HOSEA

Not much is known about the prophet Hosea, other than what he reveals in his book. Hosea is called by God not only to speak his message, but to become his message. God commands him to ‘Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and to have children of whoredom for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD’ (Hos 1:2-3).
Some think this command is purely allegorical, or metaphorical (Hosea marrying an idolatrous woman but not a prostitute), but it is more likely that he really did marry a prostitute, or a woman of known dubious character. He has three children with her, their names representing God’s message to Israel (Hos 1:4-9). Later she leaves him and he has to buy her back from her current lover (Hos 3:1-3), a public humiliation.
Hosea’s marriage and life thus becomes his message: Through Hosea God calls the covenant he made with Israel at Sinai a marriage (Exo 19). Israel was not worthy of such an act of commitment and honor from God’s side – just as Hosea’s wife was not worthy of the honorable marriage he brought her into. But God in mercy committed himself to his people in a binding contract. Israel – on the other hand – repeatedly and even flippantly breaks the covenant by worshiping other gods and disobeying God’s law. So God is the spurned husband, the rejected Lover. Israel’s callousness, pride and carelessness stands is stark contrast to God, who has no pride, and who will take wayward Israel back as his lawful wife, if only they repent. The utter humility of God in pursuing his faithless people should tug at people’s hearts, but by Hosea’s time the corruption has gone deep.
God lays the charges: ‘There is no faithfulness or loyalty; and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns…’ (Hos 4:2-3). He especially finds fault with the leadership, both political (king, officials) and spiritual (priests, prophets): ‘Hear this, O priests! Listen, O house of the king! For you have been a snare…’ (Hos 5:1-3, 4:4). But the people are also guilty, who have wantonly rejected God’s law and prophetic word: ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you … Israel is stubborn… Ephraim is joined to idols … Israel has spurned the good… they have refused to return to me’ (Hos 4:6,16-17, 8:2, 11:9). So now ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’ (Hos 4:6).
Hosea starts issuing his heart-rending call during the second part of King Jeroboam II’s reign (782-753 BC). Jeroboam is a strong ruler and under him deteriorating Israel is once more gaining strength, reclaiming land and dominating trade (2 Kin 14:23-27). But the apparent boom is cheating the eye. It has created a false sense of security, a false religiosity even. People are idolatrous, or syncretistic (sacrifice to idols and to God), but at the same time oppress the poor. God will have none of it, but the people, fooled by the apparent prosperity are not willing to listen. Hosea in his emotional message tries to woo Israel back into a real love relationship with God; his contemporary prophet Amos in his biting message tries to crack their false sense of security. Both together are God’s final call to Israel.
After Jeroboam II weak kings follow, with constant coups, assassinations and increasing political instability. Finally the powerful and violent Assyrian empire gobbles up both Syria, Israel’s ally in the North in 732 BC, and then Israel itself in 722 BC. The destruction is final and irreversible: Israel (the ten northern tribes of Israel) and decimated and exiled. They never again become a nation, nor participate in a return, and so are lost from history. God’s judgment – after many unheeded calls to repentance – has finally come.
Yet Hosea speaks words of hope as well. It may be that some people took the warning of Hosea and other prophets seriously. They may have moved south into the more godly Judah and so escaped in time, though Israel as a nation didn’t.
It seems that Hosea speaks mostly to Israel, but writes down his prophecy for remaining Judah, so that they would not follow Israel into disaster but find back to the God who loves them so unconditionally and so passionately.

The Author and his story

The author identifies himself as Hosea, son of Beeri. The name Hosea means ‘salvation’, it was Joshua’s name before Moses renamed him Joshua, which means ‘God is salvation’ (1 Ch 27:20). It is also the name of Jesus. Nothing is known about Hosea’s birth place, family or occupation other than what can be gleaned from his prophecy.
Hosea is fully aware of his nation’s state, that Israel is far from keeping the covenant. He addresses his nation from God’ perspective, realizing that it is slipping quickly towards irreversible destruction.
Hosea is told by God to marry “a wife of whoredom” (probably a prostitute, or a woman with bad history) and have “children of whoredom” with her “for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (Hos 1:2). From the very beginning two pictures in Hosea are linked: adultery and idolatry.
Adultery                    <=> Idolatry
husband and wife    <=> God and Israel
God calls the covenant he made with Israel at Sinai a marriage (Exo 19). Israel was not worthy of such an act of commitment and honor from God’s side, just as Hosea’s wife is not worthy of the honorable marriage he brings her into. But God in mercy committed himself to his people in a binding contract. He is the faithful, covenant-keeping husband. Israel – on the other hand – repeatedly and even flippantly breaks the covenant by worshiping other gods and disobeying God’s law, in fact taking the role of an adulterous wife, who runs after other lovers. So God is the spurned husband, the rejected Lover. Israel’s callousness, pride and carelessness stands is stark contrast to God, who has no pride, and who will take wayward Israel back as his lawful wife, if only they repent. The utter humility of God in pursuing his faithless people should tug at people’s hearts, but by Hosea’s time the corruption has gone deep.
Some say that this marriage never happened in reality, that it is rather a mere vision or pure allegory, for God would not require this of a prophet. Some say that God wouldn’t command to marry a prostitute as it is against his law or word. Others argue that his wife Gomer was not an adulteress but an idolator (as most were in Israel) and that ‘adultery’ is meant only in the spiritual sense. But many hold that though this marriage was definitely not what could be called an advantageous marriage, there is nothing in the Law of Moses as such that forbids marrying a prosititute. It was forbidden only in the case of priests (Lev 21:7,14). Also it was forbidden to force a daughter into prostitution (Lev 19:29) or to use money earned by prostitution for the temple or vows (Deu 23:18), but this is not Hosea’s case. God, therefore, does not command Hosea to do an immoral thing, just a very gracious and self-sacrificial thing.
Hosea is unquestioning in his obedience to God. Even when his wife leaves him and he has to buy her back from her current lover, a great humiliation (Hos 3:1-2), Hosea is obedient, humble, compassionate and forgiving. He loves Gomer unconditionally. He exhibits God’s heart, his patient grace and unconditional and long-suffering love towards his wayward wife. Through this heart-wrenching story, Hosea participates in the suffering, shame and dishonor God experiences with Israel, who spurns him. The messenger becomes the message. No other prophet comes nearer to the New Testament revelation of the pursuing, stubborn and unconditional love of God. Hosea’s prophecies come out of this state of being deeply affected. His words are emotional, heart-rending and gripping. Hosea’s book powerfully reveals God’s character: He is gracious beyond all reason, he finds a reason for grace where there is none. He is steadfast love. Why else would he go to such length to call back his people who show such indifference to him, and even spite.
The metaphor of God reaching out – yet one more time – to his unfaithful wife Israel is presented as an emotional story in chapter 2: God is hoping that through hardship, misery an isolation in the wilderness (partial judgments) his adulterous Israel will turn back to him. God is ever-ready to accept them back: “I will… speak tenderly to her… on that day you will call me, “My husband,” … and I will take you for my wife forever… in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD” (Hos 2:14,16,19-20).

When and to whom did Hosea speak?

In Hos 1:1 Hosea references his prophecy to Judah’s kings Uzziah (769-739 BC), Jotham (739-731 BC), Ahaz (731-715 BC) and Hezekiah (715-686 BC ), and to the Israelite king Jeroboam II (782-753 BC). This covers a significant time span. We can assume that Hosea wrote down his prophecies continually over this time.
Hosea’s message is to the northern nation of Israel. Why, then does he refer to Judah’s kings? Possibly because Hosea – as other prophets also – acknowledges the Davidic kingly line as the legitimate one, and therefore takes reference to it. Hosea predicts the destruction of Israel as a nation, and later sees the fulfillment of his prophecy with his own eyes in 722 BC. Since Israel ceases to exist as a nation, he looks to Judah instead. Also the fulfillment of his prophecy proves him to be a true prophet of God according to Deu 18:20-22. Therefore Judah would have treated his writings with respect.
Though Hosea speaks mostly to Israel (Hos 4:1) with special challenges to its kings, princes, priests (Hos 5:1,5:10,4:4); he writes very much with Judah in mind. He constantly mentions Judah and is concerned with Judah’s response to the word of God: “Judah still walks with God” (Hos 11:12) and “For you also, o Judah, a harvest is appointed” (Hos 6:11).

Date and Historical situation

Hosea addresses Israel during the reign of the strong and successful king Jeroboam II. In order to understand the historical situation of his time, some earlier events in Israel’s history (the northern kingdom) need to be understood:
931 BC            King Jeroboam I    evil
Israel separates from Judah, rejects the son of David and in his place chooses Jeroboam I to reign. Jeroboam I – in spite of a promise of God – installs a syncretistic worship of calves at Bethel and Dan, in intended competition to Jerusalem. He establishes a worship, an altar, a high priest, sacrifices and feasts at exactly the same time as they are held in Jerusalem. He discourages Israel from attending the temple. He makes Bethel the national sanctuary and the calf worship the official religion of Israel (1 Kin 12)
841-814 BC     King Jehu               partially evil
Army general Jehu rebels against Israel’s current king, kills off the kingly family and proclaims himself the new king. He tries to eradicate Baal worship from Israel and is rewarded by God with a prophecy that declares four generations of his sons to sit on the throne. Jehu’s family becomes the longest lasting dynasty of Israel (2 Kin 10:30).
814-798 BC      King Jehoahaz     evil      1st generation from Jehu
When oppressed by Syria, this evil king entreats God, and God promises him a ‘savior’ (2 Kin 13:1-6). ‘Savior’ probably refers to Adad-Nirari of Assyria who defeats Israel’s enemy Syria and so gives Israel some respite.
798-782 BC       King Joash           evil      2nd generation from Jehu
782-753 BC       King Jeroboam II evil      3rd generation from Jehu
2 Ki 14:25-27 says that since Israel was oppressed, God gave them a strong ruler, Jeroboam II. Though he is evil, Jeroboam manages to re-capture lost lands, to re-establish peace and to anew control important trade routes. Israel starts thriving economically. But the apparent boom cheats the eye, only a very limited number of people are getting rich, often on the back of the poor. The new-found prosperity has also created a false sense of security, a false religiosity even. People are idolatrous (Hos 2:16, 4:12) or halfhearted (Hos 6:4). Yet at the same time they swear, lie, steal, commit adultery and murder (Hos 4:1-2). Israel’s stability and apparent prosperity is really a ‘living off the left-over blessing’ of God’s grace and Jehu’s faithfulness, but it will not be sustainable.
Meanwhile the violent empire of Assyria is an ever-present threat looming in the North. It has an unbroken series of strong and conquering rulers: Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC) who conquers the remaining buffer state Syria in the North, Shalmaneser I (727-722 BC) who conquers Israel and besieges Samaria, Sargon II (722-705 BC) who destroys and exiles Israel and Samaria and Sennacherib (705-681 BC) who threatens Judah and Jerusalem severely.

Hosea and Gomer’s children

Hosea marries Gomer and they have three children together, two sons and a daughter. Each time God indicates the name of the child, which is a message to Israel:

Son Jezreel
”Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood 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 Jezreel” (Hos 1:4-5).
The name Jezreel means ‘God sows’ or ‘God disperses’. In Hebrew pronunciation Jezreel (‘God sows’) sounds very similar to Israel (‘God strives’).
Jezreel was a city in the plain of Sharon, near Mount Gilboa, originally given to the tribe Issachar. Jezreel has a lot of history: The evil king Ahab of Israel lived there (1 Kin 21:2). Elijah met Ahab there towards the end of the famine (1 Kin 21:17). Jezebel has Naboth murdered there to obtain his vineyard. Jezreel is where Jehu kills King Ahaziah of Israel and King Amaziah of Judah, and also Jezebel; and where Ahab’s seventy sons’ heads are placed in a heap at the gate (2 Kin 10:1-11).
God’s first prediction is that he will – in a little while – punish the house of Jehu for the blood spilled at Jezreel. God’s second prediction is that God will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.
The background for the first prediction is King Jehu, who did well in fulfilling God’s command to wipe out the house of Ahab (2 Kin 9: 6-8) and the Baal Cult (2 Kin 10:28). For this zeal Jehu receives the promise of having four generations of sons sit on the throne (2 Kin 10:30), though he is evil in other regards (calf-worship in Bethel). Also all his sons are evil kings. The current king Jeroboam II is the 3rd generation from Jehu. When Jeroboam II dies in 753 BC, his son Zechariah (4th generation from Jehu) starts to reign, but is soon assassinated by Shallum, who becomes the next king of Israel (2 Ki 15:11-12, 752 BC).
Why is God judging Jehu’s house? Maybe for halfheartedness, for obeying God in one thing but not in another. Maybe for executing judgment yet not keeping a high standard himself. Maybe for excessive bloodshed, killing Ahaziah of Judah and his kinsmen. Maybe for four generation of evil rulers. The reasons are not explicitly stated.
The second prediction, that God will put an end to the house of Israel and break the bow of Israel in Jezreel is fulfilled by the Assyrian kings Shalmeneser and Sargon invading, besieging and defeating Israel and Samaria in 722BC (2 Kin 17:5-6). Israel is destroyed, killed off and irreversibly scattered. ‘God is dispersing’ the idolatrous Israelites. They will never again have an identity or history as Israel.
Hosea, together with Amos, are God’s last call to Israel. The judgment is the long-ago stated consequence for persistent disobedience and idolatry (Deu 28:63-64, Lev 26:33).

Daughter Lo-Ruhamah
“Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity of the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war; or by horses, or by horsemen.” (Hos 1:6-7)
Though Israel’s doom as a nation by now has become irreversible, individual repentance is still possible and wanted. Why else would God still send prophets and announce the judgment?
The very clear contrast of doomed Israel and saved Judah is God’s invitation, indeed an urgent last call for those in Israel who take God’s word serious to move to Judah now. In Israel’s history there has been at least two other times when godly people from the deteriorating northern kingdom moved south into Judah (2 Ch 11:13-17, 2 Chr 15:8). Later king Hezekiah (2 Chr 30:11) and king Josiah (2 Kin 23:15-20) reach out to any remaining population.
There is no record of a migration south due to the prophecies of Hosea and Amos, but there may well have been, for both prophets, though they speak to the northern Israel, have their eyes on Judah and speak a message for that kingdom as well.
Judah, that is also threatened repeatedly by the armies of Assyria is saved by a powerful, supernatural intervention of God against Sennacherib in 701 BC (2 Kin 19:35).

Son Lo-Ammi
“Name him Lo-ammi, for you a re not my people and I am not your God” (Hos 1:8-9). This is now pronounced from God’s side. But it has been a reality from Israel’s side for two hundred years: they haven’t treated God as their God ever since 931 BC, they have broken covenant, separated themselves and have chosen not to be with God. So now, after much patience, God responds in kind: He will also separate himself from them. He will no longer call them ‘my people’. God agrees to the divorce.
This painful statement is meant to shake up Israel since they have become so accustomed to God’s continual long-suffering grace. To hear the divorce pronounced just maybe makes them up to think one more time. For those in Judah this is a sore warning: by continual rejection of God they, too, might finally get what they chose. Don’t do it!
The children are not doomed to keep the names they have. When Israel will respond rightly to its God, he will change the names of the children into the exact opposite “I will have pity on Lo-ruhamah (‘not pitied’), and I will say to Lo-ammi (‘not my people’), “You are my people”; and he shall say, “You are my God” (Hos 2:23).

God shows Israel her guilt

Hosea makes it abundantly clear what it is Israel does, that God cannot live with. Here are the some of the most important ones:

Breakdown of morality and leadership
God lays the charges: ”There is no faithfulness or loyalty; and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns” (Hos 4:2-3).
He finds fault with the spiritual leadership (priests, prophets): “With you is my contention, O priest… my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me… and since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children… Hear this, O priests! For you have been a snare“ (Hos 4:4-6, 5:1). The priests’ role precisely was to know, follow and teach the Law, they were meant to speak God’s word.
But God equally lays charges against the political leadership (king, princes, officials): “Listen, O house of the king! For you have been a snare… The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmark… by their wickedness they make the king glad, and the officials by their treachery… They made kings, but not through me, they set up princes, but without my knowledge.” (Hos 5:1, 4:4, 5:10, 7:3, 8:4). Kings were precisely meant to be good shepherds of the people, ensuring lawfulness. Now they are corrupt, and lawlessness is the norm: “the corruption of Ephraim is revealed, and the wicked deeds of Samaria; for they deal falsely, the thief breaks in, and the bandits raid outside… you have plowed wickedness, and have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies.” (Hos 7:1, 10:13).
The remaining thirty years of Israel after Rehoboam II are years of great instability, continual assassinations of kings, constant leadership changes and an increasing chaos – until Assyria wipes it all out in 722 BC.

Idolatry and syncretism
“With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. Your calf is rejected, O Samaria… For it is from Israel, and artisan made it; it is not God… The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces… When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin, they became to him altars for sinning” (Hos 8:4-6,8,14). The calf was actually in Bethel, but since Samaria is the capital, it stands for Israel in general here.
“Israel cries to me “My God, we – Israel – know you!” Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him… though they offer choice sacrifices, though they eat flesh, the LORD does not accept them… they shall not our drink offerings of wine to the LORD, and their sacrifices shall not please him. Such sacrifices shall be like mourners bread; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the LORD. What will you do on the day of appointed festival, and on the day of the festival of the LORD?” (Hos 8:2-3,13, 9:4-5).
It seems that Israel still maintains that it is ‘worshiping God’ at the Bethel calf cult, with observance of sacrifices and festivals. God slashes that to pieces. The prophecy of destruction of the shrine and altar in Bethel is fulfilled by King Josiah in 640-609 BC.

Willful rejection of truth
“Because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you… My people consult a piece of wood… Israel is stubborn… Ephraim is joined to idols… Israel has spurned the good… they have refused to return to me” (Hos 4:6,12,16-17, 8:2). So now “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6).
Israel’s repentance sounds good “Come, let us return to the LORD… Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD, his appearing is a sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, live the spring rains that water the earth” (Hos 6:1,3) but is halfhearted at best: “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early” (Hos 6:4). God is at a loss what else to try. One of the saddest verses in Hosea is this: “Ephraim is joined to idols – let him alone” (Hos 4:17).
Idolatry, the willful rejection of God, is also a rejection of knowledge and conscience. To turn to other gods is to elevate something far inferior to be the standard (whether promiscuous fertility cults or bloodthirsty power cults). When these things reign, moral breakdown will follow, families, society and especially the vulnerable will suffer.

Political Alliances
When Hosea speaks of Israel’s adultery he usually means their rejection of God in embracing idolatry. But Israel’s adultery can also mean their rejection of God in making smart political alliances, rather than trusting in God to save them.
“When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, to the great king… Ephraim is… without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria… They have gone up to Assyria, a wild ass wandering alone; Ephraim has bargained for lovers. Though they bargain with the nations, I will now gather them up. They shall soon writhe under the burden of kings and princes” (Hos 5:13, 7:11, 8:9). God says “none of them calls upon me… They do not return to the LORD, nor seek him… I would redeem them but they speak lies against me” (Hos 7:7, 7:10, 7:13)
Repentance of their adultery would sound like this: “Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; we will say no more, ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands” (Hos 14:3). Note that here adultery in both senses is mentioned together: idolatry and political alliances.

Therefore: judgment is certain

For all these reasons, and in absence of any serious repentance, Hosea (like Amos) gives Israel its final prediction of doom: “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind… Israel is swallowed up; how they are among the nations a useless vessel… Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt… They shall not remain in the land of the LORD, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food… The days of punishment have come, the days of recompense have come… Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars… the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-Aven… the thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. Ephraim shall be ashamed of his idol” (Hos 8:7-13, 9:3,7, 10:2-6).
The prophecy is fulfilled by Assyria’s conquest, destruction and exiling of Israel in 722 BC. Going back to Egypt is a metaphor for going back into slavery. Beth-Aven (meaning ‘house of vanity’) refers to Bethel, the site of the syncretistic calf cult.

Nevertheless God promises a Restoration

“Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the LORD…” (Hos 14:1-2). Over twenty times Hosea calls for Israel to return and puts words of repentance into their mouths.
At the very end he gives a wonderful prophecy of hope (Hos 14:4-7): “I will heal their disloyalty; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom…”
Already Hos 1:10-11 contains a prophecy of hope: “Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them’ you are not my people’, it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God. The people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head; and they shall take possession of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.”
What does this refer to? Does this ever fulfill? Some individual Israelites may have repented and some may have migrated to Judah, but Israel as a nation is irreversibly lost in 722 BC. Its population is decimated. The few that survive are forcefully re-settled and are absorbed into the surrounding idolatrous peoples. Israel as a nation or people no longer exists. And even though the later exiled Judah sees a return, Israel and Judah are never again joined together. How then should one understand these prophecies?
Some say this fulfills in the few Israelites who might have joined Judah and who might have (when Judah is allowed to return) joined that return in 536 BC under Zerubbabel (see Ezra 1). Others say that this hasn’t fulfilled in history, so it must happen sometime in the future.
But more likely this is really a picture speaking of Jesus and what he accomplishes for mankind: the ‘number of people like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured not numbered’ should remind us of the promise to Abraham looking at the starry sky (Gen 15:1-6), then of God’s promise for him to be a blessing to all the earth (Gen 12:1-3), which literally fulfills in Abraham’s offspring Jesus (Gal 3:16). The countless numbers are referring to all those who will be saved through Jesus.
Hos 1:10-11 gives a picture turning around the negative aspects of the first son Jezreel’s name. Jezreel means ‘God scatters’, but also ‘God sows’. Here it turns into a positive picture of God’s word being sown far and wide (the gospel going out into the word), and an innumerable harvest springing up. “It shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’” – yes, indeed, sons through Christ. They “shall be gathered together” is a picture of all divisions and differences being abolished through Jesus. “And they shall take possession of the land” is a picture of salvation itself (Heb 4) and also of the kingdom of God gaining ground through the gospel going out and reaching more and more people. “They shall appoint for themselves one head” then refers to Jesus, the head of the church. And yes, “say to your brother Ammi (‘my people’) and to your sister Ruhamah (‘under God’s grace’)” (Hos 2:1). Through Jesus we become God’s people and are under God’s grace.

If we understand the love of God, we will understand the prophets. God loves his people, therefore it matters how they live their lives. God cares passionately, otherwise he wouldn’t be their father. God can’t let them carry on, God can’t let them off, God can’t let them down. Hosea and Amos are together God’s last call to Israel. Hosea is wooing and Amos is biting, revealing the mercy and the justice of God. Hosea powerfully reveals the tender, vulnerable heart of God. He is like Jesus, who cries over Jerusalem, knowing the destruction to come (Luk 19:41-44).

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Written by whom?

• Hosea clearly is the recipient of the message “word of the Lord that came to Hosea” (Hos 1:1) and also “The Lord said to me” (Hos 3:1).
• Hosea is also mentioned in the 3rd person: “The Lord said to Hosea” (Hos 1:2) and “The Lord said to him” (Hos 1:4,6 ).
• Hosea is most likely the author, probably referring to himself. Possibly he is using a scribe, as was common (2 Kin 12:10). Some say this indicates an additional writer.

What do we know about Hosea?

• Hosea’s name means ‘Salvation’. It was the name of Joshua before Moses renamed him (Num 13). Jesus’ name ‘Joshua’ or ‘Jeshua’ is related, it means ‘God is salvation’. A tribal leader of Ephraim at the time of Solomon has that name (1 Chr 27:20), the last King of Israel also has that name (2 Kin 15:30) and a returnee leader of the people making a covenant with God has that name (Neh 10:23) but none of this matches.
• He is the son of Beeri, which gives no additional information. Esau’s Hittite wife Judith’s father’s name is Beeri (Gen 34:27) but that doesn’t match either.
• Therefore we know nothing about Hosea’s birth place, family or occupation other than what is in his prophecy.
• A concentration of ‘baking metaphors’: ‘kneading of dough’, ‘heat of oven’, ‘cake not turned’ (Hos 7:4,7,8) could suggest that Hosea was a baker by profession.
• Some say that Hosea was of the tribe of Ephraim because he often refers to the Northern kingdom Israel as ‘Ephraim’. This could be so, but it could also be general: Ephraim was a dominant tribe of Israel. Also Israel’s first king Jeroboam I is an Ephraimite. Also Shiloh is in Ephraim, where the tabernacle was till the Philistines destroyed it (1 Sam 4:1-11).
• Hosea is fully aware of his nation’s state (that Israel is far from keeping the covenant, and is slipping quickly towards irreversible destruction), and has God’ perspective and view to address it.
• Hosea is unquestioning in his obedience to God even when commanded some difficult things. He is compassionate, forgiving, loving unconditionally, like the God he presents to Israel. The messenger becomes the message.

Date of writing?

• Hos 1:1 mentions Judah’s kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, and Israelite king Jeroboam II.
• This covers a significant time span. We can assume that Hosea wrote down his prophecies continually over this time.
• Why does Hosea, who preaches to the North refer mostly to Judah’s kings?
  • Possibly because Hosea – as other prophets also – refers to the Davidic kingly line as the legitimate one.
  • Maybe it expresses his prophetic knowledge that Israel will not last much longer.
  • Or simply because the Northern kingdom Israel by the time of final editing has ceased to exist (722 BC).
    • Uzziah     769-739 BC              Jeroboam II   782-753 BC
    • Jotham    739-731 BC
    • Ahaz         731-715 BC
    • Hezekiah 715-686 BC
• Probably Hosea gets the first words after 769 BC and writes as late as 715 BC.
• This means Hosea prophesies during the ‘golden age’ under Jeroboam II with relative political peace and prosperity at least for some. Israel’s prosperity theme all through out the book.
• His message of judgment becomes true in 722 BC, proving him as a prophet to God. This may be part of the reason his writings became known and were preserved carefully in Judah.

Written to whom?

• First hearers is mostly Israel (Hos 4:1), with special challenges to kings, princes, priests (Hos 5:1,5:10,4:4)
• First readers: If book was written after Israels deportation then Judah are the very likely first readers > to warn them not to go in the same way as the Northern Kingdom (Hos 11:12 “Judah still walks with God” … Hos 6:11 “For you also, o Judah, a harvest is appointed”
• The Kings of Judah are mentioned (Hos 5:10) and there are clear, repeated references to Judah (Hos 1:7, 1:11, 5:5, 5:14, 6:4, 6:11, 8:14,10:11,11:12).

Written from where?

• Unknown, most likely from Israel, possibly from Judah (having moved there to escape the destruction).

Historical Background Israel

Summary of Jehu Dynasty

• King Joram, son of Ahab’s military captain Jehu is anointed by a prophet sent by Elisha (2 Kin 9-10) and thus rebels against him and assassinates him, Jezebel and visiting King Ahaziah of Judah (2 Kin 10:12-14), all evil people.
• He is commanded to bring God’s judgment on the house of Ahab (2 Kin 9:7-10) which he carries out with great zeal.
• He also wipes out the Baal cult from Israel, though he continues the Bethel calf worship.
• God rewards him by promising 4 generations of his sons on the throne (2 Kings 10:30) which fulfills: > 1 Jehoahaz > 2 Joash > 3 Jeroboam II > 4 Zechariah
• Jeroboam II 2 Ki 14:23-29
  • Jeroboam is the 3rd generation from Jehu. He reigns for 41 years (2 Kin 14:23), follows in the Bethel calf cult (2 Kin 14:24), is victorious over the Syrians (2 Kin 13:4, 14:26-27) and extends Israel’s borders to their former limits in David’s time ‘from entering of Hamath to the sea of the plain’ (2 Kin 14:25, Amo 6:14, 1 Chr 13:5).
  • With borders safe, political stability restored and trade routes under his control his reign was the most prosperous that Israel had ever known since the time of David & Solomon > a second golden age.
  • With all the outward prosperity, however, sin & evil prevailed in the land (Hos 4:12-14, Amo 2:6-8, 4:1, 6:6)
  • In spite of the material prosperity, there was a widening social & economic gap between rich and poor, mistreatment of the vulnerable, unrighteous gain, bribes, false balances and corruption (Hos 12:7-8)
  • The bubble bursts quickly; after King Jeroboam II there is a quick succession of 6 evil kings and continual assassinations (4 kings) over the next 22-25 years. In 732 BC Assyria invades, in 722 BC Assyria conquers and exiles Israel irreversibly.

Israel’s spiritual condition

• Ever since the kingdom’s birth in 931 BC Jeroboam I’s syncretistic calf cult has been Israel’s main religion – for 200 y.
• Since then it has also picked up foreign idolatry, first and foremost the Baal cult (Hos 2:16), but really just about every idol of the surrounding nations with their ritual prostitution and sacrifices.
• In name the God of Israel is still evoked (syncretism), there is plenty of religion and rituals, but little righteousness and morality (see Amos), a time of continued moral decline … a misleading & dangerous situation of left-over blessing
• Hosea’s description: ‘there is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out bloodshed follows bloodshed’ (Hos 4:1-2)

Surrounding Nations

Judah

• King Uzziah of Judah is (similar to Jeroboam II) a long-ranging monarch, creating a 2nd Uzziah is relatively godly.
• There is idolatry, but nothing like Israel at this time. Yet the chance to go the same way as Israel is real and something Hosea repeatedly warns against (Hos 4:15, 5:5, 6:11, 11:12).
• Also: warning against alliances with other nations
• After a disastrous King Ahaz Judah later regains power under King Hezekiah.

Syria / Aram

• Serious military threat to the northern Kingdom. God uses Syria to discipline and get the attention Israel, especially before the reign of Jeroboam II
• In 736-735 BC King Pekah of Israel & King Rezin of Damascus form alliance and attack Jerusalem (2 Kin 16:5, Isa 7:1)
• King Ahaz of Judah (735-715 BC) disobeys Isaiah and attempts and alliance with Assyria (2 Kin 16:7-9). Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria is happy to oblige:
• Assyria invades Syria & Israel: cities of Dan & Naphtali are captured and captives taken to Assyria (2 Kin 15:29).
• 732 BC Assyria besieges Damascus and conquers and exiles Aram (2 Kin 16:9) and subjugates Israel (2 Kin 17:3)
• 725 BC King Hosea of Israel rebels against Assyria, attempts an alliance with So of Egypt. Assyria besieges Samaria (2 Kin 17:4)
• 722 BC Assyria conquers Samaria and exiles Israel (2 Kin 17:5-6). No return is described.

Assyria

• Tiglath-Pileser III   745-727 BC    > golden age of Assyria with 120 years of strong kings
• Shalmaneser I          727-722 BC
• Sargon II                   722-705 BC
• Sennacherib              705-681 BC
• Esar-haddon             681-669 BC
• Ashurbanipal            669-627 BC

Egypt

• Israel – when threatened by the Assyrians – calls on Pharaoh So of Egypt (Hos 7:11,12:1)
• Reminder of their beginning and slavery and bondage while in Egypt (Hos 9:3,11:5)

Contemporary Prophets

• Amos also to Israel
• Micah to Israel and Judah
• Isaiah to Judah

Literary Category?

• Mostly poetry (prophecy) > figurative interpretation
• Some prose (Hosea’s story) > literal interpretation Hos 1:1-11, Hos 3:1-15, Hos 11:1-4

Structure

• Basically a prophecy with interspersed narrative passages
• Prophecy in the form of a law suit … God calling the accused, giving evidence for wrong done, announcing the verdict
• Prophecy is often interchanging between doom (announcing judgment) and hope oracles (promising restoration). Sometimes the interchange is very abrupt, even within one verse.
• Prophecy often has history recounting parts (past), giving reasons for the current situation (present) and predictions of doom or hop depending on the response now (future).

Composition

• Symbolism explained repeatedly in text: God = husband, father. Israel = prostitute, wife, mother. Covenant = marriage, commitment. Breaking of the covenant = adultery. Other gods = lovers
• Some interpret this as an allegory only, which means it didn’t really happen. But really there is no evidence for this.
• Hosea’s marriage & family rather is a real enacted symbol, a physical picture of a spiritual truth: Israel’s adultery
• Figures of speech: Metaphor, Irony, Metonymy (Ephraim, meaning Israel)

Main Ideas

• Comparison of Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute-adulteress to God as the true husband of unfaithful wife Israel being continually slighted and cheated on by Israel through idolatry and smart political alliances (= going after lovers)
• Reveals God’s faithfulness to the covenant, his torn heart, his longing for Israel to return, his incredible long-suffering, his humility by being willing to accept Israel back on almost any terms.
• Desperate and heart-rending final call for Israel to return before the irreversible judgment comes: destruction and exile by Assyria

Main Reasons

• To break through Israel’s brazen and conscious rejection of God by a heart-rending message (making the messenger the message, Hosea marrying a prostitute-adulteress)
• to reveal God’s heart to Israel and Judah, wooing them into realization, repentance, restoration
• to call Israel to wholehearted repentance (last chance)
• to warn Judah not to look down on the doom of Israel, but rather to humbly take the warning and to be wholehearted in their pursuit of God

HOSEA TEXT

Divisions of the book

Ch 1-3

• Israel’s apostasy from God (Hos 1:2), they forsake the Lord (Hos 3:1), they run after other gods (‘adultery’), in parallel with prophet Hosea’s marriage

Ch 4-14

• Prophetic oracles, descriptions of the backsliding and idolatry of the people, mingled with judgments and restoration oracles based on God’s love and compassion
• The tension in the book is between God’s love for his people, and his justice in carrying out the curses (judgments) for covenant unfaithfulness
• The story of unfaithfulness and judgment is repeated with even greater intensity in (ch 11-13)
• The prophecy concludes with God’s love song for his people (ch 14)

Hosea Chapter 1

• Hos 1:1 “The word of the Lord” that came to Hosea over the time span of several Judean Kings, and Jeroboam II King of Israel, roughly 769-715 BC, a time span of over 50 years, from 2nd half of Jeroboam reign to Hezekiah.

Hos 1:2-3 Hosea’s unusual calling

• Hosea is told by God to marry a prostitute (a wife of whoredom) and have children with her (children of whoredom).
• This raises the question whether God would ever do this, or whether it is even against the law (marrying an unbeliever).
• OT Laws in regards to prostitution
  • Lev 21:7,14 priests not allowed to marry prostitute, but there is not indication of Hosea being a priest
  • Lev 19:29 Father is forbidden to encourage or make his daughter to become a prostitute
  • Deu 23:18 Prostitutes pay could not be accepted as offering for temple or payment
  • ? Children of prostitute were outlawed
  • Lev 21:9 a Priests daughter who becomes a prostitute could be burned to death with fire
  • Deu 22:21 A bride with prior sexual relations was stoned to death for adultery
• What really happened?
  • Some say the marriage never really happened, it is a mere vision or pure allegory
  • Some say Gomer was a prostitute in spiritual matters (an idolater), just as the nation as a whole, not a prostitute
  • I think Gomer was indeed a prostitute, and Hosea actually married her.
• Would God command that? It is not his usual standard? Can we draw ‘loose marriage rules’ from this?
• The very heart-wrenching hurtfulness of Hosea’s situation is what drives home the theme of God love for the unworthy
• No other prophet comes nearer to the New Testament Revelation of the love of God.
• The fact that Hosea marries a prostitute has deeply affected him, this is evident in his emotional book
• Hosea is ‘controlled by his subject’ instead of ‘controlling it’, just as God is controlled by his love for his people
• Hosea’s heart speaks in this book, his words comes out like the sobs of a broken heart. Hosea does not say he is weeping as Jeremiah does (Jer 18:18, 18:21, 9:10), but we hear it in his broken utterances, just as God’s heart broken over the unfaithfulness of Israel
• This book powerfully reveals God’s character: He is gracious beyond all reason, he finds a reason for grace where there is none. He is steadfast love. Why else would he go to such length to call back his people who show such indifference & lack of interest. It is Israel (and us) who put God in such situation.
• God does call his prophets to lives of identification, of obedience and sacrifice, doing things out of the ordinary laying down their lives that God might use it as his message.
• Their lives is the message that God is speaking. The messenger is the message. Hosea will marry a prostitute and be betrayed by her adultery, like God is betrayed by Israel’s idolatry. Jeremiah will be without a companion-wife to share God’s loneliness at Judah’s bitter end. Ezekiel sees his wife die to share God’s sense of bereavement over Judah.

Hos 1:4-9 Hosea & Gomer’s children: predictions of judgment

Son Jezreel

• Hos 1:4-5 “Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood 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 Jezreel.”
• ‘Jezreel’ means ‘God will sow, God disperses’. Jezreel (God sows) and Israel (God strives) sound very alike in Hebrew.
• Jezreel is a city in the plain of Sharon, near Mt. Gilboa, given to tribe Issachar.
• Jezreel is where evil King Ahab of Israel lived (1 Kin 21:2), it is where Elijah meets Ahab at the end of the famine (1 Kin 21:17), where Jezebel has Naboth murdered for a vineyard, where Jehu kills King Ahaziah of Israel and King Amaziah of Judah, and Jezebel, and where Ahab’s 70 sons’ heads are placed in a heap at the gate (2 Kin 10:1-11)
• 1st Prediction God will punish house of Jehu for blood of a Jezreel in a little while
• 2nd Prediction God will put an end to Kingdom of Israel.
  • The first Prediction is a counter-judgment on the house of Jehu, who did fulfill God’s command to wipe out the house of Ahab with great zeal (2 Kin 9: 6-8) and the Baal Cult (2 Kin 10:28). But he sins with the Bethel calf worship (2 Kin 10:29-31)
  • For this Jehu receives the promise of having 4 generations of sons sit on the throne (2 Kin 10:30).
  • Current King Jeroboam II is the 3rd generation. Soon this will fulfill indeed in 752 BC with Shallum killing Zechariah, the 4th generation from Jehu (2 Kin 15:11-12).
  • Why this judgment on Jehu’s house?
    • Half-heartedness … obeying God in one thing but not in another? Half-hearted means not really. God has all our heart or not really anything he wants. Lukewarm is not acceptable (Rev 3:15).
    • Judging powerfully yet not keeping a high standard himself? Excessive bloodshed (killing Ahaziah of Judah and kinsmen)
    • This theme of Israel’s sin of half-heartedness, hypocrisy and insincerity will be throughout the book (especially ch 6-7)
  • fulfilled in 752 BC, when Shallum murders Zechariah, son of Jeroboam II.
• 2nd Prediction God will put an end to the house of Israel, break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezebel
  • This fulfills by Shalmeneser of Assyria’s invasion & conquest in 722BC (2 Kin 17:5-6) by conquering and destroying Israel.
  • The picture of God dispersing Israel among the nations is indeed ‘Jezreel’. Hosea is a last call.
  • It also fulfills the curses for disobedience of Deu 28:63-64 and Lev 26:33.
• Message to the first Readers
  • Sin, half-heartedness, hypocrisy, syncretism will not go unpunished
  • In spite of what it looked like when Hosea was speaking this (Jeroboam II’s golden age), it does fulfill frightfully quick.
  • Challenge to Judah to have the fear of God, to stay faithful and wholeheartedly committed to covenant.
  • Kings and government are held accountable by God in all they do > no willful abuse of power, no corruption
• Application
  • Halfhearted commitment is hypocrisy and is a sin, God wants a wholehearted commitment
  • Trust God to fulfill his word, entrust judgment over injustice to him

Daughter Lo-Ruhamah

• Hos 1:6-7 ‘Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity of the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war; or by horses, or by horsement.”
• God announces Israels’ judgment. Hosea (together with Amos) is God’s ‘last call’ to Israel.
  • Though Israel’s doom as a nation is by now irreversible, individual repentance is still possible and wanted (why else announce the judgment?) .
  • The very clear contrast to Judah may also be an invitation, indeed an urgent last call to move Judah for those who take God’s work seriously. Another time when Israel ‘moves’ to Judah is during the good 3 years of Rehoboam (2 Chr 11:13-17). Hezekiah and Josiah will reach out to remaining Israel as well.
  • This is the moment when to ‘not intervene’ becomes too much of an injustice: this time is now here.
• Israel’s destruction fulfills with Assyria’s conquest and exile of Israel in 722 BC, a maximum 35y after this prediction.
• Judah being saved by God himself (not armies) is fulfilled in the supernatural defeat of the army of Assyria under Sennaherib (2 Ki 19:35) in 701 BC.
• But also: the reasons that make God give up on Israel are real. If Judah does the same, they will suffer the same fate > no reason for superiority or casualness, rather for humility and repentance

Son Lo-Ammi

• Hos 1:8-9 ‘Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people and I am not your God.’
• God now from his side words out what has been a reality from their side for 200 years: They haven’t treated God as their God for a long time. They have chosen: not God. So now God, after much patience, responds in kind: He will also separate himself from them. He will no longer call them ‘my people’. Divorce.
• Again: this painful statement from God’s side is meant to shake up Israel. They have become so accustomed to his continual long-suffering grace, to hear the divorce just maybe makes them think once more.
• For the Judah first readers this is a sore warning: by continual rejection of God I finally get what I chose: not him.
• By continual rejection of God I have now brought about what I wanted: a severed relationship. C.S. Lewis ‘All get what they wanted, but not all will like it.’ …’You can either reign in hell or serve in heaven.’
• This is in a real sense our self-chose hell: not to have God, to live in darkness, away from God who is all life, light, truth, justice and goodness.

Future Restoration and Hope

• Hos 1:10-11 ‘Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them’ you are not my people’, it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God. The people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head; and they shall take possession of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.’
• Though no repentance nor anything worth God has happened from human side, it seems God cannot remain with a ‘judgment only’ prophecy 🙂
• The promise of Gen 12:2 and Gen 32:12 is picked up again: Israel as an uncountable multitude. The promise of being a blessing swings with this.
• There is a re-adoption, a re-marriage. What does this refer to?
  • Judah and Israel gathered together, lead by one ‘head’, taking possession of the land … what does this refer to?
  • In a sense a restoration, this is what they once were. But in history this never fulfills, the 10 northern tribes never return, there is never again a self-appointed head (Maccabees over Judah at best) … What then?
• 3 Options of interpretation
  • 1 is refers to the return of Jews in 536 BC under Zerubbabel (the ‘head’), some of the returnees might have been from the 10 tribes (probably those that moved earlier in history).
  • 2 This must still be in the future, this refers to a physical Israel and physical Judah re-uniting and reigning under a ‘head’ in a apocalyptic age 2022++ AD.
  • 3 This must be a picture / metaphor for what happened or started to happen when Jesus came: a countless multitude, a blessing to all, the dispersed & exiled re-united, them ‘taking possession’ of their true inheritance (salvation), an abolishing of differences … not a bad picture for the church. Fulfillment 30 AD onwards.
  •  Then the day of Jezreel is also the day of ‘sowing’, of seed going out, of a harvest coming up in response, of a world-wide crop of believers from all peoples.
  • The Old covenant – in this sense – failed, God – in his mercy – now offers the New covenant.
  • The ‘head’ then refers to Jesus Christ, under whom true Israel, all who respond to God (of both Jews and Gentiles) shall be gathered together. The picture changes from scattering to sowing.
• Hos 2:1 Say to your brother ‘Ammi’ and to your sister ‘Ruhamah’ … Israel as God’s people and under God’s grace
• What does this show the readers about the character of God?
  • God’s desperate desire is always for restoration, he is forgiving, long-suffering, patient …
  • But not to be trifled with, he is holy & fiercely loving, therefore he can’t be satisfied except with having the whole heart

Idolatry

What is idolatry

• To put anything above God: to adhere, to look to, to put my hope in, to obey, to look to for value and meaning to anything other than the living God. Breaking the 1st commandment (Exo 20:2-3, Deu 5:6-7).
• The most obvious forms is: substitute God by false gods, worship idols, bow before images. Breaking the 2nd commandment (Exo 20:4-5, Deu 5:8-9).
• Israel was commanded to destroy all such idols and places when they settle in Canaan (Exo 23:21, 34:13, Deu 7:5)
• The law stipulates death penalty for idolatry (Exo 22:20) and for inducing another to commit idolatry (Deu 13:6-10).
• Hos 9:10 … ‘But they came to Baal-peor; and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.’ Principle of worshipers becoming like the things they worship. Also Jer 2:4, Psa 115, 2 Kin 17.
• Idolatry was introduced by Solomon & his many foreign wives, the syncretistic calf worship was set up by Jeroboam I, and Canaanite & more foreign idolatry was introduced in time.
• Idolatry could include offering burnt offerings (2 Kin 5:17) or incense (1 Kin 11:8) to the idol, presenting it with tithes & first fruits (Hos 2:8), kissing it (1 Kin 19:18) bowing down to it (1 Kin 18:26-28)
• As in Hosea, the use of the metaphor prostitution or whoredom refers to idolatry and unfaithfulness to God also in Jer 2-3 or Eze 16:23-29).
• It can also refer to smart political alliances & dependence on other nations for security instead of God (Hos 5:13, Jer 2:17-19, 3:1).

Hosea Chapter 2

• Hos 2:1-13 God trying to bring Israel to conviction & repentance by partial judgment
• Hos 2:2 “Plead with your mother, plead … – that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts.”
• Theme of children of adultery (Hos 1:2, 5:7), children who are affected and influenced, and often follow in the parents footsteps, and bring on themselves the same thing: Hos 2:4 “Upon her children also I will have no pity.” and Hos 4:6 “I will also forget your children.”
• Hos 2:2-13 is a dramatic retelling of a basic law teaching: By letting negative consequences or withdrawal of blessing affect the sinner God hopes to lead him to repentance. Remember the “if … then” of Lev 26?
• Hos 2:3 “I will strip her naked and expose her … and make her like a wilderness, and turn her into a parched land, and kill her with thirst … 8 She did not know that is was I who gave her the grin, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished upon her silver and gold that they used for Baal, 9 Therefore I will take back my gran in its time, and my wine in its season … 11 I will put an end to her mirth … 12 I will lay waster her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, “There are my pay, which my lovers have given me.” … 13 I will punish her.”
• God’s favor and blessing is (as in the law) expressed in plenty of food & essentials (grain, wine, oil, wool, flax)
• The sin of Israel is to think she got all these blessings from her lovers (Hos 2:5b) … sometimes the picture changes to her actually paying her lovers with these blessings.
• God’s answer: to withdraw the blessings from her in the hope of making her come to her senses … Hos 2:7b “Then she shall say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.” This concept is exactly paralleled in Jesus’ parable of the Lost Son, who eventually realizes he was better off with his father.
• God tries to give a new beginning:
• Hos 2:14 “I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor (where Achan was stoned, meaning ‘trouble’) a door of hope. There she shall respond as in the days of her your, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.”
• We know things weren’t glorious even then (see Exodus), but God is generous, forgiving, desiring to have her back, dreaming of ‘how it once was’.
• This is a Lawsuit Oracle with the elements of summon the guilty, charging with wrongdoing (adultery, going after her lovers, accrediting idols for blessings, incense to Baal) and giving the verdict (strip her, remove blessings, lack, thorns.
• Notice that the removal of blessings (Hos 2:12), the “hedging up of her way with thorns, building a wall against her” (Hos 2:6), the wilderness (Hos 2:3) are really blessings in disguise: God is trying to woo her into conviction and repentance, so as to forgive her. There is mercy in the wilderness.
• Application: The prophet’s bony finger, the stinging irony, the bite of conscience, the very judgment of God is mercy.

Hos 2:14-23 – Salvation Oracle

• God will – for no reason on our side – again try to lure us, to ‘lead us to repentance by his goodness’ (Rom 2:4).
• God will forgive and accept and cleanse again … re-marry us in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.
• This is in stark contrast with the betrayal, injustice, slighting, shame associated with adultery. This is the picture inverted: A true love, husband and wife, marrying in decency, lawfulness, legitimacy, commitment …
• Sometimes when we are in love or at least ‘in want’ anybody who counsels caution or against it is perceived as one who is against love. But that is not the point, the point is to do it right. If this girl is good, give her the honor of a decent, legal, honorable marriage.
• Hos 2:21-23 … And God is more than willing to bestow every blessing yet again: cultured land in contrast to the wilderness
• Hos 2:23 … And God is more than willing to accept again, to take back: Lo-ruhama will be given pity, Lo-ammi will be made his people … “and he shall say, “You are my God.” … which is the Exo 19:4-6 covenant restored: I will be your God and you will be my people.
• All throughout the prophets you will find a vivid interchange of judgment oracles and Salvation oracles. Sometimes it switches surprisingly quickly, in the middle of a sentence, breaking up everything.
• Hos 2:14 the Salvation oracle starts with a “therefore” … but really, Israel has given God no ‘therefore’, no repentance, no reason to be merciful. I think here the therefore is not because of Israel’s repentance, but rather because of God’s steadfast love. Grace is God’s unilateral undeserved intervention.
• Salvation oracle uses the repeated word “in that day” or “on that day” (Hos 2:16, 2:18, 2:21) to indicate the change.
• When does this refer to? When is this fulfilled?
  • One could say with Israel it doesn’t fulfill, it is destroyed in 722 BC, there is no return. It does fulfill for each individual that repents, though, also from Israel, possibly moving to Judah.
  • It fulfills at various times in Judah’s later history, when there are repentance movements (Hezekiah, Josiah).
  • It fulfills with the return of the Jews in 539 BC, when they again become the ‘people of God’.
  • But it is clear that this is ultimately fulfilled with Jesus’ message of forgiveness going out into the world.
• Many prophecies will be like that: with more immediate limited fulfillment, but also with more principal spiritual fulfillment in Jesus.

Hosea Chapter 3

• Hos 3:1 God commands Hosea: “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the LORD loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.’ So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine.”
• This probably refers to Hosea going to take back Gomer, who is not not so much called a harlot but an adulteress. He legally married her, so for her to go after somebody else is not adultery.
• Why does he have to pay a redemption price?
  • Actually as the wronged husband, he may have accused the adulterer (Le 20:10 death penalty on adultery for both man and woman), but then also Gomer would have to be punished.
  • In Prv 6:34-35 a case like this is described “the husband … will accept no compensation, and refuses a bribe no matter how great.”
  • But here it’s the other way round: the wronged husband Hosea pays to get her back.
  • Is this a picture for the shamelessness of Gomer? Of her holding on to the adulterer so Hosea has to practically beg (and pay!) to have her back? Of her having sold herself again and her being now in economic and legal bondage, from which he has to legally free her?
• I am not sure what exactly the situation was, but it is clearly a total and public humiliation of Hosea, having to beg, plead, pay to get back a very careless and adulterous woman, and becoming the laughing stock for everybody who will hear this story. Hosea gives up every right, he retains not even the right to be angry or offended. It’s total humility on his side. Why in the world would he? Why in the world would God?
• God is shown as utterly forgiving, utterly humble, willing, committed to accept any shame or ridicule for his faithful love … if only she may be saved. God has no pride. Only a torn heart. Nowhere in the OT is the picture of God as close to Jesus on the cross.
• Hos 3:3 “And I said to her, ‘You must remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the whore, you shall not have intercourse with a man, nor I with you.”
• A distancing from what was, a time of chastisement, discipline, coming to one’s senses is needed. Only a distance from current life-style will stop the ‘stumbling from one disaster into the next’. A separation from adultery is needed.
• Hosea also tries to put distance between ‘the others’ and himself. He is not like them. He doesn’t just use her at will, imposing his will or pleasure on her, buying her for his purposes, with her having no say. Hosea wants to be different. He doesn’t want her to be ‘obedient’, he wants her to respond to love. He doesn’t want her body, he wants her wholeheartedly. So he can’t command, he can’t claim. So he woos her again afresh.
• This is very much like God: having to forcefully intervene to save, to stop, to steady … but then not willing to go ahead unless we want to, unless we respond. God wants our wholehearted response, all of us.
• Hos 3:4 “For the Israelites shall remain many days without king or prince, sacrifice, pillar, ephod or teraphim. Afterward the Israelites shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; they shall come in awe to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.”
• What does this refer to?
  • Northern Israel will soon loose king, land and calling by the exile in 722 BC, but there is never really a return described.
  • Is the ‘return and seek David their king’ a last call invitation for Northerners to join the Southern kingdom before it is too late? It could be. For Israel’s kind is not David or a son of his. So this points to the South.
  • But Southern Judah will in a few centuries equally loose king, land and freedom by exile in 586 BC.
  • There will be a return spiritually and physically in the post 536 BC time, and they will ‘seek a David’ but not really seeing a fulfillment of this as Jews under big foreign empires
  • Yet “latter days” and the “seeking of the LORD and David their king” and the “coming in awe to the LORD and his goodness” is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus and in all who respond to him and his death on the cross (the goodness!) of whatever race.
  • Another example of telescopic prophecy: partial fulfillments take place earlier, but the real fulfillment is in Jesus.

Hosea Chapter 4

Spiritual leadership is guilty

• Hos 4:1 God summons Israel, he is announcing his court case, he has an indictment against Israel.
• Hos 4:2-3 God lays the charges: ‘There is no faithfulness or loyalty; and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea are perishing.”
• The charges are CHU, EDU, GOV, ECO, FAM … basically a breakdown in all areas. No surprise with idolatry. You become like the God you worship. Spiritual fall > moral fall > injustice, societal problems (family, economic, political and even ecological consequences). Sin doesn’t do anyone good. Rom 8:19-22 all creation groans.
• Hos 4:4-6 God lays the charges, particularly accusing the spiritual leadership: priest and prophet. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you rejected knowledge I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
• The problem is willful rejection of what could easily be known, it’s total neglect of one’s duty (priests: teach the law) and giving no importance to God’s word (forget the law).
• It’s not an innocent ‘oh, I didn’t know!’, it’s a willful rejection of God’s word and voice over centuries.
• God’s punishment is even and in kind: You refuse to be and do according to calling > I withdraw my calling (‘I reject you from being a priest to me’).
• Hos 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” … what a sentence! How true for Israel.
• How true today. The church, God’s people do not really know God’s word or will, and therefore act ‘as seems best’ and are destroyed by their choices.
• The crimes they are charged with are idolatry (rejecting God) and ignorance (rejecting knowledge), which leads to all other sins mentioned. These two are repeated themes in Hosea. They are also interlinked, causing and worsening each other. If I reject God, I reject his word and truth. If I reject truth, I know less about God and start believing lies.

Repeated Theme – Lack of knowledge of God

• Hos 4:6   “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you rejected knowledge > I reject you as priest”
• Hos 5:4    “Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is withing them, and they do not know God.”
• Hos 6:3    “Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD” … a needed but sadly only half-hearted repentance
• Hos 7:11    “Ephraim has become like a dove, silly and without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria.”
• Hos 8:2-3 “Israel cries to me, “My God, we Israel know you!” Israel has spurned the good, enemies shall pursue him.”
• Hos 8:4     “They made kings, but not though me; they set up princes, but without my knowledge.”
• Hos 8:12    “Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions, they are regarded as a strange thing”
• Hos 9:7      “Israel cries, “The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad.” Because of your great iniquity your hostility is great.”
• Hos 10:13   “You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies.”
• Hos 11:3      “Yet is was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.”
• Hos 13:4-5  “Yet I have been the LORD your God; ever since he land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who lead you in the wilderness, in the land of drought …”

Charges against Israel and judgment announcement continued

• Hos 4:7   “The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; they changed their glory into shame” (Rom 1:18) … “They” is presumably still priest and prophet.
• Hos 4:8   “They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity” … encouraging evil by own greed, especially devastating in leadership, and even worse in spiritual leadership. Greed and spiritual leadership are totally incompatible … if you are interested to get rich, don’t do ministry, do business.
• Hos 4:9   “And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.”
• Hos 4:10  “They shall eat, but not be satisfied, they shall play the whore, but not multiply; because they have forsaken the LORD to devote themselves to whoredom” … dissatisfaction, fruitlessness, like Ecclesiastes.
• Hos 4:11  “Wine and new wine take away the understanding” … lack of self-control and addiction is not okay for leadership. Remember the conditions for church leadership in Tit 1 and 1 Tim 3?> not greedy, not drunk.
• Hos 4:12-13a  “My people consult a piece of wood … they sacrifice on the tops of the mountains.” Descriptions of idolatry
• Hos 4:13b-14   daughters, daughters-in-law playing the whore, men, temple prostitutes … picture of adultery and idolatry combined
• Hos 4:15    “Though you play the whore, o Israel, do not let Judah become guilty. Do not enter into Gilgal or go up to Beth-aven, and do not swear “As the LORD lives.” … Expressing the prophet’s fear cum prayer (let Judah not also be infected!). Gilgal was a shrine (Amo 4:4), probably going back to when the tabernacle was there (Jo 4:19), also Samuel used it as a center when he judged Israel. Beth-Aven is a city of Benjamin, the name means ‘house of vanity’, it probably here refers to Bethel (house of God, Jeroboam I’s shrine) that has now become Beth-aven (house of vanity). Gilgal and Bethel mentioned together also in Amo 4:4.
• This is also expressing what God will soon do: Give up on Israel and shift all attention to Judah. See Hos 4:17 Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone. This has got to be one of the most tragic sentences in the Bible: God losing hope. The sudden focus on Judah could also be an invitation to escape Israel now (to Israelite readers) and wake-up call to Judah (they are not above danger.
• Hos 4:18 “When their drinking is ended, they engage in sexual orgies; they love lewdness more than glory” … addiction, adultery, idolatry
• Hos 4:19 “A wind has wrapped them in its wings and they shall be ashamed because of their altars.” The wind = God’s judgment (2 Sam 22:11 God rides on the wings of the wind, Psa 104:3 He rides on the wings of the wind, and make his ministers wind). When the defeat and exile happens, all the idols and altars are proven powerless.

Repeated Theme – willing, conscious, brazen rejection of God

• Hos 4:6     “Because you have rejected knowledge I reject you”
• Hos 4:10   “they have forsaken the LORD to devote themselves to whoredom”
• Hos 4:16   “Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn”
• Hos 4:17    “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone.”
• Hos 5:11    “Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after vanity.”
• Hos 7:16    “They turn to that which does not profit”
• Hos 8:2b   “Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him.”
• Hos 9:10    History retold: “They came to Baal-Peor, and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame, and became detestable like the thing they loved.”
• Hos 9:17    “Because they have not listened to him, my God will reject them.”
• Hos 11:9    “They shall return to Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.”
• Sore warning to the first hearers Israelites and to the first readers Judahites.
• God is not threatening punishment at a whim, he is not ‘easily offended’, he has been consistently, consciously, carelessly rejected over centuries. It takes a lot to make God give the final call, but when we have such an attitude to have convinced him that there is no hope, we will let the judgment fall.
• Do not play with God, do not ‘delay repentance’, do not ‘play with the fire’, do not think you will repent on your death bed. You will have ruined your life, not to speak of God’s loss, and you will no longer have the wisdom to repent.

Hosea Chapter 5

Spiritual and political leadership and the people are guilty

• Hos 5:1 God summons the priests, the people Israel and the king to listen
• Hos 5:10a  “The princes of Judah have become like those who remove the landmark” … The job of GOV is to protect people’s rights, here they are corrupt, greedy, abusing power, themselves the cause for the injustice
• Hos 5:1      “for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor; and a pit dug deep in Shittim; but I will punish all of them” … Mizpah, together with Bethel and Gilgal, is where Samuel judged (1 Sam 7:16, GOV link!), a town of Benjamin. Tabor was the location of a great deliverance by Deborah and Barak (Jdg 4:6), but had become a center for idolatry by this time. Mount Tabor is a border mountain between Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali. Shittim is the place Israel camped with Moses before crossing the Jordan.
• Hos 5:10b  “on them I will pour out my wrath like water” … God’s promise of eventual judgment on all this. You want to make God angry, here is a good way. O government, listen!
• Hos 5:4-5a “Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God; for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they do not know the LORD. Israel’s pride testifies against him”… Pride snares people in sin, prevents them from humbling themselves and returning to God, so they deprive themselves of forgiveness. Pride is self-exalting, always looking down, so it can’t see and know God.
• Hos 5:5b   “Ephraim stumbles in his guilt, Judah also stumbles with them”
• Hos 5:12    “Therefore I am like maggots to Israel, and like rottenness to the house of Judah”
• Hos 5:13a  “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his would … > went to Assyria.” Here both kingdoms are mentioned together, equally guilty, equally weakened by sin. This is a sore warning to Judah readers, especially one doom has fallen on Israel. See also Hos 6:4.
• Hos 5:13b  “Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is no able to cure you or heal your wound” … Weakness or partial judgments were meant to lead them to repentance, but in their pride they’d rather trust their own wits and smart political alliances. This is the other way the ‘adultery’ metaphor is used (though not spelled out here). Assyria will not only ‘not help them’, Assyria will terminate them! So much for smartness. To Judah’s readers this is also a challenge, for soon their own King Ahaz will make exactly the same mistake and call on Assyria, only reaping an almost conquest in 715 BC. Instead of humbling myself and repenting, I find justifications, excuses, escapes, which only bring on more entanglement & trouble & sin.
• Hos 5:7       “They have dealt faithlessly with the LORD, for they have borne illegitimate children” … Reasons for judgment
• Hos 5:5-14  “Ephraim and Judah shall stumble … 7 now the new moon shall devour them along with their fields. 8 Blow the trumpet in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah, Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; 9 Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of judgment … 10 I will pour out my wrath like water … 11 Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment … 12 Therefore I am maggots to Ephraim and like rottenness to the house of Judah … 14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house o Judah. I myself will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue” … Powerful metaphors. Visualizing & dramatizing the coming disaster (blow the trumpets!). Though the judgment will be by the hand of Assyria, it is a disaster coming by God himself who judges. How do you like the metaphors of maggots / moths and rottenness for God? Moths are very destructive to woolen & costly fabrics & clothes, it will eat the cloth until it fall to pieces.

Hosea Chapter 6

Israel’s half-hearted repentance

• Hos 6:1-3 “Come, let us return to the LORD; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise up, that we may live before him. 3 Let us know, let us press on to know the LORD, his appearing is a sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, live the spring rains that water the earth.”
• Wonderful, powerful words: God is the reason for the trouble (or really our sin), but he is also the solution. Becoming God centered again in repentance.
• Living before him ‘coram Deo’ … what a calling! what an encouragement! what an accountability!
• As much as it was willful rejection of God and his knowledge, so it is us deciding to ‘press on’, it’s a matter of commitment, a matter of the will, the heart.
• Verse 2 is an unexpected Messianic prophecy popping up, ultimately accomplished in the death & resurrection of Jesus. Only in Jesus this is fulfilled, and repentance and restoration happens fully.
• Hos 6:4 “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early.”
• God is wistful here, would be happy to believe the wholehearted repentance, and willing to accept it, eagerly, but He is not fooled. He knows that this is not wholehearted, nor lasting. In dry land countries the temperatures of day and night are extremely different, unlike Bangladesh’s tropical climate. Just after dawn there may be dew, or morning clouds, but in arid sun-parched climates this disappears within shortest time of sun rise.
• Their concern is healing, but not cleansing; happiness, but not holiness; a change of circumstances, but not a change of heart and character. It is to treat God a lifeguard, to rescue me when in danger, but not as somebody with the authority to demand change in my life. We want a quick fix, which is the mark of an unrepentant heart, not willing to pay the price for deep cleansing. Deep cleansing will take humility, honesty, patience, willingness to agree and obey, a ditching of pride and self-will.
• Hos 6:5  “Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the word of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light” … God’s usual pathway of getting our attention: prophets, partial judgments. Though the metaphor’s are negative ‘hewn’, ‘killed’, this really is grace, a strong message and warning, an attempt to avert the final doom.
• Hos 6:6  “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” … not religious activities but heart change, echoing back to Samuel’s challenge to Saul in 1 Sa 15:22, where it is ‘obedience’ rather than burnt offerings. But in Hebrew thinking knowledge and practice isn’t separated, to know God is to obey God.
• Hos 6:7-10 “But at Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. 9 As the robbers lie in wait for someone, so the priests are banded together; they murder on the road to Shechem; they commit a monstrous crime. In the house of Israel I have seen a horrible thing; Ephraim’s whoredom is there, Israel is defiled.” … Adam is probably referring to Gen 3, Gilead was conquered by King Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria at the time of Pekah’s reign; many were captured and exiled (2 Kin 15:29). Shechem, a Levitical city of Ephraim, surrounded by Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, where Joshua has the solemn ceremony of Jos 8:30-35 and also where he makes the covenant with the 3rd generation at the end of his life (Jos 24:1).
• Hos 6:11 For you also, O Judah, a harvest is appointed. …. If this was spoken by Hosea to Israel, it would be an indication of the justice of God, who doesn’t just ‘favor’ Judah over Israel. If this was only added in the writing: It is an important side-slash at the Judah readers, to not be too sure, to not think themselves above Israel, to not disdain nor rejoice, but to take the sore warning seriously. What happened to Israel can happen to Judah … unless you repent.

Hosea Chapter 7

Political leadership and people’s total corruption revealed

• Hos 7:1-7 People sin: corruption, wicked deeds, deal falsely, thief, bandits, please the king & officials by wickedness and treachery, adulterers. King and officials sin: encourage people’s wickedness, drink, heat of wine, mock, anger smoldering, blazing … devour rulers, kings fall … Hard to know which, people or leadership, but it seems to be almost indistinguishably corrupt, people and leadership.
• The remaining 30 years of Israel (752-722 BC) are years of great instability, of continual assassinations and leadership changes, of increasing chaos.
• Hos 7:8-9 Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples … foreigners devour his strength. Could refer to marriages to idolaters, but because of the 2nd part it probably here refers to political alliances, Israel paying money but nothing coming of it.
• Hos 7:9 “Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, but he does not know it” … a sad metaphor of the consequences of sin, but also of Israel thinking himself so smart, but really not getting it at all. It’s premature old age, exhaustion, and finally a premature death.

Repeated Theme – “Political Alliances”

• Hos 5:13   “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, to the great king.”
• Hos 7:11    “Ephraim … without sense; they call upon Egypt, they go to Assyria”
• Hos 8:9     “They have gone up to Assyria, a wild ass wandering alone; Ephraim has bargained for lovers. Though they bargain with the nations, I will now gather them up. They shall soon writhe under the burden of kings and princes” … here the metaphor is very clear: political alliances = adultery.
• Hos 9:3, 11:5 “They shall not remain in the land of the LORD, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food” … God’s punishment, if you want to call it that, is as so often (see for example Num 14) in kind: you wanted to go to Assyria? Okay, to Assyria you shall go.
• Hos 14:3    Repentance: “Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; we will say no more, ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands” … the twin sins of political alliances and idolatry (both depicted as adultery).
• Hos 7:7      God: “none of them calls upon me.”
• Hos 7:10    “They do not return to the LORD, nor seek him”
• Hos 7:13    “I would redeem them but they speak lies against me” … same point by stating the opposite: What God would want, is simple faith in him, trust in him, making him our center. How difficult is it???
• Hos 12:1    “they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a treaty with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt” … olive oil was a product of rural Israel.
• Baking metaphors … Hos 7:4-8 “heated oven”, implying fierceness, injustice, violence, adultery, greed, lust … a cake not turned, implying half-heartedness, being uncooked, not good nourishment, a wasted blessing or opportunity.
• Sore warning to Israel that their political smartness is doomed. Conquest is coming. Now is the last chance to repent as a nation or as an individual. King Pekah makes an alliance with Syria against Judah. King Hoshea is a vassal to Assyria, then rebels.
• Sore warning to Judah to not go down the same path. Ahaz and Hezekiah of Judah both also make political alliances, Ahaz with Assyria, Hezekiah with Egypt and Babylon.
• Application Evaluate yourself: where do you turn? From what do you get safety? Who do you look to? How serious am I in my relationship with God? Careful with over-estimating yourself. Pride is forever our number one enemy. Counter it by accepting correction, inviting and considering others’ opinions, valuing others, being thankful for what is given.

Hosea Chapter 8-10

Idolatry and syncretistic Religiosity but no repentance > Judgment is certain

• Hos 8:4     “They made kings, but not through me, they set up princes, but without my knowledge.”

Repeated Theme – Idolatry

• Hos 8:4-14 “With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. 5 Your calf is rejected, O Samaria … 6 For it is from Israel, and artisan made it; it is not God. 8 The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces. … 14 When Ephraim multiplied altars to expiate sin, they became to him altars for sinning …”
• The calf was actually in Bethel, but since Samaria is the capital, it stands for Israel in general here. Prophecy of the breaking of the Bethel shrine. According to God’s prophecy (Hos 10:6) the calf is taken to Assyria, but it seems the shrine and altar itself remains (Assyrians were idol worshipers themselves and don’t seem to have pulled down all shrines). The destruction of the shrine and altar is by King Josiah in 640-609 BC.
• The overall message of idolatry hit home again: Israel, you have got to repent now. Judah: you have got to be careful!

Repeated Theme – Syncretistic Religiosity

• Hos 8:2-3 “Israel cries to me “My God, we – Israel – know you!” Israel has spurned the good; the enemy shall pursue him” … God is not fooled.
• Hos 8:13    “though they offer choice sacrifices, though they eat flesh, the LORD does not accept them.”
• Hos 9:4     “they shall not our drink offerings of wine to the LORD, and their sacrifices shall not please him. Such sacrifices shall be like mourners bread; all who eat of it shall be defiled; for their bread shall be for their hunger only; it shall not come to the house of the LORD. 5 What will you do on the day of appointed festival, and on the day of the festival of the LORD?”
• It seems that Israel still maintains that it is ‘worshiping God’, probably thought the Bethel calf cult (God being enthroned on the bull or something). God slashes that to pieces.
• Hos 8:12 Though I write for him the multitude of my instructions, they are regarded as a strange thing … it is self-appointed religious rituals but has nothing to do with knowing, loving and obeying God.
• Remember 1 John : to know = to love = to obey. You can’t just do your religious rituals and think that God has to be pleased with that.

Repeated Theme – The judgment is certain

• Hos 8:1    “Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the LORD” … dramatizing of the coming conquest and slaughter (vultures come to watch battles, then prey on the slain).
• Hos 8:7-13 “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. … 8 Israel is swallowed up; how they are among the nations a useless vessel. … 13b Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins; they shall return to Egypt” … The metaphor of ‘useless vessel’ is tragic, what a far cry from Israel’s calling from being a light to the nations (Exo 19:4-6)!
• Hos 9:3    “They shall not remain in the land of the LORD, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and in Assyria they shall eat unclean food”
• Fulfillment?
  • Exile to Assyria in 722 BC is obvious. How about Egypt?
  • Maybe Egypt here stands metaphorically for ‘going back to slavery’. Maybe this is literally fulfilled by slave trade and the like.
• Hos 9:7    “The days of punishment have come, the days of recompense have come” … no more delay, judgment is irreversible by now.
• Hos 10:2-6 “Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars … 5 the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-Aven. Its people shall mourn for it … the thing itself shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. 6 Ephraim shall be ashamed of his idol … 8 The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grown on their altars” … Judgment specifically on the idolatrous sites. Again: ‘Beth-Aven’, ‘high places of Aven’ probably means Bethel. Remember ‘Aven’ means ‘vanity’.

Remaining Themes

• Hos 9:10   Short retelling of history: Israel picked up by God but then falling into idolatry.
• Hos 9:12     Warning: “Woe to them indeed when I depart from them!”
• Hos 9:12-17 Family metaphors: “Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them until no one is left … 13 but now Ephraim must lead out his children for slaughter … 14 Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts … 15 I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more … 16 Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will kill the cherished offspring of their womb.”
• Hos 10:1   “Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more the fruit increased the more altars he built as his country improved, he improved his pillars” … The metaphor is picked up, but now used a bit differently: Israel used God’s real blessing on them for idolatry.
• Why the family metaphors? > to emotionally bring home to the hearers the terrible reality of the coming war.
• But also because its parallel to the other metaphor of fruitlessness. They are fruitless indeed, literally and also spiritually. They have flunked their calling, the young stately palm tree planted in a lovely meadow (Hos 9:12) is drying up, it has nothing good to give. This again is also a sore warning to Judah.
• Growth, development and fruitfulness are wonderful promises of God, but he also demands them.
• Hos 10:11-11  “Ephraim was a trained heifer that loved to thresh, and I spared her fair neck … But I will make Ephraim break the ground; Judah must plow; Jacob must harrow for himself” … God being very gracious to those willing to obey his word and do his work. But now Israel’s ground is hard. Also: parallel warning to Judah.
• Hos 10:12-15  “Sow for yourself righteousness … 13 you have plowed wickedness, and have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your power and in the multitude of your warriors, 14 therefore tumult of war shall rise against your people … fortresses shall be destroyed … 15 Thus it shall be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great wickedness. At dawn the king of Israel shall be utterly cut off” … Again calling out, and showing what will surely come as a fruit of choices: destruction. False trust in own armies (as false trust in political alliances) rather than in God.
• God is not looking for perfection – but for a broken and contrite spirit

Hosea Chapter 11

God’s past and future mercies

• Hos 11:1 “Out of Egypt I call my son” … quoted in Mth 2:13-15 as referring to Jesus, who as a small child was taken by his parents to Egypt.
• Here the context seems to indicate that this refers to Israel as a nation, whom God calls out of Egypt in Exodus.
• This is not necessarily a contrast: In Isaiah we will see the theme that Jesus truly is what Israel was meant to be: the son of God, the servant of God, the blessing to the nations.
• Hos 11:2-4 Retelling of history: God adopting Israel as his son, his own nation, loving them
• Hos 11:5-7 Israel is a rebellious son, a prodigal, refusing to return to God, enjoying God’s blessings, but taking God for granted
• Hos 11:8-9 God’s heart poured out, compassion though no reason given, acceptance and mercy
• Hos 11:9 It is interesting that in the book where God says “I am God and no mortal” is the book where he seems to be most ‘human’ 🙂
• Hos 11:10-11  “They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD” …
• When is this fulfilled?
  • Israel as a nation does not return at all, there is not recorded return from Egypt or Assyria, though some might have migrated to Judah. Also the overall message is still one of judgment which is not suspended.
  • Judah as a nation does return (though not really from Egypt nor Assyria) in 536 BC. But what about the West? There is nothing in the West of Israel, other than the Mediterranean. The metaphor ‘West’ has barely come so far in the books we’ve read, if at all.
  • This indicates that we have to take this prophecy as more far reaching, as being about Jesus. Then it is a metaphorical text: Egypt stands for ‘bondage’, Assyria for ‘exile’, the different locations for ‘the world’, Israel for ‘God’s people’ or NT believers from all tribes.
  • We will increasingly find prophecies like this: a sudden widening-out of the scope and vision, a

Hosea Chapter 12

What Israel was meant to be – and is not

• Hos 12:1-5, 12-13 A retelling of Jacob’s story, his struggle with his sibling Esau (Gen 25:26), his meeting God at Bethel (the Bethel the calf worship is at now! Gen 28:10-22), his struggle with God (Gen 32:28), but coming to faith and peace. The retelling even includes Moses (the prophet bringing up Israel from Egypt) …
• Hos 12:1    the metaphor “pursuing the east wind” means to pursue something empty, actually destructive (hot, dry)
• Why this retelling? What Bethel really once was: the place where God spoke with Israel / Jacob … What Israel should be: one to pursue God, his blessings, his presence. Israel here includes the Southern and Northern kingdom, challenging them both to be what they were meant to be.
• Hos 12:6     a call to repentance: “But as for you, return to your God, hold fast to love and justice and wait continually for your God.”
• Hos 12:7-14 Contrast to what Israel really is: a cheat, proud, self-sufficient, presumptuous, sinning … pride in wealth, but unrighteous gain – this is Jeroboam II’s economic flower.

Hosea Chapter 13

Ephraim’s sin led the nation to death

• Hos 13:1    Again an emotional picture of who the tribe of Ephraim once was: exalted, powerful, influential … “But he incurred guilt through Baal and died”. Jeroboam I of Ephraim founded Israel on the calf-cult in spite of God’s promise and set the nation on a path of destruction.
• Hos 13:4-6 A retelling of history, how God chose Israel, revealed himself … but they grew proud and forgot God
• Hos 13:7-13 So therefore God now is against them … a lion, leopard, bear, wild animal … no king, ruler can save him
• Hos 13:14    Yet in all the judgment there is a turn around … “Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death?” … the implied answer is clearly “no”. But then it turns: “O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?” which Paul quotes in 1 Cor 15:55 as referring to resurrection. In resurrection Death is abolished and Sheol is emptied. … then it turns negative again (Hos 13:14c-16).
• Application my disobedience & selfish choices affects the future generations, just as the obedience and loving choices affects future generations for good. We have to be intentional to be a good example.
• How can you live your life, how can you make wise and loving choices so the generation after us reaps the blessings of our obedience
• We are primarily responsible for this generation … and also to influence the future generation positively.

Hosea Chapter 14

Restoration and call to return

• Hos 14:1, 2, 7   Three times repeated the call to “return” … also another 22 times in Hosea. Hosea is putting words in people’s mouths how they could come back to God.
• Hos 14:4-7       A series of God’s wonderful promises, expressing his generosity to the repentant, his utter willingness to take them back > motivation for repentance: it’s not too late, it’s not impossible. Hosea pictures restoration like a new life in a dry field, the fallow ground becoming a fruitful garden.
• Hos 14:2          “offer the fruit of our lips” … the right attitude: a broken spirit, a broken, contrite heart (Psa 51:16-17).
• Hos 14:8-9      Hosea offers 2 alternatives: to rebel against the Lord and continue to stumble or to return to the Lord and walk securely in his ways … echoing Deu 30:19: “choose life!”

Summary

• You will never understand the prophets unless understand love of God. Since I love them: it matters how they live their lives, care passionately, otherwise I wouldn’t be their father. You can’t let them carry on, you can’t let them off, you can’t let them down.
• Amos and Hosea side by side. Hosea wooing, Amos biting, Justice side by side with love. Justice and mercy > Jesus Christ at the cross. Wrath against sin and patient love for the sinner.
• God’s tender, vulnerable heart is revealed most in Hosea, before Christ … On Palm Sunday: Jesus pausing on mount olive > crying for city, people … seeing their future destruction