Stop! In order for you to understand the rest of what is written here, you must understand the akedah. Akedah. Now, let's continue. Kilayim (mixtures, of seeds or hybridizing, Dt 22:10, Lv 19:19) of true shlichim and false shlichim, illicit unions of believers and unbelievers [Boaz did not marry Orpah!], organizations that espouse the narrow way of the Besorah Tovah mismated "ecumenically" with organizations that have no such commitment...all this is shatnez wool and linen mixing and censured by 2C6:14.  See 1C6:9-20.  Mixing Hashem's people and heathen people is like mixing oil and water: they cannot be mated.   Those that skip over this text of 2C6:14 have no idea about the sufferings of Hosea.  Indeed, in a sense such unbelief causes Hosea's sufferings to be in vain.

In Numbers 25:1-3 and Hosea 9:10 we see that the Israelites turned in to the Baal prostitutes at Baal-Peor.  The Israelites worshiped the g-d of the Moabite women. Hosea 9:10 (RSV) says "they became detestable like the thing they loved." We become good or bad according to what we admire (see Pp4:8). Those that admire violent, pornographic movies are becoming increasingly violent and pornography-tolerant.

Once a prophet named Hosea, cast in the Messianic role of the rejected Goel Redeemer (see Hos3:1-2)was called to marry a prostitute/adulteress in order to be able to speak from the heart of G-d. Only a cuckold with a covenant-breaking loose-living wife (who forgets him and thinks idolatrously only about her worthless boyfriends) can have any comprehension of how G-d feels toward His people when they forget Him and let something else have first place in their hearts. A minister with such a one in the parsonage truly understands the Hosea dilemma. Also, before a person can be born of Hashem they must be delivered (sometimes through very painful divine chastisement) from the spirit of harlotry which Hosea's book chronicles.  Then, having repented and cried out to Moshiach, Hashem raises us up (Hos 6:2) as new creatures with the knowledge of G-d in the Ruach Hakodesh.  And like a good and faithful husband, G-d supplies all our needs and in Him we live and move and have our being; yet as unregenerates we worship and serve our prideful fancies and give ourselves over to other l-rds as if we ourselves were religious prostitutes (worse than prostitutes because we receive no real and lasting payment from our idols, the "gigolos of the heart".)  Without fidelity to the Scriptures--we may linger lovingly over Rabbinic opinion and Talmudic pilpul hair-splitting but the Bible itself we do not deign to sniff at--our love for the G-d of the Scriptures is as tenuous as a fading morning cloud or the vanishing morning dew (Hos6:4).  See the spiritual ADD problem.

A husband whose wife forgets him and is unfaithful has an ambivalent reaction: on the one hand he has a tender broken heart and an open hand seeking reconciliation (see Hos2:14-23); on the other hand, he has a fist of hellish reprisal seeking justice and punishment. He is like a sower with two kinds of seed in his hands: seeds of mercy and seeds of vengeance. Contrast the name of Hosea's son (Jezreel meaning "G-d sows") in 1:5 and the use of the word in Hos2:23[2:25]. G-d will sow vengeance on the northern tribes because they broke away from David, G-d's King. But the good news is found in Hos3:5 and mirrored in Ro11:25-26 and in the revival we have seen in our own lifetime since the Six Day War.

[Jehu threatened the L-rd's plan to raise up a Savior through the seed of Dovid not by killing the king of Israel, Joram (851-842 B.C.E.), but by killing the king of Judah, Ahaziah, the grandson of Jehoshaphat

the descendent of Dovid. Like Athaliah's sin of almost liquidating the Davidic dynasty, this sin of Jehu was more than bloodshed. It was an anti-Moshiach attack on the coming Davidic Moshiach Himself. In this respect Athaliah was as evil as Manasseh (696-642 B.C.E.), who has been called "the Ahab of Judah." But Jehu's sin began at Jezreel, so the sin of Jezreel was the rejection of David and David's coming Son the King Moshiach. Whoever rejects him commits the sin of Jezreel.]

Furthermore, the treacherous and rebellious kings of the northern kingdom wipe out each other's dynasties with violent abandon. Therefore, in the same way that Hosea can't be sure that Jezreel is his legitimate son, G-d also has a backsliding people who have begotten "alien children" (Hos5:7). However, Hosea sees that G-d will transform such tragic covenant-breaking and its results. What G-d has sown will in the end come up as a marvelous multitude: first Israel after the flesh, then a regenerated people of G-d (see Hos1:10-11; then Ro9:25f; then 1K2:10) followed by natural Israel at last herself grafted in (see Ro11:25-32).

Hosea is a prophet to the nation, and his domestic upheavals help him see what others cannot see. He sees that his nation has broken its covenant with G-d, has turned from G-d-ordained leaders and gone after worldly self-reliant ones who trust in military strength (1:7) and a foreign policy that plays off (see 8:10; 12:1) one enemy (Egypt) against another (Assyria), while the common people applaud the g-ds of civic religion and celebrate them by idolatrous sensual pursuits rather than seeking the divine protection that a national revival might have brought. To return to Egypt to appeal for help there (7:11) implied a cancellation of G-d's electing choice, for G-d called his people out of Egypt (11:1). Four of the kings of Israel were assassinated in palace intrigues during this period because each king trusted traitors (7:5).  Hosea lived to see his own prophecies come to pass as the Northern Kingdom of Israel (Ephraim) experienced its fall with the destruction of its capital Samaria in 722 B.C.E.  Hosea stands in the same place with the Northern Kingdom as Jeremiah does with the Southern Kingdom of Judah, certifying the truth of the Bible by its historically verified prophetic content.  Look at Amos's similar prophecies (Am 3:11; 4:2; 5:5-6; 25-27; 6:7-8, 14; 7:8-11; 17d; 9:4,9 (Amos is Hosea's older contemporary)  and remember that Hosea's other contemporaries are Isaiah and Micah.

Look at Hoshea 13:6. "When they grazed, they were sated; when they were sated, they grew haughty; and so they forgot Me." The very prosperity G-d gave Israel in the land caused them to forget Him; yet they grumbled at the lean wilderness experience, and as soon as their husband provided more than enough, they forgot him like an unfaithful wife. Thus Samaria (the capital of the northern tribes) "must bear her guilt, for she has defied

her G-d" (Hosea 13:16). This was tragically fulfilled (II Kings 17:6) in 722 B.C. when the Assyrians took the northern tribes into exile. Samaria is the unfaithful wife of G-d that must be driven out of his house (9:15) in order for G-d's prodigal wife Israel (the true remnant) to fear and return to her true provider and covenant L-rd (see 2:23).  Here we see a prophecy of the Nation of Israel, her Golus and her Return, her national death and resurrection.  If Hashem can do this with a whole people, can He not also do this with one man, the Moshiach?

We see that those who teach that prosperity is always G-d's will for every person are teaching error. Money can absolutely ruin the person who cannot handle its temptations; therefore, G-d often gives money to those he is angry with as a punishment they deserve. Such fools are sealed in their sin by their assumption that riches are the final proof of divine approval. See 12:8. "And Ephraim (the northern Kingdom) thinks, 'Ah, I have become rich; I have gotten power! All my gains do not amount to an offense which is real guilt (in other words none of my crimes are going to catch up with me!)'" Like Israel, believers tend to whitewash their own sins and overestimate their own spiritual fortitude and ability to handle perfect financial and physical security. Those "health and wealth" teachers have forgotten that acquiring wealth can be the ruin of many. They have simplistically reduced divine financial miracles performed at G-d's wise discretion to a cause-and-effect "faith" formula which ignores the wayward heart of man and the chastening, testing hand of G-d.

In Hosea 11:9 we see the perseverance of G-d's mercy (unmerited by us). In 11:8-11 we see the tension between his justice (his righteous wrath against his covenant-breaking spouse) and his love (his determination to justify or forgive his spouse). See Romans 3:26; Hos 11:1 and Matthew 2:15 show the solidarity of Moshiach and people, just as the rejected Ben Dovid Talui Al Etz and the accepted Ben Dovid Techiyah Min HaMesim show the same two ideas of justice for man and justification of man embodied in the man Moshiach. Deuteronomy 21:13-21 requires a father to deliver up a rebellious son to the death penalty, but the Divine Father has love that won't allow him to do it. A father might give his son up to the death penalty, a husband might divorce his wife, but G-d will never give up His chosen people (Isaiah 49:15; Hosea 11:9). Hosea ch. 3 shows G-d's love redeeming his people from her sinful bondage just as Hosea in long-suffering love buys back his wife from the slavery into which her adultery has sold her. But Israel will not return to G-d just as Gomer will not return to Hosea until the End (see 5:4; 7:10: 2:7; Rom. 11).

G-d threatens reprisal against backsliding as He did with Israel's military carnage, drought, spiritual exile and estrangement. Hoses prophecied from 750 to 715 as a native of the northern part of Israel in the period after Amos and contemporary with Isaiah and Micah. Undoubtedly Shliach Sha'ul was heavily dependent on Hosea for Ephesians 5:32 and Romans 11:25-26, just as Yochanan was for Rev. 21:9f for his simile of marriage as a picture of G-d's relationship to His covenant spouse, the people He will restore to Himself in the end-times.

The spirit that led Gomer to forsake her husband also led her to forsake her G-d (4:12). The L-rd is showing us that we are like Samaria. Samaria was the apostate capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. She was marked for judgment. She had helped turn the holy faith of Israel into Baal worship, a fertility cult which promised rains and harvests by means of a wicked religion where devotees indulged in an orgy of drunkenness and religious

prostitution. Baal was a nature g-d or weather g-d associated with thunderstorms as in I Kings 17:1-18:46 (notice I Kings 18:45 where the thunderstorm comes from the G-d of Israel, not Baal, whose proponents have been defeated by Elijah). Baal was a fertility g-d or sex cult g-d whose worship involved erotic acts and public immorality. Baal worship was apparently based on imitative magic: that is, magic that attempts to control the universe by mimicking the desired event. If one wants Baal, the prodigious lover and fertile bringer of rain and harvests, to "ride the clouds" to his reigning wife - g-ddess Asherah (Jdg. 3:7) so that one's barley harvest will be abundant, then one worships Baal by visiting a cult prostitute, getting drunk, and engaging in ritual fornication. This is the rationale of imitative magic behind the demonic worship of Baal, and this is

also the background of the book of Hosea where a maggid (preacher) is commanded to marry a cult prostitute of Baal named Gomer. G-d says, "Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the L-rd" (Hos. 1:3).   Part of our contrition in finding salvation is the admission that we have certainly "played the whore" (2:5), forsaking the L-rd. We have forgotten her true Provider (2:13) and only G-d Himself can heal our disloyalty to Him (14:4).  G-d?s spouse has lost the honeymoon love she had for Him in the days of her youth, in her early wilderness period (2:14). She has turned to other g-ds, and the L-rd has an indictment against her. Her children are shameless. They have rejected the knowledge of G-d and brazenly devote themselves to immorality. Drugs have taken away the understanding, a stubborn spirit of whoredom has taken away contrition, and the vile deeds that even children are engaged in do not permit them to return to their G-d. The glory of our youth is to know the true G-d and the free destiny to which He has called us, but "when their drinking is ended, they indulge in sexual orgies: they love lewdness more than their glory" (4:18). So drunkards leer and refuse to work and welfare mothers proliferate illegitimate children and those who don't know G-d dearly love their wanton ways. And "they do not consider that I remember all their wickedness. Now their deeds surround them, they are before my face" (7:2). When G-d glances He sees a kaleidoscopic horror show of sexual depravity and decadence. Like an aging overweight prostitute or a filthy homeless transvestite, our nation staggers in her sin. Her wealth she puts into pockets with holes in them and she does not know it. She turns "to that which does not profit" (7:16). Our nation elects politicians "but

not through Me" (8:4), and these unjust sycophants court the muscle beach "gay lobby." With great wickedness and guilt comes great hostility to the Word. 

The L-rd has shown that He is soon going to send fire upon all the world's sleazy cities (8:14), for they have played the whore, departing

from their G-d, deeply corrupting themselves. He will remember their iniquity, He will punish their sins, as He did in the time of Hosea. The homeless will grow like a vast herd, like wanderers in a distant country. In them the heart of a wayward people will be exposed, and a prodigal nation shall sift its trash, eating the fruit of its lies. Because, merely talking about G-d, this people is bent on turning away from Him. And, led by cords of idolatry, this people trusts only in its power and in the multitude of its police. Therefore, violence rages in their cities, and G-d's hot anger hangs overhead like a vulture. Until repentance is preached on the sidewalks, these who sleep there will not know G-d, nor will He return them to their homes.

If you study the Book of Hosea, you will see that the true Messianic religion of Moses had been bartered off at that time. Jeroboam had split the kingdom and had led the people away from the true expectation of the Moshiach through David (see 8:4; see 3:4-5; see 1:11; see Amos 9:11; see Mic. 5:2;  see Is. 11:1-5; see Jer. 23:5-6; see Ez. 37:24-38; see Zch. 12:7-8; see II Sm. 7:12-13). The people build pagan sanctuaries under "sacred" trees and the wicked kohanim lead them to get drunk and to go into cult prostitutes under the alluring shade of "oak and poplar" (4:13) and other kinds of trees. But G-d is a jealous G-d, and He says, I am like an evergreen cypress" (14:8). Yet the people refuse to live beneath His protecting shadow. Therefore G-d threatens to make Israel a treeless desert (2:3), sending the Assyrian exile (prophecy fulfilled 722 B.C.E.) whose armies set fires that together with droughts turned Israel into a "parched land." And today the L-rd again is going to take His shadow away. The shade from the blazing sun over our country will be removed. Every time a prostitute brings a "client" into her hotel room and turns on the air-conditioner, little does she know that the chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals in it used to transfer the heat, are destroying the atmosphere's ozone layer. When she sprays on deodorant, little does she know that these same chemicals are removing the ozone shield and letting in ultraviolet light causing skin cancer on her exposed body, eye cataracts on her painted eyes, and a defective immune system in her ulcerated body. G-d is removing His ozone shade from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays at a rising level of depletion that atmospheric scientists called "disastrous" and irreversible.  Rev. l6:8 says, "The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire."

The world's daughters have turned to prostitution (4:13), selling their virginity for a little wine, worshiping idols at

rock-concerts. But G-d is removing the pleasant shade. Soon everyone on the streets will need umbrellas. Soon the light outside will be starkly white, like the flashpoint light of a nuclear explosion. Soon to venture outside will be a project for fools, like going unshielded into an x-ray room. The Day of the L-rd is coming (called also the parousia), that time when G-d will decisively break into history, save His people, and settle the score once and for all with His enemies, both militarily and politically. The Day of the L-rd is a Gadol "great" day (Yoel 2:11), a day that is karov ("threateningly near" or "imminent"--Yoel 1:15; 2:1), a HaGorah "dreadful, terrifying" day. The Sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to the color of blood (Yoel 2:31), and the stars shall withdraw their shining (Yoel 3:15). See Hosea 5:9-10 which speaks of the Day that G-d's wrath will be poured out "like water" which Ephraim (the Northern Kingdom of Israel) saw in 722 B.C.E., the time when the ultimate Day of the L-rd (still future) drew near, overtaking evil Samaria, and Hosea's prophecy was fulfilled. See 8:13; see 3:4; see 9:3,15-17; see 11:5 for references to the coming Exile.

Read the Book of Hosea (Hoshea) in its entirety:

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