Raisin cakes and bible surprises

Sometimes bible verses just don’t end the way you expect them to:

Hosea 3:1 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”

Cakes of raisins?! That just isn’t what I thought I was going to read next. Why cakes of raisins? And what's wrong with cakes of raisins? So, I did a bit of bible research to find out if I was missing anything significant about raisin cakes, and I discovered that they must have been quite something. See Isaiah 16:7:

Therefore let Moab wail for Moab,

let everyone wail.

Mourn, utterly stricken,

for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth.

When I was travelling around England I got a real thing for Lancashire Eccles cakes (pictured) and at the time thought they were worth a decent amount of effort to obtain. And I haven’t had one since and thinking about them right now, I really want one, but I haven’t quite been wailing and mourning for them, utterly stricken. These must have been amazing raisin cakes!

What was wrong with these raisin cakes appears to be where they came from: Kir-hareseth, a notable Moabite town (not Lancashire). It’s as though they were guilty by association. You can read about the judgment on this town, and on Moab more widely, in Jeremiah 48.

I think I’d be pushing things too far if I said any more than that the sin of the Isrealites is that they loved the gods of other lands (as stated in Hosea 3:1 above), together with the really good things of those lands, more than they loved the God of Israel, but it got me asking myself what are my raisin cakes ...