Israel Punished and Restored
“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’ “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst. I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery.
Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’ Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’ She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold—which they used for Baal.
“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her naked body. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the Lord.
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor [Achor means trouble.] a door of hope. There she will respond [Or sing] as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master. [Hebrew baal]’ I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety.
I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord. “In that day I will respond,” declares the Lord—“I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth; and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ (Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah)I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’(Hebrew Lo-Ammi ); and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
God has blessed Israel abundantly, just as He has promised through Moses and other prophets. Fruit, vegetables, grain, livestock-the Israelites have it all. And God has ordained set feasts during which the Israelites are to offer the best of their produce and livestock. But something has gone terribly wrong! Despite the fact that God has delivered the Israelites from slavery and has established them in their own land, the Israelites are saving their best to offer to idols and giving God leftovers. Now God is about to withdraw His blessings.
“Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’ Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’ She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold—which they used for Baal.”
“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her naked body. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the Lord.
God knows that unless He allows the Israelites to suffer the results of their idolatry, they will never change. God is about to practice tough love with a vengeance! But there is still hope. ““Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor [Achor means trouble.] a door of hope.” “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.” God is just and cannot overlook the sins of Israel and Judah. But God is also merciful and is already planning a glorious restoration. God plans to turn trouble into hope and is already looking forward to the day when the Israelites will truly serve Him.
APPLICATION: Who among us does not need hope? Hope is what we long for and live for. Without hope, most of us would simply give up. And who among us does not sin? If we are honest, we realize that we fall far short of God’s righteousness, holiness, and purity. No matter how hard we try, we simply can’t help ourselves. But God can. The message of this chapter of Hosea is simple: God is in the restoration business big – time and we qualify. All we have to do is to confess that we are sinners in need of a Savior and God will help us. 1 John 1:8-10 tells us “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”
God chose Gomer the prostitute as a wife for His prophet Hosea to graphically demonstrate that nobody is beyond the reach of God’s forgiveness or redemption. While we might not have practiced prostitution, how many of us gossip? How many of us are tempted to “fudge” our expense accounts? How many of us tell convenient lies to avoid having to stand for the truth? God does not grade on a curve; all sins are equally wrong and evil in the sight of a Holy God. But God is in the clean up business; all we have to do is to ask.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord, we confess that we have sinned by what we have done and by what we have not done. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have deliberately violated Your Word. Lord, forgive us and clean us. Thank You for loving us so much that You sent Your Son Jesus to die for our sins. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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