Glory to God! God has blessed us with an encouraging Scripture passage to meditate upon – Hosea 14:9 (mentioned above). Hosea son of Beeri was one of the prominent prophets in Israel (the Northern Kingdom) during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel, and during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah (Hosea 1:1). The main focus of Hosea’s prophetic message was nothing but God’s love for His chosen people Israel. In the relationship between God and Israel, God remained perpetually faithful to His people but His people Israel turned out to be unfaithful towards Him (Hosea 2:2-9; 4:1-2, 11-14). Whenever the children of Israel sinned against their God, He raised the prophets to warn His people of their sin and disloyalty towards Him. However, at the time of Hosea, God used Hosea’s approach to his unfaithful wife as an example to portray God’s love for His people, who were unfaithful to Him. Hosea was a faithful prophet of God, and married an unfaithful woman to be his wife upon God’s commands; Hosea, as a human being, went through a lots of pain, heartbreak, and anger because of his wife’s unfaithfulness towards him. God let His servant Hosea go through such distressing experiences in his personal life to call attention to His love for His chosen people Israel in spite of their unfaithfulness towards Him, so that they might understand how He feels when they sin against Him.

The worst thing His people Israel did was that they burned incenses to the gods of the nations around them and worshipped those gods while they were worshipping Yahweh, the God of their fathers. Yet, He did not forsake them and rather loved them as He promised their forefathers, and His love for them caused Him to discipline His people Israel and in order to bring His people back to Him (Hosea 2:14-23; 3:1-6; 7:1-4 [Isaiah 44:21-22]). There is hope for everyone who walks in the ways of God. God will restore all those who forsake their way of wickedness and walk in the ways of God (Hosea 14:2; Isaiah 44:22; Jeremiah 15:19). As a prophet, most of Hosea’s prophecies were (i) to describe God’s love for His people Israel, (ii) against the unfaithfulness of Israel to their God, (iii) God’s anger towards the nation of Israel because of their unfaithfulness to Him, (iv) God’s warning of punishment against their wickedness, (v) despite their sin, God’s invitation to return to Him.

Hosea’s prophecies, which were the messages to the unfaithful nation of Israel, were well connected with his personal and family life-situations. Similar to Israel’s unfaithfulness to their God, Hosea’s wife was also unfaithful him (Hosea 1:2b). Hosea’s family life was very complicated, yet he did exactly as the Lord commanded him to do about his personal and family life: (i) he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim who was an unfaithful wife to him, and (ii) he named their children the names God commanded him to name. Hosea and Gomer had three children – two sons and a daughter. When Hosea’s wife gave birth to a son, the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel (Hosea 1:4-5). When his wife gave birth to a daughter, the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them (Hosea 1:6). When his wife gave birth to another son, the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God (Hosea 1:9).

God chose Abraham and his descendants for a purpose – to bless them among all other nations and bless all the nations on earth through them. Right from the beginning, that is, from the time God called Abraham and made a covenant with him, God guided him in His ways. After him, God renewed the same covenant with his descendants and their descendants. In the process of forming them into a nation, the children of Israel spent around four hundred plus years in Egypt (Genesis 15:13; Exodus 12:40, Acts 7:6; Galatians 3:17). Although the children of Israel were free and prosperous in the early part of their stay in Egypt because of Joseph’s influence, the Egyptians enslaved their descendants in the later part of their stay in Egypt (Exodus 1:6-11). However, God did not forsake them in the midst of their servitude in Egypt, rather He blessed them and increased their number (Exodus 1:12-14). During the peak of their oppressed life, they cried out to the Lord, the God of their fathers (Exodus 2:23; 3:7-9), and He delivered them from their bondage through His servant Moses, and brought them into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8, 17; Deuteronomy 26:9; Ezekiel 20:6). God promised them that He will bless them and He blessed them immensely even more than they could ask for (Genesis 12:1-2; 15:18; 17:7-8; Exodus 33:12; Deuteronomy 7:24). The Lord subdued their enemies and He had given them rest from all their enemies around them (Joshua 23:1; 1 Chronicles 22:9). He chose them to be His people and He became their God (Genesis 17:7; Exodus 6:7; 19:6; Jeremiah 32:38; Ezekiel 36:28). God gave them His righteous laws and decrees to follow, so that the relationship between God (the Creator) and His chosen People (the created beings) will continue for ever and ever because His love for them endures forever (Deuteronomy 4:7-10; Psalms 78:5; 136:1-26; Jeremiah 31:3; Romans 1:32; 1 Corinthians 3:8). However, they not only failed to keep/obey the righteous laws and decrees and the commandments the Lord, the God of their fathers, gave them, but they worshipped the gods of the nations around them as it was written in Deuteronomy 31:20

When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I promised on oath to their ancestors, and when they eat their fill and thrive, they will turn to other gods and worship them, rejecting me and breaking my covenant.

Despite all the blessings and benefits they received from the Lord, the God of their fathers, they worshipped the gods of the nations and made the images of those deities and practiced idolatry (Judges 2:10-13; Isaiah 2:8; 44:12-17; Psalm 115:4). Prophet Hosea noted how God felt when He found the children of Israel:

When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree. But when they came to Baal Peor, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved (Hosea 9:10)

They made their God angry with their detestable practices (Numbers 32:13; Judges 2:14-15, 20; 2 Kings 22:17). Even during the wilderness journey from the land of their servitude (Egypt) to the land God promised to their forefathers (Canaan) they rebelled against Him: How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland! Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel (Psalm 78:40-41).

Moses wrote:

… They abandoned the God who made them and rejected the Rock their Savior. 16 They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. 17 They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear. 18 You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth. 19 The Lord saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters (Deuteronomy 32:15-19)

Despite the deliverance from their oppressors and all the blessings that God showered upon them, the children of Israel rebelled against Him and forsook Him, the spring of living water (Jeremiah 2:13). Almost everyone in Israel turned away from the Lord, both the leaders and the people. Israel did not acknowledge that the Lord, the God of their fathers, is the one who blessed them and provided for their need: She [Israel] has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold—which they used for Baal (Hosea 2:8). They sinned more and more against their God as their wealth increased:

Israel was a spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones. Their heart is deceitful, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will demolish their altars and destroy their sacred stones (Hosea 10:1-2)

According Hosea 4:1-2, during prophet Hosea’s time, the sin and wickedness worsened in Israel.

As a result, God confronted the inhabitants of the land and had a charge to bring against them:

• • The Lord invited the children of Israel to listen the Word God (v.1a)
  • The Lord has a charge against His chosen people (v.1b)
  • The Lord had a charge against everyone who lived in the land of Israel (v.1c)
  • There was no faithfulness found in the land (v.1d)
  • There was no love found in the land (v.1e)
  • The Lord noticed that there is no acknowledgment of God in the land (v.1f)
  • The Lord found out that there is only cursing in the land (v.2a)
  • There was so much lying in the land (v.2b)
  • There was murder in the land (v.2c)
  • There was stealing in the land (v.2d)
  • There was adultery in the land (v.2e)
  • They break all bounds and there is violence everywhere (v.2f)
  • There is bloodshed upon bloodshed in the land (v.2g)

Although, God was angry with His people for not keeping His righteous laws and decrees, He did not want to destroy them completely because of His righteous covenant with them and their forefathers. Yet, God decided to punish their sin and discipline them and draw them back to Himself. God, in His compassion, was in the mission of rescuing His people from the snare of sin they were entangled in. God promised them that He will deliver them from the snare of sin they were trapped in if they returned to Him with a repented heart. God disciplined His people and assured them time and again that He will neither put an end to His love for them nor carry out His fierce anger against them, rather He encouraged them saying:

How can I give you up, Ephraim [Israel]? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities (Hosea 11:8-9)

Prophet Hosea, being himself in a distressing situation because of his unfaithful wife, continued to prophesy the Lord’s comforting messages to the nation of Israel, His chosen people, who were unfaithful to Him:

4 I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. 5 I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots; 6 his young shoots will grow. His splendor will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon. 7 People will dwell again in his shade; they will flourish like the grain, they will blossom like the vine— Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon (Hosea 14:4-7)

If we study the passage we choose for our meditation carefully (that is, Hosea 14:9), we can understand how vast God’s compassion and faithfulness is towards His chosen ones. There is no doubt, God will definitely punish all those who disobey His righteous laws and decrees but He will have compassion for those who return to Him with a repented heart. God will forgive the people who return to Him with a repented heart and set them free from their sins and lead them to holiness and at the end they will obtain eternal life as Apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome:

Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:22-23)

The Lord said that the wise and the discerning will understand the ways of the Lord but those who are rebellious and do not keep His righteous laws and decrees will stumble in the ways of the Lord (Hosea 14:9). As the worshippers of the true and faithful God, we need to be wise and discerning in our relationship with our creator and redeemer God and the rest of the creation of the Lord, that includes (i) our fellow human beings, (ii) the creatures the Lord created, (iii) the natural world around us, and (iv) the rest of everything God created visible or invisible. This is because the entire universe belongs to God for He created it: The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it (Psalm 24:1 [also refer Genesis 1:1-31; Job 12:7-10; Ecclesiastes 3:11; Isaiah 45:12; Jeremiah 32:17; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16; Revelation 4:11]). Let us be wise and let us be discerning and let us make our relationship right with God (Hosea 14:9):

• • We need to be wise (v.9a)
  • We need to become aware of the righteous laws and decrees of the Lord God (v.9b)
  • We need to be discerning (v.9c)
  • We need to be conscious about the ways and plans of God (v.9d)
  • We need to know that the ways of the Lord are right (v.9e)
  • We need to walk in the ways of the Lord (v.9f)
  • We need to avoid to be rebellious in keeping the righteous laws and decrees of the Lord because the rebellious stumble in the ways of God (v.9g)

From the above-mentioned factors (that are based on Hosea 14:9), we can understand that there are two pathways, and in our spiritual pilgrimage we can choose one or the other.  For instance, we can choose the way of the wise or the way of the unwise; the way of the discerning or the way of the foolish; the way of the righteous or the way of the rebellious; the way of life or the way of death; the way towards heaven (eternal life) or the way towards hell (punishment in eternity); and so on.  The Lord’s ways are always right and spiritually straight and those who keep His righteous laws and decrees will walk in the ways of the Lord (Hosea 14:9), which means, those who keep the righteous laws and decrees of the Lord are righteous and they will walk in the ways of God, and those who do not keep the righteous laws and decrees of the Lord will continue to rebel against Him and, for that reason, they will stumble if they try to walk in the ways of the Lord (Hosea 14:9). The wise and the discerning will choose the right path, which is the righteous path, and they will inherit the blessings promised in the Scripture. A righteous person would live a life that is worthy of his/her calling (Ephesians 4:1). Such people would love the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all your mind and with all their strength, and love their neighbors as themselves (Mark 12:30-31 [also refer to Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37-39; Luke 10:27).

Dear friends, we learned so much about Israel’s unfaithfulness towards their God and God’s faithfulness towards His people. As the followers of Jesus Christ, let us be faithful to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9). Let us not become like the people who rebel against the Lord God, rather let us learn from the example of the people of Israel. They were God’s chosen people and they had a very special place before their God, but they turned out to be disobedient, rebellious, and idolatrous, which led them to be a people of exploitation, deception, and violence (Hosea 4:2). The Lord God was angry with His people. Yet, the Lord, their creator and redeemer God, waited patiently for the day of their repentance and return to Him. God did not destroy them in His anger because of their sin rather He waited patiently and gave them hope to return to Him. Let us be sure that godly wisdom and the gift of discernment will help us to lead a righteous life in our spiritually corrupt society, and with the help of the Holy Spirit we can live a blessed life according to the standards of Biblical teachings. May the Lord God Almighty bless us all! Amen!