Reaping the whirlwind.
The figure here is extremely striking; it is one of the most forcible and vivid of Hosea's images. It suggests the folly and unprofitableness of a life of sin; those who live such a life "sow the wind." And it emphasizes the fact that while the harvest must be the same in kind as the seed sown, the increase will be tremendous, both in strength and volume. The whirlwind of the desert tears along with a roar like a cataract, and carries in its wings violent and sweeping destruction; it is, therefore, a fit metaphor for the issue of a career of sin Let us inquire who are some of those that thus reap.
I. IDOLATERS. It is of such that the prophet is more immediately speaking. The people of the ten tribes were "sowing the wind" when they prayed to the golden calves for abundant harvests; and they would presently "reap the whirlwind" in the three years' siege of Samaria by Shalmaneser, in the successive deportations into exile, and in the final ruin of the nationality of Ephraim. The generation that came out of Egypt seven centuries before had reaped a sad harvest from the calf-worship at Horeb. "There fell of the people that day about three thousand men" (Exodus 32:28). And ever since that time the idolatries of Israel had been a standing grief to Jehovah their Redeemer (Psalms 81:8-16); until at length there was nothing for it but the two hurricanes of captivity, which respectively swept the ten tribes into Assyria, and the remaining two into Babylon. All heathendom, moreover, "reaps the whirlwind' still as the fruit of its idolatries—a harvest (as Paul tells us in Romans 1:18-32) of moral corruption and vileness, overhung by the storm-cloud of the Divine wrath.
II. DESPOTS. The tyrant makes an idol of his own evil will, and "sows the wind" of ambition, and pride, and vain-glory, and disregard of the rights of others. Universal history teems with illustrations of the fact that those kings and grandees of the earth who will not give God the glory are doomed to reap a harvest of whirlwind. Take, e.g; from sacred history such cases as Pharaoh, Ahab and Jezebel, Sennacherib, Haman, Herod. Or, from profane history, such illustrations as the Stuart kings of England, the Bourbon kings of France, and the fate of the two Napoleons, Some tyrants have foreseen the harvest before it began to be gathered in; like Louis XV; when he said to his courtiers, "After me, the deluge."
III. CARELESS PARENTS. All who neglect the godly upbringing of their children "sow the wind." There are well-meaning heads of households who fail to maintain a firm and resolute as well as kindly family government. They allow their young people to cherish self-will, or to follow pleasure as if it were the business of life, and neglect to exercise due restraint over them. This was the sin of Eli (1 Samuel 3:13); and he soaped the tornado in the disgrace which was thus brought upon the priesthood, together with the destruction of his own house. There are parents, also, who in their own personal character fail to set a consistent godly example before their sons and daughters. David's great sin entailed evil upon his family like a whirlwind; some of his sons became arrows in his heart, instead of "arrows in his hand." The historian shows us the poor king reaping his dismal harvest in the pathetic scene in which he bewailed the fate of Absalom (2 Samuel 18:33),
IV. Vicious MEN. The young man who "wastes his substance with riotous living" has his career described in our text. In following the impulse of his wild hot passions he "sows the wind." The sensualist, the drunkard, the gambler,—how profitless all their sowing "to their own flesh"! And what a harvest of torment and terror and shame they are compelled to reap! It has been so even with men of the most brilliant genius, as e.g. the poets Byron and Burns. A career of sinful pleasure produces the whirlwind as its natural harvest. It undermines the foundations of morality within the soul (Hosea 4:11). The appropriate epitaph for such a life is, on the one side of the tombstone, "Vanity of vanities;" and on the other, "Vexation of spirit."
V. ALL UNBELIEVERS. For even the man of good moral character "sows the wind," if he neglects the salvation of Jesus Christ. Every one who lives without God is without hope. He who believes that the only real life is a life of sense, and who therefore shuts his eyes to the world of the unseen, shall one day be fully undeceived. Should no whirlwind arise within his conscience during the present life, he shall find himself, when he passes into eternity, at once involved in tremendous wreaths of storm. He "shall eat of the fruit of his own way," and his "destruction shall come as a whirlwind" (Proverbs 1:24-33). What a dreadful tempest is "the wrath of the Lamb" (Revelation 6:12-17). Yet the ungodly shall be exposed to all its fury. They shall "reap the whirlwind;" or, rather, the whirlwind shall reap them; they are "like the chaff which the wind driveth away" (Psalms 1:4).
LESSONS.
1. This life is the seed-time of eternity, and all are sowers.
2. The harvest depends upon the seed; hence the importance of sowing good seed.
3. To sow sin is a policy of wretched infatuation; it is like "sowing wind."
4. The harvest of sin is not only profitless, but terrific and destructive; it is "the whirlwind."
5. All men have "sown the wind," for all are sinners; but there is "a Man" who is able to shelter us from the whirlwind (Isaiah 32:2).—C.J.