I was in High School when I first read the book of Hosea, and I realized quickly that the book is full of wonderfully amazing and encouraging aspects of faith, at least for me. Chapter 2 quickly became one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, due to the forgiveness and love that is demonstrated within it, however, after recently hearing a sermon on the book of Hosea, I have come to the understanding that this entire book is absolutely amazing.
For those of you who have not read this book, Hosea is a love story. "When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD." (Hosea 1:2) Now originally when I read this I thought that God was telling Hosea that he should get married and due to the fact that there were no women of worth within the city, he should go ahead and settle, HOWEVER, this is NOT the case. God could have simply declared, "Israel is like a wife to me--an adulterous wife." Instead, he used Hosea to act out the treachery in real life--to show in living color God's fury, his jealousy, and above all esle, his love for his people. This love that is sooo beyond all of our comprehension. The love that is sooo completely unconditional and forgiving in every cirmcumstance. Therefore, He told Hosea to take a wife that was adulterous and had many children from another men and to love her as his own. Hosea took Gomar to be his wife and she produced three offspring for Hosea before chapter 2.
Chapter 2 marks a turning point in the relationship of Hosea and Gomar. At this point the LORD goes on a rant through Hosea. He says, "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." It is now that we realize that something (we don't know what, but adultry is somewhat implied) that has resulted in the demise of Hosea and Gomar's marriage.
He continues, "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 food and my water, my wool and my linen, my 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 nakeness. 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 feasts. 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." (Hosea 2:3-13)
I love this chapter because those verses read like a letter from a lover scorned, and in fact, that is exactly what they are. God loved Israel sooo much and Israel had been turning their backs on God. They had been acting out in all of these various ways, and God longs for the one he loves. He is angry, yet still loving. The love never leaves, even in these harsh words. In fact this is displayed by the last words of these verses when the LORD says, "but me she forgot." I have heard these words before, from myself and others, and they are always said in a distraught manner. In a "why wasn't I good enough for them" sort of way...yet, God knows that he is in fact good enough. HE is EVERYTHING that they need, yet they are still walking away from him. But the aspect of this chapter that I ABSOLUTELY love is that the chapter doesn't end there. Instead he goes on to say...
"Therefore, I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." (Hosea 2:14)--Wait, What??!?!?! It is in this way that God shows his completely devoted, unconditional, incredible, transcendital, beyond mine or your comprehension, kind of love for his people. And he doesn't end there...
"There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will 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.' 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 and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle 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 an doil, and they will respond to Jezreel. I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.' " (Hosea 2:15-23)
God loves his people sooo much that he forgives them. He calls them back to him. He even allures them back to him if you will. He goes out and he draws his people to him. I read this passage and I just can't believe that I am loved that much by anyone. It completely blows my mind. Yet...this is how much God loves us. That no matter how much we screw up, no matter how many times we turn our backs on him...He is there trying to allure us back to him. So...As you go about your week...just remember that you are loved...despite all the sin in your life...despite all of the wrongs that you have done...despite what your past looks like...as long as you have a relationship with God, you are loved beyond understanding.
P.S. In Chapter 3 Hosea goes after Gomar, as God went after Israel. Hosea ends up buying her off of an auction block where she is being sold into slavery, and instead of treating her as a slave, he tells her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you." He calls her to be faithful unto him and he shows her grace and mercy and love...none of which she deserves...much like God has shown this to us.
