himself silver and gold” (Deut. 17:17). Israel spent its silver buying thrones and melting gods (Hos. 13:2). Hosea sets the two side by side because they are one act. Both take what God gave and make from it something to trust in his place. Verse 6 gives the verdict on the image, “the workman made it, and it is not God,” and “not by me” has already given the same verdict on the king.

“That they might be destroyed.” Nobody casts an idol in order to be destroyed by it. Hosea writes the outcome as the purpose because the outcome is certain. What men make to save them cannot save them, and it takes them down with it. Verse 10 shows the end: Israel will be “delivered to the nations,” and “they shall cease a little to anoint a king and princes.”

04

“No power but of God”

A careful reader will ask how this fits with Paul: “There is no power but of God” (Rom. 13:1). If every ruler is from God, how were Israel’s kings “not by me”? Hosea answers in his own book: “I gave thee a king in mine anger” (Hos. 13:11). God ruled over every coup in Samaria. He gave Israel the kings it made, and he gave them as judgment. “Not by me” denies God’s choice and God’s approval, not God’s rule. Both are true at once, and his rule over the outcome does not excuse their part in it. A people can receive a ruler from God’s hand as punishment and still answer for how they made him, which is why the same chapter taunts, “Where is this thy king? let him even save thee in all thy cities” (Hos. 13:10).

05

The kings we make

Hosea never saw a ballot, and we will not pretend he did. What he condemns is a people that makes its rulers for itself, on its own authority, and asks God afterward if at all. The American order does not do this by accident. It writes it into its charter. The Declaration of Independence holds that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and James Madison called the people “the only legitimate fountain of power” (Federalist No. 49). That is “kings for themselves” stated as a principle of law. Israel’s usurpers broke Israel’s law when they made kings without God. We keep ours when we do it.

The rest of the verse fits as closely. Israel’s thrones changed hands when the next man killed the last one. What Israel’s usurpers did by the sword, our order does by the calendar, and it gives every citizen a hand in it. Israel trusted its kings to save, and Hosea mocked the trust: “Where is this thy king? let him even save thee in all thy cities” (Hos. 13:10). Our candidates ask for the same trust in so many words. Barack Obama told his supporters in 2008, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” and Donald Trump told the Republican convention in 2016, “I alone can fix it.” One party offers the people as their own deliverer, and the other offers the man. Both offer a king made for ourselves.

Scripture records where that path ends, and it records it for us. Paul wrote of Israel’s history, “all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition” (1 Cor. 10:11). Israel’s king-making ran in a straight line. Its rulers fell one after another, and none of them called on God (Hos. 7:7). It went up to Assyria for protection and was “strengthened against himself” (Hos. 8:9), as the church is when it asks an order built on consent to protect it from what consent has produced. It sowed, in Hosea’s words, “blighted seed, and their destruction shall await them” (Hos. 8:7). It was handed to the nations and stopped anointing kings (Hos. 8:10), and Assyria carried it away (4 Kingdoms 17:6 [2 Kings]). A nation that makes its rulers the way Israel did has no promise of a different end. Scripture does not give us the date or the form of ours. It gives us the direction, and it is the direction Hosea saw.

A reader will object that America is not Israel and has no covenant from Sinai. That does not help it. The claim that authority belongs to God is not a term of Israel’s covenant alone. Wisdom says of every throne on earth, “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me nobles become great, and monarchs by me rule over the earth” (Prov. 8:15–16). A nation outside the covenant that claims to make its own rulers has claimed what God says is his, and the nations around Israel answered to God as well (Amos 1:3–2:3).

06

The king God gives

The answer Hosea points to is not a better election. It is the king God gives. Israel would return to “the Lord their God, and David their king” (Hos. 3:5), a king of God’s choosing, from a house God established, holding his throne from God and not from the people. In Brenton’s English the two texts answer each other. Of Israel’s kings God says “not by me,” and of every lawful throne wisdom says “By me kings reign” (Prov. 8:15).

We name the form of government that answers both: divine right monarchy. The king holds his office from God, receives it by succession rather than by vote, answers to God’s law rather than to the consent of the governed, and is honored as a father is honored. The law of the king describes him. He is “the ruler whom the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 17:15). He does not “greatly multiply to himself silver and gold” (Deut. 17:17). He keeps a copy of the law and reads it all his life (Deut. 17:18–19), and the law expects his sons to follow him, “that he and his sons may reign long in his dominion” (Deut. 17:20). God gave David a house and a throne “set up for ever” (2 Kingdoms 7:16 [2 Samuel]). We have made the case from the Fifth Commandment in None Gives What He Has Not and The King as Father, and Hosea gives it its plainest form. A people that makes kings for itself ends by saying, “We have no king, because we feared not the Lord: and what should a king do for us” (Hos. 10:3–4). A people that receives its king from God has one who reigns “by me.”

A careful reader will object that Israel sinned in asking for a king at all (1 Kingdoms 8:7 [1 Samuel]). The law had already provided for one, a ruler “whom the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 17:15), so the office could not be the sin. Samuel names what was. The people set aside God as their deliverer (1 Kingdoms 10:19 [1 Samuel]) and asked for a king who would “go out before us, and fight our battles” (1 Kingdoms 8:20 [1 Samuel]). That is the trust Hosea condemns, a king made to save the people who made him. God then gave David a throne “set up for ever” and made it the throne of the Christ (Luke 1:32). Monarchy was never the sin. Kings made by the people for their own rescue were.

Every such king answers to the one King no people made: “But I have been made king by him on Sion his holy mountain” (Ps. 2:6). When a crowd fed with the loaves came to take Jesus “by force, to make him a king,” he “departed again into a mountain himself alone” (John 6:15). His crown came from the Father: “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). The kings of the earth are told what follows: “Now therefore understand, ye kings: be instructed, all ye that judge the earth. Serve the Lord with fear” (Ps. 2:10–11).

07

What we do with it

Personally. Notice what moves you when the returns come in. Peace that rises and falls with a ruler rests on that ruler, so if an election sets your peace or your dread, you are trusting a king made for yourself, whichever way it goes. Hosea gave Israel the words of return, and they name the false saviors one by one: “Assur shall never save us; we will not mount on horseback; we will no longer say to the works of our hands, Our gods” (Hos. 14:4). Pray that verse with your own names in it, the candidate, the party, the account balance.

In the home. Sons learn whom to trust by watching what moves their father. A man who rages at the news and celebrates a victory teaches his household that the nation’s hope sits in an office. Read the law of the king (Deut. 17:14–20) with your sons, and ask what God requires of a ruler before anyone asks what party he belongs to. Teach them that a ruler’s authority comes from God the way a father’s does, and that a father’s does not come from their vote. Pray for rulers by name at the table, the ones you oppose and the ones you favor (1 Tim. 2:1–2).

In the church. Jeroboam’s calf was a church built to guard a throne, and it was credited with the Lord’s own work, bringing Israel up out of Egypt (3 Kingdoms 12:28 [1 Kings]). A church does the same thing when its teaching on public life could be predicted from the party its members vote for. The church’s office toward rulers is the prophet’s office, telling them what God requires, as Nathan told David and John told Herod (2 Kingdoms 12:7 [2 Samuel], Mark 6:18). Ask whether your church’s teaching on rulers would change if the other party held power. If it would, the calf is in the building.

In what we advocate politically. We advocate divine right monarchy and say so plainly. We do it the way the prophets dealt with kings, by speech and prayer and not by resistance, because “the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1), and we obey them in everything lawful. We decline the vote for rulers, for the reasons None Gives What He Has Not sets out. We tell rulers of every party that their authority is God’s and that they answer to his law, and we pray for them by name. And we teach men to want a king who reigns “by me” more than a candidate who promises to save them.

SOURCES

Texts and editions

SCRIPTURE

Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton, trans., The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (London, 1844), with its numbering.

The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), for the New Testament.

THE ORDER EXAMINED

Declaration of Independence (1776).

James Madison, The Federalist No. 49 (1788).

Barack Obama, remarks to supporters, Chicago, 5 February 2008.

Donald J. Trump, address accepting the Republican nomination, Cleveland, 21 July 2016.

OUR OWN WORK

None Gives What He Has Not. The King as Father.

Published by Beyond Left and Right. Old Testament from Brenton’s Septuagint with its numbering and spelling, English book names in brackets where they differ (Hosea 14 runs one verse ahead, Assur is Assyria, Sion is Zion). New Testament from the King James Version. Correspondence: contact@beyondleftandright.com