OT512
LESSON 18 OF 24
Old Testament Theology 2
Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.
Professor of Old Testament and
Semitic Languages at Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School in
Deerfield, Illinois

The 8th Century Prophets:
Hosea and the Faithfulness of God
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Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.:
Notes:
Okay now we turn to the book of Hosea. In terms of canonical arrangement, this is the first book in the twelve Minor Prophets, and it’s the longest of
them. Perhaps that’s why it’s put first. The book of Jonah we talked about earlier
is really about God’s compassion, and the book of Amos is about God’s justice and
the concern that the Northern Kingdom would repent and become just. And then
Hosea is about God’s struggle with Israel’s infidelity. They have a lack of fidelity but
He remains faithful. That’s the main message. God is a faithful God. That’s one of
the main points of this book in spite of the lack of faithfulness of northern Israel.
Now He is going to remain faithful, but He’s not going to remain faithful
at the expense of His own character in terms of His demand that they repent from
their wickedness from their sin. So He is concerned about them turning back to
Him truly and to living properly, but He’s remaining faithful in spite of the fact that
they simply don’t do that. And He’s even going to go to the extreme of bringing
them back to Him when they’ve rebelled against Him in very perverse sorts of ways.
So we have in this book two major themes that are running through it. We
have the judgment of God. There is a God who is going to judge—He brings punishment, chastisement on His people—but also the love of God. He punishes because
He loves. He chastises, He disciplines because He loves. He wants them to come
back to Him and He’s not going to let them go astray.
The book of Hosea has striking patterns in it, or images. The first one, of
course, is in chapter 1 with the marriage to Gomer but you have the contrast between judgment, in that section, and then you get the Lord still loves. The Lord still
pursues even this faithless Israel.
Now, for example, in Hosea 1:2, “When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children
of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” Of course,
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The 8th Century Prophets:
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harlotry is a key term in this book, religious harlotry, a lack of commitment to the
Lord, going after other gods. Verses 3-5:
So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the
bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house
of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of
Jezreel.”
So the reason he’s having Hosea marry this harlot (and we’ll talk about what that
actually means later), the reason He’s having them do this is specifically so He can
illustrate the lack of faithfulness of Israel and the need for them to be chastised.
So you have this judgment section where He says, “You know,” for example, “you have been called My people.” Not “You’re not called My people.”
However, He turns that around again, so in 2:1, “Say to your brothers, ‘My people,’ and to your sister, ‘You have compassion.’” So He reverses that in saying
that He’s just not going to give up on this harlotress nation in spite of her determination to be perverse and to go after other lovers as it’s put.
We have extreme contrast in this book between the Lord’s judgment
and the Lord’s love—the concern to focus on the need that the Lord has to really show His love in the midst of even difficult situations. That’s who the Lord
is. He, by nature, loves. And in doing that He doesn’t give up on the fact that
there must be repentance in those who stand against Him in order for that
love to be felt in their experience.
Amos emphasizes the social oppression of the Northern Kingdom.
Hosea emphasizes the spiritual or religious perversion, the harlotry and the
opposite of that—the Lord’s faithfulness in spite of the infidelity of the nation. So the basic picture that we get in Hosea 3 where he brings back this
harlotress wife is one of the main points of the book. If they simply turned,
come back to Him, He will take them back. In fact, He will buy them back out of
whatever situation they’re in. He goes to such extremes. It actually is a picture
of the extreme to which the Lord has gone in sending His Son to die on our
behalf to purchase us, to redeem us out of our sinful life and out of the ramifications, the judgment that comes with that. So it’s a good example in the Old
Testament of the extremity to which the Lord will go in His faithfulness.
Now in terms of the name, Hosea means “salvation.” It comes from the Hebrew word yasha which mean to save or deliver, and the book dates again early back
to the time of Uzziah. We’ve talked about him previously in Jotham. And then we
come down to Ahaz and Hezekiah and that’s in Judah. In the Northern Kingdom in
Israel, Jeroboam II again is referred to in Hosea 1. So he’s “during the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah—kings of Judah—and during the days of Jeroboam II
the son of Joash, king of Israel.”
Now we don’t really know how long his ministry actually lasted over that
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period of time. There are a lot of years there, and it’s also interesting that you don’t
get the mention of the later kings of the Northern Kingdom. Now there may be a
particular reason for that. It looks like his ministry began probably late in the times
of Jeroboam and extended perhaps to the early years of Hezekiah in the south after
the Northern Kingdom had been taken into captivity. Most of the preaching reflects the time before the captivity of the Northern Kingdom.
Now perhaps we don’t get the later kings mentioned because there’s
such a rapid succession—the later kings of the Northern Kingdom right after
the time of Jeroboam. In II Kings 14 we have the beginning of this and it goes
on, but the point of reading this and taking a look at this is to see the rapid
succession. In II Kings 14:28-29 we read this:
Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam and all that he did and his might,
how he fought and how he recovered for Israel, Damascus, and Hamath, which had
belonged to Judah, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings
of Israel? And Jeroboam slept with his fathers, even with the kings of Israel, and
Zechariah his son became king in his place.
Now if you go down to 15:8, “In the thirty-eighth year of Azariah king
of Judah, Zechariah,” the same Zechariah I just referred to “the son of Jeroboam
became king over Israel in Samaria for 6 months.” He really only lasted 6 months.
He did evil in the sight of the Lord, as his fathers had done; he
did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which
he made Israel sin. Then Shallum the son of Jabesh conspired
against him and struck him before the people and killed him,
and reigned in his place. Now the rest of the acts of Zechariah, behold they are written in the book of the Chronicles of the
Kings of Israel. This is the word of the Lord which He spoke to
Jehu, saying, “Your sons to the fourth generation shall sit on the
throne of Israel.” And so it was.
This is the fourth son from Jehu, and so now his death is just to the fourth
generation and that’s all that Jehu had been promised. So they come to the
end of that period of time of the Jehu dynasty.
Then in verse 23 of the same chapter, “In the fiftieth year of Azariah king
of Judah, Pekahiah son of Menahem became king over Israel in Samaria, he reigned
for two years.” So you get a short 2-year reign. Now it gets longer. Verse 27, “In the
fifty-second year of Azariah king of Judah, Pekah son of Remaliah became king over
Israel in Samaria, and reigned 20 years.” And that is an important reign, because it
comes up then in 16:5, “Then Rezin king of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah, king
of Israel, came up to Jerusalem to wage war; and they besieged Ahaz.” These are the
ones that attacked Ahaz, and we talked about that earlier.
And finally then we come to the last king. Second Kings 17:1-3:
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah
became king over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned 9 years. He
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Hosea and the Faithfulness of God
Notes:
did evil in the sight of the Lord, only not as the king of Israel who
were before him. Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against
him [and so on].
Verses 5-6:
Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the
king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried away Israel into exile
to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, in the cities of the Medes.
Far up in the far north along way from the region of Samaria.
Now this then is the last king, and that is the captivity of the Northern
Kingdom in 722–721 BC. That’s the historical background, and you notice the rapid
succession right after Jeroboam, so it seems likely that the rule of Jeroboam followed by those things is what’s reflected in the fact that Hosea does not pick up on
the later kings after Jeroboam II. So maybe his oracles came in the earlier part of
that time before the captivity not long after Jeroboam.
Then the religious and cultural background is important. We’ve talked already about the use of the word “harlot.” It occurs several times right in that first
verse where we read, “Go, take for yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of
harlotry, who commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). This is the
nature of this land, so it gets transferred right away from the harlot, Gomer, to the
harlotry of the land of the kingdom of Israel. Fertility cult is also important. We’ll
say more about that later and that may relate to this concept of harlotry.
Second Kings 17 then describes the rebellion of the Northern Kingdom
and what this harlotry is really all about. This gets reflected, of course, in the book
of Hosea. Well we get it stated in II Kings 17 starting in verse 7, “Now this came
about because” this is the captivity of the Northern Kingdom, “came about because
the sons of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up
from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they had
feared other gods.” That’s the first thing “and walked in the customs of the nations
whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel” (verse 8), in other words,
the Canaanites previously. They picked up on all the Canaanite cult things and so
on which is the very reason the Lord had brought the severe judgment on the land
of Canaan and the people of Canaan back in the days of Joshua. They had high
places, sacred pillars, all sorts of things.
Verse 13:
Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep
My commandments, My statutes according to all the which the
law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you
through My servants the prophets.”
So we’ve heard this also back in Amos and in other places about the imTranscript - OT512 Old Testament Theology 2 Latter Prophets and Writings
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The 8th Century Prophets:
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portance of the prophets for what the Lord is doing. He speaks through the
prophets exactly what He’s going to do.
Verse 14, “However, they did not listen,” they didn’t listen to the prophets
“but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their
God.” Down in verse 19, “Also Judah,” now we see this in the prophets but we also
see in the Historical Books that we have the Northern Kingdom of Israel goes astray
into apostasy serving Baal, but Judah is also influenced by this and we see this in
these Northern Kingdom prophets that we’ve already been studying.
“Also Judah” verse [19] “did not keep the commandments of the Lord their
God, but walked in the customs which Israel had introduced.” So they got affected
by all that. “The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and
gave them into the hand of plunderers, until He had cast them out of His sight”
(verse 20).
Verses 21-23, “When He had torn Israel from the house of David, they
made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king.” So now it’s referring back to I Kings 12
when Jeroboam set up these calves.
Jeroboam drove Israel away from following the Lord and made
them commit a great sin. The sons of Israel walked in all the sins
of Jeroboam . . . until the Lord removed Israel from His sight, as
He spoke through all His servants the prophets [again]. So Israel
was carried away into exile from their own land to Assyria until
this day.
Whatever the day of the writing of this is. So we have these descriptions then of the
kind of thing that Hosea talks about as harlotry in Israel. Going after other gods like
a woman who’s a harlot would go after various men.
Second Kings 17:24-41 describes the aftermath of the exile of the
Northern Kingdom. This is really the early development of the Samaritans.
You may recall this reflected in John 4, for example, in the New Testament,
when Jesus [is] with the woman at the well who’s a Samaritan woman and the
expressions there about that Jews don’t normally talk to the Samaritans and
the surprise she has that Jesus, as a Jewish man, would speak to her. These are
kind of the origins of that in 17:24 and following.
Now the structure and content of the book. The book falls into two major
sections. We have this poetic narrative that we’ve introduced just a bit, and we’ll
talk more about that in Hosea 1–3 with some it’s really functioning as a prologue
to the book setting up the second section, which is the oracles that come out of this
situation with the Northern Kingdom being so harlotress—away from the Lord going after other gods. Now we’re going to treat the second section as a set of oracles
that has units to it, but sometimes it’s difficult to know where to break one off from
the other in terms of the units of the material.
We mentioned this earlier that the Prophetic Books are collections
of prophetic oracles that were delivered at different times. And sometimes
it’s hard to tell whether a particular section of the oracles is part of the same
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oracle or whether it’s another oracle starting over or just a section between.
So it’s difficult to determine sometimes where to break off particular units in
this material, but we’ll do it in a certain way.
Notice that we have in Hosea 1:1, “The word of the Lord.” And then you
get a restart in chapter 4 where it says at the beginning, “Hear the word of the
Lord.” So we have two introductory statements there. One introducing the prologue and the other introducing the sections of the oracles that follow.
Now there’s a lot of discussion about Hosea’s marriage in chapter 1. Who
is this Gomer? What is her status? And this is one of those examples that we can
find in Scripture about how much the life of a prophet was so deeply affected by the
fact that he or she was a prophet. He lives it out and that’s really what’s important
about this. He shows in his own life the message that he is preaching because the
Lord has given him these oracles.
Now it’s a complicated situation here. Many are concerned about the morality of Hosea marrying a harlot. Would that be a legitimate thing to do? Well we
do have examples in Scripture. For example in Leviticus 21:7 it said that a priest
cannot marry a harlot, which assumes that that would not be necessarily something someone else in Israel could not do. It’s just that the priest was not supposed
to do that. A person, a woman who was in that situation, could get married. The
issue really in Ancient Israel was more on the level of: if a woman was married
to a man, then she actually belongs to him and the man belongs to her, this sort
of thing. And so breaking that is violation of a commitment and then we get into
the issues of execution for adultery and things like that. Harlotry is really a bit of a
different matter in some ways. We’re not going to go into all of that right now, but
this woman is a woman he’s supposed to marry—a wife of harlotry, and that’s an
extreme statement. It’s actually the plural form. It’s a wife of harlotries multiplied
is the idea here. So she commits harlotry constantly really is the idea.
Now the question is, is this a symbolic description or is this a prolific description or is this a realistic description of this woman, the quality of
woman that this is. Some have taken it to be symbolic which means that it’s
an unreal allegorical sort of thing like a parable. The whole thing is unreal. In
Ezekiel 23:1-5 we read this:
The word of the Lord came to me again, saying, “Son of man, there
were two women, the daughters of one mother; and they played the
harlot in Egypt. They played the harlot in their youth; there their
breasts were pressed and there their virgin bosom was handled.
Their names were Oholah the elder and Oholibah her sister. And
they became Mine, and they bore sons and daughters. And as for
their names, Samaria is Oholah and Jerusalem is Oholibah. Oholah
played the harlot while she was Mine.”
So you have a parable of really a similar sort. The whole chapter’s really about this
in Ezekiel 23, so you can use this kind of an idea where this harlotress woman type
of an idea is used and the Lord, of course, is the husband who is being cheated on.
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Hosea and the Faithfulness of God
So it’s possible to think sometimes of this image as being a parable, which it is
clearly in the form of the genre in Ezekiel 23. The question is whether or not that’s
the case in Hosea 1. If it is, then it’s just for the purpose of allegorical usefulness [of]
Israel in relationship to Yahweh being described in that way. We’ll come back and
talk about the conclusions here after we go through the next ones.
Prolific description—this means that it’s looking forward. It anticipates
what she, Gomer, would become. In other words, she would become a harlot. She
was not a harlot when they got married but she is a woman who would become a
harlot. There are some problems with this view. It seems that Hosea is supposed to
go and do this specifically because it’s a picture of harlotry, and even in the Ezekiel
23 passage it’s clear that they were a harlot even before He brought them out of
Egypt. Things like this, so it’s this kind of question that we have about that description. But some people take it as being anticipating that she would become a harlot
not that she was actually a harlot when he married her.
Then the view that I prefer is the realistic description, and there are
some variations on this. In other words, this really was a harlotress woman
right from the start, but what does that mean? Some would say that she was
a common prostitute or adulteress and this symbolizes such in Israel with
regard to her relationship to God. This is also how he knows who to take as a
wife. It’s a well-known prostitute would be the idea. So she would be known
and people right away, when the marriage takes place, would know exactly
what the prophetic picture is in between Israel and the Lord.
Then others would say that she was a temple prostitute. We have a
special word for this qedeshah that occurs in certain places. Hosea 4:14 reads
this way, “I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot or your
brides when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go apart with harlots and offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes.” Now we get harlots in parallel with temple prostitutes “so the people without understanding are ruined.”
Now this is something that was forbidden in Israel to have temple prostitutes.
Deuteronomy 23 actually refers to this. Deuteronomy 23 starting with verse 17,
“None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, nor shall any of the
sons of Israel be a cult prostitute.” So there could be male and female devotees
in the temple. “You shall not bring the hire of a harlot or the wages of a dog into
the house of the Lord your God for any votive offering, for both of these are an
abomination to the Lord your God.” There was a tendency in the Ancient Near
East to have in worship context sometimes a kind of fertility cult in which the
person who was in the temple was to be sexually used so that you could symbolically, with kind of sympathetic magic, encourage fertility, and that would
mean calling down rain upon the crops and all the various things that would
come with fertility.
Now that brings us to the third possibility in that she was an initiate in a
Canaanite fertility cult. Not really a temple prostitute but the idea here would be
that all the virgins of Israel would give themselves to Baal in return for the promise
of fertility. They would be initiated into the Canaanite fertility cult through sexualTranscript - OT512 Old Testament Theology 2 Latter Prophets and Writings
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The 8th Century Prophets:
Hosea and the Faithfulness of God
ity and that some would even argue that, for example, in Hosea 2:2 we have visual
symbols of this harlotry. Verse 2, “Contend with your mother, contend for she is
not my wife, and I am not her husband; and let her put away her harlotry from
her face and her adultery from between her breasts.” The idea there would be that
these would be particular kinds of images or jewelry that would be associated with
fertility cult practice. So in that case, if that’s the view, then Hosea would have been
called to married one of these initiates in the fertility cult and she would basically
be a marriageable woman. And that’s part of the problem with the view. It seems
that if she’s just an initiate, she would be not that unusual in terms of ancient Israelite women. She would fit in but this is to stand out as a particularly forceful
illustration of the harlotry of Israel. So that does not seem likely to be the case.
Also the symbolic view does not seem to work because the very nature of
the picture is that this is something he does in order to make clear what the image
is that the Lord is using. It’s not just a symbolic kind of representation. Not only
that but Hosea, we know, is a real prophet and Gomer would be the real wife of
this prophet. We don’t have a symbolic kind of parabolic context here like we do
in Ezekiel 23. It looks like he was told simply to go marry a harlot in order to show
how extremely bad it was what the Northern Kingdom was doing. That looks to me
to be the most likely understanding of what’s happening here.
Now turning to the actual marriage then that takes place and the
children of the marriage. This is the point of the oracle many times is specifically the name of the child. For example, in [Hosea 1] verses 3-4, “So he went
and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a
son. And the Lord said to him, ‘Name him Jezreel.’” Okay now Jezreel means
“El [God] has scattered.” That’s the basic idea behind it. “And I will punish the
house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, I will put an end to the kingdom of
the house of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of
Jezreel” (verses 4-5). So they’re going to be scattered. That’s the idea.
Now this use of naming in prophetic oracles is found elsewhere in the
Bible, for example, in Isaiah 7:3 we have Shear-Jashub, and in verse 14 we have Immanuel—God with us—and in chapter 8:3 of Isaiah Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. That
has to do with the quick as the booty; speedy as the prey. It’s a destruction kind of
a name that’s being used. The point is that this is a common thing where you have
children’s names being used to carry a message in the context. Sometimes these
names, of course, would not be too flattering for the child themselves.
The next one is in verse 6 of Hosea 1, “Then she conceived again and
gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, ‘Name her Lo-Ruhamah,’”
which means “not pitied.” “For I will no longer have compassion on the house
of Israel, that I would ever forgive them. But I will have compassion on the
house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver
them by the bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen.” The compassion of the
Lord for the Southern Kingdom as opposed to the Northern Kingdom—it’s
gotten so bad that they are going to receive the brunt of His judgment because of their lack of willingness to turn back.
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The 8th Century Prophets:
Hosea and the Faithfulness of God
The second son then is in verses 8-9. “When she had weaned LoRuhamah, she conceived and gave birth to another son. And the Lord said,
‘Name him Lo-Ammi,’” which is “not My people,” “for you are not My people
and I am not your God.” Now this is actually the reversal of the covenant formulary that we have beginning, for example, back in Exodus 3:14 where we
read this, “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say
to the sons of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” “I am” is connected with this
whole idea: “I am your God and you are My people.”
Then if we go to [Exodus] 6:7, “Then I will take you for My people,
and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who
brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” So “My people”
and that’s the opposite of Lo-Ammi, not My people. Ammi is the word “My
people,” and so they’re not going to be His people and He’s not going to be
their God is the basic idea which is reversing the covenant formulary for the
Northern Kingdom and that’s the message. This relationship is broken.
Now the future promise, though, comes back around to the same concepts,
and we get a reaffirmation of the Lord’s commitment nevertheless to stay faithful
to His people. Now there’s a mix here of staying faithful to His people and actually
judging them too. The Northern Kingdom does go into captivity permanently, but
God continues to work with Judah.
[Hosea 1] verse 10, “Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the
sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and in the place where it
is said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ it will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of
the living God.’” So now we have the use of the same kinds of expressions; the fact
that the Lord is going to stick with them. That’s the point of Hosea, the faithfulness.
Verse 11, “And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, and they will appoint for themselves one leader, and they will
go up from the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.” So Jezreel, in this
case, is a place, [it] is turned around and be a place of somebody else is scattered. These people come together now and they have one leader. This looks
forward to reestablishment of Davidic focus in Israel.
Chapter 2:1, “Say to your brothers, ‘Ammi,’ and to your sister, ‘Ruhamah.’”
So now we’ve removed the Hebrew Lo-Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah has become just Ruhamah and Ammi now. The Lo means “not” in Hebrew, so the negative is removed.
So in this case they are going to be, as the Lord says, “My people” and the ones who
have compassion or are pitied by the Lord. That’s important to see that there’s a
determination of the Lord to turn this thing back around. And chapters 2–3 really
develop that more fully out of the background of chapter 1 and into chapter 2:1.
First, in 2:2-13 we hear about the contention that there is. There’s going to
be a contenting like a courtroom situation. Chapter 2:2: “Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife.” Now “contend with your mother” means the
children are to contend, these children that have been named. “For she is not my
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wife, and I am not her husband; and let her put away her harlotry from her face and
her adultery from between her breasts.” So there’s been a really, what you might
say, divorce situation taking place here. And he is telling the children to contend
with their mother, to cause her to come back to her husband. So contend with her.
Help her to get rid of her harlotries, and if she doesn’t then verse 3, “I will strip her
naked and expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a
wilderness, make her like desert land and slay her with thirst.” Now you can see the
mixture here of: he’s talking about a woman and her children, but he’s also talking
specifically about the land of Israel. And how he’s going to strip her naked means
that he’s going to bring her into the wilderness. She’s going to be dry and thirsty,
exposed. This is the nature of the contention that we have here. It’s a plaintiff being
the children and a defendant being the mother.
Now the results are going to be one way or the other. Either she’s going to
straighten out or he is going to take her and make her into a wilderness—someone
who’s stripped naked. Chapter 2:5, “For their mother has played the harlot; she
who conceived them has acted shamefully for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’”
So she’s going to go after these lovers referring again to the Baals of the land—the
various gods—but maybe also there are relationships with other nations where
they would go after relationships with other nations rather than depend upon the
Lord.
In verses 6-7, “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.” In other
words, he’s doing everything he can. He’s going to put a hedge around her so
that she can’t even get to where she’s wanting to go. “She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find
them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better
for me then than now!’” So if he can keep her away from the others, she may
decide to come back to him. And that’s what the Lord is doing with Israel;
driving them into despair so that they might come back to Him.
Verses 8-13, “For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain,
the new wine and oil.” She had misunderstood. She had taken Baal to be the god
who shows fertility and provides that for Israel when, really, the only one who really brought them fertility in the first place was the Lord Himself. And this gets
back to the covenant blessings and cursings in Deuteronomy 28 that we talked
about earlier.
[Hosea 2] verse 10, “And then I will uncover her lewdness in the sight
of her lovers, and no one will rescue her out of My hand.” In other words, He’s
going to embarrass her and try to drive her—this meaning Israel again—back
to Himself. In fact, there’s going to be more to it than that. There’s going to
be this restoration starting in verse 14. “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her.” It’s like He’s wanting
to entice or just to seduce her back to Himself, to draw her back.
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Verses 16-17, “‘It will come about in that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘that you
will call Me Ishi and will no longer call Me Baali.’” Now these are two words, both Ish
can mean “man or husband” and Baal can mean “Lord or husband,” but of course,
Baal is becoming a bad word in the context of Israel’s harlotries and so no longer is
the Lord going to be called even as her husband, her Baali, my Lord, my husband.
It’s going to be called Ishi—getting away from even pronouncing the term Baal.
Verse 18, “In that day I will also make a covenant for them with the
beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the creeping things of the ground
and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and the war from the land, and I will
make them lie down in safety.” He’s making a covenant. Here we have marriage as a covenant commitment—kind of like in Malachi 2:14—and betroth is
even used in verse 19. “I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you
to Me in righteousness and in justice.” This betrothal would require, for example, a bride price where the Lord is going to buy her back out of this thing
and that’s going to show up again in chapter 3 of Hosea.
[Hosea 2] verse 20, “And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you
will know the Lord.” And again probably because “know” can be used to refer to
knowing someone physically in marriage, this might be another play on words.
They’re going to know the Lord in a very real sense as their Lord and not just be
ignorant of His ways but know Him personally, know Him truly.
Chapter 2:22-23, “And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine
and to the oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. I will sow her for Myself in the land.
I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, and I will say
to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they will say, ‘You are
my God!’” Now we’re coming back then. It’s kind of a clue from the end of chapter 1
and beginning of chapter 2. Chapter 2:1, “Say to your brothers, ‘Ammi,’ and to your
sisters, ‘Ruhamah,’” My people, so we’re coming back to the point which is that God
is going to maintain Israel as His people in spite of all their harlotries. That’s the
point then of the pulling back of the harlotress wife after the divorce in Hosea’s life.
Chapter 3:1, “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go again, love a woman who
is loved by” a neighbor. The word here is a word for neighbor or acquaintance or
perhaps paramour. The idea here is that she is gone after someone else. She’s “an
adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods
and love raisin cakes.’” You can see the direct connection here going to other gods.
Raisin cakes are sometimes used in sacrificial context as a way of celebrating. You
would eat raisin cakes. They would even be distributed like David did in II Samuel
7:6-19. But they can so often be associated with the Canaanite fertility cult and
that’s how you would celebrate by eating these cakes.
Then in [Hosea 3] verse 2, “So I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of
silver and a homer and a half of barley.” So now He’s buying her back, and this probably is associated with the betrothal back in chapter 2:1-20. He’s going to pay the
bride price again. He’s going to bring her back again like they were in captivity in
Egypt. Now they’re going to be in captivity somewhere else and He’s going to buy
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her out of there too like He redeemed Israel out of Egypt. He’s going to redeem her
out of this captivity caused by her own sin and rebellion and harlotry.
So He’s going to love her right back to Himself. That’s probably the
reason He had to buy her again is because she’s been taken away and now He
has to redeem her. And the importance of fidelity stands out. “Then I said to
her,” [Hosea 3] verse 3, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not
play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I also will be toward you.” So
there’s going to be this commitment and the Lord is not bringing her back
without her giving up on harlotry. He is going to purify this woman, this nation somehow. That’s the idea. He’s going to purify her so that she is faithful
and so that’s the important thing. They need to repent, turn back and He’s
going to go to extremes to get her to do that, even causing her to be taken
into captivity—therefore married to someone else—all these sorts of things.
Verse 4, “For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king
or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar without ephod or household idols.” In
other words, they’re going to lose their king; they’re going to lose their land, their
sacrificial system, all these things that they relied upon. “Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king,” come back to the
Davidic kingship that was the established dynasty permanently in ancient Israel,
“and they will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days”
(verse 5). There’s coming a day when He’s going to set this whole thing right again
and that is what we’re really looking forward to even today.
Now the book goes on and continues with, as we’ve mentioned, collections of oracles. And in these collections of oracles we have different units. I’m
taking chapters 4–6 to be one particular unit, a lawsuit in fact. We’ll say more about
lawsuits elsewhere too, but you have in 4:1, “Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons
of Israel, for the Lord has a case.” Now this is a legal lawsuit case “against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness or” now we have translated here
in my version, “kindness, loving kindness.” That’s covenant fidelity, “or knowledge
of God in the land.” Really knowing God. “There is swearing, deception, murder,
stealing, and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the
beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear.”
Now throughout this section we have this focus on My people. Chapter
4:4, “Yet let no one find fault, and let none offer reproof; for your people are those
who contend with the priest.” This people being referred to. Verse 6, “My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge,” and there we get also this reference to knowledge
again. These two expressions: “My people” and “knowledge” keep showing up and
so you have that in the same context. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” The connection between the two. The issue is they’re to be His people and
they’re to be therefore the ones who really know Him. That’s the idea behind this.
In verse 8 we read, “They feed on the sin of My people and direct
their desire toward their iniquity,” the constant references to this. Verse 14,
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“I will not punish your daughters when they play the harlot or your brides
when they commit adultery, for men themselves go apart with harlots and
offer sacrifices with temple prostitutes; so the people without understanding
are ruined.” Not having knowledge of God. This is really the theme that runs
through this: “My people have no knowledge of Me.”
Okay, now we come to the collections of the oracles then. The first section
I take to be the lawsuit as we’ve mentioned before. We have then in 4:1 The Lord
has a charge to bring. The Hebrew word is riv. “There is no faithfulness.” This is
the charge, “no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing, and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed
follows bloodshed.” So along with that then since there’s this charge to be brought
from the Lord against his covenant partners, Israel, they’ve violated the relationship, therefore there’s the covenant curses mentioned in verse 3. “Therefore the
land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes along with the beasts of the
field and the birds of the sky, and also the fish of the sea disappear.” So we have this
combination of the calling of the lawsuit and then the response to it, the curses
that come because they’ve violated the commitment that they’ve made in the covenant, the contract that they have with God.
Then he goes on and talks about it’s the same between the people and the
priests. There’s a lack of knowledge. “My people” verse 6 “are destroyed for lack of
knowledge because you have rejected knowledge. I also will reject you from being
My priest since you have forgotten the Law of your God, I also will forget your children,” In other words, the people of the land. “Forgotten the Law of your God,” well
this is a disaster because the priests were, in fact, supposed to be the custodians
of the Law as we’ve talked about earlier in Ancient Israel. They were the ones, for
example, under whom the king when he came to the throne according to Deuteronomy 17 should sit down under their supervision and write his own copy of the
Law so that he could rule according to the Law. The central sanctuary area was to
be the central Supreme Court in Ancient Israel because these were the custodians
of the Law. They could always consult the Law, and this was all part of the way it
was set up. So the priests having lost the Law is a horrible thing.
You recall later in the days of Josiah, they were renovating the house of
the Lord, the temple, and they found the Law as if they’ve lost it actually in Ancient
Israel. Well it was the responsibility of the priests for them to not lose the Law but
in fact to exhort the people to live according to the Law. The prophets would bring
that into the specific situation, but in this case they have to preach. The true prophets have to preach against the priests, the ones who are supposed to have the Law.
There’s a focus on leadership that develops then in 5:1, “Hear this, O
priests! Give heed, O house of Israel! Listen, O house of the king! For the judgment
applies to you.” So there’s a real focus then in chapters 5–6 on the need for the
leaders to get their act straight in leading Israel.
Then in chapter 6 there’s this false repentance that is referred to and we
go. It goes like this, “Come, let us return to the Lord for He has torn us, but He will
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heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after 2 days;
He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him. So let us know, let
us press on to know the Lord” (verses 1-3), again this issue of the constant refrain
of needing to know the Lord that we’ve mentioned earlier. “Let us press on to know
the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He will come to us like the
rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Then the Lord’s response, “What shall
I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah?” (verse 4). So, again,
Judah is included in this because we’re still in the Divided Kingdom Period, but the
focus is on judgment against Ephraim.
“For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes
away early.” In other words it just doesn’t last. Their loving kindness, their covenant fidelity just doesn’t last. You can’t depend on it. “Therefore,” verse 5, “I
have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My
mouth.” He’s brought these judgments these cutting judgment oracles against
them and He’s hewn them to pieces. “And the judgments on you are like the light
that goes forth. For I delight” and this is a key verse in the book of Hosea, “I
delight in loyalty” that’s hesed, “loving covenant fidelity,” “rather than sacrifice, and in knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (verse 6). So the covenant commitment, the knowledge, really knowing God, these are the key things
that the Lord is concerned about, and that’s just not what has been going on in
Ephraim. “But this is what I delight in,” He says in verse 6, “But like Adam they
have transgressed the covenant.” this is the way it reads in my version in the NIV,
“Like Adam, they have broken the covenant—they were unfaithful to me there.”
Now the question is what is Adam referred to here? There’s been some
debate about this. It appears that what it’s really referring to perhaps is “mankind.”
Adam, of course, can be a word for mankind as much as it is for Adam the man in
the garden, and so it may be that this refers to for all of mankind, they have broken
the covenant, they were unfaithful to Me here. The idea being they’re no different than anybody else. They just break the covenant. They’re My covenant people;
they’re My people and I’m their God covenant formulary reflected in Hosea 1–3 but
the fact is they’re not any different in the way they live. And that’s a disaster. And
that’s always a disaster amongst the people of God. If people, for example, today
in the church live like in the world, that’s a tragedy because we’re supposed to live
differently in a way that really reflects a loyalty toward God and really knowing God
who He is and what He wants and living in light of that.
Chapter 6:11, “Also, Judah, there is a harvest appointed for you,” it
says. So Judah’s also in dire straits because of their lack of fidelity to the Lord
and the lack of the knowledge of God.
Now in chapters 7–8 we have a whole unit here of metaphors for their
sin and its consequences. You can isolate this unit based largely on the references to king and prince and focus on similes that we have in this section of
the book. So in 7:1-3:
When I would heal Israel, the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered, and
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Notes:
the evil deeds of Samaria, for they deal falsely; the thief enters in,
bandits raid outside. They do not consider in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds are all around them;
they are before My face. With their wickedness they make the king
glad, and the princes with their lies.
So we get the kings and the princes kind of loving this wickedness. “They are all
adulterers, like an oven heated by the baker” (verse 4). Now we get this metaphor
like the oven and the cake here:
Who ceases to stir up the fire from the kneading of the dough until it
is leavened. On the day of our king, the princes became sick with the
heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with scoffers, for their hearts
are like an oven as they approach their plotting; their anger smolders
all night. In the morning it burns like a flaming fire. All of them are
hot like an oven, and they consume their rulers; All their kings have
fallen. None of them calls on Me (verses 5-7).
So we have this oven situation that’s used as they’re like an oven where it just
smolders and then it gets on fire and it gets worse and worse. The idea is that of
a smoldering fire: time isn’t ready yet and they have this plotting going on, and
then in verse 8, “Ephraim mixes himself with the nations; Ephraim has become a
cake not turned,” in this oven which means the process has gone all bad. They’re
unturned so they’re going to be burned on one side.
Verse 9, “Strangers devour his strength, yet he does not know it; gray hairs
are also sprinkled on him.” You can put sprinklings on bread, but what has being
spread on them is gray hairs. They’re becoming old and they’re going to have the
effects of death coming upon them.
Then 7:11, “So Ephraim has become like a silly dove.” Now we have
another image here— a metaphor. They’re flighty, unstable. They go back and
forth between Egypt and Assyria. And that will lead ultimately to their destruction. In verse 14 there may even be some words that reflect the sounds of
a dove. “They do not cry to Me from their heart when they wail on their beds;
for the sake of their grain . . . they turn away from Me.” Some of the words
there might suggest this kind of sound of doves.
The screeching of an eagle then in 8:1-10:
Put the trumpet to your lips! Like an eagle against the house of the
Lord, because they have transgressed My covenant and rebelled
against My law. They cry out to Me, “My God, we of Israel know You!”
Israel has rejected the good; the enemy will pursue him. They have set
up kings, but not by Me; they have appointed princes, but I did not
know them and it.
The point is that the Lord has rejected their calf in Samaria, all their idols
and that sort of a thing and there’s a screeching that’s happening. Here it’s
a cry out and in fact in verses 7-8, “For they sow the wind and they reap the
whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it yields no grain. Should it yield,
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strangers would swallow it up. Israel is swallowed up” like an eagle would
swallow up its prey. These images then really stand out in this section.
In 8:10, the latter part of chapter 8 and the first part of chapter [10], all
the way through the first part of chapter 10, have a lot of mentions of altars so apparently this one is associated with this. This section is associated with the altar
worship:
Since Ephraim has multiplied altars for sin, they’ve become altars of sinning for him. Though I wrote for him 10,000 precepts
of My law, they are regarded as a strange thing. As for My sacrificial gifts, they sacrifice the flesh and eat it, but the Lord has
taken no delight in them (8:11-13).
The Lord takes no delight in their various altars where they go after various gods.
And then there’s a geography of this and you can see that they go up to the threshing floor or you can recall the apostasy that took place in Numbers 25 where they
go up and worship other gods.
In [Hosea] 10:5 we read, “The inhabitants of Samaria will fear for the calf
of Beth-Aven.” Now that’s an interesting expression because Beth-al is the place,
Bethel, which is the house of God, but aven is replacing al, with aven is the house
of wickedness. And so this is a place of wickedness instead of a place of God. So we
have this play off of the name of Bethel there.
In the next section then we have an exhortation to hope, and here we get
some interesting things showing up. Chapter 10:11-12:
Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh, but I will come
over her fair neck with a yoke; I will harness Ephraim, Judah
will plow, Jacob will harrow for himself. Sow with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord.
Breaking up your fallow ground is to plow the ground so that you can put seed in
it that will really germinate. There will be a real crop; some real produce from this.
Everything is ending in no for them in the way that they pursue their other gods.
They need to pursue the Lord. That’s what it means to break up the fallow ground.
And because they are not willing to do this, they’ve just plowed wickedness and
they just fill their soil with wickedness and he will destroy them at Bethel.
Chapter 11 introduces a certain motif that’s important. “When Israel was
a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. The more they called them,
the more they went from there; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning incense to idols. Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them in My arms.” So
He’s talking about the youth when they first come out as a nation from Egypt, the
youngness of the nation, how He took care of them.
Now this is the passage that gets used in Matthew 2, the time of Jesus
when He is under the threat of Herod. And He’s, of course, born in Bethlehem. And
then because of the threat to kill all the babies, they flee down to Egypt, and then in
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Matthew 2:15, “So Joseph” starting with verses 14-15, “So Joseph got up and took
the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. He remained
there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord
through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son.’” So He called Israel out of
Egypt back in the book of Exodus. Similarly in this situation you can use that same
kind of an expression to talk about how He’s going to bring Jesus out of there as a
youth. He is just a youth at this time, and so it uses the same kind of context. The
similarities cause Matthew to use this passage in Hosea 11 for Jesus coming up out
of Egypt as well. It’s an Exodus motif that’s such a common motif that it could be
used in various ways like we might use a proverb or something like that.
Then you have Ephraim’s waywardness and this keeps on going around
and around on their waywardness. And then in chapter 14 we come to the Lord’s
call for repentance again. Chapter 14:1-3, “Return,” now, again, that’s shuv again.
They’re supposed to turn back, “O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to
Him, ‘Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously, that we may present the
fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us.’” Now see, we’re in the time of Assyrian, so
we’re talking about the Northern Kingdom. “We will not ride on horses; nor will we
say again, ‘Our god,’ to the work of our hands; for in You the orphan finds mercy.”
So they’re to return really in sincerity. If they do, verse 4, “I will heal their apostasy,
I will love them freely.” That’s the point of the story at the beginning of Hosea. He’s
coming to the conclusion which is really turn to the Lord. The Lord is determined
to bless Israel. The Lord desires to bless Israel.
Verse 8, “O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? It is I who answer
and look after you. I am like a luxurious cypress; from Me comes your fruit.” In
other words, you can’t have fruit without being attached to the Lord, coming to the
Lord. It’s kind of like the abiding passage in John 15 where you must abide in the
Lord in order to have fruit, because He’s the vine and the Father is the Vine Dresser.
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Then finally there’s a conclusion. It’s an unusual way to conclude a Prophetic Book. We have in 14:9, the last verse, “Who is wise? He will realize these
things. Who is discerning? He will understand them.” The things that have been
talked about, the need to repent and turn back and that the Lord is willing to love
even now. “The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.” The Lord’s ways are right in front of us and we can either
walk in them or stumble over them, and that’s the point. The wise person walks in
the ways of the Lord. So it ends really with like a proverbial statement there—a wisdom statement—and wisdom really is based in the knowledge of the Lord. That’s
one of the main focuses of the book of Hosea. And you can see this even in Proverbs
1:7 and various other passages where “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Fools despise this understanding.
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