HOSEA 2
Say to your brothers, “You are my people,” and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”2 “Plead with your mother, plead— for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband—that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; 3 lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst. 4 Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom.5 For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ 6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. 7 She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’
– Hosea 2:1-7
HOSEA 2 THE SIN OF ADULTERY
A poem by ILMA inspired by these verses
When you commit to someone, you are in a covenant
Keeping your promise to this person is part of your contract
If one does not fulfill the promise they partook
That person has breached that pact
Unfaithfulness is the sin of adultery
It wreaks havoc in any relationship.
In this account, God punishes Israel for turning their backs to God and worshipping Baal instead. God’s people broke their covenant with God by serving another god. In this chapter, God speaks through Hosea the spiritual adultery by the clear declaration of the consequences of Gomer’s unfaithfulness to Hosea. Because she wouldn’t stop her harlotry, her children are also bearing the sin of adultery. Verse 4 may sound harsh to us when children bear their parent’s sins, but God cannot change. He hates sin and he has to punish the sin itself. In verse 6-7, God shows Gomer what she’s losing by pursuing men who cannot provide for him as He can.
REFLECTION
- How can spiritual adultery manifest in a marriage?
