Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- Hosea

When I came to the little short chapter of Hosea 14, I realized I was getting the tail-end of a story.  It is the promise of what God will do for Israel in the future.  Much like our Sunday message, the future people Israel must have been wanting forgiveness without having to ask for it, because the very second verse instructs them:

Hos 14:2  Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to him, "Take away all iniquity; accept what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips...




"Take with you WORDS..." They needed, like we do, to say it, not assume it.  That's part of humility.  But then, God takes over the situation...

Hos 14:4  I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.
Hos 14:5  I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;
Hos 14:6  his shoots shall spread out; his beauty shall be like the olive, and his fragrance like Lebanon.
Hos 14:7  They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow; they shall flourish like the grain; they shall blossom like the vine; their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
Hos 14:8  O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit.


I will heal... I will love... I will be...  I will answer.  But it all started with the spoken-word repentance.  And you might be saying to yourself, "Didn't the Israel being referenced get LEVELED by God for NOT doing this?"  Exactly, and that's why you have 2 further places to look at- one of them the chapter just previous...

Hos 13:14  Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.
Hos 13:15  Though he may flourish among his brothers, the east wind, the wind of the LORD, shall come, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up; his spring shall be parched; it shall strip his treasury of every precious thing.
Hos 13:16  Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. 

Yes, compassion for the Israel of then was non-existent.  But the next chapter speaks of the remnant, the survivors who turned to Jesus in the Tribulation and survived Armageddon.  And this is a bookend message in this Book, for look at chapter one, a chapter in which God uses Hosea's wife and children to enact before Israel what was about to happen...

Hos 1:5  And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel."
Hos 1:6  She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the LORD said to him, "Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all.
Hos 1:7  But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen."
Hos 1:8  When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son.
Hos 1:9  And the LORD said, "Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God."
Hos 1:10  Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the living God."
Hos 1:11  And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. 

Look at the contrast between verses 9-10.  This is where Israel struggled in prophecy- they couldn't conceive that God, standing above time, could see and talk of events thousands of years apart almost as the same thing in the same breath.  Even if they paid attention to the prophecy, most of them would say, "Look, it's gonna get bad, then go back to good.  We've been doing this for a while, we can't be THAT bad off."  But it was what was going to happen in that thousands of years long gap- a gap we still haven't got to the other side of- that SHOULD have scared them straight, and never did.  So now, the fall, the diaspora, the Inquisitions, the Pale, the Pogroms, the Holocaust, the wars-  all of this has happened in that gap where they were "not My People."