Hosea 2:11
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I will put an end to all her exultation: her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths— all her appointed feasts.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
The scope of this chapter seems to be much the same with that of the foregoing chapter, and to point at the same events, and the causes of them. As there, so here, I. God, by the prophet, discovers sin to them, and charges it home upon them, the sin of their idolatry, their spiritual whoredom, their serving idols and forgetting God and their obligations to him (Hos 2:1, Hos 2:2, Hos 2:5, Hos 2:8). II. He threatens to take away from them that plenty of all good things with which they had served their idols, and to abandon them to ruin without remedy (Hos 2:3, Hos 2:4, Hos 2:6, Hos 2:7, Hos 2:9-13). III. Yet he promises at last to return in ways of mercy to them for his own sake (Hos 2:14), to restore them to their former plenty (Hos 2:15), to cure them of their inclination to idolatry (Hos 2:16, Hos 2:17), to renew his covenant with them (Hos 2:18-20), and to bless them with all good things (Hos 2:21-23).
Open source ↗2:11 From the context (2:13, 16-17), as well as from similar passages in Isa 1:12-17 and Amos 5:21-24, it seems clear that the Israelites had defiled the legitimate festivals, new moon celebrations, and Sabbath days by combining worship of the Lord with worship of the Canaanite fertility god, Baal. God rejects such syncretism (mixing of different faiths) and declared that he would remove these unholy days from Israel’s calendar.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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“I hate, I despise your feasts! I cannot stand the stench of your solemn assemblies.
asking, “When will the New Moon be over, that we may sell grain? When will the Sabbath end, that we may market wheat? Let us reduce the ephah and increase the shekel; let us cheat with dishonest scales.
I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sounds of joy and gladness and the voices of the bride and bridegroom, for the land will become a wasteland.”
For this is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: I am going to remove from this place, before your very eyes and in your days, the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom.
For they will be entangled as with thorns and consumed like the drink of a drunkard— like stubble that is fully dry.
For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or idol.
“In that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “the songs of the temple will turn to wailing. Many will be the corpses, strewn in silence everywhere!”
So I will silence the sound of your songs, and the music of your lyres will no longer be heard.
Moreover, I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and bridegroom, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp.
And Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up, and he installed priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.