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The Book of Hosea – Part 4, Hos 4:1-19

[Study Aired May 4, 2024]

Since the sole theme of this study in Hosea, Chapter 4, is our Lord’s direct accusation of His wife, Israel, for her adulterous ways, we won’t repeat the verses as is sometimes customary; rather, we will launch right into them individually.

The Lord Accuses Israel

Hos 4:1-19  Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.

Even a Babylonian babe unwittingly worshiping ‘another Jesus’ (2Co 11:4) can easily see the historical account of Old Israel’s sequence of see-sawing obedience, then prostituting disdain for the Commandments of God, severe chastisement and Gomer-like impenetrable heart’s return to her Husband only to do it all over repeatedly. Of course, today, the Lord’s faithful wife looks back upon those historical accounts, knowing fully well that they represent her disappearing spiritual prostitution. Her most humbling knowledge is that all these things, from Genesis to Revelation, are mostly all for her sake. She takes no glory in her figurative 1,000 sisters in Babylon (symbolised by Solomon’s 1,000 wives [1Ki 11:1-6]) and their unwitting spiritual suffering, inclusive of their increasingly horrendous physical suffering. She, the heavenly mother (Jerusalem) of us all, and like any mother in more ethical and moral times past, anguishes over her children’s contempt for their father’s instructions and headship. Subsequently, the lack of truth, mercy and knowledge will make them the basest of men, silly doves (Hos 7:11) taken in their own craftiness. The Lord has a “controversy” with the incipient Bride of Christ and is now showing her that in past times, she didn’t reside in truth, mercy or knowledge. He is revealing to her her skirts above her loins, her nakedness to be covered by His word. All things, both good and evil are hers for her increasingly enthusiastic knowledge and understanding.

1Co 3:18  Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 
1Co 3:19  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 
1Co 3:20  And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. 
1Co 3:21  Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; 
1Co 3:22  Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; 
1Co 3:23  And ye are Christ’s; and Christ [and His Christs] is God’s. 

Hos 4:2  By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. 

No greater original “swearing” was there than Old Israel, our Lord’s espoused first wife solemnly agreeing to her marriage vows.

Exo 24:7  And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.
Exo 24:8  And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words. 

Hos 2:19  And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. 
Hos 2:20  I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD. 

Jer 3:14  Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: 

2Co 11:1  I would that you were bearing with me a little in foolishness; but indeed bear with me. 
2Co 11:2  For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one Man, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

Next, after swearing allegiance to her unwitting inability to keep the espousal agreement, she is full of God-given scheming deceptions (lies) irksomely endemic to her gender. Solomon termed them “inventions”, which are devices of deceit to control her relationship with her husband.

Ecc 7:27  Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account:
Ecc 7:28  Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. 
Ecc 7:29  Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

In the same breath as swearing, stealing, lying, and adultery are “killing” and resultant “blood touching blood”, and the act of killing, symbolising the entire bloody affair.

Blood spiritually is Christ’s word, His very body! Blood, the physical essence of life, prefigures death to the Old Man and life to the New Man. If blood is spilt spiritually, it means the death of the truth or lies. Since the Elect metaphorically kill another person with the fiery sword of God’s word, that action results from them having killed us for our rejection of God’s word, just as we killed Christ physically and spiritually – it all is figuratively spilling blood.

Pro 1:16 For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.

Isa 59:7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. 

Joe 2:30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 
Joe 2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.

Rev 17:6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood [Her zealous killing of God’s word] of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

Christ’s blood is His spirit, His word that is the truth. When we speak God’s word untruthfully, we kill Christ all over again; we spill His blood or others’ blood by our heresies. In doing so, we steal our Lord’s gold and silver and make them into idols of our own which we diligently serve and thus commit adultery.

Mat 26:26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 
Mat 26:27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 
Mat 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Blood must be spilled when sin is found. We must die daily, and we figuratively are killed and our blood spilled. Sin requires death and spilled blood, first, physically in the Old Covenant and then, spiritually in the New. 

Luk 11:50 That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; [no individual generation, but the generation of whoever reads that verse].
Luk 11:51 From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation [The incipient Bride of Christ]. 
Luk 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! [False Christs; preachers] for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

Hos 4:3  Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. 

Solomon’s 1,000 wives, including Leah, Jacob’s ‘hated wife’, all languish in bewilderment because their husbands do not desire them. Why? because they all want to eat and drink their own bread of self-righteousness and symbolise all the rest of mankind, “the beasts of the field,” giving up since God’s word is given to be too hard to understand. They throw up their arms in Babylonish confusion to blithely gorge themselves in her delights. The result is that they all are “taken away” and seen prefigured by Israel’s exile into Babylon.

Just as mankind was taken away in Noah’s flood, so, too, is every man into Babylon; so, too, are all left after the First Resurrection into the rule with the rod of iron in preparation for the final casting into the Lake of Fire of God’s word.

Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our [fleshy] likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1Co 15:45  And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul [flesh in God’s image in the process of being made spirit]; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
1Co 15:46  Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural [?]; and afterward that which is spiritual [because God is in the process of creating God in man and He begins first with the natural, the flesh to become a new creature of spirit, as He is].

Rev 20:13  And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. 
Rev 20:14  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Rev 20:15  And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Hos 4:4  Yet let no man strive, nor reprove another: for thy people are as they that strive with the priest. 

Since all things were preordained before creation, our Lord, by whom all things are created, designed man’s every thought, word, and action by His own will. No man other than the Elect of God, who knows their Lord’s judgments, is able to righteously reprove another man. The churches of the world, all 40,000 + splintered sects, thus strive contentiously with each other, “the priests”. Unknowingly, they are striving with the Priest and His Priests, that is, Christ and His Christs.

Act 4:26 The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ.

2Co 10:7 Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ’s, let him of himself think this again, that, as he is Christ’s, even so are we Christ’s.

Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Hos 4:5  Therefore shalt thou fall in the day, and the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother.

2Th 2:6  And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 
2Th 2:7  For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 
2Th 2:8  And then shall that Wicked [We, the embryonic Bride of Christ] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 

The Lord’s Bride first falls by the brilliant light of Christ’s fiery word in the day, and upon going to bed, sleep flees her where her sins in revealing thought, cast as dreams in the night, devastatingly destroy her faith in Babylon, her mother. She sees herself as having been deceived by the harlot churches of Babylon with their magic arts.

2Th 2:9  Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
2Th 2:10  And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 
2Th 2:11  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie [figuratively an innumerable 200,000,000 of them (Rev 9:16)]: 
2Th 2:12  That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Hos 4:6  My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

A Biblical quintessential notable forgetting God’s law is Israel’s rejection of Samuel’s representation as their King and Priest who shockingly can represent the Lord’s few chosen to forfeit their inheritance, Christ’s wedding feast. Our Lord’s deliberate design of Israel, representing us in our time, is awfully humiliating to Him for us effectively returning to Babylon to have some Christian priest, a worker of magic arts to rule over us.

1Sa 8:4  Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,
1Sa 8:5  And said unto him, Behold, thou art old [we are sick of Christ’s boring doctrines], and thy sons [Babylonian Christianity] walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
1Sa 8:6  But the thing displeased Samuel [God], when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD. 
1Sa 8:7  And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people [and give them the idol of their hearts] in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. 
1Sa 8:8  According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee. 
1Sa 8:9  Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them [speak sternly, resolutely with authority], and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. 
1Sa 8:10  And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. 
1Sa 8:11a  And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you:…

Here lies precisely what the world is experiencing today: a peaking crescendo of violence of every man’s hand against his neighbor and wars and rumors of wars in response to the ‘kings’ of government we chose with our lovely Democratic Capitalist Bolshevism (Marxists) ruling over us. Samuel goes on to prophesy exactly what will happen.

1Sa 8:11b … He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots [your young men will go to endless wars]. 
1Sa 8:12  And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest [Lord it over other nations], and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
1Sa 8:13  And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries [Ointment-makers, perfumers = haughty harlots with mincing steps; churches deluding the world], and to be cooks [guardsmen of church doctrine], and to be bakers [cooking up doctrinal lies].
1Sa 8:14  And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants [outwardly, the West is being overrun by immigrant’ servants’ whose moral foundations serve other gods and strange doctrines and intermarry those doctrines with Oholibah’s churches]. 
1Sa 8:15  And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. 
1Sa 8:16  And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work [Slavery on all fronts!].
1Sa 8:17  He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. 
1Sa 8:18  And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.

That account of us wanting our chosen ‘king’ to rule over us is superlative of the current world’s government’s slavery of its citizens. Yet, we know that it all is speaking a precise mirror of ourselves, spiritually. It all revolves back to Hosea 4:5 “Therefore shalt thou fall in the day, and the prophet [Samuel and the Elect, and the Elect now inwardly] also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother [the Great Whore within and without] 

Hos 4:7  As they were increased, so they sinned against me: therefore will I change their glory into shame. 
Hos 4:8  They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity. 
Hos 4:9  And there shall be, like people, like priest: and I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings. 

If we have unity in a righteous or unrighteous ideology, a church doctrine, the people are in harmony with their priest, just as the Bride is in righteous harmony with her Lord.

Joh 17:16  They [the Bride of Christ] are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 
Joh 17:17  Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. 
Joh 17:18  As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. 
Joh 17:19  And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. 
Joh 17:20  Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; 
Joh 17:21  That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 
Joh 17:22  And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
Joh 17:23  I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. 

Beginning in the one-thousand year rule with the rod of iron, the world will fearfully begin to know that these people ruling over them have a very different spirit from them. An unwavering unity of spirit is forced upon them, thus causing them to grudgingly inconsistently keep Christ’s commands yet without eyes and ears in the same joyful unified spirit.

Psa 2:8  Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 
Psa 2:9  Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. 

Rev 2:26  And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Rev 2:27  And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

In the one-thousand year reign, those alive will eat of the Lord’s word and not be filled with understanding, thus not being unified with the spirit of Christ and His Christs. They thus remain unfaithful to His word and remain harlots. Eating and drinking His word will not satiate a hunger that doesn’t exist as they eat their own bread and drink their own water, believing that they were fair virgins, not knowing their harlotry. Of course, the Lord’s Elect know that all these things refer first to her in this age who are given to thirst for Him. 

Amo 8:13  In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. 
Amo 8:14  They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

Hos 4:10  For they shall eat, and not have enough: they shall commit whoredom, and shall not increase: because they have left off to take heed to the LORD.
Hos 4:11  Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.

New wine takes away the heart since those without eyes that see and ears that don’t hear do not understand the New Covenant spiritually. Subsequently, they remain jubilant in unwitting whoredoms of false doctrines and another Jesus and don’t increase the fruits of Christ’s commands.

Hos 4:12  My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God. 
Hos 4:13  They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery. 
Hos 4:14  I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall. 

Daughters committing whoredoms are lecherous acts deemed too insignificant (depicted as a babe learning truth – a “daughter”), correlating to Israel’s thinking that God wouldn’t be concerned with trifling sins. More damnable are they when committed by her parents. A complementary view of a daughter engaging in whoredoms reflects a juvenile understanding of doctrine by the daughter or her parents.

Verse 14 is a subtle spiritual reference to the one-thousand year reign with the rod of iron since people are punished, yet no change of spirit is given; they thus remain unjust and filthy. For those chosen to have their eyes and ears opened in this age, they are stripped naked of their filthy clothes and given by their Husband the clean white linen of the Saints.

Rev 22:11  He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

Our loving Father chastises every son whom He loves. Upon our suckling stages of learning to walk in Christ’s commands by His faith and strength, we, just like young children, view those relatively light chastisements as deeply hurtful. Subsequent to our adult equivalence of pouting, kicking and screaming, we learn to receive those disciplines joyously since we immutably know that our acknowledgment of sin is quickly followed by a bountiful increase in spiritual growth! As seen previously in Hosea 5:8, They eat up the sin of my people, and they set their heart on their iniquity.

Eating up the sin of my people are people with an appetite for gluttony. To boot, their impenitent hearts are so seared that their sins become an idol of their heart. When Ancient Israel did that to her fullness, she represented us formally in our journey, insisting on keeping pet iniquities.

An incredibly insidious problem will emerge that is likely to land a backsliding Saint in the Lake of Fire because of the spirit of whoredoms, as seen in Hosea 4:12 above! When our Lord blesses us with a figurative 40 years of chastisement, and we become a “backsliding heifer”, it reflects our utter refusal to change, and we will unwittingly find ourselves on the knife edge, maybe seeing too late that we didn’t have a wedding gown of His righteousness; OR, if we are preordained since before the Creation to be an Elect, we will suffer chastisement far more intensely until we do acknowledge our iniquity. Regardless, the statement, “he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still,” portrays the Master Potter creating His vessel in each of us to His precise dimensions at His will to be either filthy, righteous or holy as He pleases in a particular age for His purpose.

Jer 3:13  Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the LORD. 
Jer 3:14  Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: 

Ecc 11:3  If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. 

Eph 5:27  That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. 

Rev 19:7  Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 
Rev 19:8  And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. 

Yet, continuing in this age, ancient Israel’s harlot ways are as a figurative revolving wheel (Gilgal H1537) brightly spiritually mirroring in the Middle East today, their preordained returning to vomit for us to remember to not be ‘filthy still.’ Thus, we, as Judah representing the Priests of God, decreasingly re-offend on our fiery course in becoming His ‘Christs.’ Being given our Lord’s faith, we utterly rely on His strength to not reoffend.

Hos 4:15  Though thou, Israel, play the harlot, yet let not Judah offend; and come not ye unto Gilgal [H1537 Definition: Gilgal = a wheel, rolling 1. the first site of an Israelite camp west of the Jordan, east of Jericho], neither go ye up to Bethaven [Beth-aven = house of vanity], nor swear, The LORD liveth.
Hos 4:16  For Israel slideth back as a backsliding heifer: now the LORD will feed them as a lamb in a large place. 

Israel being fed “as a lamb in a large place” depicts the Lake of Fire for predestined humanity, which is a very “large place” that will contain all of mankind since Adam, as numerous as the sand of the seashore or stars of the heavens.

As seen in Part 3 of Hosea, the Jews today who say that they are Jews and have never been given to go forward spiritually to thus “backslide.” That truth is soon possibly reenacted by the sacrifice of their probable ‘red heifer’ for the dedication of their physical temple on Solomon’s original temple mount site in Jerusalem. It will be exciting to see what the Lord has to transpire. Maybe a rebuilding and then destruction. Regardless, it will be destroyed, as will all edifices of Christian worship in the one thousand years.

Lev 26:30  And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. 
Lev 26:31  And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. 
Lev 26:32  And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
Lev 26:33  And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. 

Eze 6:13  Then shall ye know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak, the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols. 
Eze 6:14  So will I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, yea, more desolate than the wilderness toward Diblath, in all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

For the time being, it is not given to those not dragged to understand.

Hos 4:17  Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.

Ephraim represents the entirety of Israel, the world of humanity left alone to continue in their sins and remain filthy. It is just that we need to thoroughly fast within to see ourselves spiritually in ALL of these outward examples.

Hos 4:18  Their drink is sour: they have committed whoredom continually: her rulers with shame do love, Give ye.
Hos 4:19  The wind hath bound her up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices. 

The spirit of God, the wind, has, for the time being, made ancient Israel faint, as we were within, earthbound, unable to be lifted up on eagle wings and thus made ashamed because of whoredoms and sacrificing haughtily to our Queen Vashti-like idolised selves [2Th 2:1-4].

Isa 40:30  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 
Isa 40:31  But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.