Hosea 6:1-7:16.  In yesterday’s reading we concluded the last of god’s complaints related to Israel and tying back in to example of the names of Hosea’s three children.  We also saw little glimmers of hope.  In the beginning of today’s reading we see how Israel could get to that place of hope.  In yesterday’s reading the judgment of God was compared to a lion that tears and kills (Hosea 5:14), to the darkness that comes with the new moon (Hosea 5:7) and to the wind (probably a sign of drought since wind is often associated with droughts like the “Dust Bowl” days in America’s history).

Here in the first three verses we of today’s reading we see the possibility of the reversal of these three comparisons.  The path to hope for our future and especially our future and eternity with God involves returning to God (repentance which means to turn around and go the other way, toward God).  If we return to God he will bandage us up and heal us.  He will also bring us back to life.  The two days and three days is a very obscure reference to Jesus.  In  1 Corinthians 15:4 Paul told the Corinthian believers that Jesus was raised back on the third day “according to the scriptures”.  This is the only reference in the Old Testament that comes close to that kind of prediction.  So Hosea here is talking about resurrection, restoration of life, and Paul links our resurrection to Jesus’ (1 Corinthians 15:20-21).  So in verses 1-2 we see that our hope is linked to turning back to God, living like he matters to us.

In verse 3 we see that another part of having a restored relationship with God is knowledge.  We need to understand who God is and what sorts of things make him happy.  We cannot live for God according to what we want.  In verse 3 we see the reversal of the darkness when God’s presence is like the dawn after a dark moonless night.  We also see God’s presence compared to a gentle spring rain watering the fields, the drying wind is replaced too. Knowing God and turning back to him allows his forgiveness and restores our relationship with him.  We then can have hope in the good future he has promised for his people.

Unfortunately the rest of today’s reading paints a gloomy picture of the relationship that Israel had with God.  In Hosea 6:4-6 we see God very frustrated with them.  Their love is like morning fog that disappears as the day heats up.  He has sent his prophets with very specific words of warning but they have not listened.  They have pretended to love God with their obedient sacrifices but have missed the point of those sacrifices.  The rules were supposed to remind them of their broken relationship with God, they were never going to be a way to fix the relationship.  What God wanted was their hearts first not the work of their hands.  He wanted them to honor him with all of their lives (“acknowledge Him”) and it would show most in how their treated others (“mercy”).  If you read through Isaiah with us then you might remember that God’s two big complaints with Judah at about this same time in history were that they didn’t honor Him and that they were looking out for their own interests first (pride) and treating others badly.

In Hosea 6:7-9 the pattern of three turns up again with the mention of three cities Adam, Gilead, and Shechem.  You might be thinking that Adam is a guy not a place and you are right but there was a city in ancient Israel called Adam too.  We don’t know much about the city but Hosea is probably using the word as both the city and they name of the guy here.  Adam (the man) was the first guy to break the rules.  And Adam the city may have been rule breakers too, so Hosea is making a pun here with the idea of breaking the rules as the point.

Gilead and the country near it had a lot of history in the Bible and much of it dealt with Jacob (Israel, see “What’s in a Name”).  We are told that Gilead is a city of “wicked men, stained with footprints of blood”.  The Hebrew word “footprints” comes from the same root word as the name Jacob.  Also the phrase ”doers of wickedness” uses a word we have seen earlier in Hosea “aven”.  That word was used as in the substitute name for Bethel, remember the “House of God” was a “house of destruction”.  Again there is a connection to Jacob.  Bethel was the place where Jacob had a dream-vision where God promised to give him the land.  So in a way Bethel was the beginning of Jacob’s journey with God.  Mahanaim, near Gilead, was where Jacob met his brother as he returned to the land and it is also the place where his name was changed to Israel as he received a blessing from God (see “What’s in a Name”).  So Gilead, in a way, represents a turning point in Jacob’s relationship with God.  He went from being Jacob (“supplanter”, one who makes his own way) to Israel (“God wins”).  It was the place where Israel returned to God’s place for him.  Unfortunately his descendants, the kingdom of Israel remained “aven”, wicked or destroyed.  In a play on Jacob’s name we see their feet have been stained with blood.

Shechem was the place where the divided nation all began.  Judah’s (the southern kingdom’s) first king was crowned there.  But he was so evil that the nation was split in two.  Also Shechem was famous as the place where Levi and Simeon slaughtered a whole town after the rape of their sister Dinah.  Later in Israel’s history (the whole nation) Levi’s descendants would become the priests who served in the tabernacle (a sort of portable church) and later the temple.  Here in Hosea we see Levi’s descendants being compared to Levi when Hosea calls them a murderous band in the region of Shechem.  We also see in this comparison that Hosea is again singling out the leadership in Israel.

Chapter 6 ends with another pattern of three.  In this group the northern kingdom is mentioned twice being called both Ephraim and Israel.  The evil of the northern kingdom is pointed out as sort of a summary of the previous complaint and then Judah is also warned that judgment is coming for her too.  The last part of verse 11 should actually be part of the first verse of chapter 7.

Chapter 7 starts out with another in the pattern of three.  This time the northern kingdom is called by three names; Israel, Ephraim, and Samaria.  The chapter starts out with God talking about when he is going to fix Israel.  He tells us that when he fixes Israel it will involve dealing with their sins (disobedient actions here called iniquities and evil deeds).  Remember in Hosea 6:1 that Hosea encourage the people to return to God and in verse 3 he told us that we need to know God.  The things we have done wrong need to be dealt with they cannot just be hidden or ignored.  To turn back to God means that we must be honest about our rebellion and failure.  Hosea 7:1 gets more detailed when three crimes are mentioned lying, breaking and entering and muggings.  But the real problem is found in verse 2, the people do not really think about the fact that God is watching them.  In our system of justice here in the United States we are supposed to give people the “benefit of the doubt”, they are innocent until proven guilty.  That sort of system will only catch most of the guilty people some will get away.  But that was OK with our founding fathers because they were strongly influenced by the Bible and they knew that God will eventually judge evil.  They wanted to make sure that no innocent” people were ever punished.  IN Israel the people had forgotten that God was watching and evil started to get out of hand, it seems like the same thing is going on in the United States today.

Most of the rest of chapter 7 uses two examples to describe the leaders in Israel.  One example is of a baker who is lazy about his work and the other is about a dove or homing pigeon who cannot find her way home.  The king, the princes and the people around them are scolded for not doing their duty.  They were supposed to lead the people in trusting and honoring God instead they plotted evil (v. 6), followed the examples of the surrounding nations (v. 8 instead of being an example to them), made treaties with foreign nations (v. 11) (leading the people in trusting God) and they did not turn ot God (v. 10).  IN v. 13 they are told to, “Look out!” (woe) and warned that destruction is coming their way.  IN spite of all the warnings they continue to serve the false gods (the crying on their beds was probably part of a false religious practice as were the assembling for the wine and grain).  Verse 16 is very plain that they are looking for God in all the wrong places.  Today’s reading ends with the northern kingdom (and Judah was not far behind) being a total failure in God’s plan for them.  They were to be a place that the world could look and get the right idea about the true God, Yahweh.  Instead even the nation of Egypt, who’s army was destroyed in the Red Sea when God did a major miracle to save the Israelites, will make fun Israel.

We need to be careful that we turn to God and honor him in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).  If we do not we will be like the people and leaders of Israel.  Paul told the believers in Corinth that they were to be God’s ambassadors to a lost and dying world (2 Corinthians 5:20).  We need to remember that God is watching and honor him with our actions.  If we do not we run the risk of personal destruction and also will be bringing those around us down too.  The question is will the world see Jesus and God when they look at me or will they mock and make fun of him?

God help my life be a good witness to the world around me.  Let there be good changes in me from who I was before you took control of my life.  Let the world see those good changes.  Thank you for saving me, help me live like a grateful member of your forever family.

Hosea 4:15-5:15.  In yesterday’s reading we saw God start to get more specific about the problems he had with Israel.  We also saw that the description of Israel’s sin (disobedience and disrespect for God) related back to the example of Hosea’s three children.  In yesterday’s reading we saw God’s complaint tie back to Jezreel and Lo-Ammi.  In today’s reading some scholars see a connection to Lo-Ruhamah, “Not Loved or cared for”.

In Hosea 4:15 Hosea extends the warning of the disaster that is coming to Judah.  Remember that Hosea was mainly bringing God’s message to the northern kingdom, Israel, but he also give this warning to the southern kingdom, Judah.  The second part of verse 15 is a loose quote of Amos 5:5.  Amos was a southerner, He lived in the territory of Judah, but he went north to Bethel, the then capital of Israel (the northern kingdom) to bring God’s message to them.  He lived at the same time as Hosea and preached a few years before him.  Amos 5:5 is part of a sad song or poem about the destruction that was coming in the history of Israel.  Amos mentions three cities.  Bethel and Gilgal were both in the territory held by the northern kingdom but were close to Judah.  Both had been important cities in the history of the unified nation.  When the nation split into two kingdoms Bethel became an alternative center for worship of Yahweh (God).  Unfortunately this alternate worship was not approved of by God and Bethel became a center of idol worship.  In today’s reading you will notice that Hosea mentions Beth-Aven rather that Bethel.  He is playing with the quote from Amos.  At the end of Amos 5:5 Amos says, “Bethel will come to trouble”.  The word “trouble” in that verse is “aven”.  The Hebrew word “Bethel” means “house of God” (Beth=house and El=God).  So Hosea is using the ideas from Amos and sort of renaming the city.  Because of Israel’s unfaithfulness it is no longer the “house of God” it is a “house of trouble”.  From the mention in both Hosea and Amos it appears that Gilgal also had become a center of false worship too.  The third city mentioned in Amos 5:5 is Beersheba.  The name means “well of the oath”.  Beersheba was in the south of Judah’s territory.  It is clear that Hosea wanted his message to remain similar to Amos’ (maybe he wanted to keep the pattern of three going) so he makes a play on the meaning of the name of Beersheba by warning the people of Judah not to make an oath using the name of God.  The problem was not making a promise and asking God to be a sort of witness, the problem was that the people were not really taking God seriously.  They were treating him like a lucky charm or rabbit’s foot or a genie in a bottle.  So Hosea was warning the people of Judah not to follow the ways of the people of Israel.  In John 4 Jesus was talking to a Samaritan woman (remember that Samaritans were the descendants of the people from the northern kingdom who married foreigners brought in by the Assyrian king who’s conquest of the land was coming very soon in Hosea’s lifetime 722 BC).  When asked about the proper way to honor God with her life, in Jerusalem or at another northern shrine near Sychar on Mount Gerizim (See John 4:20), Jesus told here that neither place was the right place.  The right way to honor God, he told her, was from her spirit and based on the truth of who God is and what he has done.  In the days of Hosea the people of the Northern kingdom were not honoring God according to the truth and Hosea was warning the people of Judah not to Go the same way.

In verses 16-19 Hosea is telling us that Israel is pretty far gone spiritually.  Ephraim was one of the main tribe in the northern kingdom and Hosea is using them here to mean the whole northern kingdom.  In Hosea 5:1 we see Hosea scolding the priests and the royal family.  In verse 4 Hosea tells us that the deeds of Israel or Ephraim will not allow them to return to God.  We need to remember that Hosea is talking more about the “religion” or “religious and political system” of the kingdom rather than the individual people.

Unfortunately it looks like Judah will not be following the advise of Hosea because in Hosea 5:5 we see Hosea predicting that Judah will be suffering judgment too.  Verses 4 and 6 both contain the idea of living for God according to his rules.  In verse 4 Hosea tells us that Israel and Ephraim do not know God and in verse 6 we see the people bringing offerings (the flocks and herds are probably referring to animals being brought to be sacrificed to God) that will not be accepted.  It reminds me of Isaiah 1:11-15 and also the words of Jesus to the woman at the well in John 4:21-24.  It is interesting in those verses in John that we see the people of Judah (who had knowledge of God) and the people of Samaria (the Northern Kingdom) both having their way of honoring God rejected.  As I said above God wants us to honor him from our heart (“in spirit”) and according to who he is and what he wants (in truth).  We also see in the verses in Isaiah that God rejects the very offerings that he commanded because they were not being offered honestly.  In Isaiah 1:13 God says he cannot stand the hypocrisy of their religious festivals when their lives are filled with “iniquity”.  That word is the same word “trouble” or “aven” in Hosea 4:15.  You might think of their actions as ones that disturbed or troubled God.

Our reading continues with more of the same ideas of how Israel and Judah have turned away from truly following God.  In Hosea 4:16, Hosea asks the question, “Can God now take they out to pasture?”  The picture is one of a shepherd caring for his flock.  We see in Hosea 5:6 that God has walked away from them.  This ties in with the name of Lo-Ruhamah, they are no longer under God’s protection and care.  Then things get worse.  In Hosea 5:10 we see God will deal with the situation.  The language here is very similar to language in Isaiah 8 which talks about an invasion by the Assyrian army.  We know from Isaiah that God used the Assyrian’s to deal with the disobedience and disrespect the people of Israel and Judah were showing to God.  Hosea 5:11 also gives us this perspective.  God is not just being mean he is dealing with disobedient people.  The picture gets even more ugly as God compares himself to a bug and to decay in a persons flesh.  Most translations call the bug a moth but it can also mean maggot (fly larva).  Since it is parallel to rotting flesh in verse 11 it probably means maggot.  Unfortunately when Israel (Ephraim) and Judah see their kingdoms being destroyed they do not turn back to God but they turned to foreign nations.  Verse 13 tells us that these foreign powers cannot help them.  Verses 14 tells us why.  Because God is behind the trouble they are in.  God has ripped their society to shreds like a lion on the hunt.

It is interesting that right in the middle of all this judgment we see some hope.  First of all in Hosea 5:8 we see three cities and there is a warning being give in all three.  The horn was often used to call people to worship and could also be used to call people to battle.  The trumpet also was used to call people to battle and an alarm was used for the same purpose.  All three cities were in the territory of Benjamin on of the northern tribes.  Notice the warning, “Look behind you Benjamin!”   Another possible point of hope is the reference to the maggots.  Most of us think of maggots as being disgusting little worms that eat rotten meat (and they are) but recently doctors have discovered in very severe cases of gangrene (a very serious usually deadly rotting of a persons flesh, like in verse 12) that they can use maggots to help a person survive.  They put maggots into the wound and seal it up.  The maggots then eat the decaying flesh and sometimes the person can survive.  So we may have a very slight picture here of healing mixed with the judgment.  Certainly the actions of God as a lion in verses 14-15 should give hope because after the lion kills he leaves.  Why does God destroy and then leave?  He tells us he is waiting until “they admit their disobedience and turn back to me.”  Notice that earlier Hosea uses terms like Israel and Ephraim and Judah and also that he uses singular pronouns with those terms.  Now Hosea changes and uses a plural pronoun “they”.  What we see here is the destruction of the old religious and political system of Israel and Judah but hope for the people who had been trapped and misled by it.  We saw the same sort of message in Isaiah judgment and punishment but also hope.  Remember that Hosea is giving these messages before the events happen.  Before the invasion by the Assyrians.  God does not just slam us out of the blue.  He warns and warns and warns.  As we saw in Isaiah he even provides the way out, Jesus and the way to live honestly with him, the Holy Spirit.  He is waiting for us to admit our guilt and to look for his face (a very personal way of describing God).  In the mean time he allows trouble and even brings it into our lives in hope that it will turn us toward him.

God thank you for loving me.  Thank you for wanting to care for me.  In reality Lo-Ruhamah was loved.  Help us all see our need.  Help us all look for an new and good relationship with you.  Thank you for Jesus and for the Holy Spirit.  Be my shepherd today.