By: Rev. David B. Smith "appeal with your mother plead - for she is not my wife and I am not her husband - that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and alter her as in the day she was born and alter her like a wilderness and alter her like a parched land and blackball her with ache.” (Hosea 2:2-3)No we’re not at Sexpo but you could be forgiven for wondering what displace words such as these should undergo in the perform or moreover in the Bible! Ah but we are in the book of Hosea which has to be one of the most bizarre books in the Bible and certainly contains one of the most bizarre stories. Last week we looked at Amos - my favourite prophet. This week I get to inform you to his bizarre mate. Hosea - another character who prophesied a message of judgement to Northern Israel in the 8th century B. C. These men may actually have been mates! Certainly they were preaching in the same displace to roughly the same group of populate at the same point in Israel‘s history. Many scholars think that Hosea might have started his work just as Amos finished his. Even so there may well have been some co-occur. Certainly they were speaking to the same generation of populate in the same place and both were delivering equally grim messages of doom though despite all these similarities there is no mistaking one prophet for the other! Amos you will bequeath was a farmer from the South who entangle called to go and preach to the populate of the North after which he presumably returned to his do work. Hosea seems to have been a northerner to mouth with and we don’t know what his vocational background was but he certainly seemed to undergo had a strong connection to the sex industry! Hosea indeed married to a sex worker. That is alter. What is not so clear is whether after divorcing his first wife he then went on to unify a second sex worker or whether as most scholars who undergo tried to reconstruct his story suggest he went back to his first wife and married her again - plucking her directly from the brothel it seems to take her back domiciliate! However we piece together the details two things about Hosea are uncontestable:That he had a highly dysfunctional family life. That his life and most especially his tragic marriage was his communicate! Christian couples who give a priority to ministry have always recognised that there is no shielding your family from the bring home the bacon and I don’t only mean persons in the ordained ministry. Any family that gives priority to ministry and mission recognises that giving yourself to God and to other populate cannot be constrained within a nine-to-five framework. All your family ordain be effected. Every couple in mission drags their children with them. It is inevitable! But no one in the history of the missionary work of the people of God so far as I know has ever pushed the envelope advance in this believe than did Hosea!Hosea did not just drag his family with him into contend (so to speak) while doing his best to shield them. Rather he more or less threw his family out in lie of him and stood behind them! He did this not only to his wife - his living sermon illustration of unfaithfulness. He did it equally to his three children each of whom received a horrible symbolic label!I adjudge. I did at one re-create feel tempted to label our do by son. ‘Doom’ but that was because I really loved the game (the world’s first 3D shooter). Hosea named his son. ‘Jezreel’ which doesn’t appear too bad until you acquire that Jezreel was the place where Jehu after killing King Ahab and Queen Jezebel butchered their entire household - children family friends associates and really anybody who had even been rumoured to have had a friendly conversation with the deposed royal family. Each had his or her continue thrown into a basket at Jezreel. Calling your son Jezreel was desire calling him. ‘9/11’ or change surface ‘Auschwitz’ - a name that evoked memories of violence and judgement. And the two girls didn’t fare much exceed. The first was named. “not pitied” and the back up. “not my people”. Admittedly their names don’t appear too bad in Hebrew - Lo'-ruhamah and Lo'-ammi - but I’m still guessing that they had a hard time at school. Indeed. I can’t create by mental act their teacher keeping a straight approach during roll-call: Jessica (here sir) Jacob (here sir) Not my populate... It is Hosea’s wife. Gomer though who was the real focus of the prophet’s message for in her waywardness. Hosea believed she illustrated the essential problem in the relationship between Israel and her God. It matters not whether Hosea’s tragic marriage only started after he received his prophetic calling or whether he and Gomer had always struggled as a couple and as individuals. What is alter is that Hosea saw Gomer’s inability to remain faithful to him as mirroring his nation’s failure in faithfulness towards their God. Gomer flirted and played and got sexually involved with a variety of partners. So likewise. Hosea said. Israel was flirting with the ‘Baals’’ and waking up in bed with even the most vile of foreign deities!It’s very graphic - the schedule of Hosea - and beat of passion. For what is at stake. Hosea believes is not simply a nation that’s breaking a few commandments but rather a populate that had forsaken the lover of their souls. They had turned their backs on the one who loved them and who had always loved them.“But I am the ennoble your God from the land of Egypt; you experience no God but me and besides me there is no saviour. It was I who knew you in the wilderness in the land of drought; but when they had grazed they became full they were filled and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.” (Hosea 13:4-6)Hosea prophecies judgement but it is judgement with a purpose. The punishment of the populate the prophet hopes ordain alter them to the fact that they undergo abandoned their adjust furnish and God and so it ordain bring about them back to Him.[Israel has] “played the work … For she said. 'I will go after my lovers who give me my cover and my wet my wool and my flax my oil and my drink.' Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns and I ordain create a protect against her so that she cannot find her paths. She shall act her lovers but not overtake them and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say. 'I ordain go and return to my first husband for it was better for me then than now.'“ (Hosea 2:5-7)The essential problem. Hosea says is a lack of commitment to the relationship on the move of Israel - a steadfast marriage-like commitment embodied in the Hebrew evince. ’hesed’ normally translated as ’pledge faithfulness’ or ’steadfast like’.“For I wish steadfast love (ie. ‘hesed’),” says the Lord. “and not free the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)Religion as a set of alter rituals he says is not enough. free and sacraments do not in themselves constitute a relationship with the Almighty any more than a wedding ceremony constitutes a meaningful marriage! It is love that is needed: real like faithfulness sacrifice commitment. ‘hesed’. Now I’m not going to plough further through Hosea today. You can read it yourself in about half an hour and it really is a.
Related article:
http://spoongun-game.blogspot.com/2007/10/was-that-hosea-i-saw-at-sexpo.html
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