Love’s Pain

“O Israel and Judah, what should I do with you?” asks the LORD. “For your love vanishes like the morning mist and disappears like dew in the sunlight.”   Hosea 6:4

Apparently Hosea and Gomer enjoyed some good years after the wedding. They had three children, but the disturbing names given to them are a clue that trouble may have already been going on. The children were called Jezreel, which was the place of a massacre (see 2 Kings 10:1-11); Lo-ruhamah, which means “not loved”; and Lo-ammi, which means “not my people” (see Hosea 1:4-9).

Try to picture Hosea at home with the children. It’s late at night, and Gomer has been gone for hours. She’s evasive about where she’s going and what she’s doing, but Hosea is not naive. He knows what’s going on. He has confronted his wife, but nothing has changed. So Hosea is pacing the floor in his own home, a man distraught with the pain of wounded love.

Over the years, Gomer’s absences become longer and more frequent. She walks in one day and walks out the next. The whole situation is absolutely intolerable. Hosea is in an agony of soul. God told him that he would experience this pain, but now he is thrust into the heart of it.

Hosea’s pain is a window into the heart of God. God’s own people were as faithless to him as Gomer was to Hosea. Their love of other gods brought the same kind of pain to the heart of God as Hosea experienced when his wife went off with another man: “One minute you say you love me, but the next minute your love fades away! What am I to do with you?” Anyone who has experienced the pain of a broken home will know exactly what is pouring from the heart of God.

Gomer’s behavior helps us to understand that sin is a deeply painful and personal offense against God. Every time we lie, cheat, steal, swear, lust, or blaspheme; every time we pursue self-interest over God’s interest, we are inflicting a wound in the heart of God. If sin were merely breaking some principle or regulation, it would be much less serious. But sin is wounding the heart of God.

For further reading, see Hosea 6