Shorter Stories

Hosea 1 to 5

Hosea comes first in the canon.  Leading the list of the minor prophets. Minor not because they played smaller roles, or brought less importance messages than the major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel), but because their writings are shorter by comparison.

NIV Notes. Traditionally, in the Jewish Canon, these 12 works are arranged in what is thought to be their chronological order:

Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah are the books that came from the period of Assyrian power, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah as Assyrian power declined.  And the Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi date from the post-exilic era. 

Hosea is the only one of the writing prophets to come from the Northern kingdom of Israel.  

I wonder if, as the gospel accounts and the Chronicler, each of these prophets will bring his own distinct flavour to the story.  Will the focus be on the words of Hope or on the words of judgment?  What will we learn about God’s Story and our story?

I wonder about the events that compelled these prophets and this people to record these words and writings during the days of change in Israel and Judah.  The compelling force to gather and knit together the story of where you came from, and where you’re going, in the context of where you ended up. Of scarcity and abundance.  Why you travel and walk and talk the way you do.  Who you serve and why and what happened along the way.  

Hosea. Gomer. And their children.   Hosea’s own family life, a symbol for the relationship between God and Israel. Conveying the message the prophet had from the LORD for His people.   Really walking your talk and naming your children.  

Ch 1:1 “The Word of the LORD came to Hosea…

Ch 1:2 “When the LORD came to speak through Hosea….the LORD said to him, ‘Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD. “

So he married Gomer, and she conceived and bore him two sons and a daughter.   His first son was named Jezreel meaning “ God scatters”, his daughter was named Lo-Ruhamah, meaning “not loved”, and the second son was named L0-Ammi, meaning “not my people”.   

I wonder how you explain these names to your neighbours when they come with a baby gift to help you celebrate these births. 

NIV notes.  Hosea carried a call to repentance and saw the failure to acknowledge God as Israel’s basic problem.   The intimacy of the covenant relationship between God and Israel, illustrated in the first chapters by the husband-wife relationship, is later amplified by the father-child relationship. 

This is Israel’s story. Of bringing foreign gods and worship into their sacred spaces, making them unclean.  Trespassing on the holiness of God. This story, step by step, chapter by chapter.   Disloyalty to God is spiritual adultery. Told after the exile, recorded and recounted to illustrate where she came from and by what path.

And in the midst of the words of judgment and punishment, are these words. 

Ch 2:14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the desert

And speak tenderly to her.

15 There I will give her back her vineyards,

And will make the Valley of Achor

A door of hope. “

God, speaking tenderly to Israel, to remind her that in spite of everything she was so loved.  

I think, if you and I write our stori, that is what we would most want to tell.  That we were so loved by God and that we would have a heart’s desire for our readers and listeners to be so loved by Him too.  And to be aware of it every single waking and walking moment. 

This God who walks out into the desert with us and speaks tenderly to us, just as He does in the centre path of the lush valleys and vineyards.  God with us in scarcity and in plenty.  Same God.  Same Love.   Love with a capital L.