Hosea

LeRoy Eims

Some 200 years before Hosea's time, ten tribes out of the twelve had seceded from the kingdom of David and had set up an independent kingdom, with the Golden Calf as its official national god.

God had sent the prophets Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Amos and now Hosea. But they wouldn't listen to these men. They stubbornly refused to return to God and had sunk deeper and deeper into the abominations of idolatry.

When we looked at the major prophets we learned that Judah had enjoyed three periods of revival. In each case, for a time the sinful decline had been checked and the people were restored. But there were no revivals in Israel.

From the beginning under Jeroboam, “who taught Israel to sin", idolatry was abounding and reached a frightful state. There was no genuine interruption in this decline. Once it was slightly checked, but the people were too thoroughly steeped in their apostasy to completely do away with it.

When Hosea began his labors, his utterances picture an awful moral and spiritual degradation of the land. Israel is pictured as the sinful, abandoned wife of the Lord. Hosea is given a prophetic vision of the end of the kingdom, and states the fact simply and clearly. He tries to bring the people back to repentance and thus avert the coming judgment. He holds out the hope that Israel, in spite of her unfaithfulness, will eventually be recovered and refined. He is a man of intense feeling and is often referred to as the weeping prophet of Israel just as Jeremiah was of Judah.

Hosea, a prophet of God, was commanded of God to marry an unchaste woman as a symbol of God's love for wayward Israel. She proved unfaithful and left him for another man, but Hosea still loved her and brought her back.

Not only was Hosea's marriage an illustration of the thing he was preaching, but he even named his children for the main message of his life. Jezreel was his first born. By naming his child Jezreel, Hosea was saying, "The hour of punishment is come." Lo‑ruhamah was his second child meaning, "no more mercy." Lo‑ammi, his third child meant, "no longer my people."

He then repeats the two names without the "Lo" which meant "not," speaking of the time when they would again be God's people. He predicts the day when other nations would be called the people of God.

This is a passage the Apostle Paul quotes as meaning the extension of the Gospel to the Gentiles. "And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared unto glory, even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As it is also said in Hosea, I will call them my people, who were not my people; and her beloved, who was not beloved. And it shall come to pass that, in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called the children of the living God." (Romans 9:23‑26)

As was mentioned before, Hosea was a tender man and his words seem to overflow with tears. It was not an easy thing for him to hold over Israel the thunderbolts of judgment. His own soul was stirred to the depths and in it all was the tender, compassionate heart of God.

There are three major truths in the book. First, God suffers when His people are unfaithful to Him. Second, God cannot condone sin. Third, God will never cease to love His own and consequently, He seeks to win back those who have forsaken Him. It behooves us all to stay close to Him in loving fellowship and to study of His Word.