Hosea 2:2-15
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Pattern and Poetry
Pattern and Poetry
Acts 17:11 note
There is something in literature called chiastic structure. I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here but we need to be aware of it or we’re going to start missing things. We’ve already skipped past the first use of this structure because we were focusing on the names and their meanings but let’s take a step back and look at how the information is presented.
I’ll give you an examples that get progressively more complicated
And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
A The Sabbath
B was made for man
B’ not man
A’ for the Sabbath
We can also see an emphasis on a point, or the turning point in a story if it doesn’t get mirrored but ends up in the center.
But many who are first will be last, and the last first.
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing. And he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’ And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first.’ And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.”
A The first will be last and last will be first
B beginning of the day hires laborers for 1 denarius and later more workers are hired
C 11th hour workers hired
D Workers are called up to the master for payment from the last to the first
C’ 11th hour workers paid 1 denarius
B’ Other workers paid 1 denarius and complain
A’ The last will be first and the first will be last
This is just a really easy one to see and we can follow along and see the structure and how things invert as we head back to A The way we identify these are usually keywords to let us know the author made this structure.
Let’s look back at what we’ve already covered in Hosea
A take a wife of whoredom
B A son named Jezreel -Judgment on house of Israel
C A daughter named No Mercy - I will have no mercy on Israel I will have mercy on Judah
D A son named Not My People - You are not my people I am not your God
X Children of Israel will flourish
D’ Not My People called Children
C’ Judah and Israel gathered together
B’ Go up from the land - Great is the day of Jezreel
D’ Say you are my people
C’ Say You have received mercy
A:Wife B:Jezreel C:No Mercy D:Not My People X:The point of emphasis
Then Hosea 2:2 picks up and completes our A’ theme again the wife of whoredom and we can see this is actually an opposite as we would expect from the chiastic structure
“Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
We also start a new structure here and some of these are also nested within bigger picture structures. Things in the Bible absolutely amaze me. Has everyone seen a fractal? As you zoom in to the edge of a fractal you get more clarity and see more and more of the pattern emerge. It never ends.
We’ll look at the next chunk in a different way.
“Plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband—
that she put away her whoring from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and make her like a parched land,
and kill her with thirst.
Upon her children also I will have no mercy,
because they are children of whoredom.
A Find fault with the mother
B No longer wife
A’ Wife should repent, turn away from her sin of adultery
B’ She will be punished and rejected
B’’ Her children will be rejected
A’’ Mother has conceived them in shame
A:Tells the childrend to - Rebuke, denounce, find fault, don’t side with, etc. the mother
A’: What the mother should do in response
A’’: Children are told they’re conceived in shame
B: Consequences
Do you see why this is helpful? This could just be a “cool story bro..” moment and everyone leaves tonight going… I do not get it and I’m more confused than ever. That would make all my prep time a waste and the work I’ve put in for tonight a complete failure. If this doesn’t make sense, why am I talking? These structures help us to start understanding the patterns God uses in the Bible. We should be picking up on these eventually. It’s a slow process to have our minds transformed. Here we have the A pattern which is cyclical. The mother is at fault and the children should acknowledge her sin both so they do not end up in it and participate and also so that the mother cannot continue thinking nothing is wrong. The next step is repentance. The last step is the children learning just how connected they are to this sin, which should take them back to the beginning and reject the sin of their mother. The B pattern just gives us the consequences that are connected to our A cycle.
Next we pick up with that last half of vs 5 through 13
Hosea 2:5b (ESV)
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.
She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them,
and she shall seek them
but shall not find them.
Then she shall say,
‘I will go and return to my first husband,
for it was better for me then than now.’
And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and who lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.
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.
And I will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her appointed feasts.
And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
and went after her lovers
and forgot me, declares the Lord.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
“And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.
“And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord,
I will answer the heavens,
and they shall answer the earth,
and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and they shall answer Jezreel,
and I will sow her for myself in the land.
And I will have mercy on No Mercy,
and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’;
and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’ ”
I grabbed this outline from The New American Commentary.
A Sin = going after lovers for agricultural bounty (2:5b)
B Punishment = walling her in (2:6–7a)
C Anticipated redemption = she will seek her husband (2:7b)
A′ Sin = refusal to acknowledge Yahweh as source of bounty and fertility (2:8)
B″ Punishment = she will be destitute (2:9–12)
A″ Summary of sin = devotion to Baal and to decadence (2:13)
C′ Redemption = Yahweh will draw her back and restore her (2:14–23)
Can you see yourself, or others in this same place as Israel, or as Gomer? This is a very familiar pattern for many many people who have finally come to know the Lord. Going after other things to have material blessing or pleasure. For those that belong to God he will make those times miserable and thorny, but we’ll not be able to really run off with that other lover sin. We will turn back to God in that time. We might reject the idea that God has provided all the requirements of salvation we don’t have anything to offer, in fact we’re destitute with nothing to contribute. We might devote ourselves to sinful things. God draws his people back and God restores them.
Okay… we can quite literally continue for the rest of these verses… frankly the rest of the book of Hosea and chart these things out. From the big picture chapter size chunks down to line by line pieces.
I am not going to do that to you every week we’re in the minor prophets… probably, but no promises... I do think it’s worth while for yourself to search the scriptures and find these things. My second favorite verse is Pr 25.2 “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” We are kings and priests in the Kingdom of God so glory is searching out the hidden things of God.