God, the reason You ask Hosea to marry Gomer is revealed. It was for privileged and devastating personal insight, but it was also for Hosea to relay the heartache and grief You feel. Through his didactic life-experience and instructive word to Your beloved Israel, he portrays Your heart. “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2 NIV 1984). ‘Because’ is followed by the explanation for what might seem to be a very unconventional and peculiar directive. If there were any mystery associated with this specific instruction to Hosea to marry Gomer a prostitute, it is now clear, “…because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery”.
‘Because’…this land, the place of promise, set apart for Your people to dwell in, was to be their home – and everything about that home was to be part of this intimate relationship You had invited them into. Israel was a people loved by You. They were treasured by You (Exodus 19:5 NIV). But, the land had become a place where instead of intimacy, there was “vilest adultery”. Israel had departed from You, to be united with other lovers – the surrounding nations and their religions.
This Promised Land was, as if it were, a new Garden of Eden – the chance to experience what Adam and Eve had before they betrayed You. “…the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” (Genesis 3:8 NIV) carries the implication that this was a regular enjoyable experience mutually had with You. Regarding this new Promised Land, You said to Israel, “I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (Leviticus 26:11-12 NIV), and, it is Your desire fulfilled in a future restored day, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3 NIV). But here…the picture is of Hosea’s house, polluted with Gomer’s unfaithfulness.
The entire house, the place where Hosea and Gomer would live, wreaks of adultery. He feels it. As he walks through his home where he had so much hope and filled with dreams for her and with her, he finds himself instead, feeling betrayed and dirty, and sick to the stomach, knowing that in this place, sex – casual – and not with him – has taken place.
God, did You walk through this Promised Land and again, smell that same stench of guilt, as you did when you sought out a shame-filled and hidden, Adam and Eve? Did grief well up in Your heart at love rejected, again? Did that deep gut-wrenching pain of betrayal hit you, again?
The land is “guilty of the vilest adultery”. These were not just vile acts. They were the vilest! Wretched and offensive, the lowest form, defiled and debase, adultery. Words used because of the hideousness of what was being done, and the deep hurt it and offense it has caused. For Hosea, it is his prostitute wife taking pure, and beautiful intimacy, and making it cheap and dirty; and for You, it is Israel, Your treasure, Your people, turning away to other nations and their gods in “vilest adultery”. Israel is guilty just as Gomer is guilty. The land is guilty. The earth is guilty – all of humanity guilty.
Counted amongst humanity, I am shamefully connected to what we have given ourselves to. I chose to look into the ‘detestable practices’, those things that You said Israel was guilty of, and do some reading around the Canaanite religions they had ‘committed adultery’ with. I’m glad I did, but I so wish I hadn’t. I sense Your sorrow, God, alongside feeling deeply disturbed.
How? How God, could we fall so far into depravity? For me, I can choose to close the tab, not read any more of it, and to not think on it or look into it, and to stay in my own safe little world, oblivious if I want to. But You can’t do that. Our betrayal, our ruin, is continually and always before Your eyes – and Your heart.
You don’t have the choice to look away and pretend it hasn’t and doesn’t happen like I can. You see it all and You know it all and feel the ugliness and pain of it all. It’s so perverted – so far from Your intention for created mankind. We have fallen far, far from Your Love –
Child sacrifice. In order to appease the Canaanite gods or to appeal to them for favour, Israel joined in the practices of this heathen nation – infants up to 6-year-olds were thrown to the fire. “They sacrificed their noble sons as an unblemished choice offering, or bought children from poor families, taking them into their homes, nurturing them as their own, but with the intention of offering them to their gods” (Roger Pearse).
Self-mutilation. A ritual in which Baal worshipers would slash themselves with swords and spears. The blood, the pain, and the mutilation were to show their earnestness in pleading before their god for an answer, for the forgiveness of sins, or mercy, or help. You would’ve given answer to their concerns. You had made the way for the forgiveness of their sins. You knew their needs before they even asked. You would’ve been their provider in every way, had they come to You.
Sex Orgies. The people were incited to indulge in sex of all kinds. Statues were erected in worship places with enlarged genitals to invoke sexual arousal. Rooms set apart in temples for sex. Prostitutes – male/female/children/animals – were dedicated to the gods for the people to perform unrestrained sexual acts with. The Canaanite god of fertility was worshiped in this way. It is said that sexual energy was stored by the gods during this time of reveling and used to produce fertility in crops and in people.
Idol-worship. “The blacksmith…makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, ”Deliver me, for you are my god!” (Isaiah 44:12,17 NIV). To You, Lord, this is the ultimate insult. You reveal Yourself to a beloved people, but instead, they take a piece of wood or stone, carve it or mold it with their own hands and then declare it, God. To their idol, they add rituals and practices and dedicate themselves to it, seek to appease it and to appeal to it for their needs.
How offensive these things are. But what it ultimately says to You, is that the participation in the surrounding religions, is betrayal, “they do not acknowledge [Me]” (Hosea 5:4 NIV). They have turned their backs on You for other lovers.
We are not far removed from the same insulting practices. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, we give ourselves to things in the appeal for the fulfillment of our needs, or to appease our own souls with stuff and practices and our ‘rights’. It may not look pagan in religious terms, but it is pagan, crude, blind, offensive and deceived in similarity.
Hosea verse 2, starts with, “Go, take to yourself” and ends in “in departing from the LORD”. To depart basically means, to go away from. But it is more than just meaning distance between the two. It is willingly and casually walking away from all that was intended, and turning to things so vile and detestable, and in marriage terms, this means that “the two shall become one flesh” is torn apart. “Take to yourself” is what should have been. “Depart” is the reality. The language of pain is so strong here! Every word in these verses, 2-3 symbolizes and represents the heartache You feel.
You are left behind, shaking Your head in disbelief. Does not a broken-hearted lover, ask the question, “Is my love not good enough? Could I have done more?” How can perfect love not be good enough?
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.]