Hosea Lesson 2

Hosea’s children and their names - Hosea 1:4-2:1

 

The book of Hosea is a book that is divided into two parts; chapters 1-3 and chapters 4-14.  These two parts deal with certain aspects of God’s plan for the nation Israel. The first three chapters explains how God is preparing a role-playing situation with the prophet, In other words, the prophet will have to, in his own marriage, act out God’s relationship to Israel. God is going to establish a historic parallel between His relationship to Israel and Hosea’s relationship with his wife.  In verse 1 we studied the occurrence of the calls of Hosea, it took place during these kings reigning in the southern kingdom of Judah. This man ministered for many years.  Actually Jeroboam’s reign began in 782 BC and the fall of Samaria is in 722 BC, so you have a gap of 60 years in there.  He died apparently, or stopped prophesying sometime before 722 BC because the fall of Samaria is not listed in this book. Since he began sometime in Jeroboam we can deduce that this man had some 50 years of active ministry in which these prophecies were made.  Many other prophecies were made in addition to these, however the Holy Spirit has seen fit only to preserve these in the canon of Scripture.

 

Hosea, in verse 2, was called to marry a professional prostitute and this was a picture of God taking for Himself the nation Israel. When it says in versed 2, “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms,” “whoredoms” being plural, it is a reference to here profession.  She is a prostitute by profession and she has children from the many pregnancies that she had while she was a prostitute.  Hosea is to love this woman, he is to cherish her and is to raise a family with her.  He is to bring reconciliation with this woman, her children, and the children that she will bear by him.  It’s a most unusual call, one of the most unusual calls God has ever given a man, particularly a man this young, of Hosea’s age.

 

This we found was, therefore, an illustration of the two kinds of suffering out of the six that believers can have.  You recall the doctrine of suffering for the Christian gives us six possibilities why you can suffer.  Three of these are direct, three are indirect.  One is the fall and every bit of suffering is due to the fall so you can always figure that one, that’s automatic.  Two is rebellion, this is when you go on negative volition against God who is the Creator and violate His law order, you pay a price.  You don’t break God’s laws, God breaks you, so that’s the second phase of suffering. The third phase of suffering is by association in the divine institutions, and this is one of the key ways in which Hosea suffered, because he will suffer being married to Gomer and he would participate in her discipline.  God was disciplining her so therefore Hosea would be hurt repeatedly.  Hosea suffered by association in the divine institutions.  He also suffered in the divine institution, the fourth one, nation, because he was a citizen of the northern kingdom, he too would suffer when God judged that kingdom. 

 

The fourth reason for suffering that is given in Scripture is that because we are identified with Christ in Satan’s world.  Since we are identified with Jesus Christ in Satan’s world we become a lightening rod with satanic attacks.  The fifth reason is that we may learn doctrine; doctrine can often not be taught apart from suffering.  Loyalty cannot be built into the soul apart from suffering and so we have a fifty reason for suffering.  Then we have a sixth reason that we can be a testimony, both to unbelievers, angels and other believers.

 

Hosea suffers, basically, for the third and the sixth reasons.  Hosea is suffering that his life might be a testimony to the people round about him.  It is not that Hosea has done some awful sin to warrant this kind of calling.  It isn’t that he was dirty in God’s sight so God scraped the barrel before He could give Hosea a low enough calling.  That’s wrong; Hosea did not merit this kind of calling in the sense I’m speaking of, but he got it anyway and it was to be a suffering by testimony. 

 

Now in verse 4 his first child was born and there’s a lot of history involved in this and so we have to go slowly through these verses.  In Hosea 1:4 it says, “And the LORD said unto him,” now obviously when it says “the LORD said unto him,” it means that God spoke a second time because God obviously spoke in verse 2, and in verse 2 God spoke to him before he married the woman, and verse 4 God speaking to him again means actually at least nine months later, so therefore we have periodic revelation, which is a good place to review a few things, and that is the doctrine of Old Testament prophets.  So I’ll summarize what Old Testament prophets were, how they functioned, so you won’t be suckers for all of the cheap gimmicks that are going around today in the name of prophecy.  Don’t be led astray by all these claims for prophecies until you understand what the Biblical category is.  Here is an overview with 8 points of the Old Testament concept of prophecy or the prophets. 

 

First, the word used in the Hebrew gives us a clue to what’s going on, the nabiim, the “im” is a plural ending, or the nabi is the single.  That’s what the root of the noun looks like.  The nabiim were people who saw something that other men did not. The nabi means to have a vision or to have communication, extra-natural communication or supernatural communication.  The nabiim go all the way back to Abel.  Turn to Luke 11:50, the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of prophets and He calls the prophets, as included in the rank of prophets, Abel, for in Luke 11:50 He said, “that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation, [51] From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zechariah,” so obviously Abel is presented as a martyred prophet.  What did Abel do?  We don’t know what his prophecies were but we know he was murdered because of them and Luke 11:50 actually fills us in on some details about why Cain killed Abel that we would not get from Genesis.  1 John tells us how Cain killed Abel, he didn’t hit him over the head with a rock.  1 John 3 tells us the method that Cain used, it was with the knife that was used to kill sacrifices.  So the means of Abel’s death was slit throat; so we know the first murder in history, we know the murder weapon and we know how the murder was committed. 

 

This verse in Luke 11:50 tells us why the first murder occurred in history.  It occurred because Abel was teaching the Word of God.  So, it’s very interesting that we know the first murder in history was to shut up somebody that was teaching the Word of God.  It is that which draws the animosity of the powers of darkness.  So Abel was martyred, but this verse teaches definitely that the order of the nabiim extended all the way back in time, probably to Adam, Adam wasn’t slaughtered so he’s not included in the group in Luke 11:50.

 

The second thing we know about the nabiim is that they didn’t start with Abraham, they pre-existed Abraham.  So they’re not exclusively Jewish.  They are exclusively human; the nabiim is a divine institution or divine function in man.   The second point about the nabiim is Numbers 11:16, here is the first time a general movement begins that is recorded in history.  This is during the wilderness wanderings.  “And the LORD said unto Moses, Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel,” now the setting for the first time something occurs in the Word of God is always critical.  God’s Word is written by the greatest author in existence, the Holy Spirit.  And when God the Holy Spirit sets up Scripture He loads, with all sorts of connotations, the first occurrence of something.  So when you read the Scripture and when you’re researching a topic, something comes up, look in a concordance, find out where it first occurs in the Bible and study the context where that first occurs and you’ll get a lot of insight into what that is. 

 

In Numbers 11:16 we have the first use of the general nabiim movement.  Why did God say unto Moses, “Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, who you know to be elders of the people, and officers over them; and bring them unto the tabernacle of the congregation,” why? Because there was a leadership crisis, so one of the functions originally for the nabiim was to provide leadership.  They were not, in other words, people who were to have a private experience to themselves, they were to have a service ministry to other believers.  These seventy men… incidentally that’s where the Sanhedrin in the New Testament got their tradition from, “the seventy,” these seventy men were called “elders” in verse 16.  Notice he says, “select from the elders.”   That tells you another thing; that the first nabiim were not new believers, the nabiim were older, mature believers.  They had already established themselves in the Word of God, as known up to that point, they had already shown and demonstrated leadership in their day.  So they are a mature group of people.

 

Then Numbers 11:17, here’s how the nabiim begin.  “And I will come down and talk with thee there, and I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.”  Notice they participate in responsible leadership.  [18] “{And say thou unto the people, Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow,” and so on and it describes how the Holy Spirit came upon these men and they prophesied.  Leviticus 11:25, “And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spoke unto him, and took of the Spirit was upon him,” that’s upon Moses, now what did the Holy Spirit do through Moses?  The Holy Spirit, through Moses taught the Word and gave leadership to the nation.  We don’t have one account in any of this text that Moses had an ecstatic experience; that’s foreign to the text.  So what did the Holy Spirit do in Moses?  Gave leadership to the nation.  Now take that Holy Spirit, in verse 25, “took of the Spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass that, when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease. [26] But there remained two of the men in the camp … and they prophesied in the camp.” 

 

So we’re not told what they were doing exactly but we have to infer what they were doing by what Moses was doing.   What was Moses doing?  He was judging people, he was exhorting people, and he was teaching people the Word of God. So by inference in the context then, what was the Spirit doing through these seventy people?  The Spirit was obviously teaching the people the Word of God and exhorting them.  So our second point about this is that when the nabiim begin in history as a movement, there is no evidence of ecstasy, the evidence is strictly on the teaching of the Word and ministry. 

 

The next time we have the movement of the nabiim we do get involved in ecstasy, 1 Samuel 10:5; this is a big gap in history of some 400 years before we come to this point.  And when we come to this point we find that in Samuel’s day Samuel clustered about him a group of people called the nabiim, but they are under the leadership of Samuel, so we’ll say in Samuel’s seminary you have a nabiim, a circle of men who are prophesying.  Notice what they’re doing in verse 5, this is instruction given to Saul because Saul is going to go to this place.  “After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, were is the garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come there to the city, that thou shalt met a company of nabiim [prophets]” here are the prophets, “coming down from the high place,” so the nabiim are on high places, which is a place of worship, so in the context they are involved in worship, “with psaltery, and a timbrel, and a pipe [flute], and a harp before them,” and it shows that the nabiim used music, “and they shall prophesy. [6] And the Spirit of the LORD will come upon you, and you shall prophesy with them….”  This prophecy was a prophecy in song.  These people were singing exhortation of some sort to believers.  That’s as much as we can garner from the text, the text doesn’t go into any more detail, much as we would like to satisfy our curiosity what they were doing.  All we know is that they were somehow using instrumental music and in the process were exhorting and teaching.

 

The fourth point about the nabiim is that they gave their prophecies, we’ve already seen they’ve given them in songs, in prose, and they would give it in poetry as illustrated by Baalim and his ass in Numbers 23, prophecy in poetic form.

 

Another point about the nabiim, the fifth point, is that their prime concern was with the nation, not with themselves or other individual believers.  The prime consideration was national, not individual, such as Elijah’s prophecy, such as Elisha, such as Nathan, all these men, whenever they did address an individual it was an important individual for the sake of the nation.  So please notice it was never individual, it was always national.

 

The sixth point is that they were political activists; they took a prime role in the ongoing of their nation. They were involved in politics and they were applying the Word of God to politics. They did not take the ostrich attitude of stay away and it will all work out by itself, the nabiim were people who got involved, such as Isaiah.  Isaiah was on the cabinet, if you want to visualize it in American terminology, he was on the cabinet of the President, he was an advisor, he would be on the level today of a Presidential advisor.  These men were political realists.

 

The seventh point is that these men eventually, in the circles of the nabiim, degenerated into professional guilds; these guilds eventually, because of their political activism, became nothing more than political parties who would identify with the status quo, or with someone whose political favor they needed.  Illustration: the prophets of Baal with king Ahab.  These were a group of people that had lost their loyalty to the Word of God and were loyal to the existing power structure.  They lost their balance; in their zeal to be politically active they lost their balance and drifted away from loyalty to the Word to a loyalty to those in power.

 

Finally, the eighth point is that the nabiim were replaced with what we call the classic prophets, or the classical writing prophets. These are the men you know whose books are labeled with their names, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, these are the classical writing prophets.  How do they differ from the early nabiim?  They differ in many ways.  First, they were not members of a group and they were usually never in power.   They were individuals who largely were powerless, with one exception, Isaiah.  Most of these men were political amateurs, they were called out of a secular background; they did not participate, as far as we know, with the groups of nabiim.  Another difference between these classical writing prophets is that visions were used rather than musical ecstasy; whereas before the emphasis had been on the power and role of music, now the emphasis shifted to visions. And more important, the classical writing prophets wrote; prophecy now was put on paper and these men wrote almost as much as they preached, whereas before they would preach in the street corners and they would train seminary students such as Samuel’s, now things had become so bad that they realized their prophesies would be lost on the men in the street, and so they wrote them in order for them to be preserved for a later generation. So we have that difference. 

 

And finally another key difference, and this is a very important one, the classical writing prophets appear on the national scene when God is about to invoke the fifth degree of discipline under the Mosaic Covenant, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 both prophesy that when the nation goes on negative volition God will administer discipline to the nation in five increasing degrees.  He will first lightly afflict them, and if they do not repent and turn back to positive volition He will increase the discipline seven times.  And these are powers of seven, so seven to the first power, seven squared, seven to the third power, seven to the fourth, and seven to the fifth are the intensity levels here.   Mathematicians, notice that was the first logarithmic scale.  So we have the increase in discipline.  The last step, the fifth step, was prophesied both in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, that last step had a certain very obvious historical trait, and that was dispersion.  By the time the nation Israel would receive the fifth degree she would be dispersed and destroyed from the land.  The land would still be there but Israel would be destroyed from that land. 


Now the classic writing of prophets appeared on the scene when this dispersion became inevitable.  For this reason they are often called prophets of doom, because by the time most of them prophesied there was no second and third chance left. The nabiim had warned the nation and warned the nation and warned the nation through the early stages of discipline and the people ignored them.  The people ignored the Word of God, they were interested in other things.  And so therefore by the time these men get on the scene things have really degenerated to the point where redemption is ultimately impossible in the short run.

 

So now we turn back to Hosea, we will see why he is going to name his children the way he does.  Hosea 1:4, “And the LORD said unto him,” this is after the baby is born, “call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. [5] And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” 

 

This child’s name is a place name; Jezreel is a valley.  In the topography of the land where you see that little jutting out on the Israeli coastline, Mount Carmel here, there’s a valley that extends inland, and it is the only valley that goes from the coast to the Jordan.  That is the valley of Jezreel.  It is the valley through which every major invasion of the land has always occurred, obviously because it’s hard to fight in the hills, it’s easier to fight in the valleys.  This is a very fertile plain, it is obviously valuable for its agricultural produce.  It is valuable strategically; it is valuable for supply and logistics to invading armies.  So Jezreel is a place and naming his son Jezreel would be a kin to, say a Frenchman or an Englishman, naming in the 18th or 19th century, their son Waterloo; in other words, it’s a place name and should strike people as odd.  So everywhere Hosea had to go he carried Waterloo around with him, and people would wonder, hey, why did you name your son Waterloo, he’d say hey Waterloo, come here. Why name the son such a crazy name?  Because God used that idiosyncrasy or that unusual feature to draw attention to prophecy, something about Jezreel.  Hosea, of all things, a so-called man of God, marries a professional prostitute whom everyone knows; then the first child born of the union is called Jezreel.  God has those men act out strange attention-getting ways to focus people’s concentration on the Word of God. 

 

Now let’s look at what the name looks like in the Hebrew.   Here is the name for Israel in Hebrew, this “el” on the end, that is the word “God,” Elohim, it’s a short term for God.  “Israel” means “prince with God,” it’s the name of Jacob, it’s a man’s name, not a nation’s name. We use it for a nation but don’t ever forget that was one man’s name.  Israel was “the prince with God.”  Now since the classic writing prophets are men of literary talents God uses that literary talent to be a little creative in the way He goes about His prophesying.  So this involves, sort of a literary pun.  You don’t pick it up in the English because Jezreel is transliterated, but in the Hebrew it looks like this; notice the end, it’s “God.” And this part Zr with a hard h, so this is Zrhel, literally when you sound it out.  So you can see how in the original language these coincided very closely, Yisrael and Zrhel, both are very close, much closer than in the English.  And he called it because this is the Hebrew word to sow and to scatter.  So the name means God scatters and this is the name of the valley.  The valley, by the way, had been named many, many centuries before the Son appeared on the scene, but there’s a literary irony to the name.  Remember these men, God communicates in their own vocabulary in their own way, and He uses literary form, and this was to be a special point as people studied the Word of God. 

 

Now what about the valley of Jezreel?  What about it and how did it function, where did it work and so forth?  The topography: the valley of Jezreel goes across like this and there’s a river in it called the River Kishon.   Here are some of the Biblical incidents which have already happened in the valley of Jezreel before this time of the writing of this book.  One of the things was the victory over Sisera in Judges 5; one of the great Canaanite oppressors came down here and in some way in Judges 5 was miraculously and catastrophically defeated in this valley, and the song that Deborah sings in Judges 5 is about the River Kishon. So Jezreel has already been the place of the defeat of one of Israel’s great enemies, Sisera.

 

A second incident that occurred in the valley of Jezreel, by way of background, I’m giving you these details because I’m trying to have you put in your mind what would have been in the mind of a citizen of Hosea’s day. So when that little boy went around and he calls him Zrhel, Zrhel, when he said that, that name would have recalled history to the people, Zrhel, the place where Sisera was destroyed, Zrhel where Gideon obtained his victory over the Midianites; that too was in the valley of Jezreel.  Another incident was the Naboth vineyard, when the power of the state or the northern kingdom decided to appropriate property, we have a polite name called imminent domain today in legal circles but in the Bible that is considered theft, God is the owner of all land and no private property holding individual under the Word of God in the Old Testament economy could ever have his property even compensated for by the government, the government had no claim on private property whatsoever.  Private property is the basis for freedom.  Naboth’s vineyard was one of the first times in history where this occurred and God very clearly said Jezreel will be the place where he pays for it.  Turn to 1 Kings 21, this is imminent domain working in Israel. 

1 Kings 21:1, “And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth, the Jezreelite, had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, close to the place of Ahab, king of Samaria.”  So we know something else, the capital of the northern kingdom was located up close to this valley, the valley of Jezreel.  Then you have some of the details of the transaction, and then 1 Kings 21:17 gives the prophecy; after the transaction, “And the word of the LORD came to Elijah, the Tishbite, saying, [18] Arise, go down to meet Ahab, king of Israel, who is in Samaria; behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he is gone down to possess it. [19] And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?  Thus saith the LORD,” and notice this curse, “In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick your blood, even thine,” and notice, place, the place, where’s the place?  Jezreel!  And Ahab died in Jezreel.

 

Now something else, turn to 2 Kings 9:14, where we have something else that occurs in Jezreel.  We want to go back to our kings to show you this; remember how the house of Jehu, ending with these two men, Jeroboam II and Zechariah, the house of Jehu had come into the throne of the northern kingdom to clean the mess up.  “So Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi, conspired against Joram.”  Verse 15, “But King Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him….” And Jehu slaughtered the apostate king in the valley of Jezreel.  Now after he slaughtered him, his house went on for four generations.

 

Now we’re prepared for the problem of Hosea’s prophecy. Hosea 1:4, we have the background so we understand why this boy was named Jezreel.  We have enough background to appreciate that the people of this time, when they heard the name, Zrhel, that they would understand Yisrael is the place where the conquers and the oppressors are destroyed.  Put another way in an even more simple terminology, Jezreel meant to the Jew of that day the place that God judges, because all those who had done wrong, all those falling under the curse of God were killed, assassinated or otherwise destroyed in the valley of Jezreel.  So Jezreel would generate all sorts of emotions in people as they heard this name passed around through the neighborhood.

 

Then God says, in Hosea 1:4 to explain it, “I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu,” you say wait a minute, I thought Jehu was the good guy, I thought he was the one who God had promised for four generations to sit on the throne.  That’s correct, but we have here a certain axiom about the way God works.  Jehu was a man who did God’s will.  Now the first thing we know, he accomplished the will of God, he slaughtered the king, but he did not do it out of loyalty to God, it turns out, his obedience was only partial.  He did it because of personal vengeance, he did it out of personal motives rather than motives of loyalty to the Lord. 

 

Now if you’ll notice, we have a man who is very much like the Assyrian in history, and like the Egyptian, and like others.  Didn’t they do God’s will in chastening the Jew?  Yes.  Are they blessed of God because they did it?  No.  Why did they do it?  Because they meant it for evil, God meant it for God.  And thus we’re faced with an axiom and this is an axiom that will hold true in  your Christian life.  Often times you will accomplish God’s will.  Oftentimes you’ll witness; oftentimes you may do good works toward other people, and these are fulfilling God’s will but you’ll receive no credit for them because they were not done with the filling of the Holy Spirit; they were not done in fellowship, they were not done walking by the Spirit, etc.  You can do the right thing with the wrong motive and come out with a big fat zero on your credit card.  So Jehu is coming out with a big fat zero on his credit card and his kingdom will be eliminated. 

Then in the last part of verse 4 another prophecy,  and I “will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.”  Now that’s the northern kingdom, not the southern kingdom.  Keep in mind there are two kingdoms at this time in history, the ten tribes in the northern kingdom called Israel and the two tribes in the south called Judah.  Those ten tribes are prophesied to be destroyed in verse 4.  Verse 4 is a statement that the fifth degree of discipline is about to fall on the nation.

 

Verse 4, “And it shall come to pass at that day,” now he doesn’t tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it will surely happen, “that I will break the bow of Israel,” the bow of Israel is an idiom for her military, “I will destroy her military in the valley of Jezreel.”  Now turn to 2 Kings 17 and you’ll see the destruction and the fulfillment of this prophecy. 

 

2 Kings 17:3, “Against him,” this is the last king, go back to the king list, notice the kings in the north, see the last name on the list, Hoshea, that’s the man you see here in 2 Kings 17:1, “In the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, began Hoshea, the son of Elah, to reign in Samaria over Israel nine years. [2] And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, but not as the kings of Israel who were before him. [3] Against him came up Shalmaneser,” actually he’s known in history as Shalmaneser V, “king of Assyria; and Hoshea  became his servant, and gave him presents.”  That doesn’t mean he sent him Merry Christmas presents, that mean he gave him bribes, he was buying his freedom in other words.  As long as Hoshea could come up with gold and silver, Shalmaneser V would grant him a certain degree of freedom. 

 

2 Kings 17:4, “And the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea; for he had sent messengers to So,” who’s a Pharaoh, “king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year.  Therefore, the king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. [5] Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three  years. [6] In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” 

 

[7, “For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods.  [8] And walked in the statues of the nations, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made. [9] And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fortified city. [10] And they set them up images and idols in every high hill, and under every green tree. [11] And there they burned incense in all the high places, as did the nations whom the LORD carried away before them, and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger; [12] For they served idols, of which the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing.  [13] Yet the LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments, and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants, the prophets. [14] Notwith­standing, they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like the neck of their fathers, who did not believe in the LORD their God.  [15] And they rejected His statutes, and His covenant that He made with their fathers, and His testimonies which He testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the nations who were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them that they should not do like them.  [16] And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them melted images, even two calves, and made an idol, and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. [17] And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger.  [18] Therefore, the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of His sight; there was none left bur the tribe of Judah only.”]

 

The story of this military disaster was one that extended, painfully, over much of the career of Hosea.  Hosea saw the early campaigns; the early campaigns were done years before, about ten years before.  Here is a map showing the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III; this is recorded in an earlier chapter of God’s Word.  The first year of his campaign was 732 BC, he struck Damascus and removed Arimea from the map and brought the lines of the Assyrian kingdom down to about here.  The next year, for they fought seasonally due to the mud and logistic problems and so on, in 733 BC he made a northern probe into the northern half of Samaria, all the way down to the valley of Jezreel, and so it was that was being fulfilled even in Hosea’s day, through the campaign of Tiglath-pileser, that in the valley of Jezreel I will smash the military might of the northern kingdom.  So this extended the borders of Assyria down to the valley of Jezreel and the Jordan valley and then eastward.  That was the year 733 BC.

 

Then in the year 734 BC Tiglath-pileser came in again and this time he wiped out every single coastal village and city that he could, all the way down to the border with Egypt.  And so by this time the only place that had freedom in the north was a small place around Samaria.  Hosea lived during this slow erosion of military power.  It was a horrible time because he was a man who loved his country, but he saw his countrymen slaughtered, he saw his military decline, he saw the nation go down.  [tape turns]  …under Shalmaneser and later on under Sennacherib.  Turn to Hosea, we’ve got to come to another one of his children before we get to Sennacherib.  We finished verses 4 and 5 that dealt with son, Jezreel.  Jezreel is a place name; if you want a modern connotation, “Waterloo.” 

 

Hosea 1:6-7 now deal with the second child, and as with the first, so with the second, God named the baby.  Hosea 1:6, “And she conceived again and bore a daughter.  And God said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruhamah; for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away” and the purpose clause we’ve got to change, literally it means that I will not certainly forgive her, the modern translations have it changed.  In the Hebrew it looks like this. Lo means no, racham means mercy, Lo-rachama, wouldn’t you love a daughter, hey, Lo-rachama, this means no mercy.  So this is really something out on the sidewalk to call his kids in for supper he had to preach a sermon every evening, Jezreel and Lo-rachama, and people would hear him, and people would wonder, what has gone wrong with this man that he calls his kids by these goofy names.  But they would recognize that he was a prophet and this was one way a prophet spoke to the people of his day. 

 

Now what does Lo-rachama mean?  It means, if you compare it with Hosea 2:1, that we have a problem with the character of God, it looks like, because we’ve just seen that He says I will have no mercy.  Yet in 2:1 He says I will have mercy, and you recall when we introduced the book of Hosea, this is one of the most fascinating things about the book of Hosea, we have got passages going back and forth, back and forth, one time He’s angry, the other time He’s happy; one time He hates and the other time He loves; it seems that we have almost contradictory parts to God’s character, but not quite.  If you will think of how real people function,  you, your loved ones, you know that at any given moment they will manifest a certain character; the next moment they can manifest another character.  Now you don’t think of your loved one as being some sort of a schizo  unless it gets real obvious that you have this tremendous violent change in behavior.  We accept this shifting of moods and shifting of attitudes as part of personality.  Now I don’t mean necessarily its sinful, it is part of a personality functioning in real history and time that you naturally don’t express the same attitude moment by moment by moment.  Your soul is complex, and at one moment you’ll express determination, at another moment you’ll express hesitation; one moment you’ll express joy, the other moment you’ll express sadness.  You won’t express all these at the same time, generally you’ll express one mood and then another one.  They’ll follow sequentially. 

 

Now we have no trouble accepting that; we don’t think there’s a contradiction in a person unless it gets real bad.  All right, when you see this happen in God’s character in Hosea, it’s one of the signals that God is a personal God, working in history, that at one moment He is mad, and in the next moment He is joyful.  This is not a charade and it is not a puppet show that God is putting on.  God is a personally reacting God, who like ourselves shows different attitudes to us at different moments in history.  If you want an illustration of this, maybe it will help you in your thinking to visualize it, visualize the Lord Jesus Christ.  At one time you have Him beckoning, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, practically weeping over the city, and another time you have Him going in with a weapon, a small whip, and literally hitting people with it in the temple.  Jesus used a whip, not to chase the birds out of the temple, He used it to hit people with.  So Jesus Christ, at one point, was angry and violent, and at another point could be very loving and mild.  Now does this say that Jesus Christ was a schizo?  No, it testifies that Jesus Christ is the same as you are, He has personality. 

 

And so the God of the Bible has personality, and when He gives this prophecy, call this girl Lo-rachama, meaning no mercy, means I have no mercy, and at this point He is announcing in history a cut off to mercy and what does this mercy-cutoff mean?  All right, it’s explained in verse 7.

 

Hosea 1:7, “But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD, their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.”  Now what’s that got to do with it.  If you read carefully verses 6 and 7 you’ll notice that verse 7 gives you the opposite of verse 6.  Again, you have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom; the southern kingdom—Judah; northern kingdom—Israel.  One prophecy, verse 6, goes to the northern kingdom, the other prophecy, verse 7, goes to the southern kingdom.  On the northern kingdom you have minus mercy; southern kingdom you have plus mercy.

 

Now let’s see historically what happened, then we can work backwards and see what does God mean when He says I’m angry.  I don’t want you to take these words as just trivial poetic words about God.  They’re rooted to something that could be observed in that day.  Now we come to the campaign of Sennacherib. What this “no mercy” point is, is that when God sends an invader into Jezreel, and her military might is destroyed, there is a progression, you’ll see this progression as it works.  First you have Jezreel, then you have the daughter.  First you have the son with a name of the place of defeat.  Then you have the daughter named with what God’s response in the defeat is going to be.  So the daughter means that when the armies come into Jezreel and your military is defeated, I won’t save you, i.e.  you will be totally defeated.  On the other hand, when the Assyrian army comes in to defeat Judah, for the bow of Judah is also going to be destroyed, her military is going to be destroyed, I will have mercy. 

 

Now here’s the story, it actually happened and you can read it in the annuls of Sennacherib if you doubt the Bible.  It’s one of the strangest things that has ever happened in the ancient times and men who do not believe the Bible still cannot understand what happened.  In 701 BC one of the most powerful Assyrian generals of all time, having one of the most well-equipped, best trained armies that the ancient East ever saw, began to move down the coast to a place called Jezreel.  The man was Sennacherib, and at Jezreel his army split.  One group under  a command of one general moved down the valley, literally up the valley and moved down onto [can’t understand word/s] from the north; the other part of his army moved across the range of Carmel and went down to meet Pharaoh.  Pharaoh, the man who Israel and Judah always wanted to rely on, came up at a place called [not sure of word, sounds like: El tika] and there the Egyptian army was destroyed completely.  Pharaoh was wiped out and the Assyrians now held the balance of power for the whole Middle East. 

 

After that defeat he began in pincer move which was the only way to fight Jerusalem.  The Jews had a series of fortress cities around Jerusalem,  a radius of about 50 miles, these small cities.  A large invading army could not hold siege to Jerusalem unless they had first destroyed these little fortress cities, because if they tried to make siege against Jerusalem, what the Jews would do is send raiding parties down to destroy their lines, and so since they couldn’t secure their lines while they were attacking Jerusalem, the obvious military point was before we hit Jerusalem we have to destroy these cities. So Sennacherib gave debriefing to his generals, we need every one of those fortress cities destroyed.  And some of those fortress cities, like Lachish, have been discovered in archeology and you can see the pictures of the ruins of the tremendous fight that was fought at each one of these points, one by one they fought.  The Jews wouldn’t go out in the field, they stayed at fortresses.  Sennacherib’s army scattered all the Jews inside the fortresses and kept them in the fortresses.  So the Jews never had raiding parties, they never took the offense in this war, they took the defense and holed up in these fortress positions, which is just exactly what Sennacherib wanted.  Then what he did is he had enough parties to scare the soldiers and to keep them inside the walls, and then he put the main force, 90% of his force, and concentrated on one at a time.  And he obviously overwhelmed them, one after another of these cities fell. 

 

One after another the defense perimeters of Jerusalem was being destroyed.  Day after day, week after week he’d tighten this, from the north another strike force was coming down, destroying all the protected cities to the north; one by one the same tactic, the defense perimeter was broken from the southwest and from the north. And then at the last moment, when the armies came against Jerusalem, with absolutely no defense perimeter, a strange thing happened, and to see what happened turn to Isaiah 37.  This shows you what the Word of God can do.  The bow of Judah was destroyed; the fortress cities were gone.  Militarily there was absolutely no hope for Jerusalem in 701 BC, except God is the Lord of history.  And in the city of Jerusalem was a remnant of believers who had been taught the Word under a man by the name of Isaiah.  These believers gathered together in prayer for their city.  They had studied the Word and been faithful to the Word of God that they knew.  Hezekiah himself was a born again believer and he prays in Isaiah 37:1, “And it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard it, that he tore his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.” 

 

And in Isaiah 37:6 when Isaiah comes and gives him the word, “…Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that you have heard; with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me,” in other words, the Assyrians just went overboard a little too much in 701 BC.  They were confident Jerusalem was like a ripe plum, ready to fall into their hands.  They were over confident and in one of their moments of over confidence they blasphemed Yahweh, the God of Israel.  And then God acted, and so the announcement is given in verse 7, “Behold, I will send a blast [wind] upon him, and he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.” 

 

The story of just what happened is given down in Isaiah 37:36, keep in mind this is unprecedented in history and the beautiful thing about this event is that it is perfectly documented from non-Biblical material.  This literally happened and you can show it literally happened.  People disagree on what exactly did happen but we know that this army had completely surrounded Jerusalem, destroyed everything, they had all the logistics here, then suddenly Sennacherib takes off; suddenly he’s defeated somehow.  And he, in his annuls never gives you what happened, he just says I [can’t understand word], I moved away, and he never reports what happened but something obviously happened because in earlier annuls he said I was coming to destroy the whole place. He doesn’t record any bribes made by Hezekiah, he just simply… the Assyrian army evaporated.  Here’s what really happened.

 

Isaiah 37:36, “Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were dead.”  185,000 men died in one night.  You can imagine what happened when they took roll call in the morning to see if all are present and accounted for.  And battalion after battalion after battalion, where’d they go? Finally they tallied this thing up and there was 185,000 men missing in roll call, all in one night. That’s why Sennacherib’s noose on Jerusalem was destroyed.  [37, “So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh [38] And it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch, his God, that Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, smote him with the sword, and they escaped….”]

 

Now what affected this?  Was this “by bow?”  Does verse 36 tell you that the house of Judah was saved by her military?  Does it say that the house of Judah was saved by those fortress cities?  Does it say that they had a great cavalry force and that destroyed the Assyrians?  Nothing like that.  What you’re reading there is the fulfillment of Hosea 1.  So let’s go back to Hosea 1:7 again.  The second child of Hosea, “Call her name Lo-ruhamah,” for I will not have mercy on Israel as I have mercy on Judah. Stated again it means that in Jezreel they will experience defeat; they will experience the collapse of their military and after this collapse they too will be led into captivity, a very merciless existence for these poor people that were deported thousands and thousands of miles. 

 

The Assyrians did not follow the policy of the Greeks or the Romans.  When the Assyrians invaded a land, in order to keep political stability they decided to deport people.  And they would take the whole population, men, women and children, tie them up, put them on long chains and make them march hundreds and hundreds of miles and those that didn’t die from starvation and heat along the way made it, and those that didn’t they just cut the string and let them die, and that’s how these people met their fate.  And they would be marched all the way up into the Mesopotamian area and settled in new villages, and the people in those villages, to which those people were taken, would be in turn bound into carts, tied up and shipped on the backs of animals and those that could walk would walk, all the way the thousands of miles back down into Israel.  And so the Assyrians, when they got through in 721 BC, an entire population had been moved up into the Mesopotamian valley and Gentiles from the Mesopotamian valley had been moved back down into the land, the mixed population, which by the way was the rise of the so-called Samaritans. That’s where they originally came from.

 

So we have in Hosea a tremendous prophecy in verse 7, “I will have mercy upon the house of Judah,” now this was given in advance of the 701 BC campaign of Sennacherib, “and will save them by the LORD, their God,” you see the little slam there.  You’ve got to remember that in the northern kingdom, who were they worshiping?  In the northern kingdom they had a religion set up by Jeroboam I and this religion had the golden bull, the golden bull that was worshiped.  Now what God says is I’m down there, you people wanted to set up your own religion, fine, see how far it gets you.  And so when he gives you this address, there’s this little sarcastic personal pronoun, “their God,” they’ll be saved by their God, “and I will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.”  And you saw the fulfillment of that.

 

Now going on to the end of this, verse 8, “Now when she had weaned Lot-ruhamah, she conceived, and bore a son.”  This is probably two or three years later.  Verse 9, “Then said God, Call his name Lo-ammi; for you are not My people, and I will not be your God.”  In the Hebrew it looks like this, Lo means no, am or ham, from which we get Abraham, people; there’s your Hebrew word for people, that’s why Abram is called Abram and then Abraham, father of a nation.  Okay, this is my, so “you are not My people.”  Now look at these names and look at the sequence.  First you have Jezreel, then you have “no mercy,” then you have “not my people,” and those are the three steps to destruction. Every time Hosea would call his name he had to preach a sermon to the people who would hear. 

 

Let’s look further in the text.  After He says, “I will not be your God,” this is the height of the anger of God Himself.  At this point it sounds like all is lost.  Surely in 721 BC the entire ten tribes of the north will be lost.  No!  Hosea is the book of God’s love; Hosea is the book of eternal security and the prophecy is interrupted by poetic session.  In the original language this is poetry, it begins at verse 10 and continues to 2:1, so there’s three verses and the way your Bibles are numbered it should be 1:10-11 and 2:1.  There’s a three verse parenthesis.  In the middle of the condemnation God suddenly stops.  Now why does God stop in the middle of His hatred?  Because He’s grace; here is God’s grace.  Israel doesn’t deserve it, Israel doesn’t merit it but God stops His own judgment in the middle; this is a tremendous message.  You will find this in prophecy after prophecy, God gets almost to the point of dropping the whole wad, and then suddenly He stops and what does He say?

 

Hosea 1:10, “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered;” there are actually four prophecies contained here.  Let’s enumerate them. The first one, “the number of the children shall be” great.  So the first prophecy is a national population explosion.  As you read this, and you want to do this as you study Scripture, as you read this prophecy and it says “the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea,” that phraseology should ring a bell.  That is the Abrahamic Covenant and those are the exact words of Genesis 22:17.  In other words, here God is straining to judge the people, what is it that restrains God?  His sovereign gracious plan, the positional truth of those people, their top circle, the Abrahamic Covenant says I will bless you Israel, your seed will never be erased from history.  And as God comes almost to the brink… see, this is a picture of the tension and in every real personality there is tension.  Tension is not sinful.  Do you know why tension isn’t sinful?  People say in heaven there won’t be any tensions.  Not necessarily, in the Garden of Eden  there was tension, wasn’t there, before the fall?  Wasn’t there tension whether or not man would choose.  Tension by itself is not evil. 

 

All right, so we have in God’s character kind of a tension here.  On the one hand He wants to judge; on the other hand He has His sovereign gracious plan.  Now apply it to yourself.  We have our top circle in Christ; in Christ everything is provided.  But that doesn’t mean… eternal security doesn’t mean that God just sits there and folds His hands and looks and sees what’s going on.  Wrong conclusion from a right doctrine.  You’re right, you are eternally secure, but God can still be furious at you, as He is furious against this nation.  And the only thing that checks it is that sovereign plan.  So He says I will multiply your children, just like I promised, Genesis 22:17. 

 

Then again, a second prophecy, “and it shall come to pass that, in the place where it was said unto them,” your Lo-ammi, “You are not My people, there it shall be said unto them, Y are sons of the living God.”  Do you know what this prophecy is?  National regeneration.  The second one is national regeneration: parallel references, Jeremiah 31:33-34; Ezekiel 36:25-27.  Hosea was one of the first prophets to develop the concept of the New Covenant.  Jeremiah is going to develop it a lot more later, but Hosea, you can see the seeds of it right here.  God is going to cause national regeneration.

 

Then the third prophecy, if you continue in Hosea 1:11, “Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together,” the third prophecy, besides a national population explosion, besides a national regeneration, the third one is national restoration.  To see this as it was later developed by Ezekiel, turn to Ezekiel 37.  I’m taking you to this because this represents an addition to Hosea as it was later developed.  I’m also taking you to this prophecy because some of you have asked me what are the two sticks because you have had certain visitors from a certain religious cult come calling at your door and you have had this explained in another way.  First let’s look at the prophecy, then let’s look at what this cult tries to tell us is true, and then let’s look at the context.

 

Ezekiel 37:15, “The Word of the Lord came to me, saying, [16] Moreover, thou thy son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel, his companions; then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel, his companions; [17] And join them one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thine hand.”  What has Hosea said?  That I will join both houses together, northern kingdom and southern kingdom. 

 

Now in this writing I have published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we have Ezekiel 37:15-20 explained this way:  “Here was another remarkable prophecy which had not entirely escaped the attention of these people.”  He’s describing his talking with him, and he says: “These prophecies refer to the revelation to Israel and the revelation to Joseph Smith, and we’ll take the two sticks together and make them one.”  Now this is an illustration of all you have to do, when you get involved in this kind of a problem, is just read the context.  If they give you verse 15, try verse 14, it might help.  If they give you verse 16, try verse 15, just look a little bit in the context and most of these problems will dissolve.

 

So Ezekiel is amplifying a prophecy of Hosea.  Turn back to Hosea.  There’s one further prophecy, actually it’s in the last phrase of verse 10.  The Hebrew order here is different than the English.  After “the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head,” notice that, “one head,” it means the fourth prophecy concerns the Messiah, the “one head” is Messiah Himself.  How do we know this?  Context; turn to Hosea 3:5.  What does it say; in 3:5 of this very same book, “Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD, their God, and David, their king,” see, prophecy of Messiah.

 

So we have verse 10 and 11, the merciful injection by God, and finally Hosea 2:1, summarizes the whole thing, and you get quite an interesting contrast out of verse 1 when you look at it, “Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.”  Now who is that addressed to?  That is addressed to the children that Hosea has just mentioned, those three children, he is telling as a father, he says now kids, I want you to say to your brethren.  Who are the brethren and the sisters of these three children.  Look at Hosea 1:2, those are the children in Hosea 1:2, the children of prostitution.  In other words, when Gomer comes to Hosea she already has her own brood.  It will be the natural thing for the three children born of the union of Hosea and Gomer to look down their nose at these kids that were born out of wedlock under prostitution.  Rather than do that, Hosea has to care for those children born out of wedlock and the children born in wedlock, and he instructs his children, I want you to call them Ammi, “my people,” and Ruhamah, “mercy.”  Why?  Because the attitude of Hosea’s children toward the other children is an attitude and a picture of the end times, when all the nations will be converted and brought together in the kingdom.

 

Next week we’ll deal with the passage in chapter 2 and further judgment.  Notice that in this part that we have covered so far, Hosea 1:1-2:1 you’ve noticed God’s judgment but you’ve noticed His mercy.  To back off for a minute and not get lost in the forest for the trees, just to back off in conclusion, what do you see in all of this about God’s character?  God is going to judge, but it’s never a total judgment; it is a judgment upon people but it is bracketed by His mercy.