Today, I am reading and commenting on  Hosea 1-7.

The Book of Hosea is weird to me.  Hosea’s prophecies are based around his relationship to his adulterous wife.  He named his first daughter “Not Loved” and his first son “Not My People”.  This represents God’s rejection of Israel and Judah for their unfaithfulness.  The rest of today’s passage, and really the rest of the book, expands on God’s reaction to the unfaithfulness of His people as understood by Hosea through his wife’s unfaithfulness.  Yet, even before going into the ways in which God would punish the people of Israel (both the Northern Kingdom and Judah), he declares that God will once more call them “Loved” and “My People”.  Hosea describes how God uses both the “stick” and the “carrot” to draw us back to Him.  He puts “thorns” between us and sin, and give us “vineyards” to spend time with Him.  He also talks about how Israel and Judah, and, by extension, us, seek cures for the illness which results from their unfaithfulness without turning to God.  We see that today when we look for the government, or other things, to fix our society’s problems, problems which result from not following God’s direction.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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