When God’s people need a ‘timeout’ — and a heart-to-heart restoration (Hosea 1–3)

“‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”
Revelation 2:4 NASB

“We love, because He first loved us.”
1John 4:19 NASB

One of the last warnings Heaven has for Earth is that it has serious commitment and infidelity issues. The people don’t know the Maker because of cultural drift over decades or eons, or the people have had a relationship with the God revealed through Israel but want something else.

As the annual Feast of Weeks (Shavuot, aka Pentecost) approaches quickly (May 17 this year), we are focusing in this study on the opening chapters of the Bible book of Hosea. One of the themes of Shavuot is the “marriage” of Israel and Heaven at Sinai with the giving of the Ten Words (aka Ten Commandments, Exodus 19–20) and the joining of the nations to the Holy One (Acts 2). And Hosea begins with an extended living parable for Israel through the prophets dysfunctional family.

Why the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness?

Key themes of the book of Bemidbar (aka Numbers) is the movement of Israel from revelation of the Ten Commandments at Sinai to the Promised Land, and the passing of the legacy of the People of God from the first generation that disbelieved that promise to the second generation who would actually enter the Land. Key questions in the book are these:

Have you followed HaShem’s instructions and discipline to leave behind the Mitzraim mindset? (Egypt had lots of elohim (deities), and the Nile was seen as the source of sustenance.)
Do you trust the One Who is leading you to “My rest” (i.e., the Promised Land)?

Hosea: Salvation for a people with a wandering eye for other saviors

The Torah passage בְּמִדְבַּר Bemidbar/Bamidbar (“in the wilderness,” Num. 1:1–4:20) contains long tallies of the tribes of Israel and how each was assigned to a campsite around and task in the Mishkan (Tabernacle). The haftarah (parallel passage) for Bemidbar is Hosea 1:10–2:22 (chapter 2 in the Hebrew Bible), focusing on how the many myriads of Israel blessed by the LORD’s leading decided to go after other leaders — other deity-lords — and then were sent into the wilderness of exile as a key way to wake up the people from this Earth-threatening error.

Who was Hosea?

הוֹשֵׁעַ Hoshea (“salvation”) was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, headquartered in Samaria. The Northern Kingdom broke from united Israel conservatively in 931–930 B.C. under Yeroboam (Jeroboam I, 931–909 B.C.), who set up a counterfeit, syncretistic system of holy days and worship places.

The timing of the Hoshea’s prophecy (Hos. 1:1) came during the reign of another Northern Kingdom ruler named Yeroboam (Jeroboam II, reigned 793–753 B.C.), during the reigns of Southern Kingdom rulers Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (reigned 792–686 B.C.), and before the Northern Kingdom’s exile by Assyria in 722 B.C. That’s why the book is thought to be conservatively set in 725 B.C., just a few years before that exile.

The Northern Kingdom existed for just over 200 years. It was a young country, not too dissimilar from the United States, which will be celebrating the 245th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from Great Britain on July 4, 2021.

And sadly, just as the Northern Tribes lost their raison d’être when they broke away from the Temple in Jerusalem and set up their own forms of worship, America faces a similar crisis.

Each generation has to inspire the subsequent generation with the nation’s history and legacy. Each generation asks why does our nation exists and does it deserve to continue to exist?

Hosea shows us how bountiful God’s loyalty and compassion is. Israel responded to God’s loyalty and faithfulness with disloyalty and adultery. She responded to God’s compassion with indifference and apathy towards the widows, orphans and the poor.

Our connection with heaven and our connections with others are interconnected. When you lose your connection and compassion for your fellow man, your connection with God also falters.

If you had an awful family life, it makes a connection with Heaven a struggle as Yeshua taught us to pray, “Our Father who is in Heaven…” is a hard prayer for someone who had a horrible father or none at all.

The book of Hosea is a living parable of God’s loyalty and lovingkindness. It shows us what God plans to do for the family of Israel.

Overview of Hosea

Theme: This is what Heaven’s חסד khesed (loyalty) and רחמים rakhamim (compassion) look like, in spite of Israel’s infidelity with so-called deities that didn’t deliver the people from slavery nor give them the Land.

One way to see the structure of the book¹:

Hosea’s commission (Hos. 1:1)
Symbolic marriage (Hos. 1:2-3:5)
- Adulterous wife and children (Hos. 1:2-2:1)
- Punishment and restoration of Israel (Hos. 2:2-23)
- Hosea reconciled to his wife (Hos. 3:1-5)
Oracles of judgment (Hos. 4:1-9:9)
- Case against Israel (Hos. 4:1-19)
- Battle cry of the LORD (Hos. 5:1-15)
- Israel’s unrepentance (Hos. 6:1-7:16)
- Israel’s punishment (Hos. 8:1-9:9)
Prophetic reflections on Israel’s history (Hos. 9:10-14:9)
- Israel like grapes and figs (Hos. 9:10-17)
- Israel like a spreading vine (Hos. 10:1-10)
- Israel like a trained calf (Hos. 10:11-15)
- Israel like a growing child (Hos. 11:1-11)
- Israel’s wickedness (Hos. 11:12-12:14)
- The LORD’s wrath (Hos. 13:1-16)
- Call for repentance (Hos. 14:1-9)

Living parable of Hoshea’s marriage (Hosea 1:2–3:5)

“‘Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD.’”
Hosea 1:2 NASB

Wife: Gomer is thought to come from the Hebrew verb גָּמַר gāmar, which means “cease, come to an end, fail, perfect, perform.”²
Son: יִזְרְעֶאל Yizre’el (Jezreel): “(God) will sow” (Hos. 1:3–5): Near homonym for Yisra’el. Yizre’el will be where rebirth and judgment happens.
Daughter: לֹא־רֻחָמָה Lo Ruchamah: “not/lacking compassion” (Hos. 1:6–7): No compassion for the North, deliverance for the South.
Son: לֹא־עַמִּי Lo Ammi: “not My people”

“‘She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, “I will go back to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!”’”
Hosea 2:7 NASB

After Gomer had given birth to her three children, she ran away from her husband to chase after men who promised her a better life, but just as the children of Israel had falsely praised their idols and fake gods for the rain, the increase in food and economic growth, Gomer also falsely credited her lovers with the safety and security that living with Hosea had provided her.

Messiah Yeshua³ told the “prodigal son” parable (Luke 15:11–32) with a similar line, in which the wanton younger son wakes up from his debauchery and realizes how good he had it.

The parabolic punchline is not only the mercy of the Father for wayward people of Israel and the nations but also about the necessary mercy for these returnees from those who stay faithful (older son in the parable = faithful in Israel).

“‘I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths And all her festal assemblies.’”
Hosea 2:11 NASB

Some point to verses such as this one to back the teaching that God put an end to the Torah commandments such as the festivals at Yeshua’s death and resurrection.

But we see elsewhere in this book (“sacred pillars … household idols,” Hos. 3:4) and in the writings of contemporary Northern Kingdom prophet (Amos 5:21; 8:10) that these festivals were hardly the LORD’s appointments of Leviticus 23.

I don’t recall God telling us to use “sacred pillars” or “household idols” in celebrating His feasts so the feasts, new moons, etc., that God will be putting an end to aren’t His feasts, but the false pagan feasts.

As we mentioned earlier, part of the Northern Kingdom’s raison d’être was a separation from the practices of the Southern Kingdom, which maintained at least the specifics of the LORD’s instructions for the festivals.

The legacy of the people of God is not passed along ethnically, but through a common ideology. You can have many ethnicities in the same empire if they are “all in” with the goals of their emperor. The key to being a child of God is to have trust in God. Being a descendant of Abraham but not living like Abraham means nothing.

“‘Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Bring her into the wilderness And speak kindly to her.’”
Hosea 2:14 NASB

“Speak kindly to her” is translated from דִבַּרְתִּי עַל לִבָּהּ ḏibbartı̂ ’al libbah, which literally means “speak to her heart.”

Just like the father in the prodigal-son parable runs to the returning wayward younger son, so too the LORD goes to wayward Israel in the “wilderness” of exile. And then the LORD says that wayward Israel will no longer call the LORD “my Ba’al” (“my Master”) but rather “my Man” (i.e., “my Husband”) (Hos. 2:16; 2:7).

We see a similar message of the “marriage” between Heaven and Israel via Southern Kingdom prophet Yeshiyahu (Isaiah), writing at roughly the same time as Hoshea:

“‘Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.”
Isaiah 54:4–5 NASB

And Messiah Yeshua noted this move of His closest students from “servants” to “friends” the closer their hearts connected with the Word of God made flesh:

“‘No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.’” (John 15:15 NASB)

God is not a “ball and chain” to weigh us down but a Friend Who we should look forward to seeing.

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud And like the dew which goes away early.
Therefore I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth; And the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth.
For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
But like Adam they have transgressed the covenant; There they have dealt treacherously against Me.”
Hosea 6:4–7 NASB

Yeshua quotes from Hosea 6 during one of the occasions when He healed a person on the Shabbat. He used this text to remind the Pharisees, and us, that we should have compassion on those who need it, regardless of the day of the week.

Is our loyalty like the marine layer which comes in the morning but burns off by noon or is it something that sticks around when things get hot and uncomfortable? That is the question that the prophet Hosea asks us to consider.

Summary: Tammy