In most families, it takes a fair bit for parents to kick their kids out of home. (For my dad, the standing threat was he’d kick me out if I got an earring. I never got to test if he was serious, because I’m not into unnecessary pain. Or earrings, for that matter. In my teens, I once wore a stick-on one to church on April Fool’s day; he spent the morning edging around the church trying to tackle me to remove it, while I was being shielded by all the twenty-something guys who thought it was great fun. He also would use me and my sister in sermon illustrations, so this is part of the enduring payback. The thing is, had he not mentioned it, I wouldn’t have even thought about wearing an earring – which means I can trot this story out in connection with Rom 7:7-8, too. But back to Hosea.)

In Hosea 11, we have God depicted as a conflicted parent – one who has every right to kick his wayward son, Israel out of home, who’s had far more than his ears pierced, tattooed himself with the names of most of the local prostitutes (see Hosea 5), and stolen from the family multiple times to feed his growing addiction to methamphetamine, which causes him to be a dangerously bad influence on his impressionable younger brother, Judah (Hos 4:15). As a parent, God is torn, simultaneously feeling love and anger, compassion and rejection. What will he choose to do? Will he kick Israel out? And if so, will it be for good?

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My wife is a primary school teacher. One of the less pleasant parts of her job is having to discipline children who have misbehaved. And over the past generation, the discipline options for teachers have (rightly, in most cases) become far more limited. So teachers have to be more creative than just sending children to the deputy for six of the best.

One of my wife’s favoured approaches – which I’ve witnessed first hand when we were youth leaders together, and think should be banned under the Geneva Convention – is the Excruciatingly Long Lecture About Exactly What It Is You Did And Why It’s Wrong. She brings it out particularly in cases where a student has done something to hurt another student, as her way of standing up for justice and fairness. It’s effective because it stops students muttering a perfunctory and insincere “sorry” (like Israel did back in chapter 6) and avoiding having to face the full reality and consequences of their actions.

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Yesterday in Hosea 6, we saw how Israel’s shallow, presumptuous “repentance” was unacceptable to God. Today, the accusations continue, moving to the political realm.

But first, we get another difficult-to-understand section, in which God seems to be saying that his people’s sin is so great it’s getting in the way of him restoring them:

The accusations then continue. This time they seem to be about the political instability, commenting on the constant cycle of assassinations that dominated the history of the northern kingdom. (See 2 Kings 15, which lists how Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah, Pekah, Kevin, Julia, Kevin, and Tony were assassinated.):

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Yesterday, we left Israel accused of idolatry – worshipping the Canaanite fertility gods and goddesses – largely because they had been led astray by the priests. After two chapters of strong words, it ended with this frightening image – along with a tinge of hope:

So is this what happens? Does Israel earnestly seek God in repentance?

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We’re going to pick up the pace a bit in our reading through Hosea. (We took our time with the first three chapters last week: we saw the contrast between Israel’s unfaithfulness and God’s undeserved love that sets out to win back his wife, depicted in the real-life object lesson of Hosea and Gomer.) The next few chapters are reasonably repetitive – and there’s a reason for that, which we’ll see. They focus on Israel’s spiritual adultery (chapters 4 & 5), her lack of repentance (chapters 6 & 7), and the certainty and totality of God’s coming judgement (chapters 8 to 10). So we’ll work through these quickly over three days – with a little less comment than usual – before slowing down again when we hit chapter 11.

The case for the prosecution

This chapter is often described as a “prophetic lawsuit,” in which Hosea delivers God’s opening statements for the prosecution. It begins with the announcement that God is bringing formal charges against Israel:

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The votes are in on “catch-up Friday”, and the majority still wants five days a week. But (in the spirit of compromise) they’ll often be a little shorter.

This week we’ve looked at the real-life object lesson Hosea acted out at God’s command: to marry a promiscuous woman, only for her to cheat on him, and then be the one to go and win her back. Just like God had done – and would do – for Israel. But there’s still a postscript to this story. Because there was quite a long wait for Israel in the 8th century before Jesus turned up. So Hosea’s little object lesson needed another chapter, to give Israel some hope:

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Yesterday, through the metaphor of Hosea’s marriage to unfaithful Gomer, God accused Israel of sleeping with other lovers: thinking that the Canaanite fertility gods and goddesses were the ones who were providing for her, rather than recognising that it all came from God, her husband. So he decided to withhold his providential care – leaving Israel to the mercy of her Canaanite “gods,” to let her find out how well that goes. Having experienced drought and famine, she might decide she was “better off” with God after all.

A hot date in the desert

But God isn’t leaving things to chance. Just as in chapter one we saw judgement followed by restoration, things abruptly change here in chapter two. You could be forgiven for thinking that Israel’s adultery means the marriage is over. Well, it is (see verse 2 from yesterday). But God’s not going to let it end that way.

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In our series in Hosea thus far, God has told Hosea to act out a prophetic sign against unfaithful Israel (the northern kingdom). In chapter one he was told to take a promiscuous woman as his wife, and to give his children names that symbolised the coming judgement on Israel, and the revoking of God’s covenant with (soon-to-be-not) his people. Yet there was also a message of hope that one day he would reunite his people under one leader, and again be their God.

In chapter two we see the same two-scene structure: judgement (verses 2-13, which we’ll look at today), followed by restoration (verses 14-23, tomorrow).

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Yesterday, we began a series in the Old Testament book of Hosea. You’ll need to read yesterday’s post for this one to make sense.

Quick recap of the story so far: in the 8th century BC, Israel (that is, the northern kingdom) has been persistently unfaithful to God, worshipping fertility gods/goddesses and making alliances with foreign nations, rather than trusting in God for their security. God has had enough. So he gets Hosea to act out a real-life object lesson. He tells him:

Find a promiscuous woman and marry her. Call the first kid “Jezreel” (referring to the place of slaughter where the previous ruling dynasty came to an end, and also meaning “scattered”) as a sign the kingdom of Israel is coming to an end, and about to be slaughtered and scattered. Call the second one “Lo-Ruhamah” (meaning not loved, or not shown mercy) as a sign I’m not going to be merciful to Israel any longer. And call the third one “Lo-Ammi” (meaning not my people), since I’m reversing the covenant I made back when I brought Israel out of Egypt – I’m not going to be their God any longer, and they won’t be my people.

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Prophets in the Old Testament got told to do some pretty outrageous things. And I think what God told Hosea to do is up there with the worst of them. What do you think?

In the first chapter of the book of Hosea – which we’ll be studying for the next couple of weeks – God gives his prophet one of the worst assignments you could imagine:

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