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Hosea Cc About fifteen years after Amos’s appearance at Bethel, a new voice was heard in Israel. It was the voice of Hosea. Unlike Amos, Hosea was born in the northern kingdom. He could not easily pronounce upon Israel the sentence of doom for their misdeeds. His naturally tender nature was filled with sorrow and love and pity for his people. The times had worsened since Amos had prophesied. Assyria, at first like a gray mist on the horizon, now loomed like a thundercloud, threatening terrible storms over the land. The kings of Israel, in their madness, played politics with Assyrian and Egyptian monarchs, and had to pay them tribute. Murder and assassination removed one king after another from the throne of Israel. In the twenty-three years since Jeroboam II’s death, six kings ruled the shaking throne—four of them murderers of their predecessors. The people fell back into their ancient sin of idolatry. They continued to crowd their sacred shrines at Bethel and Gilgal, but they worshiped God via the images of the Golden Bullock. Also they sacrificed there to the Baals—the nature deities—who, they foolishly thought, made the land fertile and produced grain and fruit, and oil and wine. Even the priests were not loyal to their tasks. They multiplied in number , but they neglected the people’s education; they gave Israel no instruction in the true knowledge of God. They raised no voice against the evils and wrongdoings that filled the land with violence and injustice. Thus, Israel, beset by powerful enemies outside, was collapsing from within. (The end of the kingdom of Israel actually came at the hands of Assyria in 722 B.C.E.) In those stormy times, Hosea lived and felt himself called upon to preach the word of God. One day, he relates, he heard God speaking to him in his heart, summoning him to be a prophet: ■ 311 ■ Put a ram’s horn to your mouth— Like a guard over the House of God! (Hosea 8.1) As God’s guard, Hosea’s task was to warn his people of the dire punishments that must follow their evil practices. His voice carried no scorn or angry threat. He spoke of Israel’s repentance, and God’s love and healing mercy. To Hosea, God was not only the God of justice (as Amos had taught), but also the God of mercy. If Israel would but end their ways and return to paths of uprightness and decency, God would forgive them and help them to live. How did Hosea discover the meaning of God’s love for Israel? A tragic, marital experience had changed the whole course of Hosea’s personal life. He had married a woman named Gomer, whom he loved deeply. With her he had three children. He thought he had achieved a perfect, happy home. But Gomer proved herself unfaithful to him, and sought the company of deceitful “lovers” who gave her gifts. Hosea drove her from his house. But he was unable to uproot his love for her out of his heart. Because of his great love for her, he searched her out, and when he found her in the slave-market where she had been sold by her “lovers,” he purchased her. He made her live by herself for a short time, not so much to punish her as to give her time to repent and redeem herself. Then he took her back into his home once more. Hosea’s personal suffering led him to understand what God’s feelings for Israel must be like. He expressed God’s relationship to Israel through the symbol of marriage. As Hosea had loved Gomer, so God loved Israel. God was the “husband” of Israel; Israel was the “wife” of God. As Gomer had forsaken Hosea for her “lovers” who gave her gifts, so Israel had abandoned God for the nature Baals. But, as Hosea could not abandon the wife he loved, though she proved faithless, and he wooed her back to him, so God sought to win Israel back to their old loyalty and their old purity. As Gomer had to be set apart until she redeemed herself , so God would take Israel out into the wilderness of exile, not to destroy them, but to cleanse them of their evil ways. Then they would be restored to their rightful place as God’s people. The Bible records that Israel did not heed the pleadings of Hosea...

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