THE PROPHET'S ACCOUNT
"When Jehovah spake at the first by Hosea, Jehovah said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom ; for the land doth commit great whoredom, departing from Jehovah."—Hosea 1:2.
I am not proposing in these articles anything in the nature of a full exposition of this marvelous prophecy. I propose rather to consider some of its essential light —light for all days and for all life. By way of introduction it may be best to remember some of the facts concerning it. Accepting the dating of the first verse, Hosea was evidently a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, not to the southern kingdom of Judah. The dates of the kings referred to cover a period of no less than one hundred and twenty-eight years. Which, of course, does not mean that he was prophesying for one hundred and twenty-eight years, but he must have exercised his ministry for at least seventy years. In this book of Hosea we don’t have a full account of his preaching. Unquestionably he or someone else—most likely he—did, towards the end of that wonderful period of prophesying, commit to writing the general movement of his ministry. It reveals the conditions in the midst of which he preached, and gives us the striking points of that marvelous ministry.
The book of Hosea is peculiar in one regard. Among these twelve prophets, which we commonly call Minor, there are three which are distinctively narrative prophecies. Two in themselves are accounts: the Book of Jonah is an account with a prophetic value; and so also is the Book of Habakkuk. Hosea is not in itself an account, but behind it there is an account, which emerges in the outlay, and we find that the account gives color to the ministry of Hosea.
It was the darkest period in all Israel's history. The prophet spoke to that nation as it passed down the swift decline to captivity (as our countries today). The account is that of tragedy in the prophet's domestic life, which colored all his messages.
The words of the second verse of the first chapter refer to that tragedy, and reveal its influence on Hosea's ministry, and its value to him as a prophet of God. Let us first consider the account in itself; then let us consider the account in the light of these words; and finally let us attempt to gather up some of the values of the account for ourselves.
What is the account? Hosea married a woman named Gomer. As the result of the marriage three children were born to them— Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi, naming them as they were named. Then Gomer played him deceitfully, and he cast her out judicially (divorce), as she had left him in infidelity. After a while, when she had descended to the uttermost depths of degradation, having become merely a slave, the property of someone else (as sin does to its slave), Hosea sought her out in her degradation, bought her at the price of a slave, and restored her to his side as his bride. (As if that same thing didn’t happen for each of us.)
That is the account bluntly told. It obviously speaks on the subject of marriage and what unfolds in that arena for those who experience tragedy as well as those who have relative success with the miracle of becoming one with another of a different make-up in mind, soul, as well as body. This ultimately is the account of becoming one with God Himself and is told by way of the relationship of marriage and family.
The first part of this account is tragic, but it is not uncommon. The second part is by no means common, and is absolutely amazing. With the first part we are familiar: it is tragic, heartbreaking, but not unknown. But the account of a man seeking a woman when she has passed through all the period of passion, and has lost her value on the material level, and is merely a slave; and of such a man, going after her, buying her for thirty shekels and bringing her back, and restoring her to his side as his bride, is something very uncommon in cases of divorce. That is the domestic account that lies behind this prophecy.
Now we come to the statement of this verse; "When Jehovah spake at the first by Hosea, Jehovah said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom ; for the land doth commit great whoredom, departing from Jehovah."
The statement in the form in which it is made has created a difficulty in the minds of many, and I recognize the reason for that sense of difficulty. I admit the strangeness of it, but surrender to that it is rather in the way the thing is said, than in what is really said.
It may appear, from our reading of it in our English translations, and, indeed, in the Hebrew Bible also, that Hosea states that he deliberately married a woman of sin, and that he did so at the command of Jehovah. But that is not so.
In the Revised Versions, both English and American, by the side of the words, "When Jehovah spake at the first by Hosea," there is a marginal note, and the marginal note says, "or with." That is a slight alteration, but the revisers evidently admitted Ewald's view as possibly correct. I adopt it resolutely. It gives us the true sense. "When Jehovah spake at the first with Hosea." That refers not to Hosea's preaching, but to his communion with God. That antedates the prophetic work of Hosea.
Then notice very carefully that little phrase, "at the first." The writer was looking back, from the end of his ministry, when he was writing out his notes, committing them to manuscript form, and he said in effect: When away back there my ministry began, when, before the tragedy came into my life, Jehovah spoke with me, it was He Who commanded me to marry Gomer. The statement distinctly calls her a woman of whoredom, but it does not tell us that she was that at the time. It certainly does mean that God knew the possibilities in the heart of Gomer, and that shortly they would be manifested in her conduct, and knowing, He commanded Hosea to marry her, knowing also what his experience would do for him in his prophetic work. When Hosea married Gomer, she was not openly a sinning woman, and the children antedated her infidelity. The earlier life of the prophet was in all likelihood one of joy and happiness.
Israel at the time was playing the harlot from God, and as Hosea's children were born, they were named, and their naming reflected the age: Jezreel, telling of coming judgment; Lo-ruhamah, people that are not obtaining mercy; Lo-ammi, people that are rejected. The domestic scene at first is the scene of peace and quietness and blessedness; but it reflects, in the naming of the children, the national condition.
Thus we discover the force of the statement. Hosea looked back over his own life, to the tragedy that had come to him. He might have said without any hesitation, that marriage was the mistake of my life. See the misery that has come to me through it. See the blight upon my children as a consequence of it. See the tragedy of the woman herself. If he had been interpreting along the line of the natural that is how he would have referred to the circumstance. But in looking back he rose, to the height of supernatural interpretation. He says, No, that is not so. God guided me. He said, Go thou, and take a wife; and when He said it, being God, He knew all that was coming, and yet He said it.
With what result? The result of the tragedy in his life was that he, Hosea, came to understand the heart of God, and what God suffered when His people sinned. He was admitted, through the mystery of his own tragedy, into an apprehension of what the sin of the nation meant against the heart of God. Hosea has been described as the prophet of the broken heart. The pain and agony of the man's heart is everywhere apparent, but it had become to him an interpretationof the agony of the heart of God. In his own experience he discovered what infidelity means to love; and so, that the infidelity of Israel roused, not the wrath of God, though He was compelled by it to act in judgment, but the heart-break of God. (Speaks on divorce today so easily entered)
It is startling. I am not quite sure that we have grasped it even in our Christian thinking. Yet Calvary is the ultimate exposition of the tremendous fact. Hosea, in this communion with God, came to understand the sin of the nation as he could never have understood it apart from the experience of his own agony. It is so easy for us to speak of the love of God, and sometimes so difficult for us to understand that to postulate love accurately, is to postulate the possibility of suffering and agony. He learned what God suffered in the dark hours when he was alone. The infidelity of Gomer interpreted to Hosea the infidelity of Israel. God had said, "I have betrothed thee unto Me forever." If he had preached without this experience, his prophesying would probably have been very different. The national sin might have roused his anger when he had described what it meant to God, but it produced a much deeper note. So, looking back, he said, God overruled this. He knew that through it I should pass. He knew what would happen to this woman, and yet He guided me. By that guidance I have come to understand the suffering of God.
Now what are the lessons which we are to learn from this account? I think that the first is that God interprets Himself to us through our own experiences. Over and over again we find that the experiences of an hour cannot be understood at the time; but now we look back and see, that when we talked to Jehovah at the first, He led us, even though the thing we did brought us into tragedy, for in the midst of the tragedy we have discovered God. Some only discover hatred instead of what God intended for them to learn.
It was so with Joseph. On the day when his brethren came and he made himself known to them, and when they were weeping and bewailing the fact that they had treated him so badly, Joseph said to them, "God did send me before you, to preserve life."
He said in effect, You treated me badly. You put me in the den. You sold me into slavery. Oh yes, you did it, but there is a higher realm of interpretation. I have suffered years of imprisonment. But now I see the meaning of it all: God sent me before you, to preserve life.
That is the final value of the account of Job. Is there anything more grand in literature than those cycles of debate between Job and the great philosophers, who, nevertheless, could not account for him when he did not fit into their philosophy, and so rejected him. All the while God said, "My servant Job, a perfect and upright man." When we get to the end of the account, we find Job talking, and he has found God, and found God's meaning. The revelation of the account is that suffering cannot be accounted for at the moment. God may be preparing us for co-operation with Him, and doing something in our lives, the witness of which shall pass down the ages, to give the lie to a false philosophy of life.
When Jehovah spake at the beginning, it was God that guided Hosea. God interprets Himself to us through our own experiences. In the case of Hosea his own broken heart gave him an understanding of the heart of God; and shortly when, obedient to the command of God, he sought out and went to find Gomer, and found her degraded, and brought her back, he found God's attitude, even to those who by sin broke His heart. Thus the backward look reveals Divine guidance often at times when it seems most unlikely.
We have in the Book of Hosea one of the most arresting revelations of the real nature of sin, and one of the clearest interpretations of the strength of the Divine love.
No one can read the account of Hosea without realizing the agony of his heart. Then, lift the human to the level of the Infinite, and know this, that sin wounds the heart of God. I believe that the meaning of David when in his great penitential Psalm he said, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned." (Psa. 51:4) Someone says —was that true? Had he not sinned against Bathsheba? No, he sinned with Bathsheba. His sin against Uriah, too, was in the last analysis sin against God. His sin was of that nature that caused pain to the heart of God, and wounded love.
There was a theologian some years back who wrote a book of which the title was, The Impassive God, in which he sought to prove that God is incapable of real suffering. Well, that God is not my God. That is not the God revealed here. Sin breaks in upon the Divine order, ruins the rhythmic nature of the universe. Yes, but that is not its chief heinousness. Get into Hosea's soul when Gomer played him falsely and left him. That is how God feels, and that is what Hosea learned.
And we learn the strength of love. To that we will come back in a subsequent article. But one cannot close without reference to it. The first part of this letter should include chapter two and the first verse. At the close of chapter one, at the ninth verse we read, "Call his name Lo-ammi; for ye are not My people, and I will not be your God." Terrible words. But read on: "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass that, in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not My people"—Lo-ruhamah—"it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint themselves one head, and shall go up from the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Say unto your brethren, Ammi, and to your sisters, Ruhamah." God said Lo-ruhamah, Lo-ammi; no mercy, a rejected people. Yes, but He said that is not all, that is not the last word. The Divine purpose will be fulfilled, and the day will come when you will say Ruhamah, mercy obtained; Ammi, My people.
Hosea was in the mind of Peter when he wrote, "Who in time past were no people (that is, Lo-Ammi), but now are the people of God (that is, Ammi); who had not obtained mercy (that is, Lo-ruhamah) but now have obtained mercy (that is, Ruhamah)."
God suffers in the presence of sin; but His love is such that soon, in spite of it all, He will find a way for the sinner to come home, a way of release, a way of ransom, a way of rescue. You learn patience waiting for Hosea’s God to act.
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