Project 119: Hosea 2:1-13
| Project 119
“A Season of Separation”
There is a difference between punishment and discipline. While the former is intended only to create pain in retaliation for some offense, discipline is a tough action intended to encourage reconciliation and reform. It is that type of “tough love” that Hosea was called to show his faithless wife in the most gripping way of all—by asking their children to drive their mother away from the home!
The language in this text is graphic because the sin described was egregious. Hosea’s wife’s persistent and willful rebellion points to the hardness of her heart and the worthlessness of her character. However, her wayward life will run its course and she will recognize the error of her ways, returning to Hosea whose provisions were always steady and predictable.
Clearly, this section is symbolic of how the nation had turned from God in similar ways. Hosea’s prophecy regarding his actions toward his wife would convey to the people how God would put a plague of infertility upon them because of how they had attributed to Baal the good life and blessing they had known (Hosea 2:6). By removing her false securities, God was hopeful that His people be drawn to Him again as they once were during the time of the exodus, totally dependent upon God for all their provisions (Hosea 2:7-13).
In the same way that Gomer returned to Hosea after the going got tough for her, so we tend to come back to God when we have exhausted all other options. However, from God’s standpoint doing so is better than remaining separated from Him in our sin.
Where, then, do you locate the favor that has come to you? Too many today give credit to everyone and everything but God. Don’t make that mistake. “Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights” (James 1:17, NIV). It is always better to turn to God out of gratitude than out of desperation, and we can rest assured that God knows the difference.
Hosea 2:1-13 (ESV):
Israel’s Unfaithfulness Punished
1 Say to your brothers, “You are my people,” and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”
2 “Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
3 lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
4 Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
because they are children of whoredom.
5 For their mother has played the whore;
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.’
6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
7 She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
‘I will go and return to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.’
8 And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.
9 Therefore I will take back
my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season,
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.
10 Now I will uncover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.
11 And I will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her appointed feasts.
12 And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
13 And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers
and forgot me, declares the LORD.