Hosea 4:1-14.  As I said at the beginning of Hosea, Hosea’s life has been shown to us as a sort of living parable.  God instructed him to take a wife, give her children certain names as they were born, and deal with her unfaithfulness in specific ways as a lesson for the people of Israel.  His life was “laid along side” (parable) the lifestyle of the people of the northern (and to some extent southern) kingdom (Israel and Judah).  The people God had chosen to teach the world about himself had been unfaithful.  Through the picture of Gomer and her children we have learned about God’s unhappiness with us when we stray from him and turn to other gods.  We have seen that this unfaithfulness has consequences.  But we have also seen that there is hope. God wants to fix our relationship with him.  He will pay the price to bring us back.  He loves us and will love us but we need to prove our selves.  Thankfully from the New Testament we know that we are not alone in remaining faithful, we have a helper, God’s Holy Sprit (John 14:15-17).

Starting with chapter 4 we will see more detail about God’s complaints against the Israelites.  Hebrew’s love symmetry and numbers and structure, when we write poems we like to rhyme they like to give interesting structure or form to their poetry.  In Hosea the three children set up a form that will continue through the next three chapters (and that is probably coincidence since the chapter divisions were added to most of the Bible around 1200 AD and the verse numbers were added around 1500 AD), things will often come in groups of three in chapters 4-7.  Today’s reading divides into two sections.  The first section is Hosea 4:1-3 and the second is Hosea 4:4-14.  Some scholars see a connection back with the children of Hosea.  That would make sense since the children were part of an example to teach the people of Israel (and us) what God thinks about certain things.

The first section is a complaint about the way the people of Israel were living.  We see the pattern of three when God tells the people that he sees no integrity or kindness or knowledge of Him in the land.  The first word (it may be different depending on what translation you are reading) is a Hebrew word that means faithfulness, truth, loyalty or integrity.  The idea behind the word is living out what you believe.  Another word that might describe it is “honorable”.  The second word, “kindness”, is a big word in the Old Testament, “hesed”.  Hesed is not just being kind to someone but involves a commitment, a contract or vow, like in marriage.  But then the word goes beyond the promise and does more and more and more.  In Matthew :43-45 Jesus is talking to a crowd of people (probably mostly Jewish) about a teaching in their culture, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  That saying is not a direct quote from the Old Testament but was probably a teaching by the religious leaders (priests and scribes) and may have been based on events in their history like being attacked by the Amalekites as they journeyed from Egypt to the promised land (See Exodus 1:8-16) or not being helped along their journey by the Moabites (See Deuteronomy 23:3-6).  Jesus contradicted the teaching and told them to love their enemies and pray for those who mistreated them.  Remember the Israelites were supposed to help the world see the one true God.  Loving your enemies and praying for those who treat you bad is going “above and beyond” what would normally be expected, it is “hesed”.  Finally the people had no “knowledge of God”.  They did not understand about God nor understand how to honor him with their lives.  The book of Job is about a guy who loved God a lot and got hammered for it by none other than the Devil himself. After 34 chapter of his friend trying to make sense of what had happened to him, God speaks.  God gives him no specific answer about what happened to him but rather reminds Job abut who he is (creator of the universe) and what he has done (made all that is).  In Job 42:5-6 Job responds by saying “Before I knew about you but now I really know you.”  Then Job showed great sorrow for questioning what had happened to him and changed his attitude.  If we really know God it changes our lives.

Instead of honoring God with their lives the people of Israel had filled their land with evil oaths (swearing), lying and deception, murder, stealing and adultery.  All things the 10 commandments that God gave to Moses as a summary of his rules warned against.  Notice that most of these complaints deal with how we treat other people.  They are summed up in the end of verse 2 as violence and the result is more and more bloodshed.  The idea of bloodshed ties back to Jezreel in Hosea 1:4.  In Hosea 4:3 the result of the bloodshed is that the people and the land were suffering.  Mourning is what people do when someone dies.  In this case it is the land that was mourning probably a sign that it was dead and unproductive.  The people were sowing their seeds but there was no produce.  Not only was the land unproductive but the livestock were unhealthy, something was wrong with the birds and there were no fish in the sea.  It looks like there may have been a famine.

IN the next section of today’s reading we see “my people” mentioned three times in verses 6, 8 and 12.  Remember that one of the children in Hosea’s family was named Lo-Ammi, “not my people” but in Hosea 2:23 we see that God will one day bring the people back to himself and call them “my people”.  Here in chapter 4 we see God talking about his people and in verse 4 we see they are contrasted with “your people”.  Whose people are they?  They are children of their mother.  The language is a little confusing but verse 4 tells us who they are children of, they are evidence against the priests.  The mother then in Hosea is a symbol for the religious culture or establishment of Israel.  Verse 6 tells us that the people are being destroyed because they do not know about God.  The reason is because the religious leaders have rejected the truth about God.  Verse 8 tells us that the priests take advantage of God’s people, encouraging them to disobey God. Verse 9 tells us that just as the people were going to suffer for wandering away from God so too the priests would suffer.  Verse 12 tells us that God’s people were turning to idols, false gods, for advise instead of the one true God.  The were being encourage to be spiritual “cheaters”.

Part of many false religions in ancient times was prostitution.  The temples of many ancient religions would have prostitutes who lived in them and “worshippers” would go there and be involved with the temple prostitutes, leaving an offering to the false god when they left.  Obviously those prostitutes were the daughters of someone.  Evidently this was going on in Israel and Hosea tells us that God will not punish these women because the men are just as guilty as the women are. This probably means in some extra way since the people were already suffering in general (remember the possible famine) for their sins.  In fact verse 14 specifically tells us that the people are being destroyed because they don’’t know God.

Three groups of people are in view in this section, the regular people, the women and the priests.  Although all three groups suffer the real losers in this section are the priests.  They were supposed to help the people know and remember God but instead they themselves were ignoring God and encouraging the people to follow false gods.  The priests were rejected and the “mother”, the failed religious system, would be destroyed.  In 1 Peter 2:9 Peter tells early believers in Jesus, “you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession”.  That’s us!  Or is it?  The verse goes on to say, “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light”.  The question is, “Do we do that?”  Are we like Job who knew about God?  Or we like the Job in the end where we know about God and it makes a difference in our lives?  Are we being good “priests’ for God or evil ones?  Hopefully we know god and it is making a difference in our lives and the lives of others.  The warnings are clear, disobeying and disregarding God has consequences.  Not living for God destroys people’s individual lives and the society in which they live.  Jesus taught that we need to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16) we need to help the world “taste and see that God is good” (Psalms 34:8).  We need to help the world see how God changes us into people who care even for their enemies.  Then people will turn to Yahweh, the one true God, and not to idols.

God help me be a good priest.  Help me be a light to my world.  Help me be salt too.  Bad priests bring destruction on themselves and their society.  Help my life be a blessing not a curse on all it affects.  Thank you for the privilege of being “your people” help me act like it today. 

Hosea 3:1-5.  Today’s reading completes the story and explanation of the “living parable” of Hosea’s life.  We have seen that Hosea was commanded to marry a “cheating kind” of woman.  He had at least one child with her and she had two others.  All three were named by Hosea and lived in his house but the second two may have been the children of other men.  We do know that Gomer, the wife, cheated on Hosea.  We also saw that the names of the three children were given to teach the Israelites what God thought about their unfaithfulness to him.  The fact that the people of Israel were turning to false gods, idols, meant that they had to be punished.  Although permanent banishment from God is what they (and we) deserve when we turn away from God that is not what God wants.  God wants to forgive and restore and have a relationship with us again. We see in the explanations of the children’s names that that is exactly where God is going to take the people of Israel.  We need to understand, though, that God can not just ignore sin, it must be dealt with.  The structure of Hosea so far really put an emphasis on the seriousness of sin (disobedience and rebellion to God).

While the children represent the actual people of Israel, Gomer, so far has represented the society of Israel (Israel as a group with it’s cultures and leaders).  In Hosea 3:1 God again talks to Hosea.  The first time God spoke to Hosea it was to tell him to marry Gomer.  Now God is talking again and he is telling Hosea to go love a woman who is involved with another man, an adulteress.  He is to do this as a symbol of the way God still loves Israel even though they are cheating on him.  The rasin cakes mentioned in the end of the verse are parallel to turning to other gods.  It is probably a reference to the wild parties that would take place in the temples of false gods.

In verse 2 Hosea pays a price to get Gomer back.  There is no explanation of why he must pay to get his wife back.  One possible solution is that he sent her away for cheating on him.  In that society in those days it was almost impossible for a woman to live without the support of a man, either her father or a husband.  As an outcast Gomer may have turned to prostitution or sold herself as a slave to someone.  If she had become a slave she her owner would have to be paid off for Hosea to get her back.  In Israel there were specific offerings that had to be made for sins.  Another possibility is that Hosea was making those offering s to God as a sign of his willingness to deal with her sin.  It is interesting that Hosea used both money and products to pay for Gomer, It is possible that this shows us that Hosea was using much of his wealth to get her back, it cost him a lot.

After Hosea gets Gomer back it’s not “happily ever after” though, not yet.  First there is a time of suffering, for both of them.  In the life of Hosea Gomer has to stay away from other men, but Hosea stays away from here too.  I guess if she wound up pregnant Hosea would be able to say, “Hey it wasn’t me, you must be cheating again.”  Again we have an explanation of how this applies to Israel.  The nation will have a time when they have no king or prince of any religious worship at all (The meaning of most of the things mentioned in end of verse 4.  Household idos would hav e been totally forbidden under the rules God gave to Moses.  The ephod was a coat worn by a priest when he was making offerings.  Offerings were things given to a god or God and sacred pillars or stones were monuments to honor a god or God.  Theses items could be used to honor God or dishonor him by honoring false gods.)  After many days the people of Israel would turn back to God and look for him.  They would also look for “David their king”.  The reference to “David their king” is a way of saying they would look for the promised descendant of David who was to be their king forever.  This promised one was called, messiah.  In the New Testament the word for messiah is Christ and Jesus is that promised coming king (though as we saw in Isaiah he had to be a suffering servant before he can become king.  Isaiah 53).  In the last days Israel as a nation will come back to God in fear looking for his care.

This part of Hosea is a lot like one of the parables of Jesus that we studied in Sunday Scripture Exploration (Sunday School), the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).  In that story we see the son who had abandon his father and family coming home with the idea of becoming a servant in his fathers home.  But the father has an entirely different idea and the son is received back as a son.  Of course the people of Israel in the days of Hosea didn’t have that story to look at but the message of Hosea is clear, God is good and loving and caring and wants to fix our relationship with him but he is also serious about sin and it must be dealt with properly.  As we saw in Hosea 1:7, God himself will deal with our sins.  As we learned in Isaiah 53:6, Jesus, the messiah, would pay the costly price for our sins.  Jesus is our Hosea (God saves) and the Hosea of the Israelites.  May we return to him and be faithful as we wait for that day when we enjoy a fully restored relationship with him.

Lord I have been unfaithful but you loved me so much.  As the old hymn says you sought me and bought me with your redeeming blood (or is it love?  Actually it’s both).  Thank you for seeking me.  Thank you for buying me back.  Thank you for giving me your Spirit so I can live faithfully for you.  Help me honor you with my life as I wait for your eternal kingdom.