Today, I am reading and commenting on  Hosea 1-7.

My lovely wife married me 22 years ago on the 23rd of this month.  So I am going to wish her Happy Anniversary every day from now until then.

Happy Anniversary, Darling!

Hosea prophesies that the people of Israel had sought gods other than God to worship and had credited those gods as providing the blessings which came from God.  He then said that God would cut them off from both those gods and the blessings He had given them so that they would turn back to Him.  While Hosea’s prophecy is for Israel as a group, as a people, it has relevance for us today as individuals, because we tend to similarly turn to other “gods” when we receive God’s blessings.  And God similarly seeks to turn us back to Him.  Hosea goes on to say that God will not support a double standard: we cannot expect God to punish the prostitutes while asking Him to give the “Johns” a pass.  God will not punish the sins of the oppressed while overlooking the sins of the oppressors.  Further, Hosea warns us not to follow the forms of worshiping God, while giving ourselves a pass for our own sin, not to call out the sins we do not commit, while ignoring our own sins.  God does not overlook some sins, while punishing others.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.