The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying In the Crucible with Christ in the SSnet.org series Lesson 4, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart. 

The Topic today is: "Hosea asked to return to a losing situation so that God can turn it around to a winning situation"

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God"

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on page 59 and for the laymen edition or Standard Edition, on page 40.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

---Just like Joel was describing the eschatological events in the last days, so Hosea in 2:2 is thinking eschatological, contrary to Reformed Commentaries on this verse. I will give a literal translation from the Hebrew: "And they will be gathered together, the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel and they will place them on Head (or, they will establish for them one Head) and they will go up from the earth, for great is the Day of Jezreel".

---Go up from the earth? Day of Jezreel? Yes, see the Battle in the Book of Joel. Go up from the earth? What is this? If you say they will go up from the land or go up to the templemound, I can understand. It means then that the go to another country or go up a higher place in Jerusalem, because the temple is higher than the houses. But, it reads that they will go up from the earth.

---It is a unifying elsewhere. If I have to guess, I will use Joel to understand it and Psalm 46. It might not even be the earth but in mid-air. This concept is also in the work of Paul in the New Testament.

---Another possibility is that the people of God will be scattered throughout the earth and that they will be gathered from the four corners of the earth.

---Great is the Day of Jezreel? What will be great this Day in Jezreel? It is the Day of the Lord coming.

---The severe actions that Hosea want to do with his wife even let her die of thirst in the desert, resembles the harsh divorce laws known ever since Hammurabi's laws paragraph 129, she and the man must be strangled and thrown into the river. Most of these harsh laws were just on tablets maybe. The state's role in the private life of the individuals prevented them from carrying out these stipulations.

---In 2:6 Hosea is not a model of how to deal with the situation but he represents the legal harsh position how to deal with the children that are not his. We have an emotionally unstable Hosea here that has a vendetta against his wife and are now blasting out against adopted children of his that belonged to her.

---It appears as if Hosea's wife is plagued with the "Lot's wife-syndrome". The excuse to look for water and bread is a legitimate one in 2:7. It is as if she wanted to go because he is not supplying the house with these necessary items?

---2:8 Fencing people in is a metaphor and not a way to deal with one's wife. Mechanical control to subdue an adult is used by society to deal with dangerous criminals and psychological dangerous people. Thornbushes were used by nomads to control and protect their domestic animals from wild ones outside. It is almost God speaking here not Hosea, namely to protect against Satan. The next phrase contains a word for "conversion". Hosea was harsh in his approach to her but God is soft in 2:8 to lead her to conversion.

---God's method is that people need to pray that God fence people in or block others from association. God can do that.

---The legal action of Hosea is not necessary for the powerful interception of God leads to conversion. ---Lock her up in a room? No. This is spiritual warfare in which humans can't and God can do something.

---2:9 Hosea's wife was blocked in circumstance provided by God and came to conversion. The word return is the same as conversion. The prodigal son in Jesus description also came to his senses and wanted to return to his father, thus conversion.

---2:10 Hosea says he gave her the gold and grapejuices that she took to her lovers and to Baal. At Qumran a fragment was found in cave four in which the interpretation is made in those days before Antiohcus Epiphanes that faithful people of God ate and were satisfied and they forgot that God fed them and His commandments they cast behind them, which He had sent them, His servants the prophets.

But to those who led them astray they listened and honored them and if they were gods, they fear them in their blindness".

---Hosea taps himself on the shoulder in 2:10 that he did good things to his wife.

---Sometimes lovers exchange gifts to each other and in the absence of the lovers they "kiss" or "hug" the objects as if they are now identical to the absent lover. it is this phenomenon that God dislikes. Love is not around your neck, in your ears, on your fingers. It is in the mind and that is where it should be. We do not need fetish objects to remind us of our love-relation with our lover.

That is why we do not hang a cross around our necks.

---What people do not know, is that while Hosea is describing his experience with his wife, he used vulgar language. It is almost as if he was not converted. Converted people do not use foul language as Hosea did in his anger. Like in 2:11 at the end.

---The lesson today is that God can take difficult situations where we are the looser to force us to continue that losing way so that He can turn it into winning later.