HOSEA TAKES FOR HIMSELF A WIFE AGAIN
Key verse: Hosea 3:5
God enjoins Hosea to go love Gomer, or, probably to go take for himself another wife. Hosea is obedient to all the directions which God has given to him. God sends again the message to the people, so that they change their behavior and come back to God.
1. Go and take again for youself a wife (1-2)
God enjoins Hosea to go and take for himself another wife. She can be the wife of her husband, but she is adulterous, because even if she is loved she looks away again. God enjoins Hosea to love this wife. So God wants to transmit his heart of love. God's heart hasn't changed towards the people in spite of their repellent and degraded condition, therefore God sends his prophet and makes him love the people. The people are committed to the gods of the harvest, who they think give material abundance through the sacrifices. They get drunk on their voluptuous sensuality and they offer the harvest to the idols. Hosea buys a wife at half of the value of a slave. So, the idolatrous people are of little value before God.
2. The prophetised return of God's people (3-5)
In verse 3, Hosea speaks about the imprisonment of the wife, and during this time she will not be visited by her husband and her lovers ("you will stay here" in another translation). That means the relationship of their forefathers with God will be broken and their relations with the idols also will stop. During captivity, they will break with idolaty and also with the living relationship with God which has become a dead worship, only formal. During this time, God will be faithful, that means he suffers with his people. The people will be deprived of king, chief and high priest. So, politically and spiritually they will be deprived of independance and blessing. After this time, Israel will come back to God, like the woman who begs her husband to take her again for himself. After the exile, idolatry and schism will stop at the same time. They will move towards the Eternal God with the humble trembling of a repentant sinner. This prophecy predicts the achievement of God's work through the coming of the Messiah. Israel and the Pagans will coalesce to form a single redeemed people by Jesus' blood.
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