Studies in Hosea
2 - Unconditional Love
In chapter 2 with three great ‘therefores’ God pronounces judgement on His unfaithful wife, Israel, but that judgement is not intended to reject her, but is meant to bring her to her senses and lead to a second honeymoon. Because Israel is intent on going after her other lovers (verse 5) God says “Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them, but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now’” (verses 6 - 7).
This divine tactic might be called judgement by frustration. God will block her wanton urges. Enforced chastity would lead her to change her mind. This is God’s gracious purpose. It often takes thorns and a blank wall of famine and frustration to dispel our illusions. The prodigal son returned home for the same reason – not because of love, but because he was cornered. The love, initially, was all on his father’s side.
Israel has been wilfully ignorant of the fact that it is God who has provided the grain, new wine and oil, not the pagan Baal. This provision was the covenant sign of God’s love (Deuteronomy 7:13). This lavish provision will now be withdrawn so Israel may learn afresh that it is God alone who sustains true life. Here’s the second ‘therefore’ in verse 9. “Therefore I will take away My grain when it ripens and My new wine when it is ready. I will take back My wool and My linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of My hands” (verses 9 - 10). Israel had forgotten God. God was like the jilted lover. Gomer has forgotten Hosea. She’s an adulteress who has forgotten the bonds of marriage and the commitments of faithful love. She has pursued the Baals, the false gods.
In verse 14 God is declaring He wants His wife back. God and Israel first married at the Exodus. They were alone together in the desert. Here comes the third ‘therefore’ (verse 14). “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor (Trouble) a door of hope. There she will sing (or respond) as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt” (14 - 15).
Here’s quite a surprise, we’re unprepared for. Is God proposing a second honeymoon in the wilderness of the devastated land or in the desert of the exile? One thing is crystal clear – God and Israel will start all over again, for God isn’t just in love, He is love.
Only God can make the Valley of Achor, where Achan was buried (Joshua 7:26) into a door of hope. God, through a later prophet, Jeremiah, sang of that original short-lived honeymoon. “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of His harvest” (Jeremiah 2:2 - 3).
There’s a brighter prospect of a future hope (verse 16 - 23) as God speaks of a new covenant and utters wonderful marriage vows. “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call Me ‘My husband’” ... “I will betroth you to Me for ever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord” (verses 19 - 20). If the marriage is renewed between God and Israel, peace with nature will follow.
The word translated ‘love’ in verse 19 is ‘chesed’, a special word in Hosea. It signifies real devotion or true love. It implies the love and loyalty which partners in marriage or in covenant owe to one another. Stern warnings are given to avert the very judgements they foretold. What has been lost in judgement can be restored in mercy. The ruined vines of verse 12 are answered by the vineyards of verse 15.
The expression of God’s love is certainly unconditional, but our enjoyment of that love is conditional and depends on our faith and obedience. God’s response will ultimately cancel those appalling names of the children that we saw in chapter 1, an act of pure grace. “I will plant her for Myself in the land; I will show My love to the one called ‘Not My loved one’. I will say to those called ‘Not My people’, ‘You are My people’, and they will say, ‘You are My God.’
Here’s the bottom line. God had grounds for divorce. Israel was playing the harlot. But reconciliation, not divorce was in His heart. God wants His wife back – she’s not for sharing.
Chapter 3 opens perhaps twenty years after Hosea’s first call. He’s an older man now, with grown up children. God tells Hosea to buy Gomer back – she’s one of the working girls doing business on the streets or, perhaps, she was a temple prostitute serving Baal. The sordid reality is she was still in adultery – this was no occasional lapse, but desertion -God urges his prophet to love one who is unlovely, unlovable and who loves others. This is God’s love in miniature – love to the loveless shown. It’s an enactment of the divine love which is constant in all circumstances, present even when a spirit of prostitution leads people astray and they are unfaithful to their God. “The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods” (verse 1).
Remember, Gomer has left Hosea for one of her paramours. She’s a kept woman who’d made a fool of him, but he did not object to God’s command by saying “she’s not worth it”. He bought her back for fifteen shekels of silver.