Days of Visitation: Gibeah and Baal-peor Remembered

The arrival of “days of visitation” creates conflict around the prophet himself: Israel labels the prophet a fool and the spiritual man mad. Hosea answers by reaching backward in Scripture. The people have “deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah,” explicitly invoking the horrific story of Judges 19–20 as a benchmark of social and covenant collapse.

He then reaches farther back to Baal-peor, where Israel joined itself to a fertility cult in the wilderness. Hosea’s historical method is important For this study: later Scripture interprets earlier Scripture. The prophet does not treat Gibeah and Peor as isolated ancient scandals; he uses them as covenant mirrors for his own generation. Israel’s present is exposed by the stories it should have remembered.