Hosea #8 Ch. 13-14 Hosea — Chuck Missler

Hosea 12:10 and the Holy Spirit's Use of Figures of Speech

Okay, we're going to wrap up our study of Hosea tonight. We're in chapters 13 and 14. But I want to, before we get into that a little bit, talk about chapter 12 from last time, verse 10. You may, I'm sure if you were here last time, you marked that passage in your Bible.

Because I think it's a very interesting one. Your commentators may not highlight it that way. But it's become one that I quote frequently. Verse 10 says, God says through Hosea, I have also spoken by the prophets and I have multiplied visions and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets.

And we talked about that last time, how the Holy Spirit uses figures of speech of all kinds. And similes, similitudes, and puns are a trademark of the Holy Spirit. We see it all through the scripture, but especially in the book of Hosea.

And it may surprise you to know that the Holy Spirit uses many forms of multi-level and also reflexive codes of different kinds as puns, similes, analogies, metaphors, and other figures of speech. Now a figure of speech, what does that mean?

That's a legitimate departure from usual laws of grammar and syntax for some special purpose. And I mention this here, and I think this verse is important because we should recognize that even as we use that in speech and in writing, the Holy Spirit does too.

And what's interesting is the construction that the Holy Spirit uses. Stitch the whole Bible together, the 66 books penned by 40 different guys over thousands of years, we discover an integrated message.

And some of these figures of speech really demonstrate that. Essentially, the ancient Greeks had their schema and the Romans had their figura, but the decline of learning in the Middle Ages caused the study of linguistic structures of this kind to pretty much die out except among specialists.

But it's really interesting to discover how they're used, especially in the scripture. And as I think I mentioned last time in our book, Cosmic Codes, Hidden Messages from the Edge of Eternity, we deal with all kinds of hidden messages in the scripture, but we also include an appendix that lists or catalogs, really, over 200 different kinds of rhetorical devices and where they're used in the scripture as examples.

And examples, first of all, are puns. We don't talk about puns. Denotatively, they're a homonym, two words that sound the same but with a different meaning, usually with a humorous application. But connotatively, they're really any kind of double reference, and they're not necessarily used just for humor.

One of the examples I often think of is the washing of the water by the Word. We wash ourselves daily in the Word of God. In Revelation, we see the saints standing on the glassy sea. And here we wash in it, there we'll stand on it.

You say, gee, that's a pun. Yes, exactly, and the Holy Spirit uses that that way. And they're also double entendres, we speak of that. That's usually a word or phrase with a double meaning. They're often used, but not necessarily with some kind of salacious or sensuous overtone, but not necessarily.

Double entendres have broad application. You'll find them in Isaiah 52 verse 13 and elsewhere. We also use the term oxymoron. How many have heard the term oxymoron? You know, that's a term like, you know, military intelligence, or it's a self-contradictory phrase, it would seem.

You know, engineering commitment is another one, you know. You know, thinking liberal is another one, so. But we also find those that, strangely enough, the Holy Spirit uses those, you'll find some in our book.

There's also what's called a synecdoche among specialists. That's where there's, you exchange, it means transfer one idea for another. You can use the general for the specific or the specific for the general idiomatically, and I won't get it all out here.

But there are more elaborate ones. There's an, I think, we speak of allegories. That's a comparison by representation, where one thing's an allegory of another. Perhaps the most classical allegory, of course, is Paul Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

The whole book is an allegory. But we find allegories all through the Scripture, and we also find metaphors. A metaphor is a representation of a word, declare one thing represents another. And there's a similar kind of thing called a simile, which is resemblance, where one thing, a declaration that one thing resembles another.

And then, of course, there's a very strange one that many don't know about, is a hypokatastasis. That's where, well, I'll come back to that. We have microcodes. Those are codes in the letters themselves and subtleties.

There's also macrocodes. And macrocodes are perhaps the most exciting ones. And that's a macrocode in the computer field. And also, if you were to use the word processor, you know, you can use a code to tell you in advance what's coming.

If you're going to do a fax, you can hit one code, it'll set up your fax. Or if you do email, it sets it up. There are macro, you can define almost anything you want to do that you frequently into a code, a macrocode, and it'll set it all up for you.

Well, macrocodes have the distinction that they can be anticipatory. And we find that Bible is full of models or types, as they call it, or macrocodes, in which they anticipate what's coming. What's dramatic about that is many of those codes are inserted in the text centuries before the fact.

It demonstrates that the origin of the designer of the text is outside the dimensionality of time. And so, we get into some of that. Now, hypokatastasis is one of these things that there's an implied resemblance of representation.

And some of them are extremely subtle, so subtle that scholars often have missed it. There's a little Hebrew word that's called et, an aleph and a tau. And when it's hooked, it's used as a grammatical connector.

But when it freestands, it sometimes doesn't seem to make sense. If you look at Zechariah 12, verse 10, that's where you all remember the verse where it says, and they shall look upon me whom they've pierced.

It's a second coming reference in the book of Zechariah. But if you look at an interlinear Bible, every Hebrew word has an English word equivalent, and you go through that, but you'll discover there's a... between the me and the whom, they shall look upon me, there's two little letters that are not translated, an aleph and a tau.

They're the first and last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Let me say it to you if I was saying it to you in Greek. They shall look upon me, the alpha and the omega whom they've pierced. But it's in Hebrew.

They shall look upon me, the aleph and the tau whom they've pierced. And we find this aleph and tau used in a very, very strange way a number of times in the book of Genesis 1. In the beginning, God, barashit bara elohim, there's two little letters not translated.

In the beginning, God, the aleph and the tau created the heaven and the earth. And so these things are kind of interesting. You can dismiss them. I think they're extremely profound. Microcodes also there, anagrams, acrostics.

I won't get into those here, but they'll be in the notes. And some of these devices are very mysterious. There's a thing called an enigma, a dark saying, a truth expressed in obscure language, all kinds of those.

There's also what the Hebrews call a remez, a hint of something deeper. And, of course, we talk about that in our book. And the really strange ones are the ones whose meaning rely on the numerical value of the letters.

And that's unique to Hebrew and Greek. They're the only languages that have that characteristic. And interestingly, they're the two languages used in our Bible. Kind of fascinating. Well, getting back to Hosea, harlotry and adultery are metaphors for idolatry all through the book.

We've talked that. I won't go through all the references. You recognize that. There are all kinds of powerful and rather shocking figures of speech that are used to describe God's pervasive and irresistible judgments.

Pus and infection encountered in Chapter 5, the lion, panther, and bear in Chapters 5, 11, and 13, a trapper, vulture, and eagle, so forth. And more comforting metaphors are pictures of Jehovah as the husband, in one case, in Chapter 2, a parent in Chapter 11, and a lover in Chapter 14, we'll see.

And now Israel is also portrayed with rather vivid figures of speech. A stubborn heifer in Chapter 4, a snare in a net in Chapter 5, a heated oven in a sense, Chapter 7, a treacherous bow, Chapter 7, useless vessel in Chapter 8, grapes in a fig tree in Chapter 9, a luxuriant vine in Chapter 10, a trained heifer in Chapter 10, a crooked merchant in Chapter 12, a stupid baby in Chapter 13, we'll see.

And its lack of stability is pictured as mist, or dew, or chaff, or smoke in Chapter 13. The futility of her foreign policy is described as riding herd on the wind in Chapter 12. And the fate of her idol worship as a bobbing like a chip on the water in Chapter 10.

And so these rather graphic word pictures are characteristic of the Bible in general, but Hosea specifically. Now, puns are also... have been a vivid part of our tour of Hosea. His... the names of his kids that God instructed him to name were puns.

Jezreel has a double meaning. God will scatter, and in Chapter 1 it meant like seed and judgment, and yet God will sow, that is inseminate, in the restoration in Chapter 2. It's used both... in both senses.

The term Sabbath and that will end. It's a pun in the Hebrew language in Chapter 2. Ephraim means on the one case a wild ass, and the other case fruitfulness, strangely enough, by just a slight change of pronunciation.

And the use of verbs are related to the ancestors' double name, Jacob and Israel. We talked about that last time. And the mocking of Bethel, by calling it Beth-Avon or Beth-Abel, nearby towns but with very different meanings.

And on it goes. So, these biting word plays, of course, would not have been lost on the hearer's ears, just as it's not lost on us as we read it. Many of them are subtle and in the Hebrew, and I haven't tried to, you know, distract you with getting into too many of those.

Ellipsis, Prophecy, and the Church Age

But there's another kind of construction that we're going to want to be at least aware of. It's a rather sophisticated, perhaps, but it's called an ellipsis in rhetoric. Reading it technically means an omission in rhetorical terms.

And that's where a gap is deliberately left in a sentence or a passage through the omission of some words or other words. And there's a whole bunch. There's an absolute omission where the words are supplied from the nature of the subject.

There's a whole bunch. There's about a number of different categories of these. The fifth within that subcategory is an interval of time. Entire interval of time is omitted. If you've studied Daniel chapter 70 weeks, the third of the four verses, Daniel 9 .26, speaks of the interval from the time that he was rejected, that he rode the donkey when Messiah was presenting himself as king riding a donkey, until the 70th week of Daniel.

There's a whole interval there that we recognize the church age. That interval is not only in the Bible, it's in the Bible 24 times. And that's an interesting number when you recognize, you study the book of Revelation, you understand that 24 is the number, in effect, of the elders and their apparent representation of the church.

So, and the list of the references will be in your notes. But we develop that, of course, in our book. But the point is, there are a number of other ellipses. But one of the ellipses, one of the strangest kind, in fact, it's one that's usually omitted in analyses of ellipses, is what's called ellipses of reversal.

It's the most unusual of all. And we're going to encounter that in a very unusual way in Hosea. That's why I wanted to digress a little bit to talk. One of the things you'll learn as you try to study things is not just the content, but the methodology and what I call the adjective aspects of the text.

And so, we'll touch a little bit about that as we go, as we discover the truths and the treasures that God has hidden here for us in the book of Hosea. We're going to take Hosea 13 and 14 tonight. Hosea 13, you could subtitle, the death of a nation.

Hosea 13 and the Death of a Nation

And it was his tragic errand to have to go to the northern kingdom and present God's case against them. He's the, if you will, the prosecutor of the case. And he brings the charges against the northern kingdom.

And their sentence, of course, will be that God will use their enemies to wipe them out. Romans 6 .23 is one of those Bible verses that if you've done any Bible memory at all, I'm sure you've included in your list.

Romans 6 .23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Sin causes death. No surprise, you all know that. But we sometimes don't think through that sin also causes the death of family life, of culture, of major movements of history, and even the death of nations.

Now, that's glibly said. What do we mean when we say nations die? How do nations die? Oswald Spengler did a massive two-volume book called The Decline of the West, and he compares the movements of history to stages in biological life.

Civilizations are born, grow strong, and die. Now, he doesn't, he has no attempt to link those to sin, and he has no apparent background in redemption and so forth, but his work still is rather provocative from a historical point of view.

It seems that there are three stages of the death of a nation. The first stage is they die in spirit. The second stage is the soul of the nation dies. Its national character deteriorates, in other words.

And the third stage is when the body itself finally dies. And this does seem to be the pattern of the Northern Kingdom that we're going to deal with in chapter 13 of Hosea. Let's start with Hosea 13, verse 1.

When Ephraim, that's of course an idiom for the Northern Kingdom. That's the lead tribe, but it's used as a synonym, if you will, of the whole nation. When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel.

But when he offended in Baal, he died. Now, this is a recap of all we've been going through these chapters, how the Northern Kingdom, even though it was their most prosperous period in history, it was the best of times.

They turned to idol worship, and they forgot the Lord that had blessed them. And so it was also the worst of times. They plunged into immorality, and God is using Hosea to announce to them, to declare to them that they're in trouble, and they're going to be wiped out.

Now, Ephraim's first phrase here, he exalted himself in Israel, his prominent, Ephraim's prominent place among the tribes of Israel is well known from Genesis 48 onward. Jeroboam I, who had led their secession after Solomon's death from the south, the first king, Jeroboam I, was an Ephraimite from that specific tribe.

But it was this tribe, though, that had taken the lead in embracing Baal worship, false worship. So it's interesting, the first, this I'm going to suggest represents the first stage, and that is they die in spirit.

And when a nation forgets God and begins to worship that which is not God, that's stage one. We saw that in Nazi Germany, where they worshiped race. And we see that in the United States, where we worship material prosperity instead of God.

The Nazi party in Germany was not only a Nazi party, but it also was very occultic. And there's many, many books on that. It's a very, very provocative study. The United States has, just like the Northern Kingdom, in that they had two centuries in which they finally, they just rejected, forgot, abandoned their heritage, so are we.

And that's why this is such a provocative study. So the first step in the dissipation is when the God consciousness dissipates. Or worse, is even deliberately removed. Prayer and Bible reading removed from our schools, forcibly.

Identification even with biblical principles, where there's debates about the Ten Commandments appearing in one of our courtrooms. And of course what happens then, weapons and diplomacy replace quickly the dependence on God.

Idolatry, Moral Decline, and the Death of a Nation's Soul

Let's get to verse two. So what happens at Ephraim? Now they sin more and more. They have made them molten images of their silver, their idols according to their own understanding, and all of it the work of the craftsmen.

They say of them, let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves. Now kissing here is referring to paying homage to. Very interesting phrase to use because it's in contrast to Psalm 2, which is this trilogue, if you will, between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 2, you won't understand unless you diagram it. Sit down and read Psalm 2 sometime and figure out who's talking to whom. It's finally, Chloe kissed the son lest he be angry. And same idea except in this case it's they're kissing the calves, the idols.

So part of this idol worship caused them to multiply their sin further and further. And this, in effect, I'm going to suggest is parallel to stage two. That's when the soul of a nation dies. Its national character deteriorates.

What happens? They start lowering the moral climate within the nation. Corruption starts to get accelerated, even in the leadership. And it causes the breakup of families. There's a drive towards materialism, an increase in crime and violence.

The failure of even the government to keep faith with its own people, let alone other nations. What are ways that governments fail to keep faith to the people? One way is to allow inflation, which debases the currency, undermines savings and all the rest of it.

Have we had that here? Like 50 every 10 years. Every 10 years cut in half. Almost predictably. Another failure, of course, is the failure to honor agreements with other nations. And we've probably seen the most dramatic example of that on April 24th of 1999 when NATO, a defensive alliance of 15 nations, agreed to defend themselves against any attack or redefine themselves as a global police force.

And without getting into all the mechanics of it, what's interesting about that whole procedure, we violated every known international law that pertains. We violated the Helsinki Accords of 1975, the Vienna Convention of 1980.

We've even violated the U .N. Charter. And even our own War Powers Act had expired on that issue. So the parallels here are too dramatic not to notice. Verse 3 of Hosea 13. Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud and as the early dew that passes the way and as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor and as the smoke out of the chimney.

Now there are four similes here, obviously. The mist, the dew, the chaff and the smoke. All suggestive, all trying to make graphic the idea they're going to just dissipate. They'll vanish. These idioms could be used many ways.

Here they're clearly used to indicate that it's over. They're going to be gone. And this is stage 3. The judgment of God would make these idolaters quickly vanish. And it would result in the total dissipation of the nation.

This nation would disappear and never return again. And this is the final stage when the body of the nation dies. Now by the way, in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah it happened suddenly. And in the cases of other cases it's happened suddenly.

It doesn't necessarily happen suddenly by sudden or total overthrows. It can happen in small degrees. They can break down bit by bit. The police can become ineffective. The courts can become technical battlegrounds where justice is perverted.

Politicians pander to the elite. Schools cease to educate. The population, oblivious to the trends, drifts into oblivion. Does that seem uncomfortable to you? It should. Verse 4. And God continues through Hosea.

Yet I am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt. And thou shalt know no God but Me, for there is no Savior beside Me. Here's God reasserting what they should have been remembering on their own. And He refers to the God from the land of Egypt because that's where they were in bondage and He delivered them.

Not because they deserved it, but just as a gracious Father. And He keeps harping on that. They've forgotten the source of their blessings, the source of their heritage, the source of their freedom. Wow.

How many of us in our country keep in mind the source of our freedom, our blessings, our prosperity? The parallels here I find most disturbing. I am the Lord thy God and so thou shalt know no God but from Me.

Isaiah 43, 11 and also 54, 21 where God says the same thing. Beside Me there is no Savior. This assertion is all through the Scripture. I've mentioned it a couple of places. See the first commandment is what God's talking about.

And that of course was lost in Hosea's day and of course obviously is in ours also. Verse 5, I did know thee in the wilderness in the land of great drought. Verse 6, according to their pasture so they were filled.

They were filled and their heart was exalted therefore they have forgotten Me. See once again God is reminding them not only of their deliverance of bondage but that He cared for them. He nurtured them.

He says according to their pasture. The idiom here suggests a calm, peaceful, freely grazing analogy here. In terms of His grace towards them and taking care of them. And especially through the wilderness.

All these ordeals through the wilderness wandering. He's there always providing for them. Sometimes quite miraculously. And then of course ultimately lets them feed in the promised land. Delivers them into the promised land and so forth.

And what they should have done in return is simply be grateful. Just acknowledge them. Gee thanks God, that's neat. But no. Instead they're worshiping their idols. Taking credit for things themselves.

Just demonstrating disloyalty. It's not like He wanted to be repaid. It's like He wanted to be acknowledged. Doesn't sound so bad does it? And yet even that they became proud on their own and forgot Him.

Does that sound like another country you know? Verse 7. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion, as a leopard by the way, while I observe them. And I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps.

And I will rend the call of their heart. And there I will devour them like a lion. The wild beast shall tear them or rip them. Wow. That's strong language. Who's talking here? Who's talking here? God is.

It's interesting language for Him to use. That He would attack His people. See and He's still using the idioms here. Still continuing like they're a helpless flock. He's going to, you know, He's upset.

Now it fascinates me to notice the idioms He's using here. There are four animals. A lion, a leopard, a bear and a wild beast. Does that ring familiar to you? Daniel chapter 7. Where He describes the empires that will come from Babylon to the end.

There's a lion, a leopard, a bear and then a wild beast. And they're not in quite the same order. So I wouldn't make too much of this. But yet it's interesting that we find the same idioms used. To describe the Gentile world that God uses to deal with Israel.

We're going to talk more about that as we go. Verse 9. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help. See it's ironic that the helper of Israel would become her destroyer because she was against Him.

You see the irony here? Can you see, can you get a sense of God's frustration? He's the one that chose them. He's the one that's delivered them. He's the one that's cared for them. And because of the disloyalty and their stubborn resistance.

His justice has to be served. He's going to have to do this. Now as you watch this. In addition to trying to put yourself in that Old Testament period. And try to understand the dynamics here. The real issue we want to get from all of this is to try to understand the character of God.

That's really what we're going to, one of the main things that I believe this is here for. But as we do this we can't help but ask ourselves. What about the parallel between America and Israel? We started that way.

We've known it all the way through the study. Where is America relative to the Northern Kingdom? Most prosperous period they've ever had in their history. And it was also their most despicable from immorality and what have you.

And here's America. Never been more prosperous. Baffling all the analysts. The strength, the apparent strength of the economy is enormous. And yet we've become the lowest we've ever been in our history and in the world.

We've become the exporter. The entertainment industry has been the exporter of everything you can imagine that God abhors. Well as we understand where we are. As we understand where Israel was. As we understand how God felt He had to do with Israel.

Where does that put us? What are we expecting? That God is going to just, you know. He couldn't shrug it off for Israel. He had to deal with it there. What's He going to do with us? Wink at it? Let's let it go for a little longer?

Or do you think there's some point at which God's going to say, Okay guys, enough's enough. We'll see. Verse 10. Now speaking nationally. Obviously individually it's a whole different thing in terms of your position in Christ.

But as a nation. God deals with nations too. He deals with this at all levels. Anyway, verse 10. I will be thy king. Where is any other that may save thee in all thy cities? And thy judges of whom thou saidst, Give me a king and a prince and princes.

See, when the Lord comes to destroy, there will be no one that will be able to save the people. Not even the political leaders that they had demanded from the Lord. Bear in mind, see, they had set up their own leaders.

Verse 11. I gave thee a king in mine anger and took him away in my wrath. What that probably refers to is the northern tribe's part in the original crowning of Saul. That goes back in 1 Samuel 8. We won't go into that here tonight.

But it also can allude to their secession from Judah after Solomon's death under Jeroboam I. Either way, it can apply. It also can allude to the removal of the king Hosea. That was not Hosea, but the final king of the northern kingdom when the Assyrians used God's judgment to wipe them out.

That was under their final king, Hosea. And that's also all in view in that. Well, verse 12. The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is hid. Now, it's bound up like stored for a treasure. It's sort of the sin is taken and stored.

It's ready to be brought out at the right time. See, God has not overlooked Israel's guilt. We hit that in chapter 10, 12, and here it is in 13 again. We've got to come up with some more. And the sinful deeds of the northern kingdom are compared now in a sense like a document that's tucked away and locked up for the occasion that's coming.

That's sort of the tone of it all here. It's as if the sins of the northern kingdom are being guarded carefully until the day of retribution and where they will be brought forth as a testimony against the nation.

Now, I'm fond of pointing out this is in contrast to yours, sin, and mine. In Hebrews 10, 17, also in Hebrews 8, 12. One of the great commitments of our God is He says to you and I, for in Christ, I will remember your sins, how long?

No more. And there's another place where it says that as far as the east is from the west, right? That's a long way, by the way. If He said as far as the north and the south, that's got to terminus. You see, you can only go so far north before you're starting to go south again.

You follow me? The north and south are, you know, what are they, 8 ,000 miles apart. That's all. How far is the east and the west? Those directions are indeterminate. They have no terminus, right? You can go east forever.

You can go west forever. How far is the east from the west? See, it's interesting that even in the choice of the idioms in the text, they take advantage of a reality that you and I take for granted, but they may not have in those days.

Follow what I'm saying? It's interesting, you know. It's interesting how Jesus telegraphs all kinds of insights. He says two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taking the other left. Two men will be working in the field.

One will be taking the other left. Two people sleeping in the same bed. One will be taking the other. This all happens in the twinkling of an eye, right? Wait a minute. Two women at the mill grinding was the thing you did before breakfast.

You ground the meal for the day. That's what the women did in those days. Two men working in the field. That's the middle of the day. One or two people sleeping in the same bed at night. You've got morning, noon, and night at the same instant.

World is round. Same instant. So we take that for granted. But this is a quote from Jesus Christ in the Gospel period. I think that's interesting. But anyway, let's move on. Verse 13. The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him.

He is an unwise son, for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children. Now, that's a clumsy translation. It's hard to improve on it. But you have to understand, what it's trying to get across is that all basis of hope has disappeared.

Because Israel has not responded to God's call for repentance during the period of grace that he'd extended. Now, what's going on here is this procrastinating nation, or stubborn nation, how do you want to put it, was compared to a baby who does not come out of his mother's womb despite her strenuous efforts at labor.

And such a delay will result in death for both the woman and the child. And since the baby seemingly doesn't observe the proper time for his birth, so to speak, he is referred to figuratively as without wisdom.

You see? As an unwise son. It's a strange, in our reckoning it sounds a little strange. It's speaking as an analogy, of course. But it's going to be like the baby wasn't smart enough to come out at the right time, so they're all going to die.

That's because you didn't have the sense to come out of your idolatry and accept the Lord. There's a parallel here. Call it an allegory, call it whatever you will. But now we're going to get into a very interesting verse that most commentators are confused about.

And it's actually an ellipsis of reversal, but I'll come back to that in a minute. Verse 14, a very famous verse you might want to mark it. God says, I will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them from death.

O death, I will be thy plagues. O grave, I will be thy destruction. Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes. Now traditionally, this verse, especially the front part of it, is interpreted as an expression of hope and promise of salvation.

The NASB, the NIV, tweet it that way. It sounds great, you know, but it turns out that if you really look at the Hebrew, that's a rather problematic bending of the text. You see, and even though Hosea's text is often characterized by sudden shifts of tone, this kind of a shift here would be premature, because we'll see as the rest of the verses go.

The shift in this section really comes more at chapter 14, verse 1. And if that's the case, that would leave chapter 13, verse 14 rather awkwardly connected with what's following. So it turns out that exegetically, the first two statements would be better translated as rhetorical questions, implying a negative answer.

Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? Is really more accurate. Strangely enough, that's what the RSV deals with that way. Then the next two questions that follow, where, O death, are your plagues?

Where, O grave, is your destruction? And thus the passage really, if taken strictly and carefully, both in its structure, but also in its position with the verses both before and after, are really virtually appeals for death to unleash plagues and destruction against Ephraim.

So it does not appear as a triumphant cry of victory over death. Now, how do we solve this exegetical enigma, if we're going to be precise? It's interesting that several commentators are quite confused about this.

Now, I'm really intrigued with this, because as you wrestle with the technicalities of the text, it is confusing, because you'd like to bend it around to be a positive thing, and I'll come back to that why.

But at the same time, that's really not what the text is saying. Now, what do you do whenever you find a problem text in the Scripture? You find something in the Scripture that you don't understand. Well, let me back up a second.

Let's set this aside for a minute, because I want to answer this one more broadly. It's too important. Whenever you find a passage that you struggle with, that you don't understand, seems to contradict itself, or it doesn't make sense, you want to get your journal, a little diary that you're going to reserve just for this purpose, that's your private little place.

You want to put down the date. You want to put down the reference. And you want to put down why it is, this is the hard part, why it is that this passage, whichever it is, bothers you. You do this in ink, not in pencil.

You do it in a private journal. You'll never show anybody else this is your private place, because you want to be absolutely honest and candid with yourself. Date, reference, and what it is that seems so confusing about this passage.

Then what you do is you close your little journal, and you take it before the throne of God. And you remind the Lord that, Lord, you said that the Holy Spirit would teach me all things. Not most things.

All things. Well, Father, I've got this area in Your Word that I'm confused about, doesn't make sense, seems to contradict, whatever, whatever, whatever. I'm asking You to reveal what it is You have for me here in this verse.

And commit that, you know, pleading the blood of Jesus Christ and so forth. Amen. Now, it won't necessarily happen in the next ten seconds or hour even. It might happen the next day, a week later, who knows.