The Church of Divine Guidance (CDG) Sunday morning adult bible study group is studying the book of Hosea. Israel's unfaithfulness to the Lord is depicted by Hosea in terms of a wife who has turned her back upon a faithful husband in order to follow evil lovers. These posts are my notes for each session. Please study with us. You can participate by asking your questions or making comments below. We welcome your thoughts, questions, comments, and prayers.
Introducing Hosea
Hosea and Gomer
Hosea is one of the books at the end of the Old Testament in a group called the Minor Prophets. They are not called minor because they're unimportant they are just the shortest of the books of prophecy.
Hosea's prophecies begin during the forty-one-year reign of Jeroboam II in the eighth century B.C. Jeroboam's rule, militarily successful but religiously corrupt
2 Kings 14:23-29 (HCSB) 23 In the fifteenth year of Judah’s King Amaziah son of Joash, Jeroboam son of Jehoash became king of Israel in Samaria and reigned 41 years. 24 He did what was evil in the LORD’s sight. He did not turn away from all the sins Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit. 25 He restored Israel’s border from Lebo-hamath as far as the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word the LORD, the God of Israel, had spoken through His servant, the prophet Jonah son of Amittai from Gath-hepher. 26 For the LORD saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter. There was no one to help Israel, neither bond nor free. 27 However, the LORD had not said He would blot out the name of Israel under heaven, so He delivered them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash. 28 The rest of the events of Jeroboam’s ⌊reign⌋—along with all his accomplishments, the power he had to wage war, and how he recovered for Israel Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah —are written in the Historical Record of Israel’s Kings. 29 Jeroboam rested with his fathers, the kings of Israel. His son Zechariah became king in his place.
Though Jeroboam is the only king of Israel mentioned by name in Hosea the list of the kings of Judah Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah,
Hosea 1:1 (HCSB) The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam son of Jehoash, king of Israel.
Hosea's prophetic ministry extended over a fifty-year period and may have included the fall of Israel to Assyria in 722 B.C. It was a time of prosperity, with Israel and Judah controlling the international trade route. But it was also a time of idolatry and corruption as the Israelites, seeking success and security, adopted practices of the surrounding pagan cultures.
“Prosperity had brought an unprecedented degree of cultural corruption. The much-sought-after political power had opened Israel to foreign cultural influence, including the demoralizing influence of Canaanite Baal worship with its fertility cults and orgies
Hosea 11:2 (HCSB) 2 ⌊The more⌋ they called them, ⌊the more⌋ they departed from Me. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
Israel was a mostly agrarian society with most of the population involved in farming of some kind including livestock. In agrarian society the accepted way to assure good harvests was through ritual worship of fertility gods, the Baals and Asherahs mentioned in the Old Testament. Israel saw this, liked the promised results and enthusiastically entered into the pagan worship. No doubt they saw themselves not as abandoning God, but as simply using the latest "technology" to achieve the best harvest possible.
Adultery and prostitution are the ugly pictures Hosea used to describe Israel's spiritual condition. The image of sexual immorality not only symbolized Israel's running after other gods and turning to other nations for protection, it also literally described their acts with temple prostitutes that were part of the fertility rites they had adopted.
Hosea whose name means "deliverance or "salvation" was a man of deep spiritual conviction who throughout his long ministry became progressively concerned both for the Lord’s person and testimony as well as his troubled people. Nevertheless, he remained faithful to God and his calling through it all.
Hosea prophesied during the same time as Isaiah. Isaiah, however, lived in Jerusalem and addressed his prophecies largely to the Southern Kingdom (Judah), whereas Hosea prophesied to the Northern Kingdom (Israel or Ephraim as it was sometimes called). -The Wycliffe Bible Commentary.
At God's command Hosea marries—and stays married to an immoral woman Gomer. Some translations call her a harlot, adulteress or a prostitute. Hosea has the conflict of any person with an unfaithful spouse who is still loved; it is the conflict of anyone who cares about any person that is doing things that are not good for them. It could be a child or a parent or just a good friend, but in the case of the book of Hosea it show God’s relationship with Israel who is called a harlot, and adulteress, or prostitute throughout the book. Throughout Hosea's prophecy, God condemns Israel's sin and knows Israel deserves to be written off, yet he hangs on, still hoping, unwilling to give up on them. God would eventually let Israel be defeated in the Assyrian conquest, but he did not abandon them forever.
Hosea goes back and forth between God's judgment on the nation of Israel and his mercy for them. It’s sort of like God arguing with himself about Israel—not that God has trouble deciding what to do, but he feels the pain of conflict between what he wants for Israel and what he must do because of their sin.
A Share in God's Pain - “Hosea, Go Marry a Prostitute”
Pain among people who love each other—or once loved each other—is a common human experience. It is not new. God used it in the life of the prophet Hosea to dramatically demonstrate something about God himself and his love for Israel. But first God had to have Hosea's cooperation in obeying a hard command.
1. Think of a time you were asked to do something very difficult. How did you respond, and why?
I first tried to get out of doing it by saying maybe somebody else should do it. I remember the first time I was told to lay someone off or fire them. I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to hurt them or for them. I've also been asked to take on a very difficult assignment but in those cases I was eager to take it on to see if I could accomplish it because I was asked to do it and quite frankly there was usually a reward for accomplishing it. On the other hand if I failed there could be negative results but I've always been a risk taker.
He told Hosea to marry prostitute and not only marry her but to have children by her.
The marriage to a prostitute seems contrary to God's character doesn't it?
Indeed, adultery is repeatedly condemned in the Scriptures
Leviticus 20:10 (HCSB) 10 If a man commits adultery with a married woman—if he commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24 (HCSB) 23 If there is a young woman who is a virgin engaged to a man, and ⌊another⌋ man encounters her in the city and has sex with her, 24 you must take the two of them out to the gate of that city and stone them to death—the young woman because she did not cry out in the city and the man because he has violated his neighbor’s fiancée. You must purge the evil from you.
Engagement in that culture meant marriage just not consummated sexually.
Proverbs 2:16-19 (HCSB) 16 It will rescue you from a forbidden woman, from a stranger with her flattering talk, 17 who abandons the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; 18 for her house sinks down to death and her ways to the land of the departed spirits.
19 None return who go to her; none reach the paths of life. .
The full context of the book and it's description of Israel's relationship with God requires that, it would seem best that God tells Hosea to obtain a wife who like Israel would later prove to be unfaithful (cf. Hubbard, Wood). This position preserves both the integrity of God’s character and the standards of his word while allowing Hosea’s life situation to serve as a visible spiritual lesson for the people to whom he was called to minister. If Israel was pure when God found her, as we will read later, and took her as his bride, then the marriage of Hosea to Gomer should parallel that aspect of Israel’s history and Gomer could not have been a harlot at the time of her marriage.
So promiscuity of Gomer may well have developed after her marriage to the prophet, however. In retrospect Hosea would think of this marriage as providentially ordained by God, for it provided the analogy which he used in addressing Israel. The prophet charges: the land hath committed great whoredom. As Hosea's wife had proved untrue to him, so Israel was untrue to the Lord. Spiritual adultery is a figure of speech drawn from the Canaanite fertility cult, with its ritual prostitution. - The Wycliffe Bible Commentary.
3. What mixed feelings might Hosea have had about the three children Gomer bore?
They had 3 children Jezreel (God sows’, a son ), Lo-ruhah (No Compassion or not-pitted, a daughter), Lo-ammi (not my people, a son). Might he have some doubts as to if these were really his children or if they would become like their mother?
Just as Gomer had children which may have been tainted by their mother's lifestyle the people of Israel were living in an atmosphere of spiritual infidelity.
The Lord explained that Hosea's marriage to Gomer would symbolize God's relationship with unfaithful Israel (Hosea 1:2).
The names of the children each have a special meaning. It was God who gave these names to Gomer’s children. These names will show what will happen to Judah and Israel in the future.
Hosea 1:3-5 (HCSB) 3 So he went and married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 4 Then the LORD said to him: Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I will bring the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.5 On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.
The first son born to Hosea and Gomer was "Jezreel" and the name spoke of two things. First, Jezreel means "Scattered," and Israel would soon be scattered in exile by an conquering Assyrian army. Second,Jezreel refers to the Valley of Jezreel, where Jehu - the founder of the dynasty that put Jeroboam II on the throne - massacred all the descendants of Ahab, thus establishing his throne
2 Kings 9:1-3 (HCSB)1 The prophet Elisha called one of the sons of the prophets and said, “Tuck your mantle under your belt, take this flask of oil with you, and go to Ramoth-gilead.2 When you get there, look for Jehu son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi. Go in, get him away from his colleagues, and take him to an inner room.3 Then, take the flask of oil, pour it on his head, and say, ‘This is what the LORD says: “I anoint you king over Israel.”’ Open the door and escape. Don’t wait.”
2 Kings 10:11 (HCSB)11 So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel—all his great men, close friends, and priests—leaving him no survivors.
God directed Hosea to name his son Jezreel to confirm His promise to avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel by judging the house of Jehu.
Obviously, this was not good news to Jeroboam II. It said that his dynasty, the dynasty of Jehu, was coming to an end. In fact, after the death of Jeroboam II in 752 B.C. his son Zechariah barely reigned only six months before being assassinated , and that was the end of the house of Jehu.
2 Kings 15:8-10 (HCSB)8 In the thirty-eighth year of Judah’s King Azariah, Zechariah son of Jeroboam became king over Israel in Samaria for six months.9 He did what was evil in the LORD’s sight as his fathers had done. He did not turn away from the sins Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit.10 Shallum son of Jabesh conspired against Zechariah. He truck him down publicly, killed him, and became king in his place.
And bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel: Just as the house of Jehu would fall, so would the whole kingdom of Israel. Which was defeated, destroyed, and taken captive by the mighty Assyrian Empire
2 Kings 17:20-23 (HCSB)20 So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel, afflicted them, and handed them over to plunderers until He had banished them from His presence.21 When the LORD tore Israel from the house of David, Israel made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Then Jeroboam led Israel away from following the LORD and caused them to commit great sin.22 The Israelites persisted in all the sins that Jeroboam committed and did not turn away from them.23 Finally, the LORD removed Israel from His presence just as He had declared through all His servants the prophets. So Israel has been exiled to Assyria from their homeland until today.
Break the bow of Israel: "The bow was a symbol of power in a day when it was the principal instrument of warfare. Thus a broken bow symbolized the loss of power." (Hubbard)
Hosea 1:6-7 (HCSB)6 She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and the LORD said to him: Name her No Compassion, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel. I will certainly take them away.7 But I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them by the LORD their God. I will not deliver them by bow, sword, or war, or by horses and cavalry.
The name Lo-Ruhamah means "No Mercy." Every call to this child with the unfortunate name would remind Hosea and everyone else of coming judgment and exile.
Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah: The army of Assyria that destroyed Israel also attacked Judah, but they did not conquer them. Instead, God miraculously fought on behalf of Judah against Assyria when the angel of the LORD killed 185,000 soldiers in the camp of Assyria in one night The whole story is in 2 Kings 18:13-19-37
2 Kings 19:35 (HCSB)35 That night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the ⌊next⌋ morning—there were all the dead bodies!
The fact that God had no mercy to Israel and had mercy towards Judah shows two things. First, it is true that Judah and her kings were more faithful unto the Lord during these years, as exemplified by King Hezekiah
2 Kings 18:1-8 (HCSB)1 In the third year of Israel’s King Hoshea son of Elah, Hezekiah son of Ahaz became king of Judah.2 He was 25 years old when he became king and reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi daughter of Zechariah.3 He did what was right in the LORD’s sight just as his ancestor David had done.4 He removed the high places, shattered the sacred pillars, and cut down the Asherah ⌊poles⌋. He broke into pieces the bronze snake that Moses made, for the Israelites burned incense to it up to that time. He called it Nehushtan.5 Hezekiah trusted in the LORD God of Israel; not one of the kings of Judah was like him, either before him or after him.6 He remained faithful to Yahweh and did not turn from following Him but kept the commands the LORD had commanded Moses.7 The LORD was with him, and wherever he went he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.8 He defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza and its borders, from watchtower to fortified city.
Second, it does not really matter if Judah was more worthy of mercy than Israel was, because by its very nature mercy is mercy. If one deserves leniency, then leniency is a matter of justice, not mercy. Mercy is only shown to the guilty. Therefore it is within the wise and loving heart of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy
Romans 9:15 (HCSB)15 For He tells Moses: I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
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