One of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible is Hosea 2. It’s funny to me even now that I would identify one of the Minor Prophets – those hard-to-find books at the back of the Old Testament – as my favorite, but Hosea’s story has come to mean a lot to me over the past year. I can also say for sure that this 2700-year-old prophet influenced my decision to go on the World Race.
Here’s the Cliffs Notes version of the story: At the beginning of the book, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. So, Hosea finds a prostitute named Gomer, marries her, and has kids. Gomer, however, is unfaithful to Hosea. She leaves him to pursue other lovers, but her husband pursues her in turn, despite her adultery. He even literally purchases her back to himself in chapter 3.
Besides being a treasure trove of baby names (Gomer, No Mercy, Not My People), the book of Hosea uses Hosea and Gomer’s relationship as a picture of God’s relationship with Israel. The adulterous wife is a metaphor for Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. She’s also a pretty good picture of how I often relate to the Lord.
I’ll excerpt some of chapter 2 here, starting in the middle of verse 5 and skipping to verses 7 and 8.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
‘I will go and return to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.’
And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.
Hosea 2 reminds me of how easy it is to start focusing on God’s blessings rather than on God himself. It’s easy to try to find my security and comfort in those things, to desire and seek the good things he gives over and above the one who gives them in the first place. I am absolutely grateful that God has blessed me with things like financial provision and an awesome community of friends, but I have to recognize not only that every good thing comes from him, but that he himself is the greatest blessing. He loves me too much to let me be satisfied in anything apart from himself.
My favorite part of the book comes a few verses later, though. Hosea had every right to just cut ties with his cheating wife and move on, but he chose to pursue her. Listen to what God says about her/Israel (selected from verses 14-20):
Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.
Here’s the most awesome thing about those verses: Hosea was prophesying about a future hope, but we have the fulfillment of that hope now in Jesus.
We as Christians are the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:7-9). He has betrothed us to himself in righteousness, justice, love, mercy, and faithfulness forever. When God looks at me, he doesn’t see the way I’ve chased after other lovers and prostituted myself to idols; he sees Christ’s perfect righteousness covering me. He sees his beautiful daughter, whom he loves, whom he’s set apart to be holy. When I start to stray, he speaks tenderly to me and allures me to himself.
Sometimes, he tenderly says that it’s time to leave everything and everyone I know so that I can follow him around the world. I am absolutely going to miss the stability and comfort of my life here, not to mention the friends that I love dearly, but I am thrilled by the new intimacy that God is drawing me into. He’s taking me on an adventure just because he loves me and wants to be close to me, and I am so excited to fall deeper in love with him.
