Kissing Calves: A Meditation on Hosea 13:2

ESV Hosea 13:2 And now they sin more and more, and make for themselves metal images, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of them, "Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves!"

The Hebrew says literally "sacrificers of men," which could be understood as "those among men who sacrifice" or "those who sacrifice men," i.e. offer human sacrifice.

The human sacrifice translation makes sense in light of what we know about the idolatrous practises of the Canaanites (whom the Israelites loved to emulate). It also makes sense in the context of God's indictment of Israel's idolatry in which the verse is found. It is as if the charge is, "You are so corrupt that instead of kissing your fellow man and slaughtering calves, you do the opposite; you slaughter men and kiss calves (the metal images you make)."

What a timely reprimand for our day in which human life is so devalued and animal life so cherished!

Which leads me to ask, "Are the slaughter of the unborn and leniancy to murderers in modern courts just byproducts of sinful society? Is the culture of death just one more way that sin plays out in our generation?

I think it is more. I think it is a deliberate and strategic assault by the god of this world on imago dei. I think that the devaluation of human life is the Devil's deliberate attempt to stamp out the image of God, that is human life. It is not so much humans that he hates (though he is our adversary) but the One in whose image we were created. I think that abortion and hand-slap sentences for murderers are evidence of 2 Cor. 4:4.

ESV 2 Cor. 4:4 "the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

This really helps me make sense of how even an unbeliever can value a bottle-nosed dolphin's life over that of a person or treat an unborn child like nothing more than cell tissue to be discarded. The issue is blindness. The "god of this world" blinds the eyes of unbelievers to "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." Because they are blinded to the light of the gospel, they cannot see the glory of Christ. Because they cannot see the glory of Christ, they do not know what the image of God looks like. Therefore they cannot see the image of God in their fellow men and value it as God does. So "those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves!"