I will hear. (Hosea 2:21)

“I will hear, says the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel” (vv. 21–22). Here, the sky asks God for clouds, and God gives it. The earth asks the sky for rain, and the sky gives it. The corn, the wine, and the oil ask the earth for fertility, and the earth gives it. Jezreel, or Israel, asks the corn, wine, and oil for sustenance, and they give it. This chain of giving encourages Israel to trace the links all the way back to God. The success of every request to supply need encourages Israel to bring her own requests to God. Verse 18 spoke of the restored harmony of the animal world, and here a picture of agricultural harmony is added.

One of Israel’s great sins was the worship of Baal, the heathen god of fertility. They prayed to him for fruitful fields and also attributed the results to this idol. For too long, God could say, “I don’t hear.” Israel failed to bring their requests and their thanks to Him. He did not hear them. As He waited over Israel, listening—nothing. Nothing but deafening silence. For this, Israel was to be judged.

However, this infliction would restore the golden chain of God’s providence to their lives, both national and personal. They would again recognize their need of and debt to God. So, God predicts, “I will hear.” Israel would once again pray for divine provision and recognize it with thankful worship. And with satisfaction, God says, “I do hear.”

Has God been hovering over your life and hearing nothing? He is listening but saying, “I don’t hear.” “I don’t hear prayer for daily bread. I don’t hear thanks.” You are attributing your blessings to your own strength, to luck, or to sheer coincidence. You are patting yourself on your back rather than praising God with your lips. The golden chain of prayer, providence, and praise has broken down. But God is saying, “I will hear.” He is coming to break your Baal. When it lies shattered before you, you begin to look heavenward, prayer is stuttered and stammered heavenward, and heaven replies, “Now I hear. And you will be heard.”

I will betroth you to me in lovingkindness. (Hosea 2:19)

We commonly speak of love or of kindness. However, the Bible speaks much of God’s “lovingkindness.” There is a multiplication of good things here. God’s love is being multiplied by God’s kindness and the blessed result for His people is lovingkindness. This is no cold, intellectual love. Neither is it cold, practical love. It is a warm and affectionate love which results in thoughtful acts of kindness.

When the mother and wife of the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus incited him to severity and objected to his mildness and readiness to yield to his subjects, saying, “You have made your power more contemptible by your kindness and compliant spirit,” his answer was, “But more secure and lasting.”

This leads us on to the deeper meaning of “lovingkindness.” The Hebrew word here is often used to describe the gracious motivation behind God’s covenants with sinners. All such covenants are started by grace and sustained by grace. This, says the Bible, is lovingkindness. The initial betrothal is gracious, but so is the ongoing divine commitment. This is lovingkindness. The Lord does not start these relationships because of what He can get out of them. And neither will He end them even if oftentimes the relationship is so one-way. This is lovingkindness. His betrothal to His people was not begun because He was attracted to them, and neither is it sustained by any such attraction. This is lovingkindness.

This lovingkindness was vividly demonstrated by Hosea in his relationship with his prostituted wife, Gomer. How shiveringly horrific such a betrothal was! But this was a betrothal in lovingkindness. And this repulsive relationship was designed by God to illustrate His relationship with Israel. This was a betrothal in lovingkindness. And, however much you shudder at this thought, be glad God doesn’t; your only hope is the same lovingkindness of God. Your only hope is that God does not love as you do; that God will say, and continue to say, “I will betroth you to me in lovingkindness.” When you experience this kind of betrothal you will stop shivering and shuddering at the thought, for the repulsive has become your redemption.

I’m devoting the next few weeks to working on a project that’s going to demand most of my mental energy. So apart from the usual Mon-Fri Checkout which will continue, I won’t be writing an additional daily article. Instead, I’m going to post a series of daily devotionals on Hosea that I wrote a few years ago.

I will betroth you to me in judgment. (Hosea 2:19)

Judgment? Surely this cannot be good for me! The last thing I need is judgment. Surely, this word of danger is out of place among all these other words of encouragement? Well, the context is one of encouragement and comfort. So it is unlikely that the word carries its common meaning of guilt, sentence, and execution.

There are three possible ways to look at “judgment” positively. First, it can describe God’s intervention for His people against their enemies. In this sense, God is the “Judge” of the widow (Ps. 68:5). If that is the meaning here, then God is promising His covenant people that He will intervene on their behalf against their enemies, thereby better securing them to Himself.

Second, “judgment” can describe the process of re-ordering what has been disordered. Therefore, perhaps here God is promising not only that He will remarry Israel but will re-order the chaos of the Israelites’ lives. He will put things back in their proper place.

Third, we might say of someone, “We respect his judgment.” What we mean is that this is not someone who acts rashly or thoughtlessly, but, rather, acts wisely after due deliberation. This is the most likely meaning here. Some people marry hastily, later regret it, and try to escape. However, God is saying that His people need not fear this of Him. His marriage proposal is well thought out—an eternity of planning! “I will betroth you to me in judgment.” He knows all about Israel and He knows all about you, your past, present, and future. He weighs it all, thinks it all through, and after due consideration of all the factors involved, still says, “I will betroth you to me”!

Some people may wish they had waited longer or had known certain things before they decided to get married. They might not have proceeded if they had. However, God knows everything and has known us longer than we have known ourselves; and yet He says, “I will betroth you to me.”

Doubting Christian, the Lord did not make a mistake in the day of your espousals. He does not regret His decision to propose to you. Lost and lonely soul, here is a divine Husband who knows everything you’ve been or will be and yet deliberately and determinedly proposes marriage. What do you say?

I’m devoting the next few weeks to working on a project that’s going to demand most of my mental energy. So apart from the usual Mon-Fri Checkout which will continue, I won’t be writing an additional daily article. Instead, I’m going to post a series of daily devotionals on Hosea that I wrote a few years ago.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness. (Hosea 2:19)

Righteousness can be either threatening or comforting. Martin Luther spent many years terrified by Paul’s description of the gospel as a revelation of God’s righteousness (Rom. 1:17), which he understood as the righteousness with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. So terrorized was his conscience that he came to hate the “righteousness of God.”

However, one day he came to realize that the righteousness being spoken of was not a divine demand, but a divine provision; not a revelation of God’s condemnation, but of God’s salvation; not something God required of him, but something God offered to him. His whole life was instantly transformed. This was how he put it:

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me…. And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.

You may ask, “But what if I cannot meet His standards? What if I am a disappointment to Him?” Here in our verse, God promises all His covenant people, “I will betroth you to me in righteousness.” He will not condemn and reject you but will acquit and accept you. Though you specialize in unrighteousness, He specializes in righteousness. Let His righteousness be your comfort, not your terror. As He betroths you to Him, He clothes you in pristine, pure, divine righteousness. He sees no spot.

I’m devoting the next few weeks to working on a project that’s going to demand most of my mental energy. So apart from the usual Mon-Fri Checkout which will continue, I won’t be writing an additional daily article. Instead, I’m going to post a series of daily devotionals on Hosea that I wrote a few years ago.

I will betroth you to me forever. (Hosea 2:19)

So, dear believer, you are encouraged by the Lord’s betrothal proposal, and you are excited about beginning afresh and starting over. But you hesitate! What if I cannot keep it up? What if I fall again and break my promises again? Surely, I won’t be given another chance. There will be no way back then. You ask, “Is it worth the risk?” What’s the point of beginning again when I know I will fall and break my promises again?

Well, consider the first element of the bride-price which the Lord is offering you: foreverness. “I will betroth you to me forever.” This is not just for a time, not even for a long time, but forever.

This foreverness can be viewed in two ways. The first way is experientially. When God’s people are chastised, it has a curative effect. Before, their relationship with the Lord was characterized by fits and starts—betrothal one day, divorce the next, and so on. Divine chastisement changes that start-stop relationship into a “forever” relationship. Painful though the chastisement is, it produces a much steadier relationship. So, rod-marked friend, your heavenly Father is bringing you from temporariness to foreverness, from start-stop to steady-as-she-goes, from betrothed-divorced to betrothed forever.

The second way to view this foreverness is objectively—that is, to see it as referring to the unbreakable union between the Lord and His people. So, fallen believer, the Lord hears all your hesitating “what-ifs?” and replies, “However many what-ifs on your side, on my side there is only foreverness!”

The Lord is promising you that the union is unbreakable. As He said in the days of His flesh: “And I give to them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28).

Jeremiah Burroughs put it this way: “The bond of union in a believer runs through Jesus Christ, is fastened upon God, and His Spirit holds the other end of it so that it can never be broken.” Therefore, when the Devil whispers, “You’ve really done it now. That’s it. It’s all over!,” take these precious divine words and rebuke him with them, “I will betroth you to me forever.”

I will betroth you to me. (Hosea 2:19)

Three times in two verses, the Lord says, “I will betroth you to me.” Some commentators believe that this reflects the involvement and commitment of each Person of the Godhead in this betrothal. In other words, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each saying, “I will betroth you to me.” It is, however, more likely that the threefold repetition of “I will betroth you” is for emphasis. It emphasizes the eagerness of the Lord to unite with those who have divorced Him and are now separated from Him. Israel did the separating, but God does the uniting.

Betrothal went further than the courtship alluring of verse 14. It was also more decisive than our Western ideas of engagement. Betrothal involved handing over a bride-price to the young lady’s father, whose acceptance of it finalized the commitment. Sometimes, especially if there was no living father, the bride-price was passed to the bride herself. This is what we have here: the Lord comes to betroth His bride to Himself with a six-fold bride-price of foreverness, righteousness, judgment, lovingkindness, mercies, and faithfulness.

What is different here is that the proposer is already married to the bride-to-be! The Lord was already in covenant union with Israel. But Israel had divorced Him by covenant disobedience. Yet the Lord comes and proposes all over again. In effect, He is saying, “Let’s start over. You will be as a virgin-bride to me, as though you had never committed any unfaithfulness to me. Let us enjoy the warmth of a new beginning with all the freshness of first love.”

Unfaithful Christian, distant “divorcee” full of regrets, you long to return to your Lord, yet fear that your relationship with Him will never fully recover and be as it once was. Listen to what He says as He graciously proposes all over again: “I will betroth you to me.” Come then and start afresh with all the excitement and thrill of first love. Your relationship can recover. It can be the same again—yes, even better than before. And if you doubt His sincerity, look at the six-fold bride-price He is offering you: foreverness, righteousness, judgment, lovingkindness, mercies, and faithfulness.