30th September 2024

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the playwright has his protagonist create a situation intended to draw out evil and corruption in this story of jealousy and tragedy. Hamlet declares in Act 2 Scene 2, “The play’s the thing”; a ‘play within a play’ where he tells a thinly veiled story of unfaithfulness and murder, performed before his mother and uncle, whom he suspects of murdering his father.

Hosea might have provided Shakespeare with an idea, because in this prophetic book God does exactly this: he creates a story within a story. As with Hamlet, it is a story of love and unfaithfulness. Hosea was a prophet to Israel and he lives out, according to God’s stage directions, an allegory of how the people of Israel have turned their back on their Creator and Sustainer, and how they will ultimately be saved.

Hosea obeys a command from God to marry a prostitute – a representation of what Israel had become to their God. In Hosea 4:6, through the prophet, God warns the nation he had brought out of Egypt, protected, and settled in the land he promised them: “…Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” (Hosea 4:6). Hosea is directed to play this out to the point where two of his children are called, “Lo-Ruhamah”: no mercy, and “Lo-Ammi”: not my people (Hosea 1:6,8).

Hosea is not just commanded to take a prostitute as a wife, but he is instructed to love this wayward bride, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods…” (Hosea 3:1). The prophet here makes the allegory clear when he says, “just like the love of the  Lord”: the relationship between God’s people and The Lord, Jesus Christ is portrayed as a marriage relationship, as Isaiah states, “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name” (Isaiah 54:5).

The final act of this continuing drama points towards the part Christ’s ultimate sacrifice plays in rescuing this foundering relationship. Jesus doesn’t turn his back on us as sinners: he pursues us and buys us back with his own shed blood and suffering. In the same way Hosea is instructed to ‘buy back’ his wife from the lovers she had run to, with ‘fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley.’ (Hosea 3:2). 

The language oscillates between the anger and frustration represented by, “…I will love them no more” (Hosea 9:15), to words of deep compassion and love expressed in, “How can I give you up, Ephraim?… My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred.” (Hosea 11:8).

The prophet follows God’s instructions to perfectly play out this drama so we might better understand our Saviour’s love for us, despite our sin.

Local congregation: GCI Market Harborough
9 The Point
Rockingham Road
Market Harborough
LE16 7QU

Meeting time: Sunday 4.00 pm

Local congregational contact:
Sinead Henderson
Email: sinead.henderson@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church