The Gospel of Hosea, Ch. 2: Divorced and Remarried

The Gospel of Hosea, Ch. 2: Divorced and Remarried.

A Broken Heart. It can easily be seen in Hosea 2 that Yahweh is taking Israel’s unfaithfulness personally. God evidently feels like a jilted lover, a betrayed husband. His chosen people with whom He has had a longstanding covenant of spiritual marriage have turned their back to Him, and God considers it a slap in the face. Notice that in this chapter alone, Yahweh repeatedly said “I” and spoke in the first person 30 times, with an equal usage of “My” and “Mine.” Israel’s spiritual infidelities have broken the heart of the Lord, which makes it even more mind-boggling, or is it spirit-boggling, that by the time we get to the end of the chapter, Yahweh is anticipating a renewing of their marriage vows! In the meantime, as we read along in this chapter and follow the train of God’s thoughts, don’t miss the rather explicit language the Lord uses in describing what He is feeling. In chapter 2 we can get a sense of God’s love language, from betrayal to complete forgiveness.

Take Your Nation to Court! “Plead to your mother!” (v. 1-2). Hosea starts off with a bang in chapter 2, demanding that the more devout people in Israel dissociate themselves from their nation, like children pleading a case against their mother. Hosea is challenging them to take the Israelites to God’s court and bring charges of infidelity. Bring this whoring nation and give evidence against her in the Lord’s court of law. Rebuke your people, haul your people into court, Hosea is telling them, and clearly plead your case against the nation for their brazen unfaithfulness to Yahweh. Why? Because the Lord has officially divorced Israel and nullified their holy covenant. “She is not my wife, and I am not her Husband!” 

Guilty As Charged. Yahweh goes into detail now as He outlines His punishments for unfaithfulness… He will publicly humiliate Israel and strip her of all dignity, much like a betrayed husband in that day, who would take off her unfaithful wife’s clothes in the court hearing before she is punished and would then take back whatever he had given her during their marriage. Yahweh will turn her life into a wasteland, a parched wilderness of infertility. He will put up barriers before her to make it difficult to find her lovers, but only to help keep her from straying. In the midst of the punishments, the Lord wants to make it easier for Israel to return to Him as her Husband. He wants Israel to regret her infidelities, to realize how good she had it with Him back in the day. The Lord wants Israel to understand that it was Yahweh, not Baal, that had always blessed them so profoundly.

“Did Not Know” Here we find in verse 8 the first mention of “yada,” a key idea throughout the book of Hosea… Knowledge of God. The Hebrew word “yada” is dropped 25 times in the book, and if we don’t understand what the Bible means by “know,” we are missing the heartbeat of our relationship with God. The Bible has a lot to say about the meaning of know, including the usual suspects: memory of a fact or event; possession of a technical skill; a perception of a piece of reality; an intuitive awareness; a mastery of a particular subject; an understanding of something; a personal familiarity with something. That’s all good. Nothing new there. But now the fun begins… The Hebraic-Christian understanding of “know” is not at all limited to an intellectual or mental knowledge. To know someone in the Biblical sense is to experience that person in a deeply intimate way. “Know” is a relationship word and involves knowledge that comes from personal experience. To know involves a deeply personal union with a truth or a person. In the Hebrew and Christian mind, we don’t really know something until it becomes a part of us, something that changes us in some way. To truly know something is to be able to live it out, to experience participation with that which is known. Knowing something involves a heartfelt focus, an intense investment. To know something is to care for it, to give oneself over to it.  To know someone in the Biblical sense is to literally participate in a profound relationship with that person, to establish an ongoing union with someone, to be personally invested to an intimate degree with a person. A spiritual relationship with God seems best understood in the context of “knowledge” in the biblical sense, a deep union involving spiritual relations between God and the believer. In the same way that Adam and Eve “knew” each other physically, God wants to “know” us spiritually, and for us to know Him at that same level. To walk with the Lord is to grow in our “knowledge” of Him, to experience spiritual relations with Him in an intimate way.  In fact, to know God in the way He want us to know Him means to have spiritual intercourse with Him, an ongoing spiritual union that involves, not physical “carnal knowledge,” but spiritual knowledge. These “know” passages in Hosea will be unpacked later in this study, but for now it wouldn’t hurt start thinking about these powerful words…

• 2:20 = “And then you will finally know the Lord.” 
• 4:1 and 6 = “There is no faithfulness, no tenderness and love – no knowledge of God in the land… My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
• 5:3-4 = “I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.” 
• 6:3 and 6 = “Let us know; let us press on to know Yahweh intimately; My will, My desire, is that you show mercy and not sacrifice, and that you grow in knowledge of Me rather than burnt offerings.“
• 8:2 = “Of course they cry out to Me, ‘Our God’! Oh, My people Israel, you claim that you know Me, but you have rejected what is good.” 
• 11:3 = “It was I who taught Israel how to walk. I took them up by their arms and carried them, but they did not know it was I who was their healer.” 
• 13:4 = “I, Yahweh, have been your true God ever since your days in Egypt. You must know no other god but Me. There is no other god who can save you.” 

God’s Seduction of Israel. And then, without much of a transition at all, Yahweh dramatically reverses course and demonstrates once again how mercy triumphs over judgment. God can’t seem to help Himself. His heartfelt instinct to forgive and forget, to remain faithful to the covenant with Israel even when Israel isn’t even remotely close to being faithful to it. God’s chosen people break one covenant promise after another, but the Lord refuses to do so. So in this graphic passage in verses 14-15, Yahweh states His intention to spiritually seduce Israel and renew the relationship He now longs for, the honeymoon period back in the Sinai wilderness 100 years earlier. “… The idea of the desert as a honeymoon in which God and the people imagined as bridegroom and bride, were alone together, consummating their union in love. The wilderness was seen by the biblical prophets as a kind of alone-togetherness, in which the people and God bonded in love.” (Rabbi Jonathon Sacks). Yahweh makes no secret of his desire to speak tender words of love to Israel, to entice Israel and romance her and court her like back in the old days. God earnestly wants to renew their wedding vows, their ketubah promises, and consummate their union once again. What was once a troubled relationship, a place of misery like the Valley of Achor that was cursed and judged, Yahweh wants to give it new life and redeem it into a blessed place of hope.

The Wilderness. When Yahweh speaks of the wilderness in verses 14-15 as the place where “Israel shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt,” a unique quality of the wilderness is raised for us to consider. Bible scholar Anna Mastro puts it well… “The desert, in Scripture and in lived experience, is not merely a geographical location, nor is it simply a metaphor for hardship or deprivation; it is a condition of exposure, a stripping away of secondary structures, a removal of all that might otherwise mediate or soften the immediacy of encounter. The Hebrew term ברָּדְ מִ , “midbar”, translated as wilderness, desert, or wasteland, has a direct linguistic relationship to ברָ דָּ, “dabar”. Although “dabar” is commonly translated as word or speech, it is not intended to be understood as mere information. It can also be used to indicate physical matter, event, or reality; which has a specific interpretation, that of speech which brings something into being when it is spoken. When looking at those two Hebrew words themselves, the only identifiable difference is the addition of the prefix mem, מִ , at the beginning of “midbar”. This prefix is added to a root word to denote when the term is shifted into “the location of” an action. Therefore, the word for desolation itself suggests that, paradoxically, it is the place of silence, where speech, particularly divine speech, becomes most perceivable. In short, the wilderness is the place where God speaks things into being; the desert is the domicile of divine revelation.”

And I Pronounce Us Husband and Wife. There is no mystery here as to God’s intentions… “On that day, declares the Lord, you will call Me “my Husband” and will no longer call Me “my master.”  The actual word for ‘master’ here is ‘Baal’, and Hosea is making it abundantly clear that even the word “Baal” is not to cross the lips of anyone in Israel ever again. Husband Yahweh is no longer to be in competition with other gods. And this renewed relationship now is to reflect more of a husband-wife union of intimate love, and less like a relationship involving mere subordination and blind obedience. Not only that, but this renewed covenant will sooner or later bring about a renewed landscape as well, a peaceable kingdom in the messianic era, with all the animals at peace, the end of warfare, and complete safety and peace.

The Lord Considered Himself a Husband to His People: This wasn’t the only time in Scripture Yahweh expressed His love for His chosen people in marital terms. “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth.” (Isaiah 54:5); “Return, O backsliding children,’ says the Lord; for I am married to you. I will take you, and I will bring you to Zion.” (Jeremiah 3:14); “…not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord.” (Jer. 31:32); “Thus says the Lord: ‘I remember you, the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the wilderness.” (Jer. 2:2); “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.” (Hosea 2:19); “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, your God will rejoice over you.” (Isaiah 62:5).

2:19 = “I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in righteousness (“tzaddiq”), in justice (“mishpat”), in covenant lovingkindness (“hesed”), and in tender mercy (“rachem”). I will betroth you to Me in loyal faithfulness (“emunah”). And then finally you shall truly know the Lord.” 

Tsaddiyq” (tsad-deek) = Hebrew word rooted in the word for righteousness; a person who is upright, just, godly, in right standing with God; who lives according to God’s standards; a title in Judaism given to people who are especially outstanding in piety, holiness and righteousness; the “tzaddik” has been described as someone who oozes goodness, who takes joy in justice, who loves to blamelessly puts things right. A righteous person is one who lives a life pleasing to God. “I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” (Isaiah 61:10).

“Mishpat” (mish-pawt) = Hebrew word for “saving justice;” treating people equitably and fairly; giving others their human rights in freedom; advocating for what is properly due to others as fellow human beings made in the image of God; wisely defending others who are being treated unfairly, including the powerless, the vulnerable, and those who are unable to defend themselves; exercising the righteous judgments that reflect the character of God. “Dispense true justice, and practice kindness and compassi0n each to one another; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.” (Zechariah 7:9-10).

“Hesed” = A Hebrew word for mercy used a number of times in Hosea, and is often translated as lovingkindness, indicating an eternally steadfast love, covenant faithfulness, unfailing loyalty, love-in-action. Hesed has so many dimensions that it is much easier to describe than define. Hesed may be the most important word in the Hebrew Bible, because it is considered a summary word for all of God’s character traits, the driving force behind all He does. There is no one translation of hesed that is perfect or says it all. Hesed is a covenant word, a relationship word, and celebrates God’s commitment to remaining true to his merciful promises out of sheer love. “Hesed” is used over 120 times in the book of Psalms alone, and a grand total of 250 times in the Hebrew Bible.

“Rachem” = Another primary word for mercy used a number of times in Hosea. The word rachem is translated in Scripture as tender mercy, deep compassion, and, profoundly enough, womb. In the Hebrew mind, the womb is much more than the sacred place in a woman that enables the unborn baby to safely develop till birth. Womb also became a metaphor for mercy because of its linguistic roots. The Hebrew word rachem is intended to mean mercy-womb. God formed each of us with rachem when we were mere unborns, and we were conceived and nourished within His rachem, the mother’s mercy-womb. The baby within the woman is the ideal time to extend God’s compassion to that human being inside of her. The developing baby utterly depends on a mercy-womb. And God wants Himself to be experienced as our womb-sanctuary, our safe place in Him, our refuge and shelter. God Himself yearns to be experienced as a womb of mercy for each of us, a refuge and shelter and safe haven. The purpose of our lives is to live in God’s rachem, God’s womb of love.

“Emunah” = The Hebrew word for faith in the First Testament is “Emunah,” which usually means faithfulness, and has overtones of steady endurance, loyalty, stability, and of course, faith. It is significant that the first time Emunah is used in the Hebrew Bible is in Exodus 17:12 at the scene of the first battle in the wilderness after their rescue from Egypt. “Joshua did what Moses ordered in order to fight Amalek. And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. It turned out that whenever Moses raised his hands, Israel was winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek was winning. But Moses’ hands got tired. So they got a stone and set it under him. He sat on it and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side. So his hands remained steady (‘emunah’) until the sun went down. Joshua defeated Amalek and its army in battle.” The Hebrew word for faithfulness, or faith, is rooted in its original word of Amen, which means “Truth.” So it appears that the Hebrew vision of faith, is more like a faithful endurance in the truth, a steady firmness in living in the truth.