WWUTT 2219 Gomer and Israel Play the Harlot (Hosea 2:1-3:5)

You know, if we were left to ourselves, we would go after the sin every time. But God has been faithful and good to us, and He has turned us from unrighteousness to Himself through His Son Jesus, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the

Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our

Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Hosea, we're going to be covering two chapters today, chapters two and three.

With three being a very short chapter, it's only five verses long, it's also the only narrative chapter in all of Hosea.

The rest of it is written in a poetic style, because this is, of course, a book of prophecy.

Now just to kind of recap, God has told Hosea, a prophet in Israel, and probably had the longest prophetic ministry in Israel, he's been told to take a wife of harlotry, a woman who will be unfaithful to him.

And this is going to be a picture of the way that Israel has been unfaithful to God. And through this relationship,

God is going to express His anger toward Israel, but then also how

He plans to redeem His people unto Himself. So let's come to Hosea chapter two.

And I'm going to read through the first, oh, let's say seven verses here. And then I'll tell you how this chapter breaks down and what we're going to consider today.

So Hosea two, beginning in verse one, I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible, hear the word of the

Lord. Say to your brothers, Am I and to your sisters, Ruhemah, contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband, and let her remove her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and set her forth as on the day when she was born and make her like a wilderness and make her like dry land and put her to death with thirst.

Also, I will have no compassion on her children, because they are children of harlotry.

For their mother has played the harlot. 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.

Therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

So she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them. And she will seek them, but will not find them.

Then she will say, I will go and I will return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.

Now this particular chapter breaks up with three therefores. We read one therefore here, which was in verse six.

Therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

This is despite the fact that there is still lust in her heart and she wants to go after her lovers.

So this first therefore demonstrates the lust of Gomer and therefore the lust of Israel.

The second therefore is going to show Israel's stubbornness, even though God has shown kindness and love to Israel, yet it has continually rejected

God and gone after idols. But then the third therefore, you would expect after those first two that the third would result in God pouring out his judgment justifiably upon Israel.

And yet it's going to demonstrate his grace and forgiveness toward his people.

And then of course, in chapter three, like I said, that's the only narrative chapter there, but that will bring to a conclusion this first section of Hosea, which includes chapters one, two, and three.

This first section sets up the story between Hosea and Gomer.

And then all the rest of it from then on, chapters four to the end, is going to be poetry with God lamenting over Israel and then talking about destroying

Israel, but then saying how he is going to redeem Israel. And that's a pattern of the next two sections that go from chapter four to the end.

So we're finishing up that first section today. Back to verse one, say to your brothers,

Am I, and to your sisters, Ruhemah. Now if you were to be reading this in the

English standard version, you might notice that the names are not mentioned there in chapter two, rather the meaning of the names.

So in the English standard version, it says, say to your brothers, you are my people. And to your sisters, you have received mercy, because that is what the meaning of the names was.

Well, Lo Am I was not my people and Lo Ruhemah was no mercy.

That's the way those names came out in chapter one. So the English standard translators have just decided to translate out the names so that you have the phrases, you are my people and you have received mercy instead of what the legacy standard version does.

And that's translate the names since those are the names of the children that were given. Now recognize here that the children who are being addressed are the children of unfaithfulness.

There was only one child that was born to Hosea that was actually his child.

The rest of the children named in chapter one were children of harlotry. They were children that Gomer had with other men because of the seed of other men.

Hosea raised them, but they were not really his children. And he brings that up here in this particular rebuke.

So again, chapter two, verse one, say to your brothers, am I into your sisters Ruhemah?

This is an address to them talking to these children of harlotry.

Verse two, contend with your mother contend. Now, the reason why this is phrased in this way is though to say,

I have addressed your mother. She won't listen to me. Maybe she'll listen to her children.

Mother, you're going to, you're going to cause us to be cut off here. If you continue in the way that you are going, even we're going to suffer because of your wickedness.

So hence why Hosea is saying, contend with your mother, contend for she is not my wife and I am not her husband.

Now that's pretty harsh, of course, but that is to say she has completely dissolved the covenant that we had between one another.

She has not been faithful to that covenant as if there is no covenant between us at all. So given that she is going after other men and giving her body to them, then she's not my wife.

There's no marriage here. And I am not her husband. What's she going to do now when she has no home to come back to?

Is she going to find comfort in the beds of these men who give her nothing at all?

That's, that's an important point, which is going to come up here in this chapter. She goes after them.

She goes into their beds, but they don't give her anything. And this is supposed to be the way that Israel goes after false gods, goes after the

Baals. Those Baals don't give Israel anything. It is

God who is always provided for Israel. So why are they going after those things? What are they going to do?

You going to depend on the Baals to provide for you? Yeah, go ahead. See how that works out.

And that is, that's even found in this address that starts chapter two regarding Gomer's unfaithfulness.

Let her remove her harlotry from her face. So don't go after it. Your face is not pointed in the direction of your lusts and her adultery from between her breasts.

So harlotry from her face is the thought and the adultery from between her breasts.

That's the action. So putting the face toward harlotry means that Israel is inclined to go after these other gods.

Adultery between her breasts means they've actually done it. They don't just have the desire for it. They've gone out and they've done it.

Now, throughout the Old Testament, you might remember this even from back in our study of Song of Songs, but the breasts on a woman is symbolic of her entire body.

There is a form to a woman that a man doesn't have, right? So oftentimes in the

Old Testament, there will be references to her breasts as an endearing thing. Think of Proverbs 5, verses 18 and 19.

Let your fountain be blessed and be glad in the wife of your youth as a loving hind and a graceful doe.

Let her breasts satisfy you at all times. Be intoxicated always with her love.

So a woman's body belongs to her husband and a husband's body belongs to his wife. But here,

Gomer is sharing her body with all these other men. And so the reference to her breasts is not an endearing thing here.

In Hosea 2 .2, it is that symbol not of her love, but of her harlotry, of her whorishness.

So then verse 3, let her remove her harlotry from her face, her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and set her forth as on the day when she was born and make her like a wilderness and make her like dry land and put her to death with thirst.

This is Hosea saying, I'm going to take everything from her. She's not going to have anything left. She will be as naked as she was the day that she was born.

She had nothing coming into the world and she'll have nothing going out of it if she does not repent of her wickedness.

And again, all this calling back to Israel needed to repent of their wickedness.

So going on to verse 4. Also, I will have no compassion on her children because they are children of harlotry.

And that again, going back to the appeal at the start, even her children are going to be cut off because of her wickedness.

For their mother has played the harlot, verse 5, she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she has 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.

There's a couple of things to this. First of all, this shows that the pagans around Israel did not go after Israel.

They didn't come hunting Israel down and were going, hey, come and party with us, worship our gods and enjoy the benefits that our gods give to us.

That's not the way that the pagans engaged with Israel. They didn't have to. Israel was inclined to go after those gods anyway.

I will go after my lovers. I was having a conversation with a friend just recently and we were talking about our natural inclinations, who we are as natural sinners.

And one of the things that I said was the world doesn't have to come after us. It doesn't come hunting us down.

We, by our own natures, would go after the world. It's not like when we're born, we would be fine.

We would be perfectly innocent if the world would just leave us alone. That's not how we come into the world.

With our sin nature that we have, because we are a whole descendants of Adam who sinned against God and received the curse, because we're born with these sin natures, we are born to go after the world, to desire it, to want it.

And we find rest and comfort in it because the world gives us what we want.

It gives us the sin and the desires and the lusts that are inherent within our flesh.

That's every single one of us. That's who we are before we come to Christ, slaves to our various passions and desires.

And so here, this is demonstrating in Hosea 2 .5 that Israel went after their lovers.

They went after the Baals. And also Israel gave credit to the

Baals for all of the ways that they were provided for. I'll go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

So Gomer has gone after these lovers, believing that they're actually the ones that are caring for her and supplying for her and giving her all her needs.

No, that was Hosea that was providing those things. I've encountered this before in actual adulterous relationships of a man or a woman who does not believe that they are being satisfied by their spouse.

So they go after others outside the marriage, believing that they're going to find something in them.

I'm actually going to get it from somebody else. And that's not really what happens. They really turn out to feel more and more empty and lost in the world rather than being satisfied with something they thought that they were not getting in their marriage.

It's the way that we go after the world because we're not satisfied in Christ. And so we go to the world looking for satisfaction.

We'll say, God, what you have for me is not enough. I need this other thing in order to be satisfied.

And James warns us in James 4, 4, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

And so what we see here is Gomer at enmity with her husband,

Israel at enmity with God. Verse six, therefore, behold,

I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

So she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them, and she will seek them, but will not find them.

So taking away those opportunities for Gomer to go after her lovers, but the desire for her lovers is still there.

It doesn't make her want her husband anymore. It just means that she's not going to find the thing that her heart desires.

She'll never be satisfied with it, just as Israel is not truly satisfied with going after the

Baals. And then at the end of verse seven, then she will say, I will go and I will return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.

There's some similarity there with the parable of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, isn't there?

If you'll remember, the prodigal son ran away from his father, went to a distant land, squandered everything that he had, had nothing left.

A famine struck the land, so he goes to work for a farmer with pigs in order to get some food.

And the best that he can do to get something to eat is to get down on his hands and knees and put his own nose down there in the pig slop.

But suddenly he has an awakening and he realizes my life was better in my father's house than it is right here.

And so he's going to go and ask that he might become a hired hand. He's not even going to ask his father to take him back as a son.

Just make me a hired hand because I know I had more here than when

I demanded my earnings and then ran off or demanded my inheritance and ran off and squandered it all with people who didn't care about me.

Same sort of a thing going on here in the book of Hosea. Verse 8.

Now, she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil and multiplied silver and gold for her, which they used for bail.

God saying, I gave you these things. And yet Israel went and served them all to the bales, gave away what

God had provided Israel with and went and served false gods with it.

And that is that's like what we do with what God gives to us. People receive life.

They have breath in their lungs, a brain to be able to think with and move with a voice to be able to speak on and on.

All of the wonderful blessings that God gives to us and we in our natural inclinations. What do we do with that?

God gave us breath to glorify him and we use it to glorify ourselves. Instead, we take our bodies and we subjected to things that are unholy and wicked and in rebellion against God.

We take what God has given and we squander it just like what

Gomer did with what Hosea provided with her, just like what Israel did with what

God provided them. Verse nine. Therefore, I will take back my grain at harvest time and my new wine in its season.

I will also deliver my wool and my flax from them given to cover her nakedness.

In other words, God is not going to provide for Israel anymore, and this will make them see their shame and hopefully understand what it is that they have done.

So now, verse 10, I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of my hand.

I will also cease all her joy, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths and all her appointed times.

And I will make desolate her vines and fig trees of which she said, these are my wages, which my lovers have given me, and I will make them a forest and the beasts of the field will devour them.

So I will visit the days of the bales upon her when she used to give offerings in smoke to them and adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry and go after her lovers so that she forgot me, declares

Yahweh. Now, notice how seamlessly we've gone from Hosea talking to Gomer's children of harlotry into God speaking to Israel.

It's like there never was really a transition in there. It just flowed right from Hosea talking to these children to the way that God was addressing

Israel, just kind of like a smooth transition right into that without there being any clear segue.

So in this last half of Hosea chapter two, we have the way that God plans to redeem his people.

And despite the lust of Israel, which we had in the first, therefore, and their stubbornness, which we had in the second, therefore,

God is going to redeem them to himself and show his mercy and provision. This is the third, therefore.

So Hosea 2, 14, therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak to her heart.

Then I will give her her vineyards from there and the Valley of Acre as a door of hope.

And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt, you're seeing

God restoring her heart, giving her a new heart that would desire the Lord instead of the bales that Israel has gone after.

And it will be in that day declares Yahweh that you will call me Eshi and will no longer call me

Baalai. So I will remove the names of the bales from her mouth so that they will be remembered by their names no more.

And, you know, when God brought us to himself through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead so that whoever believes in him, we will be cleansed of our unrighteousness and closed in his righteousness on the day that God did that for us.

The names of the bales were taken from our mouths. We don't speak those things anymore.

But even our very speech changed to reflect the change that happened in our heart by the

Holy Spirit of God. Verse 18. And in that day, I will cut a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the creeping things on the ground.

And I will break the bow, the sword and war from the land, and I will make them lie down in security.

And I will betroth you to me forever. Indeed, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and injustice, in loving kindness and in compassion.

And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. Then you will know Yahweh. And it will be in that day that I will answer, declares the

Lord, I will answer the heavens and they will answer the earth and the earth will answer the grain, the new wine and the oil, and they will answer

Jezreel. Remember, Jezreel was the was the son that was born actually to Hosea.

They will answer Jezreel and I will so her for myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion.

And I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people. And they will say, you are my

God. And that is a picture of the way that God would call even the Gentiles to himself.

Once we were not once we were not a people, as in first Peter chapter two. Now we are

God's people. You are my people. And they will say, you are my

God. And so therefore, friends, since we are no longer of this world, but we have been made people of God in Jesus Christ, let us turn from the world, our sinful desires, our fleshly passions.

And may we have a new heart that desires God and those things that are pleasing to him.

Let me conclude here with Hosea three. We'll read this chapter quickly and finish up our lesson today.

Hosea three, one, then Yahweh said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion and is an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.

So I bargained for her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and a Homer and a half of barley.

Then I said to her, you shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man.

So I will also be toward you for the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar and without ephod or household idols.

Afterward, the sons of Israel will return and seek Yahweh, their God and David, their king, and they will come in dread to Yahweh and to his goodness in the last days.

And all of that, of course, is prophetically pointing to the exile that was to come.

So once again, let us come near to Christ, turning away from the world to our Lord Jesus Christ and walk upright and faithful before him in these days.

If you have sinned, come to Christ and he will cleanse you. First John one nine.

If we have asked forgiveness for our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Heavenly Father, we are thankful for your patience toward us, though we have gone our own way.

Even after we had come to you through Jesus Christ, there would still be those tendencies that we would go after our own flesh.

We should have been as good as dead and cut off from you forever. But you have been faithful to us and holding us close and near and cleansing us and making us new.

As David prayed in Psalm 51, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me, a spirit that goes after the ways of God and turns away from the desires of my flesh.

Forgive me and lead me in your truth today. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Good.