The Calf of Samaria Shall Be Broken

The trumpet was to be set to the mouth, but the sound that came from it was not a call to worship. It was a warning against the house of the Lord, because the covenant had been transgressed and the law had been trespassed against. The enemy was coming like an eagle, not a vulture circling from above but a predator diving with intent. Israel had cast off what was good, and the pursuit had already begun.

The kings had been set up, but not by the Lord. The princes had been made, and He did not know them. Their silver and gold had been turned into idols, and the purpose of those idols was that Israel might be cut off. The calf of Samaria had been cast off by the Lord Himself, and His anger was kindled against them. The question hung in the air: how long would it be before they attained to innocency? The answer was not given, because the trajectory was already set.

The calf was not a god. It was made by a workman, and it would be broken in pieces. There was no mystery to its origin and no power in its form. Israel had sown the wind, and they would reap the whirlwind. The standing grain would yield no meal, and if it did, strangers would swallow it up. The harvest was not coming; the storm was.

Israel was swallowed up. They were among the nations as a vessel in which no one delighted. They had gone up to Assyria like a wild ass alone by itself. Ephraim had hired lovers, but the hiring would not save them. Though they hired among the nations, the Lord would gather them, and they would begin to be diminished under the burden of the king of princes.

Ephraim had multiplied altars for sinning, and those altars had become occasions for sin. The Lord had written for them the ten thousand things of His law, but they counted them as a strange thing, something foreign and irrelevant. The sacrifices of His offerings were brought, the flesh was sacrificed and eaten, but the Lord did not accept them. He would remember their iniquity and visit their sins. They would return to Egypt, not as a liberation but as a judgment.

Israel had forgotten his Maker and built palaces. Judah had multiplied fortified cities. But the Lord would send a fire upon those cities, and it would devour the castles. The buildings that were meant to secure them would become their pyres. The forgetting was not a lapse of memory; it was a deliberate turning away from the one who had formed them.

The trumpet had been set to the mouth, but the people had heard only noise. They mistook the warning for a festival fanfare and returned to their business. But the eagle was already in the sky, and the calf was already marked for breaking. The wind had been sown, and the whirlwind was coming.