Chapter 18 HOSEA
Hosea is less in the face than Amos. He starts by taking the people back to their first agreement with God. We looked at that in our very first study and the covenant with Adam:
As Adam transgressed the covenant by being faithless with me, so have you, says God. 198
Hosea gave the very last call for Israel to repent. He spoke just ten-years after Amos and forty-years before they were carried off by Assyria. This book is important because it is prominent in the minds of the people at the time of Jesus and the early church. Understanding this book will help iron out a few anomalies in the teaching of Jesus. Why, for example, was there an elder son in the parable of the prodigal son? Where did Paul gets the term “In accordance with the scriptures”? Where do we also get the same term every time we recite the apostle’s creed? It all comes from Hosea’s prophesies.
The first three chapters are deliberately about Hosea. Hosea is pictured as the faithful husband who marries a flirty woman. His wife becomes unfaithful and commits adultery. Some translators themselves are not entirely ‘faithful’ to the Hebrew here. He does not marry a prostitute, that is a different Hebrew word altogether. Each of his children are named to reinforce a prophecy he must give. The first child is a child of a faithful marriage and is called Jezreel. Jezreel is a place name and means “God sows it”. Jezreel became a rebellious and unruly child. The name refers to the time when Elisha went to Jezreel to anointed Jehu king. In his anointing Jehu was commissioned to punish Ahab for killing the prophets but Jehu overstepped the mark and massacred the whole royal family. Hosea prophesies the time has now come to judge Jehu’s excessive wrong. “Just as you ended Israel’s royal line so his line will end”. Which it did under the Assyrians forty-years later.
Lo-Ruhamah is the result of an adulterous relationship of his wife. Hosea adopts the child into the family. Lo-Ruhamah Means “no mercy” and in his explanation Hosea plays on the words in his second prophesy. Lo-Ruhamah and Ruhamah
Then Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. The Lord said to Hosea, "Name her Lo-Ruhamah, because I will not show mercy to the nation of Israel any-more, nor will I forgive them. But I will show mercy [Ruhamah] to the nation of Judah.199
Israel was guilty of unfaithfulness in two ways, in clear breach of the marriage covenant made at Sinai when God said He alone would be their protector, and flirting with the gods of other nations which finally ended in an unfaithful pact with a foreign nation.
You shall make no covenant with them and their gods200
The third child, Lo-Ammi means “not my people”. Hosea adopted Lo-Ammi also.
In verse-ten he explains the time is coming when God will increase his family by bringing in people from outside of Israel.
Hos 1: 9 Then the Lord said, “Name him Lo-Ammi, because you are not my people, and I am not your God.” “In the future the number of the people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which you cannot measure or count. In the same place that God told them’’, ‘You are not my people [Lo-Ammi],” he will change their name to [Ammi] My People”
That happened first time when Assyria took half of Israel to Assyria and replaced them with other people from Cutha and surrounding places. These became known as Samaritans. The prophecy finally came to fulfilment when Jesus said go into all the world and make disciples, baptising them into the Trinity. Many people from all over the world had been adopted into the family before this201, but now it was declared part of the family mission and a proactive wish of God to increase the scope of his family.
Moving forward to the New Testament and the Gospel of John, past the wedding which was in Samaria! Move on again to the woman at the well—which was where? Samaria! Focus for a moment on an adulteress at a well, and make no mistake she was flirting with Jesus. (Read the conversation again with all its innuendos). Samaritans held the book of Hosea dear as it declared the promise that Messiah would come from their land of Samaria to restore them and the world. They thought that because Messiah would be called a Nazerene. This Samaritan woman understood when Jesus redirected her from flirting, to the faithful husband Hosea who would adopt the people into his family. It is her spiritual insight that leads her to say, “I have found the Messiah”. Jesus says: you are thirsty in life and you look to adultery to satisfy that thirst.
“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you satisfying water.’… for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. You search for true worship …But now, with God’s gift of adoption, you can worship the Father in spirit and truth, 202
Later, when Paul says, “He rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures”, he is quoting Hosea.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,203
"Come, let’s return to the Lord. He hurt us, but he will heal us. He wounded us, but he will put bandages on us. After two days he will bring us back to life. He will raise us up on the third day. Then we can live near him’’.204
Hosea is the prophet who proclaims God made a covenant with Adam.205.
Peter quotes Hosea and reminds his readers of the play on the words “no-mercy” will now have mercy.206
Paul uses Hosea again as his authority to preach to gentiles. 207
Neither last nor least, The parable of the prodigal son found its mark in the Pharisees conscience. Jesus told the story not primarily as a gospel story but in answer to a criticism by the Pharisees, “This man receives sinners and eats with them”.208 If the Pharisees had not been present, the story of the prodigal son would have had no need to include the elder brother. But the Pharisees recognised immediately he was refering to Hosea and it made them angry. They may have felt they had remained faithful to the letter of the father’s kingdom but they had never captured the father’s heart. God, as the faithful husband and father, longed for the whole family to be reunited and assembled. He was contrasting the Pharasees “no-mercy” for the Samaritains and other gentiles with the mercy that would bring everyone onto the family. He was talking of Judah and Israel who had gone after the good life. They would be brought back together with all his adopted children down through time. So, it is not just a requirement of God that people keep his rules and work in his vineyard, this is a heart of God that had to be captured.
Hosea has the same message for Israel
“Come, let’s return to the Lord. He hurt us, but he will heal us.
He wounded us, but he will put bandages on us.
How is this to happen?
After two days, he will bring us back to life.
He will raise us up on the third day.
Then we can live near him. 209
He concludes his prophecies with the challenge:
A wise person understands these things,
a smart person should learn them.
The Lord’s ways are right.
Good people will live by them.
Sinners will die by them. 210
198Hosea 6: 7
199 Hosea 1: 6
200 Exodus 23: 32
201 God often adopted people of other nations into his family on the basis of their faith. Rahab and Ruth for example became part of the Sceptre line.
202 John 4:
203 1 Corinthians 15: 4
204 Hosea 6: 1
205 Hosea 14: 9
206 Peter 2: 10
207 Romans 9: 25ff
208 Luke 15: 1
209 Hosea 6: 1
210 Hosea 14: 9