God's Love for the Adulteress

Often when God is telling a story instead of simply telling you truth statements, he is “hiding” the truth (Matthew 13:10-13)

But when God compares himself to a husband doing all he can to be faithful to an unfaithful wife (his people) - these stories tell the truth of God’s experience with his people in some of the starkest and most painful words.

There is the story of Oholah (Israel) and Oholibah (Judah) in Ezekiel 23 - a story that would make salty romance novel authors blush…

And there is the better known living parable of Hosea and Gomer in the Minor Prophet book of Hosea.

When God compares his people’s spiritual devotion to whoredom, some of the most beautiful displays of God’s love are how he simply doesn’t give up, how he endures the mistreatment and unfaithfulness of his covenant people… persisting as the worthy husband.

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.”

So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Hosea 1:2-3

Here Hosea, occupying a symbolic place of God in the Husband role with his people marries a woman with a loose reputation. You already know where the story is going…

God when he saves a person, or even a people, doesn’t typically chose the top quality material. This is not because he can’t get the girl. It’s not because he can’t woo the girl from Harvard from the good family with old money.

So he takes the rejects, the misfits, the woman on her 5th guy.

God can make a whore into pure gold. He can so change her that virgins feel dirty in comparison.

That’s what God did with Judiasm (born of pagan Abram, transformed into faithful Abraham), and that’s what he has done with the remnant church for 2000 years.

He does all this knowing what he is getting himself into. He knows the cost. He follows his own advice, and counts the price before he pays for a marriage with such a “woman” or people.

God’s love for the adulteress of his people is often a little less lovey-dovey than pastors preaching on Hosea depict.

God who brought his people so close as to compare them with a garment on his skin in Jeremiah 13, but in departing from his word they become as useless as a moldy pair of underwear:

For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen.

Jer 13:11

In Hosea he cuts off the money, the goods, and the freedom so she has nowhere to go:

For their mother has played the whore;

she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,

who give me my bread and my water,

my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,

and I will build a wall against her,

so that she cannot find her paths.

Hosea 2:5-6

Therefore I will take back

my grain in its time,

and my wine in its season,

and I will take away my wool and my flax,

which were to cover her nakedness.

Now I will uncover her lewdness

in the sight of her lovers,

and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

Hosea 2:9-10

God’s medicine is exile, to Babylon. But the result is unfettered affection from God at their return.

Most of us when socked in the face, we realize what a fool we have been, hang our head, and return to the offended party to make good. So God was able to do to Israel:

I will heal their apostasy;

I will love them freely,

for my anger has turned from them.

I will be like the dew to Israel;

he shall blossom like the lily;

he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;

his shoots shall spread out;

his beauty shall be like the olive,

and his fragrance like Lebanon.

They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow;

they shall flourish like the grain;

they shall blossom like the vine;

their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

Hosea 14:4-7

So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.

Nehemiah 8:2-3

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And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.”

For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.

Nehemiah 8:9

It is an amazing contrast, the people which would have killed Jeremiah for preaching for God in the Temple return weeping at the reading of the Law.

When God “hedges in” the whoring path of his people, they grow lean and their ears begin to perk up. They want to know why, and once they realize it’s THEIR fault, they look for repentance. Finally 70 years later, they give the tears and mourning God deserved for their deeds.

But instead of accepting their tears as some kind of penance or atonement, God being God, declares through these holy men:

“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.”

It was the feast of booths and God demanded not the prodigal’s prepared speech: “I have sinned against you and heaven, treat me as a laborer” - No they have heard the Law! Therefore obey the law - observe Sukkot - and not just observe! ENJOY!

Think about it, God considered this rejoicing mandatory!

I have to tell you I can’t finish writing this article with a description of New Covenant (Christian) People who go astray. It’s too close to our time. I’ve seen too much of it with my eyes to talk about it.

I will say, can you see the parallels? The Prodigal, the Wayward Wife, all this is before us… but no return.

I hope that just as God promised the “healing of their apostasy” regarding the Jews in the days of Hosea, so he will heal the uprooted branch of Judaism.

I hope he will bring the blessing of Abraham’s physical offspring back into the spiritual blessing of what God is doing now and forever.

If Judaism is an adulteress wife, God can take her back. I hope he will soon.

Nate