Hosea 2:1-13--Israel's Unfaithfulness Punished

Hosea 2:1-13
English Standard Version

Israel's Unfaithfulness Punished
2  Say to your brothers, “You are my people,” and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”

2 “Plead 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;
3 lest I strip her naked
    and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
    and make her like a parched land,
    and kill her with thirst.
4 Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
    because they are children of whoredom.
5 For their mother has played the whore;
    she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
    who give me my bread and my water,
    my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
    and I will build a wall against her,
    so that she cannot find her paths.
7 She shall pursue her lovers
    but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
    but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
    ‘I will go and return to my first husband,
    for it was better for me then than now.’
8 And she did not know
    that it was I who gave her
    the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
    which they used for Baal.
9 Therefore I will take back
    my grain in its time,
    and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
    which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her lewdness
    in the sight of her lovers,
    and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 And I will put an end to all her mirth,
    her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
    and all her appointed feasts.
12 And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
    of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
    which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
    and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13 And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
    when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
    and went after her lovers
    and forgot me, declares the LORD.

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The LORD gives Hosea a message to deliver to the northern 10 tribes of Israel.  The LORD still says, "You are my people" and "You have received mercy."  This is in stark contrast to to what the LORD just told Hosea to name his children.  The LORD still loves His people and will show them mercy, even though they are not acting like His people and don't deserve His love (that is the whole point of mercy, those who receive it don't deserve it).

God then uses Gomer as an example of the nation of Israel and says that because of her whoring and the way in which she did not take her marital vows seriously, the LORD says that the children that she had were not really fathered by Hosea (though he has treated them and loved them as his own).  There are a couple of options--plead with the harlot to get her to give up here sinful ways that are damaging to her and her husband and her family and everyone else around her, or, shame her and let everyone see her for what she is and turn her over to the LORD for Him to deal with her by pouring His judgment out on her until she repents.  Israel is facing the same choice.  Right now, the prophets are pleading with her to repent, but the day is coming when the only option left will be to strip her of all of her beauty and protections, publicly shame her, and give her a taste of the wrath of God that has been stored up for the pagan, Gentile nations that she is trying to emulate.  Some will still not repent and will be destroyed for the good of the whole community.  Others will repent and submit to the LORD's judgment and live.

The curse and shame will be multi-generational.  Children learn their behaviors from watching their parents (or whoever ends up parenting them if their parents are delinquent in their duties).  Like Gomer, Israel has sought for its physical needs to be met by the gods of other nations (though they were nothing but idols of gold, silver, wood, and stone or the sun, moon, stars and planets that the LORD created--and they were honestly all demons that were working to deceive the people of the other nations and keep them from worshiping the LORD).  Israel also sought pleasure in all kinds of perversion that was prohibited by the LORD but which was encouraged by the religions of these other nations.  There is a reason that the LORD is using prostitution as the example here because that was closely tied to the "worship" of these other gods.  I'm not sure if Gomer was actually working as a cult prostitute or just working the street trying to find love in all the wrong places, but she is a picture of the total depravity of Israel (and soon of Judah) and why the LORD has every right to divorce them for their unfaithfulness and reject the covenant that He made with them because they despise the covenant and do not want to live under it.

The LORD has had enough and will tell the northern tribes to let their false gods take care of them and try to protect them from the famine and drought and pestilence that He will send their way.  The gods they have whored after and sacrificed their children to (literally) will be unable to save them.  Only the LORD can do that.  The LORD will keep this harlot from finding any direction or material support.  When things get bad, everyone will look out for themselves first, and no one is going to look out for her.  No one will take her in and care for her because they know she is unfaithful.  Only her husband will be willing to clean her up and take her back and remove her shame, and that is exactly what the LORD is offering to His people Israel.

For now, it is time for tough love and to remove all the blessings and protection of the marriage covenant that she has despised and leave her to the natural consequences of her actions to see if this leads her to repentance.  We know with Gomer this is going to make her a literal sex slave multiple times and Hosea is going to have to buy her back from the slave auction to take her back and this is a picture of what the LORD has done for each of us.  He does not buy us off the auction block because of how valuable we are.  We are as perverted and disgusting as Gomer in this book, but He made a covenant with us and He loves to save people who cannot save themselves.

It is hard for us to read all the judgment that is going to come upon Israel, but the LORD knows that these people need to see that the gods they worship are useless idols.  However, most of them will refuse to repent and turn to the LORD because they want to continue to live in their sin.  They know they are worshiping idols and that the LORD is right in His judgment, but they still refuse to submit to Him because they love the darkness and hate the light because their deeds are evil.

Take a long, hard look at the effects of sin and idolatry and see if you don't see yourself and those around you in the descriptions here.  Is God calling you to repentance before He needs to discipline and judge you?  Are you in the midst of His loving judgment that is meant to lead you to repentance and back into His loving arms so you can be restored, unashamed and blessed by the covenant love that He has for His people whom belong to Him (and Him to them)?  If you have acted sinfully and shamefully, the LORD is calling you to repent and return to Him.  He will never leave you or forsake you, but He may let you experience the consequences of your decisions from time to time so that you see that His Law is for your good and protection.