Hosea Lesson 1
Introduction and Background - Hosea 1:1-2a
… were the first historians in the world, and this is just a sidelight
for the students of history. The only
viable philosophy of history you will ever find can only be a product of
someone who can outside of the historical flow of things and attain a
perspective on it. This is what is so
frustrating about the various theories of history that you will encounter in
your studies, that all of the theories of history that you ever study are
products written by men who themselves are trapped in the flow of history; they
never get above history to look at the big picture. These prophets were human and therefore had
not the Holy Spirit done a special work in their lives they too would have been
trapped in the flow of history. But the prophet was momentarily elevated out
from history and given a perspective on history, and so the world’s first
historians were the Hebrew prophets.
Always remember that when you discuss philosophies of history.
The world’s first historians were Hebrew prophets and in particular the
ones who wrote the book of Joshua and Judges.
Now it’s true, there were chronicles, that is accounts of thus and such
happened and thus and such here and this happened in this year, and so on, in
So the Nabiim or the Prophets begin with Joshua, Judges, although Ruth
is attached in your Bibles to Judges, it’s not in the Hebrew Bible, Ruth is
part of the Writings, because it was considered wisdom literature not an
analysis of history. Joshua, Judges,
Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles were not included here either, they were part of
the wisdom writings. Then you have the
big prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and then you come to the twelve
Minor Prophets. Hosea is the first of
the twelve Minor Prophets. Just because
they are called Minor Prophets doesn’t mean they are minor in importance; it
just means that less of their writings have been preserved. As I’ll point out Hosea ministered for some
30 or 40 years and he ministered in many places under many different regimes
and yet we have preserved for us only a very small, small, small fraction of
Hosea’s total prophecies. The Bible
represents a selection out from all possible revelation; only some revelation
is kept for future generations to enjoy.
The overall… we will deal with other questions of the book as we go
along to get into the text to make it more interesting, so we won’t spend time
on a big hairy introduction except to say that the overall view of the book,
the first three chapters form one section, and chapters 4-14 form another
section. There is two very clear sections; I advise you to read through the
book of Hosea, try a modern translation and read it through in that, read it
through in the King James, but you’ll notice as you read through and just kind
of get a feel for the book it’s definitely in two parts; the first three
chapters are talking about one thing, chapters 4-14 another.
Therefore obviously we begin with this first section, chapters 1-3. We can summarize the thought of these first
three chapters in the following statement: God establishes a historic parallel
between His relationship with Israel and Hosea’s relationship with his
wife. You have God and Israel—Hosea and
his wife. She had a real female name…
Gomer! The parallelism is very, very critical
because through this parallelism is revealed something that has not yet in the
progress of divine revelation in history yet been revealed up to this
point. Next time someone comes up to you
and tells you, well, we don’t study the Old Testament because the God of the
Old Testament is a bad God, the God of the New Testament is a loving God. They have not read Hosea.
The theme of Hosea is the love of God. As God loved Israel, Hosea is
commanded to love this Gomer, and he has a hard time loving Gomer because of
certain things that she represents and he therefore has to actually participate
in his life to get a feel and sensation for how God must handle sinners by
grace. Hosea is a study of the agony of
grace, that God does not sit in heaven like a blinking IBM machine in control
of all events in an impersonal way. God
is in control of all events in a personal way, and by that we mean that God
senses; God cannot remain insensitive to history. God cannot remain insensitive to your sin and
my sin, nor to our obedience. Few people
ever think of God laughing, and maybe one of the hardest things to get over is
that God does laugh. This is taught in
such places as Psalm 2; it’s taught in the way the book of Samuel was written,
and some people couldn’t stand God’s sense of humor and left, but God has a
sense of humor and you want to learn to relax and know that God can laugh. In fact, He can laugh at you; after all, how
could he stand us if He couldn’t occasionally laugh at us. God, then, responds this way.
But He also responds with deep hurt, and this book. And this book is
going to touch the heights and the depths of God’s response. Now it’s very, very difficult to comprehend
what’s going on here unless you have sorted out inside your soul and mind what
kind of a God it is that the Bible speaks about. This will challenge you to correct human
viewpoint that may have leaked into your soul that has made God into a concrete
God. Maybe you say well I know that God
is sovereign, and He’s omnipotent and all that,
you’ve got a big enough God but your God isn’t personally known. The book of Hosea is written for you, to
correct the impersonal nature of God in your soul. When you get through this book you will know
well that our God is a deeply personal God.
And this is one of the awesome things about the God of the Hebrews,
compared to the God of the other nations.
It’s that this God responds to individuals. He can get mad at you; now that may not seem
like much but if you stop and think who it is that’s getting mad at you, and
what He’s getting mad at you about, little things that you do, it shows you
therefore not bad news but fantastic news.
If you’re at all a sensitive person and can think this through for
yourself you should latch on to this immediately; if the God of the universe
can get mad at you for the things that you do in your individual daily life,
what does that do to the significance of the things you’re doing in your daily
life. Doesn’t it make them very
significant. The things we do in our daily life are so significant that it
affects the God of the universe. Now
that’s what gives value to human works.
That’s what gives value to every detail of your life. You are not an insignificant person lost in
the maize of statistics with the God of the Bible. You may be treated that way by the people
around you, even your loved ones may treat you as a statistic, but the God of
the Bible never treats people as statistics. We each have our own individual name,
and this God of the Bible responds and this is what He is going to teach. But He has to teach it by way of
analogy.
So since the God of the universe has created His creation, built into
that creation are certain analogs that can be then used to explain the nature
of God. He has built in the teaching
devices, much as if you were in charge, say you build a church building and
build it with a capacity for a school, even though you don’t necessarily want
to start the school right away you build into that building the potential for
classrooms; build into the building potential for libraries and study centers,
that kind of thing. Well, God did the
same thing when He made creation. He
built the creation and built into the creation the capabilities of revealing
Himself. And one of the things, one of the big things that He build into
creation was the second divine institution.
And in particular this relationship, built on the first divine
institution, the first divine institution being volition or human responsibility,
the second divine institution being marriage and sex within marriage, this will
become the central topic of the book of Hosea.
Sex and marriage are not emphasized in the Old Testament so much as they
are in the book of Hosea and the book of Ezekiel. And of course the Song of Songs but as far as
teaching books, Hosea and Ezekiel.
This second divine institution becomes a built-in device. So when we have a wedding service, for
example, and we have everybody up at the front and we point out that marriage
is not something thought up by man, marriage is a divine institution, not for
man’s benefit, primarily, but for God’s benefit. God has arranged our bodies, He has arranged
our souls, He has separated the male and female with not only a physical
difference but a soulish difference, and He has built us with these differences
for a purpose. And one of the purposes
is to then turn around and use us very different to illustrate what our God is
like. If we were, perish the thought,
unisexual, we could not understand the truth that God is going to teach in the
book of Hosea. This depends on the
second divine institution. So therefore
Hosea shows us a way that God has of teaching.
Again, the theme of the first three chapters, God establishes a parallel
between His relationship with Israel and Hosea’s relationship with his
wife. Now these three chapters follow a
kind of outline that we have seen before in some of the Old Testament books, a
kind of sandwich style outline. These three chapters can be divided into four
parts. From 1:1 to 2:1; from 2:2 to
2:13; from 2:14 to the end of the chapter, and chapter 3:1-5. These four parts contribute each one to the
overall argument.
The first part is God orders Hosea to marry a whore; that’s the way the
book starts, with God ordering Hosea to marry a prostitute. The last section is God orders Hosea to take
this prostitute back again, apparently she’s trotted off somewhere. So we have two sections, the first section is
very intimate, it deals with Hosea and his marriage. The last section is very intimate, it deals
with Hosea and his marriage. But the
first section that God tells Hosea to do, this is telling Hosea to acquire this
prostitute for a wife. The second part is that he is to take the prostitute
back. Those two acts that God orders Hosea to do are to teach two areas of
doctrine which are then explained in these two middle parts. Verses 2-13 is that God is revealing His
just judgment upon Israel. And you see
God forces Hosea into a personal existential situation that makes him understand
why God must judge Israel the way God judges Israel. So first Hosea is forced to personally live
this out, to personally role play it, and then God explains in detail His just
judgment upon the nation.
Then from verses 14-23 God promises ultimate sanctification to the
nation, and this gets to the last section because Hosea is ordered to take the
prostitute back and to train her into a godly wife. So Hosea takes these two truths; the first
part is Hosea’s experience; the second part is the doctrine that that
experience is to teach. The third part
is another section of doctrine and the fourth part is Hosea’s personal
experience of that doctrine.
So again if you want to outline it one way these two sections belong
together and the two middle sections belong together, so you have like a
sandwich; the doctrine is packed in the middle, the two pieces of bread are
Hosea’s experiences that God sets up and controls to mirror the doctrine.
Now because this book involves so many pieces of doctrine we’re going to
have to go slow and go over some basic doctrine. The first thing we have to understand is God
is a personal God. This is the doctrine
of divine essence. God is sovereign, God
is righteous, God is just, God is loving, God is omniscient, omnipotent,
omniscient, immutable, and eternal. These are some of God’s attributes. You could name a few more if you wanted but
these are the main attributes of God. We
organize these attributes in two columns for a reason because the attributes on
the left side tend to reflect God’s personality more than His infinity; the
attributes on the right side of that list, on the right part, tend to emphasize
His infinity more than His personality.
It’s these attributes on the left side with which this book is primarily
concerned, the personality of God. Hosea
presupposes that we all have the infinity of God down; that we all have no
problems with the fact that God is an infinite God, that God is the Creator of
all things, both material and immaterial. That’s presupposed. So the emphasis in the book is on those
attributes on the left side, the personality of God, that God is a God who
reacts, He has a holy character and His response to sin is anger. God is angry, so we have the word “anger,”
God is angry with Israel. That’s expressing the personal attributes of
righteousness and justice. We also have
the fact that, “O Israel, O Israel, I love you” so many times, and this is an
expression of God’s love.
The tremendous drama of these first three chapters have caught sensitive
people for generations. If you have,
particularly if you have kind of a poetic skill and you compose poetry or
something, and you read these first three chapters of Hosea sensitively, you’re
going to notice that this thing starts to sway on you, as Hosea emphasizes God
is angry, God is angry, He’s going to bash the nation in, and then all of a
sudden, right the next verse, there’s no transition, God loves her and will
bring her back. God says you will never
be My people; you will be My people forever.
And the juxtaposition of these verses, one after another, without any
transitions whatsoever, have caused people to say that there’s an unresolved
tension here, that Hosea can’t get these attributes together, it’s not that,
it’s simply that Hosea is trying to show the potency of each one of these
attributes, the tremendous power behind love and the tremendous power behind
anger. And ultimately there is no
resolution of these two areas until the cross of Jesus Christ. So there is in a
sense, true, that Hosea never sees the tension resolved because it won’t be
resolved for some 800 years until Christ dies.
So that’s one theme, the doctrine of divine essence.
Notice what this does. If I
emphasize that God is a personal God, what does that do to you and to me? It means that we no longer can remain
neutral; if someone loves you, you either respond by rejecting that love or you
respond to the love, but you can’t remain neutral. You may have has at some time in your life
that situation where you may love somebody and they just phitttt to you and you
know how it feels. You know, therefore,
if God really loves and we’re not just talking words, if God really loves like
we love then we can’t be neutral. The
initiative has been removed; we could have been neutral if only He hadn’t loved
us, but the moment God starts to love us, that destroys all hope of neutrality,
that’s gone; now we only have two options, we can either run away from his love
and reject it or we can bow to it and receive it, but we can’t remain neutral
any more. So for this reason Hosea
leaves us no neutrality, it’s either or, all the time in this book, either
submit or just throw it in His face; that’s the attitude.
Another doctrine that we have to study besides the essence of God is the
doctrine of suffering. Let’s categorize
Hosea’s suffering; this is one of the great suffering books of Scripture next
to Job and we want to be able to categorize how suffering operates. You ought to know the doctrine of suffering
so when suffering hits you as a believer you don’t fall apart and say oh, why
did this have to happen to me kind of response.
We’re going to give you many reasons why it can happen to you; you’re
going to say let’s see, is it this reason, this reason, this reason, at least
it gives you something to think about and keeps you out of the panic palace for
a while until you can get your feet on the ground and meet this kind of thing.
Let’s look at the doctrine of suffering; the non-Christian suffers and
the Christian suffers, both categories of people suffer. Some suffer undeservedly, some suffer
deservedly. The non-Christian suffers
because of the fall; the Christian suffers because of the fall. The fall underlies every big of suffering you
will ever have in your life. Of all the
reasons for suffering you can always count on reason number one: we live in a
fallen world. So suffering because of
the fall is normal.
The second reason, rebellion; both Christian and non-Christian can
suffer because they rebel against the will of God once it is clear to
them. Once God has made His will clear
and you violate it, that’s rebellion and we suffer for it in many, many
different ways.
We can also suffer by way of association. That is because we are in association with
others who are suffering we suffer: illustration, divine institution number
two, divine institution number three, marriage and family. You may be married to a believer who’s out of
it and God may be clobbering that person and you’re in the way, because you’re
married to that individual you participate in the suffering upon that
individual. This is why you single
people, before you go trotting down an aisle, you’d better be very clear of the
spiritual linen that’s used on the other person, because if they’ve got a lot
of dirty linen you don’t want to be the washing machine. And God will make you the washing machine if
you get hooked up with that kind of a mess.
So before you get too interested just be a little wise and
cautious. You don’t have to go sniffing
around but at least you can have your eyes opened and look for these kinds of
things. Watch how spiritually consistent a person is; most girls, for example,
have a lot of trouble in understanding when a man is operating according to the
Word of God and when he isn’t. Some of
the girls just trip and fall over anything that wears pants and the problem
with it is they get caught because this person turns out to be a spiritual
clod. Or it’s the other way, some guy
that has problems because he jumps at something that looks like real good stuff
and it turns out that this girl is completely out of it and it’s hell on earth
being married to that kind of individual. So this is suffering by association.
Another one, a non-Christian can suffer because obviously of the lake of
fire, and that’s a very horrible kind of suffering.
The Christian can also suffer for less than directly deserved reasons;
these next three reasons you suffer not necessarily because of something you’ve
done. It’s just being part of the fallen
world and you suffer but there’s higher reasons for it. You can suffer because you are identified
with Christ in Satan’s world; you’re like a lightning rod that draws the
lightening strikes. Because you are
identified with Jesus Christ in a fallen world that makes you targets for
satanic oppression and you can suffer this way.
You can also suffer to learn lessons; Jesus Christ had to learn lessons
and Jesus didn’t sin so you can’t argue that suffering for learning is necessarily
because of sin, Hebrews 5:8. Jesus
Christ suffered obedience to learn.
A final reason for suffering on the part of the believer is to be a
testimony to the world. God may put you
through the wringer and you can’t understand why because unknown to you,
perhaps, there are eyes watching you.
There may be eyes watching you in the business, on campus, in some group
that you run with, some group of friends that you have, and you may never have
thought this person, the last person you would have thought, this person is
actually quietly, when you’re not noticing looking at you and thinking about
how you respond to various things in life.
And when they see you get hit with something that they know would make
them fall apart and they see you stick it out, this becomes a testimony to them
and you, thereby, in your life show strength and stability which gives a
testimony to Jesus Christ. That’s a true
testimony; that’s not “honk if you love Jesus” stuck to your bumper, that’s not
a testimony, that just shows that you need to cover up a rusty spot on your
bumper. This is a real testimony because
this means that you have actually encountered the tough things of life and have
survived and have shown the power of Jesus Christ. That speaks millions of words to various
individuals. So don’t discount this as a
reason for suffering.
Let’s look at this chart and think, what categories of suffering is the
author, Hosea, suffering. Under what
categories? Obviously category one
because it’s a fallen world; Hosea suffers because he too is a fallen sinner
but he primarily is suffering by association because he’s married to a
professional prostitute, and God is disciplining this woman, she is corrupt and
he has to live with her and he suffers.
And out of his suffering by association will come a tremendous
appreciation for God’s suffering with fallen man. And Hosea is suffering to produce a
testimony in the world. It is going to
be through this man’s sorrow, through this man’s heartache that we are going to
understand the love of God.
Let’s go to verse 1, we’ve gone through the doctrine of divine essence
and the doctrine of suffering and now we come to verse 1. In verse 1 historical background is given for
the book. “The word of the LORD that
came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king
of Israel. [2] The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea.” First let’s look at “the word of the LORD,”
verse 1 is actually a title to the whole book. It’s verse 2a, that first sentence of verse 2
that forms the topic sentence for this part of the book. That’s a description of chapter 1. Verse 1, however, deals with the whole three
chapters, that’s kind of the overall, “The word of the LORD” refers to the fact
that this is a book by a prophet. The
Word of the Lord has come to Hosea.
Next week we’ll go into what a prophet is, but when you have this, “word
of the LORD” or “word of Yahweh,” that just doesn’t mean an inspiration of
thought, it doesn’t refer to anything in your experience or my experience. There is not a person here and there hasn’t
been a person for 1900 years who has had the Word of God come to them like
Hosea. This was a time when the canon
was open; this was a time when historic revelation was occurring. “The word of the LORD came” means that the
Word of God did not come because Hosea thought it up. 2 Peter 1:20-21 teaches that no prophecy of
Scripture came because somebody sat and said gee, I’ve got to come up with a
good example, maybe Hosea, a great teacher, was saying hey, I got to get across
to these people the love of God, now how can I get across the love of God, I
know, I’ll think of marriage.
Now just supposed that had happened, forget the Word of the Lord for a
minute and just say this is the word of Hosea; this is Hosea’s great
illustration. If this is just Hosea’s
illustration, how can we be sure it’s correct?
You see, this is the problem. If
we don’t have active verbal revelation from the infinite God we can never be
sure that when the teacher gives us an analogy that the analogy fits. The only way you can check an analogy is know
the real object. But if I can’t know the
real object because I’m a finite man, the only way I can check on these kinds
of analogs is by this trust in verbal revelation, that this is not the word of
Hosea, this is the Word of God Himself.
Notice it comes to Hosea, this is active, it doesn’t mean that Hosea
asked for it. In fact, when he gets the
first part of it he knows he didn’t ask for it.
Hosea did not ask for the Word, the Word sovereignly came to him. Why God picked Hosea out is a question I’m
sure Hosea must have asked himself many times, God why me? God picked Hosea out, that’s the active
verb. “The word of the LORD that came
unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah. The word “Hosea” means saved, God saves,
that’s what the word means. “Ho sea,” this is the part which means,
to save and this comes from Jo, or
Jehovah, Jehovah saves.
We have the place where this happened; the place where this happened was
the northern kingdom. The northern
kingdom was a place of tremendous instability, and verse 1 gives us a problem
because if you look carefully in the verse here’s a prophet in the northern
kingdom talking about kings of the south.
Look at those first four kings; what does it say after their names? Kings of Judah, and there’s only one king of
Israel listed.
Let’s look at history a moment.
In the south, called Judah, you have four kings listed. These are a
complete listing of the four kings that existed during the ministry of
Hosea. However, these are all the kings
that lived during Hosea’s time in the north.
How many of those names are listed in verse 1? You only see one, Jeroboam. This immediately involves us with a
problem. Why is it that only some of
these kings are listed; why is only one king of the north is listed when that’s
his home town, that’s his home country, not the south.
If you are not familiar with Hebrew history, let me just say this:
Israel in 930 BC split, two tribes in the south, Judah and Benjamin, and all
the other ten tribes in the north formed a thing called Israel. So one was called Judah; one was called Israel. In this book Israel is also called by another
name which you ought to know, Ephraim.
When you see Ephraim it’s not just the tribe referred to in this book
but that’s just another title that Hosea is using for the northern kingdom. So whether he calls it Israel or Ephraim he
means the same thing. That’s the northern kingdom. After 930 BC you’ve got this problem, you
have two lines of monarchs.
Now we have to raise the question and answer it, why? Why has this happened. On the chart you notice some names I have
connected with an arrow; other names do not have the arrow connecting. For example, the kings of the south, I have
an arrow that connects with Uzziah, with Jotham, with Ahaz, with Hezekiah and
on down. That arrow means it is a
father/son relationship. It is one
continuing dynasty. In the northern
kingdom you see an arrow coming down to Jeroboam the Second, then to Zechariah,
Zechariah was his son who ruled for about three months and got his head bashed
in, and then you see a line. The line
means there was an assassination and a new dynasty took over, Shalom. Then we have another man, Menahem; Menaham’s
son, Pekahiah, lived for a short time and he was assassinated. Then you had Pekah on the throne and he was
assassinated, and you have Hoshea or Hosea, not the same as the author of this
book, and he lived to see the 721-722 fall of the northern kingdom. So now look at the instability; look at the
contrast of the political stability in the south versus the political
instability in the north.
Why is this? What controls the
political picture in the south that didn’t control the political picture in the
north? God’s Word, remember 2 Samuel 7,
the promise of the Davidic dynasty. So
what is causing political stability? The
power of the Word of God’s sovereign decree.
God decreed that there would be a son of David on the throne forever,
and the south can never have a man sitting on that throne who is not of the
tribe of Judah and not have the genes of David in him. Always the man who sits on Israel’s throne
must be a man with the genes of David.
He has to be the son of David.
But in the north, if you turn to 2 Kings 10:30 you’ll see why Jeroboam
alone is mentioned. The time before this
chart there was a man who was appointed king in the north by a prophet. His name was Jehu; Jehu had sons, Jehoahaz,
Jehoash, Jeroboam and Zechariah; count how many generations. After Jehu there was one, two, three,
four. Now look at 2 Kings 10:30, “And
the LORD said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is
right in Mine eyes, and you have done unto the house of Ahab according to all
that was in Mine heart, thy children of fourth generation shall sit on the
throne of Israel.” In other words, God’s
Word said that you are guaranteed down to the fourth generation, but no
further; down to that fourth generation.
Therefore, precisely in the fourth generation, which would have been the
reign of Zechariah, you have an assassination occur. His son does not ever get to sit on the
throne; God’s promise remains literally true.
And from that point forward you have instability. I have indicated by a question mark after the
names all the kings of the north that have no prophetic designation. By that we mean that the king in the north
had to become king by means of a prophet appointing him. You’ve heard of a king-maker, that’s a
facetious title applied to the cigar smoke-filled room politics in America, the
“king-makers.” But in Israel they
literally had king-makers and they were called prophets. The prophets had, by God, to pick out the man
to sit on the throne. This is why the
four Gospels begin not with Jesus, but with his king-maker, John. So you have this pattern all through
Scripture, the kings are picked by the prophets.
Now that’s true until we reach this man, Shallum; Shallum is not picked
out by a prophet, he just killed and grabbed the throne for himself. None of these men with a question mark after
their name, that is, all the kings from Shallum down to the 721 incident, all
those kings lacked prophetic designation.
They were not picked by any prophet; there’s no sigh whatsoever that the
prophets condoned them, every one is considered from God’s point of view as a
usurper.
This is why, if you turn back to Hosea 1:1, we have significance to this
verse. See, if you know your history you
see what God’s telling you; look at verse 1 again, compare it to the chart; now
can you draw a lesson from Hosea 1:1 when he recognizes in His Scriptures only
the kings with prophetic designation.
That is, said another way, the kings listed in Hosea 1:1 are only the
legal kings. Hosea ministered in all
these eras but he refused to recognize their authority; they were not
prophetically designated and therefore they were not legitimate holders of the
throne.
I have also listed on this chart, these are the prophets who were
ministering during this time. These men
didn’t minister alone, and some of them quote each other. I’ll try as we go through this book to show
you who Hosea is quoting. Hosea, Jonah,
and Amos are all ministering about the same time. Jonah you’re all familiar with, he had a big
fish story. So it was a time when the
prophets were ministering.
But something else you can also draw from this chart. Keep in mind the date; Jeroboam II takes the
throne in 782 BC, at least that’s approximate, this is by Thiele’s chronology,
some chronologies differ by five or six years.
782 BC this man, Jeroboam II takes the throne; in 722 BC the nation is
completely destroyed. Therefore there is
a maximum of 60 years before the death of this nation. This nation will suffer, it will horribly
suffer. The Assyrians are very, very
cruel people; the Assyrian army will march into the northern kingdom and the
Assyrians had a policy that when they moved into an area they would strip you,
spread eagle you on the ground, and then peel your skin from you with knives
while you were alive. And this is the
kind of treatment the northern kingdom is going to get in just 60 years. Hosea is sounding the warning to the nation,
and his problem is this man right here, because during the reign of Jeroboam II
the nation seems to have the highest prosperity it has ever had since the
revolt in 930 BC.
Some of you asked me about these dates.
I hope you’re aware that the dates BC get smaller as we go. So 930 BC occurs before 782 BC. In 930 BC they had their revolt, that set up
the north kingdom. In the northern
kingdom you had almost 150 years of gradually increasing prosperity, more and
more material prosperity, until it peaks in Jeroboam II’s reign. From the human point of view men can’t see
beyond that, beyond Jeroboam. Hosea has
to come up in the reign of Jeroboam and preach that the nation is going to fall
in the exact hour that the nation has peaked in its prosperity. The stock market and everything else is going
up, up, up, up, everybody is happy, there never has been such great prosperity,
and then along comes this creep by the name of Hosea; but Hosea, having access
to the future, knows what the future is and that’s the topic of this book, so
keep in mind Hosea’s got a battle against the whole weight of his culture. Now in the last chapter the culture is
already going down and it’s a simple process.
The next question about verse 1, when did Hosea die; how long did Hosea
preach? He started sometime during
Jeroboam, he died before 722 BC because he doesn’t speak of the disaster, at
least he stopped writing his book. So he has a maximum of 60 years here. Now obviously he didn’t prophecy exactly from
the first day of Jeroboam, so we figure he prophesied about 50 years was his
ministry. That means he must have been
quite a young man when he started out which has significance for the next
verse.
We’ll just start the first part of verse 2 and then we’ll stop. Verse 2, “The beginning of the word of the
LORD by Hosea.” Now this is incorrectly
translated. In the original languages it
says: “The beginning of ‘the LORD spoke’ through Hosea.” Now that’s the way it should be translated
literally; we don’t know why it should be translated that way except apparently
“the Lord spoke through Hosea” must be a title of the thing, it must have been
the way the original readers took this as the title, “The LORD spoke through
Hosea,” that was the title. Now, “the
beginning of” means this is the first section of the book called “the LORD
spoke through Hosea.” This is the first
part. And the first part is the initial
command.
“And the LORD said to Hosea,” keep in mind this was when he was a
bachelor, he was a very young man, probably about age 20-25 when this came to
him. “And the LORD said to Hosea, Go,
take unto thee a wife of whoredom and children of whoredoms; for the land has
committed great whoredoms, departing from the LORD. [3] So he went and took Gomer,
the daughter of Diblaim, who conceived, and bore him a son.” Now this is the call, next time you think God
had gives you a bad deal, just think of Hosea, “a wife of fornication,” except
it’s not “fornication,” in the Hebrew it is “fornications” (plural) and when
you take a noun and you make it a plural form it’s called the plural of
intensity. And it means that she is a
professional fornicator. This is how
you’d indicate a profession, by making the noun into a plural. So she is a professional prostitute.
Now all sorts of squeamy commentators have just about hit grease when
they’ve gotten to verse 2 and they’ve come up with all sorts of
explanations. They’ve tried to argue
that well, what God’s saying here is that go marry Gomer and after you marry
her she’ll turn into a fornicator, in other words, it’s a proleptic use of this
word. And the idea is… there are two
reasons for this, number one the moral problem, God wouldn’t command this, to
go out and marry a prostitute, and the second problem advanced by these men is
that it would violate the analogy since Israel wasn’t a whore before God took
her, but both of these points can be answered.
The first point, that it’s immoral of God to do this is not so at all.
Wasn’t it moral for God to allow the slaughter of the Canaanites? God can do as He pleases. God is not the God bound by His own laws; God
gives us orders to do it and if on occasion He changes His so-called moral laws
like He changes His natural laws, as long as this doesn’t represent a violation
of His character overall, then He can do it.
So there is no moral objection to this; God ordered this like God told
Abraham to slit his son’s throat, it’s the same kind of deal. God is a God over His own law, not under
it.
The second point, that it forms an imperfect analogy with Israel is just
simply not so. Joshua 24:14 and Ezekiel
23:3-8 are verses that prove that Israel was idolatrous before the Exodus. So that objection, both of those objections
we dismiss.
[Joshua 24:14, “Now, therefore, fear the LORD, and serve Him in
sincerity and in truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served on the
other side of the river, and in
Joshua 24:14 and Ezekiel 23:3-8 are verses that prove that
Now the next clause, “children of whoredoms,” who are these children of
whoredoms? Some again argue that these
are the children who will be born to Hosea and Gomer after she is married. That is not true. The “children of whoredoms” means this woman
has become pregnant many, many times, and he is going to take both this
professional prostitute and her litter with him. The proof that the “children of whoredoms”
are sons that were born of illegitimate unions is given in Genesis 38:24. [“And it came to pass about three months
after, that it was told
That’s the summary and next week we’ll deal with what he did when he was
told to do this. Wouldn’t you love to
start your ministry in such a way? Don’t
complain about your call.