2 “Rebuke your mother,
rebuke her,
for she is not My wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adultery from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked
and expose her like the day of her birth.
I will make her like a desert
and turn her into a parched land,
and I will let her die of thirst.
4 I will have no compassion on her children,
because they are the children of adultery.
5 For their mother has played the harlot
and has conceived them in disgrace.
For she thought,
‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me bread and water,
wool and linen, oil and drink.’

6 Therefore, behold,
I will hedge up her path with thorns;
I will enclose her with a wall,
so she cannot find her way.
7 She will pursue her lovers but not catch them;
she will seek them but not find them.
Then she will say,
‘I will return to my first husband,
for then I was better off than now.’
8 For she does not acknowledge
that it was I who gave her grain,
new wine, and oil,
who lavished on her silver and gold—
which they crafted for Baal.”

REFLECTIONS

Written by Stephen Shead

I would love to be a poet, but I’m nowhere near creative enough. Poetry is so powerful. After the outrageous promises we read at the end of chapter 1, God rewinds to Israel’s current state of spiritual adultery. This time he describes it in a series of vivid poetic images. They seem to shift between describing an adulterous woman and a community of farmers and peasants.

That’s the point, of course. Hosea’s shameful marriage situation is a horrible living poem. The “lovers” Gomer has flung herself on are like the statues of Baal which the Israelites are now worshiping.

But the sexual imagery is not just poetic licence. Baal was a fertility god. The Israelites had copied the Canaanites in believing that this god Baal would give them “bread and water, wool and linen, oil and drink” if they did the right rituals (v. 5). He was, they thought, the god of the land who would make fields fertile. But to unlock that fruitfulness, they needed to sleep with cultic prostitutes at local pagan shrines.

Oh, how far they had strayed from a knowledge of the Lord, the one true God who made everything and who graciously gives us all things, not because we perform rituals but simply because of his love and goodness! It makes me wonder how long it took them to descend from knowing God to such complete blindness. Did they notice the shift as it was happening, or was it so subtle that they didn’t even realise – as bit by bit, they made decisions that drew them away from God’s Word and his people?

There is a silver lining of grace, though. God’s judgment will expose the utter shame of sin; but he has a positive purpose. His judgment just might wake them up to the foolishness of the path they have chosen, and spark in them a desire to return to the Lord as their “first husband” (v 7).

Poetry is doubly powerful when God is the author. Pray that God would move your heart to fulfil his good purpose in you – that he might guard you from those little steps that will draw you away from being guided by his Word and living wholeheartedly for Jesus.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen is our Senior Minister.