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"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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