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Hosea 2 (ESV)

1 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.’…

The Lord’s Mercy on Israel

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶ “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ ¹⁷ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. ¹⁸ And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. ¹⁹ And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. ²⁰ I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.

 

REFLECTION:

• Chapter Two talks about the relationship between the prophet and his wife on the one hand; on the other hand the relationship between God and the people of Israel. There are overlaps between the two, and sometimes it is not clear whether the prophet himself or the Lord is speaking.
• Hosea’s wife has already committed adultery at this time, and she wants to run away from home and follow her loved ones. Verse 2 is the prophet’s speech to his children, hoping to turn their mother back and renounce adultery. When the prophet’s wife encountered difficulties and setbacks, she thought of returning to her ex-husband, just as the prodigal son thought of his loving father when he came to a dead end in his life. Frustration and setbacks in sin often drive us to repent and return to God.
• The Israelites committed spiritual fornication. Their “lovers” are the Baal gods; they forsook the Lord and were not loyal to the covenant they made, but worshipped and served the idols of the Canaanites. Nevertheless, God spread out His hands to the Israelites and called them to return (14). On the spiritual journey, how easy we are to be attracted by all kinds of things, and shifted our focus of admiration away from God. Hope that we will not forget the Lord.

 

PRAYER:

Ask God to remind you not to forget that you have no good apart from Him. For apart from God you can do nothing. Do not attribute your achievements to people and things other than God. Ask God to keep you in His love.

 

HYMN: