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Scripture Reading: Hosea 2:2-23; 3:1-5
In this message we will continue to consider the symbol of a wife of harlotries.
The harlotries of Gomer as the wife to the prophet Hosea symbolize the adulteries of Israel as the unchaste wife to Jehovah (2:2-13).
Verse 2a says, “Contend with your mother; contend.” This indicates that Jehovah wanted the returned Israelites (the daughters) to contend with the adulterous people of Israel (the mother).
In verse 2b Jehovah says, “She is not my wife, / And I am not her husband.” This implies a kind of divorce. The situation forced God to do something abnormal. However, God’s divorcing Israel was based upon His strong determination to receive her back again. In a sense, God divorced Israel, but He did this with the intention of receiving her back again. What God does concerning Israel is based upon what He is.
In verses 2c through 4 we have Jehovah’s warning to Israel. First He charged her to turn away her harlotries from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts (v. 2c). If she failed to do this, He would strip her naked as in the day she was born and make her a wilderness and a dry land and slay her with thirst (v. 3). Moreover, on her children He would not have compassion, for they were the children of harlotries (v. 4).
Verse 5a tells us that Israel has gone about as a harlot and acted shamefully. She even went so far as to say, “I will go after my lovers, / Who gave me my bread and my water, / My wool and my flax, / My oil and my drink” (v. 5b). She said that her daily necessities were supplied by her lovers, that is, by her idols. That, of course, was a lie.
In verse 6 Jehovah says, “Therefore I will now hedge up / Her way with thorns; / And I will build up a wall against her, / So that she will not find her paths.” Quite often the great God would do many small things in order to frustrate us for the purpose of dealing with us. As Paul says in Romans 8:28, all things, great and small, work together for our good. As we will see, this was the situation with the prophet Jonah. The great fish, the castor oil tree, and the worm were all used by God to deal with Jonah.
Hosea 2:7a goes on to say, “She will pursue her lovers / But will not overtake them; / And she will seek them but not find them.” This shows Israel’s stubbornness. Even though God will hedge her up and build up a wall against her, blocking her way, she will not return to Him but instead will pursue her lovers, her idols. However, eventually she will say, “I will go / And return to my first husband, / For it was better for me then than now.” This indicates that eventually she will return to God as her first Husband. All of us have had this kind of experience. First, we struggled persistently against God to a point, but later we returned to God to be with Him. We said, “I will return to God, for it was better then than now.”
Israel did not know that it was Jehovah who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil and who multiplied to her silver and gold. Rather, she used the silver and gold to serve Baal, an idol (v. 8).
Verse 9 tells us that Jehovah will take back His grain in its time and His new wine in its appointed season, and He will snatch away His wool and His flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Some may wonder whether the great God would do things such as this. Yes, God does such things in order to correct us, to adjust us, to perfect us, and to make us according to His intention.
Jehovah will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her from His hand. He will bring all her mirth to an end, her feasts, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed assemblies. He will desolate her vine and her fig tree, of which she said, “These are my payments / That my lovers have given me” (vv. 10-12a). He will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will devour them (v. 12b). He will also visit the days of the Baals upon her, in which she offered incense to them and adorned herself with her nose rings and her jewels and went after her lovers and forgot Jehovah (v. 13).
In 2:14-23 we see Jehovah’s restoration of the adulterous and apostate Israel.
Jehovah will lure Israel, He will bring her into the wilderness, and He will speak to her heart (v. 14). The wilderness should signify a wild place. During the Second World War Hitler made Germany a wilderness for the Jews, and today the Arab countries are trying to make the nation of Israel a wilderness. God would allow even this, for in the wilderness God can speak to Israel.
Quite often in our human life we enter into a situation which may be likened to a wilderness. Sometimes God will cause our environment to be a wilderness so that He may speak to us, to our heart.
Jehovah will give Israel her vineyards from there (the wilderness) and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. She will respond there as in the days of her youth and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt (v. 15).
In that day Israel will call Jehovah her Husband (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14; Ezek. 16:8) and will no longer call Him Baali (meaning “my Master” — Hosea 2:16). For Jehovah will take away the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they will no longer be remembered by their name (v. 17).
Jehovah will make a covenant for Israel in that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of heaven, and the creeping things of the earth (v. 18a). Just as God made for us a covenant with the living things at Noah’s time, so He will make such a covenant for Israel at the time of restoration. Because of this covenant, the beasts, the birds, and the creeping things will be in a good order. Also, God will break bow, sword, and battle from the land, and He will cause Israel to lie down in safety (v. 18b).
Jehovah will betroth Israel to Himself forever (v. 19a). Indeed, He will betroth her to Himself in five of His attributes — righteousness, justice, lovingkindness, compassions, and faithfulness — and she will know Jehovah (vv. 19b-20).
In that day Jehovah will answer the heavens, and the heavens will answer the earth with rain to enable the earth to grow things (v. 21). Then the earth will answer the grain, the fresh wine, and the oil, and they will answer Jezreel, which symbolizes sowing (v. 22).
Jehovah will sow Israel for Himself in the land of Palestine (v. 23a). He will have compassion on Lo-ruhamah (meaning “she has not obtained compassion”), and He will say to Lo-ammi (meaning “not My people”), “You are My people.” And they will say, “My God” (v. 23b).
Hosea 3:1-5 speaks of the confirmation of God’s faithful restoration of Israel.
“Then Jehovah said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion yet who is an adulteress, even as Jehovah has loved the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes” (v. 1). Here Jehovah told Hosea to love Gomer, a woman of adulteries, again. This symbolizes that Jehovah will love the children of Israel again, though they have turned to other lovers (other gods) and loved raisin cakes (pleasures for self). Apparently, God stopped loving Israel when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and again when Titus the prince of Rome destroyed Jerusalem. To this day Israel has been left alone, apparently without God’s love, yet God still cares for Israel in His own way.
Hosea was very obedient to God. He had married Gomer already, and she had borne him three children. Then she probably left him and committed adultery with her lovers. Later, as a symbol of His intention to love the children of Israel again, Jehovah told Hosea to love Gomer again, and Hosea did so.
Hosea told Gomer, the woman of harlotries, to abide with him many days without going about as a harlot nor being another man’s, and he would be the same toward her (vv. 2-3). According to verse 4, this symbolizes that the children of Israel would abide for many days without king, without prince, without sacrifice, without pillar (for worship), and without ephod and teraphim (idols in homes). These “many days” began when the Babylonians burned the temple. For seventy years the Jews did not offer sacrifices. The temple was rebuilt, but it was utterly destroyed by Titus in A.D. 70. From that time, Israel has been without king, without prince, and without their worship by offering sacrifices to God. Furthermore, from that time until the present, a period of nearly two thousand years, the Jews have not worshipped idols.
Later, as verse 5 reveals, the children of Israel will return and seek Jehovah and David their king (Christ in the millennium — Rev. 20:4, 6), and they will come with fear to Jehovah and to His goodness in the latter days (in the restoration age — Matt. 19:28).
What Hosea did in obedience to God’s command regarding Gomer was a confirmation of what God promised to do regarding Israel. God told Hosea to love Gomer again as a symbol of His intention to love Israel again. Today Israel is a Gomer, but the day is coming when God will restore her to Himself.
This restoration will be the result of the manifestation of Christ. Once again I would emphasize the fact that in the prophetic books four things are covered repeatedly: God’s chastisement on the Jews, God’s punishment upon the nations, the manifestation of Christ, and the restoration. God’s chastisement and punishment will issue in the manifestation of Christ, and the manifestation of Christ will bring in the age of restoration, the millennial kingdom, which ushers the old and ruined universe into the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem. If we see these four things, we will see what a hope we have in Christ.
