If you enjoy satire, God employs much of it in the latter part of Hosea to illustrate the unfaithfulness of His people. Chapter 7 is particularly illustrative. God’s wayward people are called a “heated oven” (7:4), “a cake not turned” (7:8), “a dove, silly and without sense” (7:11), and “a treacherous bow” (7:16) What does this all mean? They are a people burning with passion for half-baked, silly, and useless things. Fellow Gomers, do you relate? Have you burned with passion for half-baked, silly, and useless things? This is what unfaithfulness looks like. Reading Hosea can be a confusing experience. You may wonder, what is this book all about? Why is it in the Bible?
In this article, I want to discuss how you can discover the treasure of Scripture—that is, Jesus Christ—in the book of Hosea. And I want to give you three questions that Hosea answers for our lives today.
Unlocking Hosea: A Living Parable
Hosea is part of that strange section of our bibles known as the Minor Prophets. These little gems can be difficult to interpret, but once unlocked, you find treasure!
The book of Hosea may feel complex, but interpretative help is found when we realize that it is intended to be approached as a living parable.
God loves using parables to convey truth. Consider Jesus and His use of them! A parable is simply a word picture designed to illuminate truth. The word picture runs parallel to the truth the storyteller is trying to convey.
Chapters 1-3 of Hosea present this living parable to us. The painful tale of Hosea and Gomer, a faithful husband and an unfaithful wife. Like any other parable, even a living one, the characters and the storyline point to a greater truth—the relationship between God and his people!
The Greater Truth
The marriage of Hosea the Prophet and Gomer the wayward woman run parallel and point to the covenant relationship between God and his wayward people:
“Go and take yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” (Hosea 1:2)
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