Legal Proceedings | Hosea 4:1-19
June 22, 2026
by Kirk Irwin
Young Scoundrel
I remember once when I was young, around the age of 8 my family and I were down at the beach at my grandparents trailer for a family vacation. This was something we did every year. Across the street was a small local grocery store - a great place to pick up any food stuff that was needed if a gap in a recipe occured. It also had an extensive candy aisle.
This aisle was a favorite of mine, as it would be for any youngster. One day I went there with a “summer friend” - a son of another resident of the beach camp. One young selfish mind is precocious enough, but two? As we strolled down the aisle of candy my soul went down a dark path and I made a poor choice. I stole some candy. I don’t remember the details of what it was I stole, or even why, I just did.
I am reminded of a similar moment in St Augustine’s Confessions where his young self and a group of “young scoundrels” made a similar choice, only his target was pears, not candy:
“We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden.”
Why do I remember this? Because I didn’t get away with it. My fellow “young scoundrel” turned me in to my dad. Busted.
When you are guilty…you are guilty
In Hosea chapter 4 Israel had not stolen candy. Their transgression was much more severe.
We see in the first three chapters that the northern Kingdom of Israel had abandoned God; they became an unfaithful wife - a whore. By the end of chapter 3 we see God had purchased back His “wife”, Israel, and has also promised change. But in chapter 4 there is no evidence of that promise, only the list of culpable sins, all nineteen verses of the chapter. It’s brutal. Sometimes truth cuts.
A few observations regarding this chapter, and then some concluding thoughts.
First, many critics of Christianity and especially the Old Testament would take this chapter and use it against God. “See! The God of the Old Testament is mean.” “This is a different God than Jesus. Jesus was loving, the God of the OT was hateful, he is a God of judgement!”
Someone making such claims has clearly not read the whole of the Old Testament, and decided to unjustly sever the New Testament from the Old. There is as much love in the Old Testament as judgement, let us not blind ourselves to that reality. And there is judgement in the New Testament - even out of the mouth of Jesus, “You whitewashed tombs!” “You brood of vipers!” “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God’s!”
Second, we should not avoid our guilt. Ecclesiastes 3 states, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”. In the list that follows there are things that are, to state plainly, not nice - dying, plucking what has been planted, killing, breaking down, weeping, mourning, losing, tearing, hating, and war. Could there not also be a time for guilt?
I just did a search on the web for “guilt”, “good guilt, “dealing with guilt” and came across a list of articles written on the value of guilt, when it is good. Remember we call the day of Jesus’ crucifixion “Good” Friday, perhaps that is why we should face and feel that guilt? Perhaps that is also why we need to feel that “Legal List” God lays out in Hosea 4? It was Israel’s guilt that created that list. It was OUR guilt that sent Jesus to the Cross.
But let’s not keep that feeling just on Good Friday, we should also feel Saturday. Remember Saturday of Easter weekend? Where Friday highlights the guilt and need for atonement by the Cross, Saturday is empty, it was the day after Jesus’ death. He died the day before and was hurriedly put in the tomb, and on Saturday He was still there. It wouldn’t surprise me that the Disciples were feeling the hopelessness that day. Everything they expected to see and had hoped would happen with Jesus was now rotting (I know the Bible says His body never saw decay, but I expect the Disciples thought He was rotting) in a tomb. I can only imagine the feeling.
As you read the list in Hosea 4 perhaps you felt the creep of hopelessness in your heart? Feeling both guilt and hopelessness is an important part of our story as followers of Christ. It is connected to our fallen condition. It is connected to our actions. This is not easy. It is not meant to be.
Carrying death, Carrying life
…always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. II Corinthians 4
If you find yourself in that moment where your guilt is heavy and you see no room for hope then you are ready. JRR Tolkien coined a new word for what came next, “eucatastrophe”. A catastrophe is final. A catastrophe is unalterable. A catastrophe is complete. There is no return.
“Eu” is a Greek prefix meaning “good”, so Tolkien used it to describe that moment where the guilt and the hopelessness were heaviest. It is exactly at the moment where Jesus emerges from the tomb. The resurrection is the “good catastrophe”.*
That full list in Hosea 4 was true of Israel, and in other ways it is true of us as well. There is no denying our culpability. But there is something deeper beyond our guilt and hopelessness. CS Lewis alluded to this in one of my favorite moments in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. After Susan and Lucy see the resurrected Aslan they can’t believe it, and even think he is a ghost. Susan asks, “What does this mean?”, and Aslan replies:
"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards…"
The “deeper magic” for Lewis is the “eucatrastrophe” for Tolkien. And we are better for it. The Apostle Paul sums this up when he says in II Corinthians 4 we carry both the death and life of Christ in us.
Conclusion
I was busted, turned in for stealing the candy. I have no memory of my Dad punishing me with a spanking, or even some sort of restrictions. He didn’t need to. All he did was walk me over to the store, confess to the owner what I did and pay for the candy I stole. I remember that to this day - yes, even a tinge of guilt even though Jesus is in my life.
Maybe that’s a reason God laid out the overwhelming list in Hosea 4? He wanted the Israelites to see the weight of their sin and confess to the “store owner”, Him. If you are human like me you have had a similar experience in your history, or maybe you are facing one right now? Perhaps God is opening your eyes now to His “magic”?
Brothers and sisters, the “deeper magic” of the eucatastrophe awaits, His name is Jesus.
…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10
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* You can find Tolkien’s explanation of this in the book The Letters of JRR Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, 2000