I realize my concrete-sequential friends probably cannot stand reading this blog.
I’m about to switch topics.
But, both boys are in school, I’m sipping coffee with free wifi, and I have uninterrupted time. Which means this post has the potential to be quite lengthy.
I told you I was going to teach on Hosea 1 for our small group. I did and loved learning. If you’re interested, what follows is an intro to what I learned from Study Bible intros, cross references, and bible.org.
The name Hosea means Salvation. I love that. The whole book, God is likening Israel’s spiritual idolatry to physical adultery. To be frank, often God acts like a scorned, jealous Lover. He is not like the foreign, statue-like gods among the nations. He is passionate, jealous, a Consuming Fire. He wants His people to see only He can satisfy. And prostrating themselves before anything else is as prostituting themselves away from a holy covenant with Him.
In fact, the audience to whom the book was written would understand likening covenant disloyalty with prostitution. Some examples from Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible…with which the Israelites would be familiar):
“Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods… they will lead your sons to do the same.” (Exodus 34:15, 16b)
“The priest is to sprinkle the blood against the altar of the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and burn the fat as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves.” (Lev. 17:9)
“And the LORD said to Moses: ‘You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.'” (Deuteronomy 31:16)
That was quite a mouthful. But as our small group has learned, and is learning, Hosea isn’t a Bible study for the faint of heart. God is serious about our idols. As we learn hard lessons in our own lives, it is easy to see why. He is the only Safe Place onto which we can surrender our entire being.
Scholars do not know who wrote the book of Hosea, but they mostly agree it was written in the middle of the 8th century B.C. and spanned at least 38 years. I like knowing that because, along with Truth that Covenant Yahweh wants to present to His people, this chronicles a man’s life. The story actually happened to someone who obeyed what God told him to do. Reading it quickly could minimize the length and depth of life and emotion involved.
The reason the smarties know this book spanned several decades is because of the kings listed in Chapter 1 verse 1. They are also fairly certain that, though it was likely directed to Israel (the Northern Kingdom), it was written in Judah (the Southern Kingdom) due to the many references throughout the book to Judah and Judah’s kings.
If you’re not up on this, Jacob (as in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) was renamed Israel and he had 12 sons. These comprised the 12 Tribes of Israel. Years later, at the end of King Solomon’s reign, 10 of the tribes split off and became the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Their capital city was Samaria. Judah and Benjamin, the other 2 tribes, became known as the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Their capital city was Jerusalem. There is a lot more to this, but that is what we need to know right now.
The prophet Hosea was a contemporary of Isaiah, Amos and Micah. The book of Hosea is the first of the Minor Prophets. If you’re like me and don’t know what that means, those are the 12 books from Hosea to Malachi in the Old Testament. They got the name “Minor Prophets” because they are not as important as other prophets. Just kidding. “Minor” refers to the length of these books. They are much shorter than Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekial.
Just so you know what Hosea’s audience was going through, the Assyrians were increasing in power as a threatening empire. And they were expanding westward toward Israel. These are the kinds of things men would talk about at the city gates and women would discuss at the water wells (in between relational topics, of course.)
Israel as a nation was not thriving at this time. Should they try to fight? Should they make a treaty with Assyria for protection? They were pretty much looking to anything in the physical realm to save them…as opposed to listening to Moses and the Prophets, who assured them if they would be careful to follow God’s ways and worship Him only, He would take care of them.
Can’t we all relate?
If we were chatting at small group, I could ask you all kinds of interrogating penetrating questions about what this has looked like in your life. Just know I’m thinking of (unfortunately) fresh examples in my own.
Anyway, as a summary of the overall impression of the first chapter of this incredible book, God is judging Israel’s idolatry and He uses Hosea’s physical family as a symbol of what is occurring spiritually.
More soon!