Shameless

So, with new knowledge on how you can handle a shameless person, I want you to think about this problem that is brought out in today’s chapter. Our Holy and Loving God is going to have to deal with a whole nation that has become shameless.

As we go through this chapter you will realize that the same horrible life styles are being displayed by half our leaders. As the leaders act so act our country.

The latter rains have failed to come because they have been faithless to YHWH, something that is evident to anyone who will look to the bare hills or the wayside resting places. For there their flagrant misbehavior is made apparent. But if they will only return to Him, calling Him Father and taking Him as the guide of their youth, He may well yet be ready to listen to them. Their answer is, however, seen in their unresponsive attitudes.

1 “They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife, and she goes from him and becomes another man’s, may he return to her again?’ Would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; Yet return to Me,” says the LORD.

What ‘they said’ was strictly in accordance with the Law. See Deuteronomy 24.1-4. Once a man had put away his wife and she had belonged to another, he was not allowed to take her back again. And yet YHWH’s compassion was such that He was prepared, as it were, to set aside that Law and accept His people back from their lovers if only they would return to Him again. The door of mercy was still open, and this was to be the dictate of YHWH. It was not, of course, a breaking of the Law because no individual woman was involved, nor was an earthly marriage. Besides even on the facts Judah had not remarried. She had instead had many lovers. The real point is that God’s covenant love was so great that He was willing to receive Judah back if only she will truly return to Him with all her heart.

2 “Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see: Where have you not lain with men? By the road you have sat for them like an Arabian in the wilderness; and you have polluted the land with your harlotries and your wickedness.

He charges them to look at the bare heights where they have been carrying out their lewd activities and point out any place which was free from the taint of their sexual misbehavior. There was none. And He calls on them to consider the resting places by the way where they have awaited prostitutes, in the same way as an Arabian in the wilderness (who, because they lived in the wilderness had to wait for their favors in places where prostitutes might be found) would do. Thus, had they polluted the land by their irresponsible sexual activities and by their wicked ways.

3 Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no latter rain. You have had a harlot’s forehead; You refuse to be ashamed.

And it was because they had polluted the land that the showers had been withheld and that there had been no latter rain (the March/April rain on which the final harvest depended). Yet even when they had become aware of this they were so hardened in sin that they had refused to be ashamed. ‘You have a harlot’s forehead.’ Unlike other women who were discreet and pure, covering their heads from the eyes of men, harlots brazenly bared their foreheads so that the men whom they sought would know that they were available. It was a sign that they too, like Judah, were hardened in sin.