Let’s have a look at this passage in Hosea chapter 3. It’s a short chapter but there’s quite a lot in it.
Then the Lord said to me, “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 and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”
2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man—so, too, will I be toward you.”
4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. 5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days. Hosea 3
Just some background to the first few verses there. What has happened in the narrative of the story is that Gomer has again been unfaithful to Hosea and he has, contrary to normal practice, brought her back again into his family as it were.
But he says “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery” which is what she has been doing. And he compares this to the love of the Lord for the children of Israel.
It says that they too have been following other gods, following the raisin cakes of the pagans. So, Hosea brings her back to himself and he buys her back into his family. If you like, he says “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man—so, too, will I be toward you.”
So, he brings her back but he doesn’t bring her back into a complete marriage relationship. In other words, they will not have any sexual relations. He won’t know her. He’ll bring her back but she will be as it were there before him but not in a relationship with him.
Also, she will not go play the harlot anymore. She won’t be playing the harlot after other gods. Therefore, as you can see, there is a parallel with this in what we’re going to see happens with Israel.
Gomer has been unfaithful and Israel has been unfaithful but, in this passage, they’re brought back into some relationship with the Lord, but not into a total relationship. There is something missing. She doesn’t ‘know her as a husband’ and this can be seen as a parallel with the present situation of the Jewish people in relation to God. They are brought back into some relationship with God, they are still the people of God in one sense, but they’re not in the relationship of ‘knowing the Lord personally’ because that can only happen through Yeshua / Jesus the Messiah. They can only become again ‘the wife of the Lord’, the Bride of Jehovah if you like through faith in Jesus the Messiah.
And this is what the passage is going to tell us. Something about so you have Inon in unbelief still believing in God believing in the Torah, not going after idols in the time of the diaspora, but also not in a personal relationship with the Lord, not in a place to know God through redemption but to be preserved as a people who will be brought back to the Lord at the end of days.
Now, rabbinic teaching sees verse 4 as a picture of Israel in the present diaspora condition. Verse 4
4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. 5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days. Hosea 3.4-5
Concerning this verse, there was a rabbi called Rabbi David Kimchi who wrote in the 12th century. He said these are the days of the present captivity in which we are in the power of the Gentiles and in the power of their kings and their princes. And we are without a sacrifice, without an image, without a sacrifice to God, without an image to false gods, and without an ephod and without teraphim.
Without an ephod to God by means of which we could foretell the future as with the Urim and Thummim and without Teraphim to false gods.
Now this is actually quoted by a man called David Baron in a book called ‘The Ancient Scriptures for the Modern Jew‘ which, I have to confess, I got a lot of the information which I’m sharing with you about Hosea.
He said that this showed how the present period of what we call the ‘interregnum between the First and Second Coming of the Messiah’ applies to the present condition of Israel in the dispersion.
If you don’t know who David Baron is, he was an early pioneer of the Hebrew Christian Messianic movement. He came to England as a refugee from per Jewish persecution in tzarist Russia in the 19th century. He came from a religious Jewish Family. He was very well taught in the scriptures Hebrew scriptures.
He arrived off a boat on the east coast of England (I think it was in Hull), and as he was staying there, somebody gave him a copy of the New Testament. What did he do with the New Testament? He read it. What was the result of him reading the New Testament? He came to believe that Yeshua / Jesus is the Messiah.
He then wrote back a to his father in Russia and said that he had become a believer in Jesus the Messiah. His father sent him back a letter saying, ‘To my late son David…’ and cut him off. He said ‘Don’t communicate with me anymore. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a traitor. Don’t have any communication with me because you believed in the god of the Gentiles. You’ve gone over to the other side as it were, and you’re now an idol worshipper, worshiping that man Jesus.‘
A very painful letter as you can imagine. But it didn’t put him off his faith and, in fact, at the end of his life, he did have some reconciliation with his father as his father came to recognize that he hadn’t become a Christian to stop being Jewish, he’d become more Jewish through believing in Jesus.
And he used his time to spread the Gospel message to Jewish people founding an organization called the Hebrew Christian testimony to Israel which continues to this day in the form of the Messianic Testimony.
He travelled extensively throughout Europe preaching the Gospel to Jewish communities, and added other members to the testimony. Also, interestingly, he attended the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 saying that he saw ‘the beginning of the dry bone of Israel coming together in preparation for the restoration of the Jewish State’, quoting from Ezekiel chapter 37 about the dry bones.
When he was there, apparently, some delegates wanted to throw him out because he was a Hebrew Christian and they said he shouldn’t be at this Congress. Theodore Herzl, who was the convenor, objected to this and said that Baron could stay because he was a good Jew and he believed in the restoration of Israel.
In fact, Herzl went down and sat next to David Baron just to show his solidarity with him. And no doubt, David Baron shared with him something of the Gospel. Baron was a great man and he did a great deal to influence what has become the Messianic movement great many studies on the scriptures including on this passage in Hosea.
Let’s go back to the text of Hosea. So, in the text, we read that it said that you’ll be many days without these things. Certain things are not going to be there during a period of many days.
The Hebrew word for ‘many days‘ is רַבִּיםיָמִים [rabbîmyāmîm]. ‘Many days’ implies a long period, a long indefinite period of time embracing even centuries or millennia. And, during this period, the Jewish people are going to remain as a distinct people who for the majority will retain a faith in God based on Torah observance given by God. But with the addition of Talmudic Judaism which is not inspired by God and rabbinic Talmudic teachings this would become a major barrier for Jewish people believing in Jesus as the Messiah.
Along with anti-semitic teaching from the church, Jewish people have two actual barriers stopping them believing in Jesus. Today, that’s what the rabbis teach them about Jesus and what the church has historically done in persecuting the Jews, saying the Jews killed Jesus, that they’re under a curse, and we should exclude them from our fellowships and have nothing to do with them while treating them as awful people and even persecuting them right against what Jesus said, right against what Paul said in Romans. In effect, the total opposite to what Christians are supposed to do.
So, this will be the condition during this time Hosea talks about. But, at the time of the end, there will be a physical restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and a spiritual restoration to the Lord.
On this subject, one has to say it’s not correct to say that the church has replaced Israel. I’ve done a little pamphlet here which is on the table called ‘Is the Church the new Israel?’
Although it is correct to say that the New Covenant through the Messiah Jesus as revealed in Jeremiah 31 and Matthew 26 in the breaking bread as we’ve just read and in Hebrews chapter 8, has replaced the former covenant made through Moses as the way for people to today, both Jewish and Gentile, to come to know the Lord, the church hasn’t replaced Israel.
Israel remains a people before the Lord but the Church, the true church has replaced the way in which we can come to know God through the New Covenant. You don’t come to know God through going to the synagogue and trying to keep the law of Moses. You come to know God today through repentance and faith in Yeshua / Jesus the Messiah and the New Covenant.
Jesus / Yeshua also spoke about the future for Israel. Jesus prophesied the coming dispersion of the Jewish people. He also indicated they were going to remain an identifiable people through the long years of the diaspora to be restored at the time when they recognize Him as the Messiah.
Matthew 23 says,
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 38 See! Your house is left to you desolate; 39 for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ” Matthew 23:37-39
Jesus is speaking there about the desolation of Jerusalem which was going to come with the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion of the Jewish people of 70AD. And He says ‘your house is left to you desolate. You’re going to see me no more.‘ A lot of the church would actually like to stop that sentence there. ‘He will see me no more‘ meaning it is finished, God is finished with the Jews. But Jesus doesn’t say that. He says, ‘for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Jesus says, ‘until you say’ in the Greek Εὐλογημένος ὁ ἐρχόμενος ἐν ὀνόματι Κυρίου and ברוך הבא בשם [brwk hbʾ bšm] Baruch haba B’shem Adonai in Hebrew which means ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord‘ and is the traditional greeting of the Jewish people for the coming of the Messiah.
So, Jesus is saying if they’re going to say that at the end of days they have got to be preserved during this time of the dispersion as an identifiable people. Can you see that?
And in Luke chap 21, Jesus says something similar. He says in verse 23,
For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people. 24 And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Luke 21:23-24
Again, you have that word, until it’s going to be a time of wrath of desolation, of dispersion, being led away captive into all nations. He is speaking of the dispersion of the Jewish people to the nations which has happened in our time. Jewish people spread to east, west, and the north, the south into all nations. Jesus says they are going to this, that Jerusalem is going to be trampled or ruled by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
So there’s going to be some time in which God is going to reverse this process, bring the people back to the land, bring them back to the Lord, and bring Jerusalem back under the control of the Lord. We are not there yet by the way, but it’s on its way.
Note that the word ‘until’ implies the preservation of the Jewish people until the time of the end when God will begin to reveal Yeshua to them and it’s all that is in the context of the Second Coming of Jesus.
