This chapter, brief as it is, becomes of vast importance if one would understand the ways of God in regard to the earth and the earthly people. It is, one might say, the 11th of Romans of the Old Testament, and, read in connection with that portion, sheds much light on the mystery of Israel’s present anomalous condition and the predictions concerning their future glory.
Once more the prophet’s relation to his wife is taken up as an illustration. She who had been before denominated a harlot is now an adulteress. The difference in its application is readily perceived. Israel, utterly unworthy before Jehovah took them up in His wondrous grace, had-after their union with Himself had been sealed by covenant-proven more unworthy still, so that they are likened, not only by Hosea, but other prophets also, to an adulteress, following strangers instead of her husband.
Here the language used is significant. The prophet is not told to love his wife. She had forfeited all claim to that relation. She is simply called “a woman,” and he adds, “beloved of a friend;” that is, one who had, as we have seen, chosen another in place of her rightful spouse.
Hosea’s love for so unworthy and worthless a creature was to be a picture of “the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel,” who, professing themselves to be in covenant-relation with Him, yet “look to other gods and love grape-cakes” (Hos_3:1). The latter expression is the correct reading, in place of “flagons of wine,” which has no specific reference to idolatry. The cakes were expressive of the idolatrous relation they were sustaining, as the reader may see by consulting Jer_7:18; Jer_44:19. It was thus they honored her who in that day bore the title of “Queen of heaven”-a title which in apostate Christendom has been given to Mary the mother of our Lord, and that in direct defiance of Scripture.
Gomer (for I doubt not she is indeed the “woman” the passage speaks of) seems to have so involved herself that only by paying a redemption price can she be released from her wretched and degrading position; so the prophet “bought her to him for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer of barley, and a half homer of barley”-the purchase-price of a common slave, thus illustrating the words of Isaiah, “Ye have sold yourselves for naught, and ye shall be redeemed without money”7 (Isa_52:3). Tenderly had Jehovah entreated them through the same prophet to “Return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee” (Isa_44:22). But though the purchase-price was paid at Calvary’s cross, Judah and Israel are wayward still, and the marriage-covenant has not been renewed.
{7 I take “without money” to mean that they had no money to redeem themselves with-so had to be redeemed by another.}
Hosea says to Gomer, “Thou shalt abide for me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee” (Hos_3:3); that is, a period of testing, undefined in duration, is to pass ere she shall be restored to conjugal privileges.
The application is made by the Holy Spirit in the closing verses, “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim, afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days” (Hos_3:4-5). In these two verses we have succinctly set forth their whole state for this entire dispensation, as also the future blessing that is to be theirs in the day of the kingdom, when it is displayed in power and glory.
The “many days” run throughout the whole present period until the fulness of the Gentiles shall be completed.
Ever since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans they have answered to the description here given. They have been a nation of wanderers, with no national standing, “without a king, and without a prince.” The sceptre has departed from Judah and the lawgiver from between his feet-solemn witness of the fact that Shiloh is already come, but come only to be rejected by them. Thus they are left without a sacrifice, for their temple is destroyed and their altar profaned. From nation to nation, and from city to city, they have wandered through the centuries; a homeless, often-hated people, despised by man and without means of approach to God on the ground of the law which they have broken.
Ritual and Talmudic lore have in large measure taken the place of God’s appointed ordinances and the authority of the “Torah” (the law) among them. But from year to year they have to confess in anguish, as they beat their breasts, “Woe unto us, for we have no Mediator!” The smoke of sacrifice ascends not to heaven; the blood of atonement is not sprinkled within the veil in any earthly sanctuary; and blindness in part having wrapped them in judicial darkness, they know not that by the one offering of the Lord Jesus on the cross iniquity is taken away and sin purged, because eternal redemption has been found in that precious blood.
Thus not only are they without a sacrifice, but without a priest also-“without an ephod”-for all records have long been lost: and though many survive who are in the direct line of priesthood (as shall be made manifest in the day of their restoration), yet they cannot now trace their genealogy; and if they could, there is no temple in which to officiate. Meantime the heavenly Priest ministers in the sanctuary above, but their eyes are holden, and they know Him not.
It might naturally be supposed that, being denied all the consolations of the religion of their fathers, they would have fallen again into the idolatrous practices of the heathen: but no; for we learn they were to abide “without an image,” and “without teraphim.” The Babylonian captivity cured them of idolatry. Since then, that at least has not been one of their national sins. They have no means of access to the true God while they revile and refuse His Anointed. On the other hand, they follow not after idols, but wait, like the redeemed wife of the prophet, till the day when they will again be publicly owned by Jehovah.
When the present dispensation is ended, and the Church has been translated to heaven, God will once more take them up in grace and fulfil the promises made to the fathers.8 After passing through the unparalleled tribulation of the latter days, as predicted by Jeremiah (ch. 30), by Daniel (chs. 11 and 12), by Zechariah (chs. 12-14), and by our Lord Himself in Matt. 24 and kindred scriptures, they shall “return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear [or the Hebrew may be rendered, ‘shall hasten to’] the Lord, and His goodness.” It will be the fulfilment of that to which all the prophets have looked forward, when Israel’s wanderings shall be over, their sins blotted out, themselves renewed, and the kingdom confirmed to them. In that day Jesus will be King over all the earth, sitting upon the throne of His father David, and reigning in glorious power and majesty. It would seem, too, from a careful comparison of this passage with the latter part of Ezekiel’s prophecy, that a lineal descendant of David’s line (called “the prince”) shall exercise regency on earth over the restored nation, under the authority of Him whose capital city will be the new and heavenly Jerusalem, the “city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
{8 For a fuller opening-up of Israel’s past, present, and future see a book entitled “The Mysteries of God.” The same author and publishers. Paper, 3 cts.; cloth, 75 cts.}
Thus shall the years of Israel’s mourning be ended, and the day of Messiah’s glory have arrived; for the two synchronize. There can be no full blessing for Israel and the earth till the tragedy of Calvary is repented of, and Jew and Gentile unite in owning their sin in crucifying the Lord of glory and killing the Prince of life.
Till then, the unhappy condition delineated in the next chapter must continue-save that the curse of idolatry has been done away, as we have seen.
