Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Tuesday, June 19, 2018 | Topic: Conscience 49
Scripture: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6
Note: Hosea’s bend over intervention towards Gomer, an act that typified what true redeeming love was all about, set him as an example of a role model for how redeeming love ought to be the blood that runs through the veins of every marriage. Hosea’s initial overtures to his wayward wife, pleading with her to return to her marriage, exemplified a man who loved his wife and wasn’t ready to give up easily on her despite her irritating attitude.
Hosea acted from a position of strength and not that of weakness. Very often, it’s so easy to dismiss the weaker person in a relationship as not in a position to be able to influence any change, either for reconciliation or for separation. Hosea’s marriage was contracted in Israel, both of them Israelites, hence they were bound by the laws, norms and cultural behaviours that influenced marriages. Israel was patriarchal in inheritance. The land tenure system favoured inheritance by males.
Issues of land inheritance, wealth, property and power were therefore vested in men. Women were not regarded as next of kin, even within the context of marriage. The demise of the husband therefore meant that a brother of the deceased or a cousin or a close relative would have to take over the properties and marry the wife, if he was willing to inherit the dead relative. This arrangement was in place to ensure that the offspring of the demise were properly taken care of. Gomer, being Hosea’s wife, therefore, didn’t have anything of substance to her advantage by which she could have influenced the marriage to her advantage, except remaining Hosea’s wife.
Yet, the very thing upon which she could have ever had any hope in, her marriage, was the same institution that she so recklessly and irredeemably sought to destroy. Gomer’s behaviour was inconceivable and beyond rational thinking. Yet, her reckless life was the exact graphical representation of the unbelievable attitude of the people of Israel in relation to their spiritual husband, Yahweh. Israel virtually had nothing else to fall upon except Yahweh. The very relationship upon which Israel’s survival depended, was so recklessly undermined by thoughtless and irrational actions that defied logic and commonsense. Yet, Yahweh didn’t give up on Israel inspite of her running after numerous lovers.
Food for thought: Redeeming love is sacrificial love. It’s the love that wants to give instead of receiving.
Declaration: For if, when were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Romans 5:10
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
