Thy Strong Word — Hosea 2-3: God’s Love for the Unfaithful

The Rev. Kevin Parviz, pastor of Congregation Chai v’ Shalom in St. Louis, MO, joins the Rev. Dr. Phil Booe to study Hosea 2-3.

Israel’s idolatry is described in terms of marital infidelity. Something that, because of YHWH’s command, Hosea is now intimately familiar with because of his marriage to the unfaithful Gomer. Hosea depicts YHWH as the betrayed husband and Israel as His unfaithful wife. We end our study with God’s command that Hosea redeem his wife, Gomer, which foreshadows the future redemption that awaits God’s own bride, Israel.

The book of Hosea is a love story with a twist. It tells how God commanded Hosea, a prophet, to marry Gomer, a wife who would be unfaithful to him. God wanted Hosea to feel firsthand the pain of betrayal as he sent him out to prophesy to the people of Israel how they had been unfaithful to God. Hosea still loved Gomer and pursued her and restored her as his wife. This was a picture of how God pursued Israel despite their sin and rebellion and offered them grace and mercy if they would return to Him.

Thy Strong Word, hosted by Rev. Dr. Phil Booe, pastor of St. John Lutheran Church of Luverne, MN, reveals the light of our salvation in Christ through study of God’s Word, breaking our darkness with His redeeming light. Each weekday, two pastors fix our eyes on Jesus by considering Holy Scripture, verse by verse, in order to be strengthened in the Word and be equipped to faithfully serve in our daily vocations.

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Hosea 2-3

Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished

2 ^[a] Say to your brothers, “You are my people,”^[b] and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”^[c]

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;
³lest 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.
⁴Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
    because they are children of whoredom.
⁵For 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.’
⁶Therefore I will hedge up her^[d] way with thorns,
    and I will build a wall against her,
    so that she cannot find her paths.
⁷She 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.’
⁸And she did not know
    that it was I who gave her
    the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
    which they used for Baal.
⁹Therefore I will take back
    my grain in its time,
    and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
    which were to cover her nakedness.
¹⁰Now I will uncover her lewdness
    in the sight of her lovers,
    and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
¹¹And I will put an end to all her mirth,
    her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
    and all her appointed feasts.
¹²And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
    of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
    which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
    and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
¹³And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
    when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
    and went after her lovers
    and forgot me, declares the Lord.

The Lord‘s Mercy on Israel

¹⁴“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
    and bring her into the wilderness,
    and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵And there I will give her her vineyards
    and make the Valley of Achor^[e] 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.’ ¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. ¹⁸And 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^[f] the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. ¹⁹And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. ²⁰I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.

²¹“And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord,
    I will answer the heavens,
    and they shall answer the earth,
²²and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,
    and they shall answer Jezreel,^[g]
²³    and I will sow her for myself in the land.
And I will have mercy on No Mercy,^[h]
    and I will say to Not My People,^[i] ‘You are my people’;
    and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

Hosea Redeems His Wife

3 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” ²So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech^[j] of barley. ³And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” ⁴For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. ⁵Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

Footnotes

Hosea 2:1 Ch 2:3 in Hebrew
Hosea 2:1 Hebrew ammi, which means my people
Hosea 2:1 Hebrew ruhama, which means she has received mercy
Hosea 2:6 Hebrew your
Hosea 2:15 Achor means trouble; compare Joshua 7:26
Hosea 2:18 Hebrew break
Hosea 2:22 Jezreel means God will sow
Hosea 2:23 Hebrew Lo-ruhama
Hosea 2:23 Hebrew Lo-ammi
Hosea 3:2 A shekel was about 2/5 ounce or 11 grams; a homer was about 6 bushels or 220 liters; a lethech was about 3 bushels or 110 liters

Rev. Dr. Phil Booe

Native North Carolinian Rev. Dr. Phil Booe serves pastor of St. John Lutheran Church of Luverne, MN, and host of Thy Strong Word on KFUO Radio. His parishioners probably think he can’t teach Bible study without a mug of coffee in his hand, and he’ll always be happy to eat a plate of sushi. When he’s not shepherding his flock or teaching on the radio, you might find him watching bad movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and especially binging RiffTrax and MST3K episodes. Some day he’d love to travel to the Lutheran homeland in Germany, but for now he spends time in Minnesota with his wife, son, daughter, and cat, and looks forward to Holy Week every year.