In Hosea 2, God is talking to Hosea the prophet about the nation Israel. God says basically that she is like an unfaithful wife, who has gone after other lovers who give her the things that she wants. That is naturally me, and - I assume - most of us, in life. I know what is best for me, yet often I pursue what I want above and beyond what is most beneficial to me. (Might be why I'm up so late writing this when I should have been in bed...a few hours ago...) But in this passage in Hosea, God talks to his whore of a wife through Hosea. He talks as if Israel the nation is God's own wife, and Hosea's mother:
2 “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.
4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.
5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.9 “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.
10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.
11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.
13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,”
declares the LORD.
14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor[b] a door of hope.
There she will respond[c] as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16 “In that day,” declares the LORD,The whole point of the stripping down is so that we find no joy but in Him. Which is incredibly gracious and loving, since He is the source of ultimate joy. C. S. Lewis commented on this in an ever-overquoted (yet so worth quoting) passage:
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.[d]’
17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.
18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.
19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in[e] righteousness and justice,
in[f] love and compassion.
20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you [shall know] the LORD.
We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Whether Lewis had recently read Hosea 2, I don't know, but they hit on the same theme: We are too weak in and of ourselves to wrench our white-knuckled grasp from the 'treasures' that bring us temporary pleasure. But when God wrenches them from us, (usually painfully), how gracious he is to do that because it frees us up to find our only joy in Him! How counter-intuitive, and yet how delightful.
This song, written by John Newton shortly after a dear friend of his went insane, expresses this concept beautifully.
"I Asked the Lord," performed by Indelible Grace
(Lyrics:
I asked the Lord that I might grow, In faith and love and every grace.Might more of His salvation know, And seek more earnestly His face.Twas He who taught me thus to pray, And He I trust has answered prayer. But it has been in such a way As almost drove me to despair
I hoped that in some favored hour, At once He’d answer my request, And by His love’s constraining power, Subdue my sins and give me rest Instead of this He made me feel The hidden evils of my heart And let the angry powers of Hell Assault my soul in every part.
Yea more with His own hand He seemed intent to aggravate my woe! Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, Cast out my feelings, laid me low. “Lord why is this?”, I trembling cried. “Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?” “Tis in this way” The Lord replied, “I answer prayer for grace and faith”
“These inward trials I employ From self and pride to set thee free And break thy schemes of earthly joy That thou mayest seek thy all in me, That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”)
So, let us rejoice as he strips everything away, so that we are left with Him alone. I'm so glad that He loves me enough to strip me of everything I want to cling to, that I might gain the treasure that is beyond my imaginint - My Lord himself. Truly, "at his right hand are pleasures forevermore."
