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Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
  Orange Standard

Hosea: The Innocent Partner

Article 5 ~ September 2003

"Turn back all of you by God's help; practice loyalty and justice, and wait always upon your God." Hosea 12:6.

The Old Testament prophet Hosea came to faith in God, and to a commitment to serve Him, by a route very different from that of his near contemporary, Amos.

Amos, who was deeply concerned about the problems of the society in which he lived; its imbalances - the chasm between the rich and the poor; the bad politics, ineffective religion and lack of moral values; who felt the pressures of God on him to speak out against the evils of his time and place. Hosea's concentration was on home and family and it is in his domestic crisis, and from it, that God speaks to him and to the people through him.

He had a bad marriage, for his wife Gomer had broken her vows and her unfaithfulness had driven him to near distraction. A scene which is being repeated frequently and with fearful consequences in our society day by day, with the injured party being one or other partner, and the greater likelihood is of the wife becoming the single parent.

While in many cases there is shared responsibility for marriage failure, the reasons are numerous, and well known, from the frivolous to the fearful and the incompatible, which makes living together impossible. Hosea was the innocent partner to whom no blame is attached. There are sociologists who argue that because it takes two to make a marriage it takes two to end one.

Hosea refused to seek a bill of divorcement, even though the infidelity of Gomer is unquestioned, for he determined to keep the marriage and to hold the family together. He loved his wife and he hoped by making his feelings clear to her, in spite of all that happened between them, they could make their marriage work again. Meditating on his life and his experiences in separation and then reconciliation, he thought of God's relationship with his people and from this he emphasised the treatment of God to people. Amos spoke of the God of justice: Hosea, the God of love. He likens Gomer's conduct with that of the people. He was inspired by the thought that in spite of everything they did God loved them through it all. He realised that reconciliation was there for those who recognised their estrangement from God and their need of Him.

He heard God say:

"I shall say unto them who were not my people, you are my people: and they shall say, you are our God."

There is here the New Testament conviction "we love Him because He first loved us." The forgiving God expects His people to be forgivers. It is in the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us ..... as we forgive...."

The final act of forgiveness came when at the slave market, Hosea buys his wife out of the slavery to which she had sunk. What Hosea did was the reminder that the persuasion on him to do this thing was from his confidence that God's forgiveness knows no bounds.

Where Amos despairs of humanity and emphasises its worst sins and shortcomings, Hosea underlines the possibility of repentence and sought reconciliation. It is a Biblical perception that that can happen "in the nick of time". There was the thief on the cross. Gomer had to undergo the discipline the moral law required. The restoration of the marriage, Hosea and Gomer has been used to plead that a marriage can be saved if love persists.

Hosea is not a book on marriage but about the forgiveness of God who says:

"How can I give you up, Israel? How could I abandon you? my heart, will not let me do it! My love for you is too strong." (11:8,9)

The "gospel according to Hosea" is of a loving and forgiving God. Amos and Hosea complement one another, justice must be done and the God who is just is also loving and merciful. Together they confronted people with the necessity for a decision that includes God or excludes Him and the consequences of it. The task is that of every believer who seeks to bring others to faith in God and to the way of life pleasing to Him and of value to Him and to people.

Rev. Canon Dr. S.E. Long

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