The Book Of Hosea

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The Book of Hosea is one among the several books of the Hebrew scripture and appears as the first in the order of the twelve Minor Prophets. The term ‘minor’ refers to the length and not the importance of the books when compared to the books of Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah. All the twelve minor books are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Haggai & Malachi (Feinberg, 1990). Hosea was instructed by God to marry a prostitute, by the name of Gomer, who symbolized covenantal relationship between Israel and him (God). Hosea’s prophesies were unique in the sense that they were relayed through the names given to his children. This paper seeks to give an illustrative description on the first chapter of the book of Hosea. The first chapter of Hosea has eleven verses. The first verse portrays how Hosea got his prophesies, whose child he was and at what period of history. The remaining verses talks about his wife and children and can be summarized. According to Keil and Delitzsch (1989), Hosea 1-3 symbolized Israel's adultery. God instructs Hosea to go marry a promiscuous wife and have children with her. The land of Israel was being likened to an adulterous woman because of its unfaithfulness. The children’s’ names that Hosea was instructed by God to give to his children, symbolized God’s judgment. The first son was to be named Jezreel. This name referred to the Valley of Jezreel, where the founder of a dynasty by the name Jehu massacred all the descendants of Ahab putting Jeroboam II on the throne (2 Kings 10:11). Israel did not learn from this massacre and therefore God was going to put an end to its kingdom in the valley of Jezreel. The next child born was a girl and was to be named as per ... ... middle of paper ... ...l present in the lamp stand is a representation of the Holy Spirit which provides light in our lives. This Holy Spirit is given to us as a mercy gift from God. Without this oil in us, our lamps will fade away slowly. Even though the church at Ephesus was doctrinally correct they lacked love. Without love in us we can expect to be judged same way as Israel was judged (Beckham, n.d.). • The church in today’s world have very low standards. We are disregarding the active sins of the believers in the churches and are not ready to take a stand and speak to them about it. As a result of this churches are encouraging adultery, envy, strife, unforgiveness and lack of love which is taking us away from God on a daily basis. God will give us a time to repent but one day he will judge the church and the nation just like Israel so that we come back to him (Beckham, n.d.).

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