… is another man’s treasure.
Israel’s is a story of a people whose once former glory is lost. They, now worn and worthless, are tossed out from the surrounding nations – yet they are treasure in the heart of their God (Deuteronomy 14:2, NIV).
In their story is a parallel scenario, of a woman, Gomer –
Having been the object of men’s desire, she too is now of little use, her glory fading. She – Gomer – was the Alabaster Vase – beautiful to behold. The Fragrance of Oud – heady and enticing. The Mandu Padouk – the costly chest filled with treasure. The Courtier – beyond the comparison of all other courtiers, and afforded only by the wealthy.
From commanding the world around her, came the anxiety and failure to hide what was quietly leaking – the years of cosmetics to maintain an unblemished smooth complexion, was now competing with the tiredness of keeping up the facade of being the prize to claim. So, it was to their advantage to allow her to be given to Hosea as wife, and to let her slip out of their business quietly – their treasure of the past, the best of her gone, conveniently now betrothed. Her marriage gave a measure of reputation to their trade. It said to their clients there was chattel of reputable worth to be had, and more yet to be bought, and always there would be another to take her place.
At the start, it was a flattering relief for Gomer to be ‘married’ to a man – just one man. It replaced the exhaustion that accompanied the keeping of many men. The act of giving to each that sense of singular possession, had become tiring. Perhaps surprisingly then, not long into their ‘arrangement’ of marriage, she turned back. The kindness and love of Hosea frightened her. Never from the brutality that she had sometimes experienced, but because she could not deal with the fear of this thing called genuine love, foreign to her heart. Oh, she had had genuine from men before, genuine until morning appeared, but this man’s love was different, and the shields she had in place to protect her heart were crumbling. Once she was the treasure auctioned, passed from this one to that with the exchange of a great deal of money; now she was the object of a foreign kind of love – treasured deep within Hosea’s heart! With the inability to receive his love, she fled to Another Man, “Go, show love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man, and is an adulteress…” (Hosea 3:1, NIV).
As Another Man’s illicit ‘beloved’, she was desired only to satisfy his carnal appetite, used for nothing more than sexual pleasure for this man one moment, then thrown out of the room and assigned to the tasks of ‘maid’ the next. Now and then, for the small sum he could hustle for a fallen-from-glory prostitute, she was given by her procurer to others, who’s boast was only in the knowledge that they had had her – the girl who once fetched top dollar.
How ironic that this one so treasured, so precious, so loved by her husband, Hosea, had become “junk”, of little use, of no value to Another Man – her other lover – yet she had turned her back on the sweet love of Hosea, for something like that of a slave.
She had lost her former value, for we read Another Man readily sold her back to her husband Hosea, at a price less than that of a common slave, “So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley” (Hosea 3:2, NIV). Hosea obeys not only You, God, but his heart. He “Go[es], show[s] love to [his] wife again…love[s] her as the LORD loves”.
God, Your love for Israel was an active, “Go!” yet tender, sentimental love, “as the LORD loves”. In the Hebrew, it suggests that this word for love could be read as a lovesick love. The dictionary would describe this kind of love, as a lover having yearning for his beloved, yet experiencing deep affliction over the absence of her, loving her though she does not love in return, bearing a sense of misery, and unhappiness because of this unrequited love, making this lovesick lover behave in ways that were abnormal.
God, is it not ‘abnormal’ to love and to show love over and over and over again to one who continually walks away, flirts with casual lovers, does not show love in return, cannot receive the love given her, cannot be vulnerable or intimate in love? Yet this love, and the not-considered-usual-behaviour of someone, that You ask Hosea to show Gomer, is the love You have for Israel. Israel was Your prostitute bride, as Gomer was Hosea’s. Surely, this behaviour, this love, is only possible if it is a Perfect Love – that loves anyway, that forgives, that is moved by the plight of the one loved who is deeply treasured. Buying back what You already own, what was already Yours, too, is not normal behaviour, is it? Were there not some legal rights of marriage already had here? But this lover does what it takes, and if it means paying the bride price a second time, or paying the sum of a prostitute, again, he is willing, as You were willing.
The other lovers pursued by Israel – the other nations, a wooden idol, a cake, or a cup of coffee (Blog: “Intimate with Chocolate Cake”) – did not care about Israel as You did. In the same way, Another Man and the men he hired her out to, did not care about Gomer as Hosea did. They could not! Though they demanded certain acts of servility or feigned attraction, there was no love returned by a piece of wood, or a piece of cake, or a man who was only interested in what he could get from her.
These lovers woo us in with claims of love and fulfillment but do not care for our souls, as the true Lover of our Souls does.
Hosea instructs Gomer, whom he has bought back from her indifferent lovers, to stay with him, “Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”” (Hosea 3:3, NIV). Still, she is not choosing to freely love and be loved by him. She is doing as she is told, like the slave she has become. He tells her she is not to be with any other man, knowing she will still be unfaithful. To her, unfaithful, casual love has been all she has known, it is a safe love for her, even though it has been from lovers who only used her, that he had brought her back from, paying for her freedom. The destruction of these other lovers breaks his heart, when, what he has for her is a compassionate, kind and sympathetic love. Hosea knows she will likely return to these lovers, but he makes vows of commitment to her and to his heart, again – to be faithful in this relationship, again.
As I write this last paragraph, my broken-by-human-love mind immediately seeks to accuse Hosea.
If he just loved her more.
He must not be meeting her needs.
If his love were genuine, she’d stay.
If he were more romantic.
If he just sat down and listened to her.
If he did more for her.
If he told her she was beautiful every day.
Perhaps he was just not right for her.
You can’t put demands on love.
You cannot make her stay by forbidding her to leave.
My thoughts come from broken human experiences of love. Hosea’s love is a picture of Your love, God, whose love is perfect and complete and enough. It was all she needed. There is no greater love than Yours! The problem was in the receiving of Your love. The problem was with Gomer, as it is with us. Human love, the ruin of sin, the brokenness of this world had deceived her, and has deceived us so terribly, and ruined us so thoroughly, that it is us that cannot receive this love. Gomer had a slave-like, piece of property, prostitute mentality. Though slaves can be set free, they don’t know what it is to be free, how to live freely, think freely, make free-person decisions…so often they just go back to the enslaving safety and familiarity, and of their long learned and lived out identity – that of a slave, that of someone who is used – and not that of a beloved wife.
Why could Gomer not receive Hosea’s love?
Why can I not receive Your love, God?
If Gomer, if I, were to let ourselves be loved by this love – I know I don’t have adequate words for it, but it would be all we needed. It would be all I long for. All, complete, total, perfect in every way in fulfilling me. Meeting my deepest needs. Ceasing my desire for the pursuit of other lovers. Healing the deep hurts I have. Tearing down the walls I protect myself with. Satisfying the thirst I am slain with, that endless pursuit – to be beautiful, to be wanted, to be needed, to be of worth, to be loved, to be delighted in, to be treasured. Filling me up until I feel I lack nothing and can achieve anything. This love is exactly what my humanity craves. It is what can return me to my God-design, my true origin, and purpose – and therefore fully satisfying. I was created for love – Your love – and without it, I am in this place of continual return, in slave-like fashion, to prostitution and promiscuity, to casual sex with many lovers, to lovers who are mostly indifferent towards me, to those can’t love me the way I need to be loved.
Why, like Gomer can I not receive it? What will it take?
Verse 3 literally reads, “”thou shalt sit,” solitary and as a widow, quiet and sequestered; not going after others, as heretofore, but waiting for him…Afterward, shall the children of Israel return…Before, she had diligently sought her false gods. Now, in the end she shall as diligently seek God and His grace, as she had heretofore sought her idols and her sins.”” (Barnes’ notes on Hosea 3:3). As Hosea “loves her as the Lord loves”, a day will come when Gomer will understand, her deep hurt will be healed, and she will be able to receive and return his love.
Could it be true God, that You treasure me? Really, am I treasured? This is like hope to the very depths of my soul. Though I like Gomer, keep returning to other lovers who do not and cannot treat me like the treasure You do, having too, been brought back from these indifferent destructive lovers of mine, Your persistent, Perfect Love will one day win my heart – for it is what Perfect Love only can do – and I will willingly turn to You, willingly love You, willingly desire You, willingly be Your betrothed.
Oh God, love on! Love as You love and let Your love thoroughly redeem me …
Continued in next week’s blog…
[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]