“Then the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” 2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3 Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” 4 For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar and without ephod or household idols. 5 Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.’
Since the beginning of my study for these sermons in Hosea I have had several occasions to notice the revulsion on the part of some scholars at the very suggestion of a Holy God, not only condoning a marriage such as Hosea had with Gomer, but actually commanding it and using it as a living sermon to the kingdom of Israel.
What I fail to understand is how they fail to see the beauty of true and sacrificial love that is portrayed in the obedience of the prophet. Anyone can make up a story and the teller’s hearers will go away a little misty-eyed and saying to one another, ‘Wasn’t that a touching tale of romance?’
But when the commentators in their shyness take away the literalness of this account and try to make it a symbolism only; a yarn, a tale, a fabrication, they diminish the potency of the spiritual truth being revealed; that God the Husband truly married Himself to the bride of His heart, Israel, and she went a-whoring after other gods – other lovers – and He, like Hosea, demonstrated His love by purchasing her back and keeping her to Himself even in the face of her rebellion, pending her day of awakening and repentance.
What the Father’s deep love for us has wrought through His Son’s obedience is not symbolic. It is not some spiritualized tale to represent some cosmic goodness to which we should all now endeavor to attain.
It is real and was accomplished in a point in history and can be represented by nothing less than the actual life and pathos of a man with a Godly heart walking in the obedience of faith.
THE SLAVE MARKET
God wanted to demonstrate to his wayward people the height of His love for them and the depths to which they had sunk. He wanted them to see in His prophet a drama played out in real life that would parallel the spiritual reality.
So we should pause also, to get into our minds and hearts the tragedy of this union.
This man has married a woman that he loves. In researching various commentators I was tickled at how much speculative detail is injected into the early verses of this book. Were they really in love from the beginning? Was she a prostitute at the time he married her? Did they have a good marriage for a number of years before she went astray?
Were the children really his or did she get pregnant by her illicit lovers? Believe it or not, men try to answer these questions. I’m not certain why.
We’re only told that he took a wife, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived, and so forth.
As the writing progresses we see Hosea following after her, providing for her, wooing her back.
Now at this point we might just assume that he is only obeying the Lord’s instruction in the same spirit of obedience with which Jeremiah hid his waistband under a rock Jeremiah 13:4, or Ezekiel laid on his left side for over a year Ezek 4:4-5, to demonstrate God’s message to the people.
But God loves His people! And the lack of information given to us about the prophets or any other main player in these stories can often be filled in out of what we know of the One who is speaking through their words and their lives.
So no, we are not told specifically that Hosea loved Gomer. Nor is there any indication at all given to us that Gomer repented or was converted.
But we do know about God and His love.
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Romans 5:6-10
God called to Himself a people out of the wilderness. They were not a people and He made them a people; a nation. He saved them out of slavery, He constantly proclaimed His love for them, He provided for them and defended them mightily against their enemies, and in these generations that they were unfaithful to Him in the land, even as they sunk lower and lower in sin, He used every means to call them back to Himself with warning, with wooing, with provision and promise, and she continued her downward spiral into debauchery and degradation nonetheless.
So did Hosea love Gomer? I think, undoubtedly, yes.
What grief must he have carried all these years of this troubled marriage, which spanned the birth and growth of at least these three children that are named, as he sat so many nights by the fire wondering where his beloved was and wondering if she was safe? Or worse, knowing exactly where she was and trying to keep the images out of his mind while his heart broke.
How many parents have watched their child, who began as every other, needy and helpless, precious and loveable, going through the processes of every other baby and toddler and developing boy or girl; and then as they entered into their prepubescent and teen years began to drift away one or two steps at a time.
The disrespectful attitude at home and unwillingness to talk openly about what’s on their mind. Then the bad company. Then the late hours. Then the first night they came home so drunk or drugged up they couldn’t form an intelligent word. Then the arrests or the long periods of absence. Watching them slowly turn to mush mentally and physically and change so much as a person that they no longer resembled that little one who used to wrap a warm arm around their parent’s neck and with affection say, ‘Mom” or “Dad”.
And finally, here stands Hosea in the marketplace, jostled by the undulating crowd forming around the slave block and hardly noticing their presence or the smells and sounds all around him as he stares in sorrow and embarrassment and profound sadness at the woman being auctioned off.
Listen to what James Montgomery Boice had to say about this ancient tradition, which, by the way, is not entirely absent from our world today.
“We know quite a bit about the selling of slaves in antiquity because much has been written about it. For example, the slaves were always sold naked. There is a Greek play in which a fat man is put up for sale. The bids are starting, and the men who are buying bid; ‘Ten cents!’ ‘Fifteen cents!’ ‘Twenty cents!’ They begin to joke with one another. One man says, ‘Why do you bid twenty cents for that fat slave? As soon as he gets in your house he’s going to eat up all your food.’ The man who bid twenty cents justifies his bid, saying, ‘You don’t understand. I’ve got a squeaky mill; I’m going to cut him up and use him for grease.’
At last a beautiful woman is put up for sale. Her clothes are taken off, and now the bidding is not ‘Ten cents…twenty cents.’ It is, ‘A hundred dollars…a hundred and twenty dollars!’ The men are bidding for the body of the female slave.
Thus was Gomer put up for sale. Her clothes were removed, and the men of the city were there to see her nakedness and bid for her. God told Hosea to buy his wife back.” The Minor Prophets – Volume 1, Hosea – Jonah, James Montgomery Boice, Baker Books 1983
Go, Hosea, you whose name means ‘salvation’. Even now, don’t turn your back. Don’t walk away. Bid.
I wonder how many people right there in that crowd knew exactly who she was?
Raise your hand, Hosea. Shout out a number. Pay the price. Take her home.
Because I love the sons of Israel even while they bake their raisin cakes to take as an offering and go a-whoring after other gods.
What was He saying?
She is redeemable. As she is still worth so much to your hurting heart, so Israel is worth a great cost to Me.
Can you envision Hosea, slowly shouldering his way through the crowd until he is up front? Gomer with her head down and hair over her face because with her hands tied and standing naked it is the most she can do to hide her shame before the gathering buyers.
Then she hears a familiar voice. “Fifteen shekels of silver!”
She dares a peek between her strands of greasy, matted hair and there is her husband. How can he still love her? Does he still want her or is she now to be his slave? How will he treat her? As an owner and not as a husband?
He has every right, even legally, to buy her and then take her to a side street and kill her with a stone.
The auctioneer repeats the offer. “We have fifteen shekels of silver! Do I hear twenty?” Someone yells, “Sixteen! But that’s as far as I go for this skinny, over-used retch!”
A wave of laughter ripples through the crowd and she wants to sink to the floor and curl up but the strong hand of the auctioneer around her bicep keeps her upright.
Hosea looks away from the joker back to his bride. “Fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley”. The homer and a half is valued at another fifteen shekels. The total of his offer in value equals 30 pieces of silver. The price of a slave. Ex 21:32, Zech 11:12 Matt 26:14-15 27:3, 9
SHELVED
Can you imagine the befuddled expression on the face of Gomer? She doesn’t deserve his help, she doesn’t deserve his kindness, yet he has helped her. He has redeemed her. He has purchased her back from the low estate in which she has placed herself, and as he wraps a robe around her bare shoulders and loosens the rope from her wrists and leads her away toward home she just stares up at his face and wonders how he can be so gracious.
Imagine, going from a washed out street prostitute being sold as a slave, to immediate reinstatement as an honored wife and mother, no questions asked.
Inside though, still beats a rebellious heart. She is probably thinking, even at this moment, that when she regains her strength and has time to gather a new wardrobe about her and fix her hair and make some contacts in the streets that she’ll slip out and go back to her lovers and her idols.
Then she hears his words. “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.”
What? What is this? Deprogramming? Rehabilitation? I’m to stay at home and have no lovers and even my husband will withhold himself from me, for what…’many days’…?
We aren’t told what life was like in the Hosea household during those many days spoken of in verse 3. But we know from verse 4 that it was a picture of the calamity that was about to descend upon the Northern Kingdom.
Hosea’s ministry took place so close to the fall of Israel that many scholars believe he was prophesying right up until the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. and probably a few years after that.
Verse 4 of our text is a picture of the nation in exile in Babylon. They would be without a nation, without the temple in which to worship and offer sacrifice; more, they would not have access to their idols and their pagan worship.
I want you to see this comparison. To God, the taking of Gomer back home and keeping her basically ‘shelved’ for a time of purging and cleansing and reconditioning was how He saw the time that His nation would spend in exile and in servitude to the Assyrians.
Now I ask you; how many of us, if suddenly captured by strangers and dragged away to a strange land and used as servants and free farm labor would see our time there as God’s doing? How many of us would look at it as a time to reevaluate our relationship with Him and examine our own lives and seek repentance, knowing that He had us there for our good?
C’mon, folks. Let’s be honest. We start thinking God has abandoned us if we go too long without employment or without a pay raise we feel we deserve or having to tolerate a clueless floor manager.
How often do people who call themselves Christians, meaning ‘Christ-ones’, or ‘Little Christs’, even stop to consider that the trials they are in may be a temporary setting aside in their spiritual journey while the Lord waits for them to stop and pay attention so He can correct something in their lives?
We think we sound so mature when we say, ‘Well, this time I’m going through has been hard, and I’ve been praying about it, but I believe the Lord is doing it for my spiritual growth’.
Oh, my! Doesn’t that sound spiritual? What does that mean, exactly?
I’m sure that in our minds it amounts to a sort of blowing wind that strengthens the tree as it endures; or the tension applied to a muscle in an exercise routine to harden it and make it larger and stronger.
‘Yes, this testing is to strengthen me’. How very profound and mature sounding.
Hey, Christian, maybe your dry time, maybe your prolonged trial, maybe the prayers-bouncing-off-the-ceiling effect you’re experiencing are because you ignored God’s voice so long that He has decided to shelve you for a while until you one day wake up and realize that you aren’t really in just a dry time; you’ve been carried away to a far place without the sense of His presence and His influence in your life so you’ll finally cry out to Him to bring you back from exile and set you on a fruitful and progressive path again!
God’s people taken later from the Southern Kingdom were in exile for 70 years. It was a whole new generation that He finally brought back to the land He had given their fathers. There is no recorded return of the Northern Kingdom.
When the Jews rejected God’s Messiah they were sidelined until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled at which time they will be brought back in again.
The tribulation in your life may seem very long to you, believer, but it is not time that means anything to God; it is awakening to His call and repentance that matters.
Just remember, you who are of the church age, the admonitions of Paul to the Romans.
“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; 26 and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.” 27 “THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.” 28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; 29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. 32 For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.”
Don’t think that God will not shelve you if need be, to purge you from the little idols and the spiritual adulteries that keep you from Him.
AFTERWARD
Just remember that there is an ‘afterward’.
”Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.”
In the understanding of the prophet as he wrote these words it was probably a reference to the return of the people from the exile he was predicting.
The farther-reaching message, which the Holy Spirit had in it for us, was a reference to that day Paul was talking about when God will remove ungodliness from Jacob and take away their sins; when the Messiah descends to the Mount of Olives and they look on Him whom they pierced Zech 12:10.
The application for His church; for you, Christian, is valid within the text. He has purchased you from the depths of your degradation at a higher cost than silver or gold…
“ …knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” 1 Peter 1:18-19
You did not pursue Him, but He pursued you. He wooed you, He courted you, He made you His bride at the cost of His own blood. He has rescued you from exile and prepares a home where you will be with Him forevermore.
You have taken His name and it is now your duty to keep that name unspotted before the world. It is your duty to keep yourself ‘only unto Him’.
There’s an old hymn written by Lucy A. Bennett, and I wonder why it isn’t in any of the new hymnals…
“I am the Lords! O joy beyond expression,
O sweet response to voice of love Divine;
Faith’s joyous ‘Yes’ to the assuring whisper,
‘Fear not! I have redeemed thee; thou are Mine’.”
I am the Lord’s! It is the glad confession,
Wherewith the Bride recalls the happy day,
When love’s ‘I will’ accepted Him forever,
‘The Lord’s to love, to honor and obey.”
On that day, that great ‘afterward’, when Christ returns followed by His holy ones, and all Israel looks upon Him and ‘come(s) trembling to the Lord and to His goodness’ His bride will finally be complete. Gomer. And together we will join to sing the song of the Lord’s redeemed; the slavery block forgotten, the shame forgotten, the exile forgotten, and all will finally see that His goodness and His mercy, His forgiveness and His provision are ours for His glory and His Kingdom.
And He will announce, “You are My people!”
And the great unnumbered multitude will cry in response, “You are my God!”
