Books: Stories of the Prophets

I >> Isaac Landman >> Stories of the Prophets

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His attention was called suddenly away from the window by loud
sobbing. He hurried to the door, but did not dare open it. He listened
until the sobbing ceased. Then he returned to the window, to find the
street empty and deserted. His mother had evidently gone away.

He shivered. He folded his arms tightly, as if hugging himself to keep
warm. Then he brought his chair from the door to the table, sat down
and listened. In the room below he heard his father walking up and
down with regular step. The house was completely silent but for
Hosea's footfalls.

Jezreel drew his legs up under him on the chair. He was tired and
rested his head upon his arms on the table. The silence and the
monotony of the regular heavy walking in the room under him, made him
drowsy. His little heart ached, though he could not explain why. He
tried hard to keep awake, but finally fell asleep, there at the table.
At one time he shivered, when the street door of the house shut again
with a bang; but he did not wake up.

Below, a great big, powerful man had been keeping up a continuous
march up and down the room. He was brooding over the events that had
just preceded and thinking over the years of his married life.

When Hosea first met Gomer, she lived in her father's home in one of
the poorest sections of Samaria. Diblaim, Gomer's father, was a poor
man and could not give his daughter the advantages other girls in
Samaria enjoyed. But Hosea loved Gomer most devotedly and he married
her.

Son of the priest Beeri, Hosea inherited great wealth and a position
among the priests at the Bethel sanctuary. He was thus able to give
Gomer not only a beautiful home in one of the city's most beautiful
suburbs, but also to introduce her to the royal and social leaders
of Samaria.

After a few years, however, everything seemed to go wrong in the Hosea
household. Gomer developed a weakness for luxury and jewels and fine
clothes; she used to be away from the house and the children most of
the time; she did not understand her husband, his desire for quiet
evenings at home with the children and his dislike of the pomp and
display at the court and in society. And that night, Hosea and Gomer
parted, Gomer going home to her father.

Hosea felt very much oppressed. Walking up and down the room brought
him no relief. So he rushed out of the house into the night, into the
open, where he could breathe more freely--and think. It was the bang
of the door behind him that disturbed Jezreel, asleep at the table.

But Hosea's brain was all clogged up. It could not dwell upon a single
line of thought for five consecutive minutes. And yet he was so
thoroughly absorbed in his thoughts, that he did not notice any number
of people excitedly hurrying past him.

He walked on toward the center of the city in a daze. The first time
he realized that he was not alone on the streets of Samaria was when
he found himself being jostled in a wide thoroughfare leading to the
market place.

Then he was awakened out of the stupor in which he had left his home
by cries, coming from several directions:

"Shallum!"

"Long live the king!"

"Long life to Shallum!"

Shallum? Who was Shallum? Why was the name being shouted in the
streets of Samaria?

Hosea, trying to find his bearings, was asking himself these questions
when he arrived in the market place.

There an unusual and most unexpected sight met him. The place was
filled with people. Troops were fighting in front of the royal palace.
From the palace, which was brightly illuminated, soldiers and plain
citizens were pouring forth in a stream. Above the shrieking of men
and women and the clang of contending arms, he heard enthusiastic
shouts:

"King Zechariah is dead! Long live King Shallum!"

What? Zechariah dead!

In a flash the whole situation was made clear to Hosea. Now he recalled
that down at Bethel, the king's sanctuary, someone had spoken to him of
a movement that was on foot to depose the king.

Hosea knew that Zechariah was unlike his great father, Jeroboam II,
whom he succeeded in the year 742 B. C. E. The new king was a
weakling. Upon his accession to the throne, Syria refused to pay the
annual tribute, revolted, and Zechariah could not help himself. The
wealth of the people, the luxury they lived in, the disorganization of
the army by corruption, the oppression of the poor, the injustices
practiced in business and in the courts of law, had unfitted Israel to
wage war against Syria, or any other nation, for that matter.

Zechariah, in the six months that he ruled Samaria, therefore, lost
all that had been gained by his illustrious father. Hosea, however,
did not look for an insurrection in Samaria.

But here it was: Zechariah was dead and Shallum--yes, Shallum, the son
of Jabesh, the one mentioned to Hosea as the probable successor--had
been proclaimed king. When Shallum was spoken of, down at Bethel,
Hosea had paid no particular attention. He was occupied with his own
family troubles then, as he was in the presence of this history-making
event. The threatened revolution was the farthest thought from his
mind, at that time as it was at this moment.

Therefore, before Hosea had grasped the full significance of either of
the two events that had occurred that night, he was jostled into a
side street by the mob that now filled the market place.

Sick at heart, Hosea did not stop to see the bloodshed and the horror,
nor to listen to the story of the revolt, but walked on to the outskirts
of the city.

His head swam from the excitement. His temples pounded like sledge
hammers. As he walked on, his feet grew heavy and dragged. Just how he
got there Hosea did not know, but suddenly he found himself in front
of his own home.

The day was now dawning. The first rays of the sun were shooting their
way through the early morning mist and playing on the bedewed stones
of the house. Hosea entered quietly, and walked up to the children's
bed room. To his amazement he found Jezreel asleep on his arms at
the table.

As he gazed for a moment upon the children, Hosea's heart was wrung
with sorrow. He picked Jezreel up from the chair. The boy, asleep,
clung tightly about his father's neck. Hosea laid him in his bed,
covered him, kissed him and, with bowed head, went to his own room.

And while little Jezreel was dreaming that a great giant came to his
home, picked up the house and shook it, carried it away to a beautiful
valley and brought back his mother, Hosea sat at the window and
watched and watched, until the morning's duties called him.

CHAPTER II.

_The Tragedy With a Purpose._

King Shallum soon discovered that a stolen throne is no sweeter than
any other stolen thing. A palace is no more protection against
conscience than a hovel; and Shallum passed miserable days of fear and
nights of sleeplessness, because of his murder of Zechariah.

Smitten by his conscience and tortured in mind, Shallum was not able
to collect a large force of followers to protect him or his ill-gotten
throne. When, therefore, a plot was set on foot to dethrone him,
Shallum was helpless.

Menahem, the son of Gadi, one of Jeroboam II's generals, organized an
expedition against the usurper in Tirzah, the city that was the
capital of Israel for fifty years after the Kingdom of Solomon was
divided. Within a month after Shallum had proclaimed himself King of
Israel, Menahem marched from Tirzah to Samaria, attacked Shallum,
defeated him, and, in turn, mounted the throne of Jeroboam.

Instead of ruling peaceably in Samaria, however, Menahem started a
reign of terror, until nobody in the country seemed safe in his home
or in his possessions.

Trouble came for the new king thick and fast.

Tiglath-Pileser III, who had been ruling in Assyria since 745, and
against whom Amos had warned the weakened Kingdom of Israel, had
accomplished many conquests north of Israel, in Phoenicia and in the
frontier lands of Damascus.

In the year 738, Tiglath-Pileser was knocking at the gates of Damascus
and threatening Samaria. In order to keep the Assyrian conqueror off,
and save their countries the spoliation and ruin that followed in the
wake of the Assyrian armies, Menahem, together with Rezin, King of
Damascus, the Kings of Tyre, Hamath, and other small states, agreed to
pay him tribute.

Menahem's share was the enormous sum of one thousand talents of
silver. To raise this amount, he levied a tax of fifty silver shekels
each on "all the mighty men of wealth," both priests and merchants, in
the kingdom.

Now, the lawlessness started by Shallum and the anarchy continued by
Menahem had had their effect. The great sum of money needed for
Tiglath-Pileser was raised by "all the mighty men of wealth;" but it
was ground out of the poor by cheating, robbery and even murder.

The conditions against which the Prophet Amos cried out were now
apparent to all observers. The final overthrow of the kingdom, which
Amos declared to be but a matter of time, was now evident to all
patriotic lovers of their country.

These conditions were clear as the light of day, especially to Hosea.
Being a priest himself, he knew how the very priests at the
sanctuaries had entered upon secret understandings with rebel
associates of Menahem and the wealthy merchants to raise the Assyrian
tribute at the expense of the people. Being a lover of his fatherland,
he knew that these sins and crimes against God and men must react upon
the nation as a whole and rush it on to destruction.

Hosea, like Amos, therefore, felt himself called upon by God to warn
his people, and, if possible, to save his country. He could no longer
stand aside and see rulers, priests and "all the mighty men of wealth"
despoiling his well-beloved fatherland. He must speak words of reproach
and warning. He must open the eyes of his people to the calamity that
was ahead of them.

One night Hosea was at home brooding over his own family troubles and
thinking of the future of his country. He had just seen the children
to bed and his mind was dwelling on Gomer, their mother, from whom he
had not heard a single word since she went away. As he came downstairs
he heard shouting and screaming and hurrying footsteps. Going into the
street, he learned that another of those attacks on peaceful people
had been made by a company of Menahem's followers for the purpose of
robbery.

This did not surprise Hosea in the least. What did chagrin and pain
him was the discovery that the attacking party was under the direction
of several priests whom, he knew personally.

All that night this phrase kept running through his mind--"Like people,
like priest." And, strange to say, the thought of Gomer, his wife, whom
he loved devotedly, whom he never ceased loving, kept on intruding
itself into his thoughts about his country.

By morning, however, the whole situation had cleared up for him.
Israel, its rulers and priests were like Gomer. God loved the whole
people of Israel devotedly as Hosea loved Gomer, but Israel does not
always understand what God desires of His people any more than Gomer
understood what Hosea desired of her. If Gomer had continued loving
her husband, as from the beginning, she would never have left him; if
Israel had continued loving God, as from the beginning, Israel would
never have strayed away from His law and commandments. What is to be
done? Israel lacks knowledge of God and His will! Israel is being
taught falsehoods by priests and prophets! Israel does not understand
God's loving-kindness toward His people! Israel must be warned! Israel
must be taught!

Hosea had determined what to do. His unhappiness at the departure of
his wife was somewhat lightened now, because he read God's mission to
him in the tragedy of his home. He felt himself ordained to be a
preacher to Israel--and he went to work.

From that day on he traveled the wide land over, preaching to the
people against the corrupt priesthood and against the usurpers of the
throne of Samaria.

"Hear the word of God, ye children of Israel,
For God hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land,
For there is no truth, nor loving-kindness,
Nor knowledge of God in the land;
There is naught but perjury and lying,
Murder and stealing,
Violence and bloodshed.
Therefore doth the land mourn,
And all its inhabitants languish.

"Yet, let none bring charges,
And let none reprove,
Since my people are but as their priestlings.
My people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because thou has rejected knowledge
I will also reject thee,
That thou shalt be no priest to me.
Since thou hast forgotten the instruction of thy God,
I will also forget thy children.
I will change their glory into shame,
And it shall be, like people, like priest.
The people that doth not understand shall be overthrown!"

Hosea naturally, met opposition everywhere on the part of the priesthood
and the hirelings of the king. Undaunted, he rebuked Menahem and the
usurping rulers in Samaria, as well as the priests and the unrighteous
people.

"Hear this, O ye priests!
And hearken, O house of Israel,
And give heed, O house of the king,
Since for you is the judgment.
They themselves have made kings, without my consent;
They have made princes, but without my knowledge.
For they commit falsehood;
The thief entereth in and the troop of robbers ravageth without.
And they consider not in their hearts
That I remember all their wickedness."

Then, his heart aching with pain, and remembering the sorrow of his
life, which led him to prophesy, he concludes:

"What shall I do unto you, O Ephraim!
What shall I do unto you, O Israel--
Since your love is like a morning cloud,
Yea, like the dew which goes early away."

But the people as a whole, having been taught by the unworthy prients,
still believed that, in offering sacrifices, all their sins and crimes
were forgiven them by God. Amos had objected strenuously to this
common belief. Hosea went a step further and decried the act of
sacrificing as an act of idolatry.

Referring bitterly to Bethel as Bethaven (the House of Violence)
Hosea replied:

"Come not ye into Gilgal,
Neither go ye up to Beth-aven,
Nor swear, 'As God liveth.'
In Bethel I have seen a horrible thing;
All their wickedness is in Gilgal;
For there I hated them.
Because of the wickedness of their doings,
I will drive them out of my house;
I will love them no more.
They shall go with their flocks
And with their herds to seek God;
But they shall not find Him;
He hath withdrawn Himself from them."

Every place where Hosea denounced the sacrifices, the people who heard
him, but could not or would not understand, called him a fool and said
that he was mad. "Yes," replied Hosea:

"The prophet is a fool,
The man that hath the spirit is mad
Because of the abundance of thine iniquity.
They shall cry unto me,
'My God, we Israel know Thee.'
(But) Israel hath cast off that which is good;
Israel hath forgotten his Maker.
And now they go on sinning,
They make for themselves molten gods,
From their silver, idols according to their own model,
Smith's work, all of it!
To such they speak!
Men who sacrifice, kiss calves!
They sow the wind and shall reap the whirlwind!"

After that Hosea followed up his rebuke and denunciation with most
pathetic entreaties:

"Sow to yourselves righteousness,
So shall ye reap loving-kindness.
Break up your fallow ground,
For it is time to seek the Lord,
That the fruit of righteousness may come upon you.
But ye have plowed wickedness,
Ye have reaped disaster,
Ye have eaten the fruit of lies.
It is love I delight in, and not sacrifice,
Knowledge of God and not burnt-offering."

When the time came for Menahem to send the tribute to Tiglath-Pileser,
Hosea discovered that even here the king and his advisers were
double-dealing with Assyria. The sending of the money to the great
emperor was only a blind on the part of Menahem.

Secretly he was in communication with the King of Egypt, sending
precious gifts to him. Menahem wanted to create an alliance between
Israel and Egypt against Tiglath-Pileser.

Hosea saw the folly of it all. He knew that neither the tribute to
Assyria nor the proposed alliance with Egypt could help the corrupt,
degraded people. He compares Menahem's double-dealing to the action of
a silly dove, and concludes:

"Samaria shall bear her guilt,
For she has rebelled against her God.
Shall I deliver them from the power of Sheol?
Shall I redeem them from death?
Come, on with thy plagues, O Death!
On with thy pestilence, O Sheol!
Repentance is forever hid from mine eyes."

This terrible pronouncement, almost a curse, brought Hosea back to his
home all wrought up. Never had he spoken so harshly. Never had he felt
so deeply the doom of Israel.

He found his children in the playroom, playing an old game called
"Mother." After watching them for a moment in silence and in thought,
his heart was almost crushed by a question his little girl put to him:

"When is our real mother coming home?"

For answer he drew Lo-ruhamah close to his heart--and wept. Hosea did
not know; only God knew.

All the love he bore for Gomer came back in an overwhelming flood. She
had strayed from him, but his love had never lessened. Would that he
could find her! With all her faults he would forgive her, if she would
repent and return. And yet, that morning, he had been so harsh. He
preached that Israel must bear its guilt and that God had forever hid
repentance from before Him.

If he, a man, could love so deeply and could be willing to forgive,
how much the more so does God love His people; how much the more so
will God have compassion and forgive, if Israel will repent and return
to Him?

And that very night it seemed that God had ordained an ordeal for
Hosea to test him and inspire him in his further work as a prophet.

A message was brought to Hosea that his wife, Gomer, was to be sold as a
slave at public auction, in the slave market of Samaria, on the morrow!

CHAPTER III.

_The Repentant Returns._

With a bowed head, though with a stout heart, Hosea went to the market
place on the following morning. He mingled with the people in the
vicinity of the slave auction district, watching particularly a certain
block, on which, he was told, Gomer was to be offered for sale.

He studied carefully every woman that was put upon the block. At last
he recognized her. But how changed she seemed. Her beauty, for which
she had been famous, was gone. Her straight erect form was stooped.
Her eyes, once proud, were cast down. She had a forlorn, hopeless
look, as if she didn't care what happened to her. Evidently she had
suffered greatly.

Where had she been during the past four years? What hardships had she
been through that she was so changed? Why did she fall so low that she
had to be sold into slavery?

The answers to these questions would have made no difference in the
plan Hosea had determined to follow with Gomer. Standing on the
outskirts of the crowd, he raised bid after bid, until he bought her
for "fifteen pieces of silver and a homer of barley and a half-homer
of barley."

Gomer was not at all concerned about the one who had purchased her.
She did not take a single glance in the direction of those who were
bidding for her. When sold, she stepped wearily down from the block
and waited listlessly to be claimed by the owner and taken away.

Hosea approached her, stepped to her side and spoke her name in a low
voice: "Gomer!"

She raised her eyes and looked at him as through a haze. Hosea, too,
had changed much during the past four years. His love for Gomer, the
uncertainty of her whereabouts, his grief, his constant preaching to
Israel that fell on deaf ears, had made deep furrows in his face and
brought wrinkles to his forehead.

"Come with me," he said softly to her.

For a moment Gomer stared at him; then she fell in a dead faint at
his feet.

It was a long time before she revived. Sorrow and repentance for her
foolishness in leaving a home where her husband loved her and where
her children would have worshiped her, had she permitted them to do
so, had sapped all her strength. The sudden shock of seeing Hosea and
the knowledge that he had bought her as a slave nearly killed her.

But Hosea had no thought of revenge. In his great heart there was
naught but love for Gomer.

On their way home Gomer began:

"I regret," she said, "I am sorry--"

But Hosea stopped her. He would not even listen to words of explanation
from her whom he loved. He knew that she must have suffered much, that
she was unhappy. It was sufficient now that she was sorry, that she
had repented. Hosea did not want to cause her the pain of a recital of
her sorrows.

That is the way people who love truly do. They forgive and forget,
quickly and without causing pain.

Hosea had the children removed to the home of a friend for several
months. During that time Gomer quickly recovered from her trials and
returned to health and beauty. Then he brought the children back and
restored them to their real mother.

Once, after the reunited family had spent a very happy evening, a
tremendous truth came home to Hosea. Here they were all happy, as if
trouble had never entered to disturb the sweetness and beauty of their
lives! Why had sorrow and suffering come upon them at all?

Then and there Hosea realized that there was a purpose in his home
tragedy. He understood better than ever before that God had selected
him to be a prophet to his people; that God had taught him through
sorrow and suffering, the lesson he was to teach to Israel.

Israel had become faithless to God and had left His law; even as Gomer
had left her husband. God grieved for the sins of Israel; even as he
had grieved for Gomer who had strayed from him. God loved His people,
nevertheless; even as he loved Gomer, continually. God was prepared to
take Israel back under His guiding and loving care, when Israel would
repent of its backsliding and sinning; even as he did with Gomer.

From that day on Hosea's preaching took on a different form. He no
longer scolded and condemned, but entreated and pleaded with his
people:

"Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God,
For thou hast stumbled through thine iniquity.
Take words with thee
And return to God.
Say to Him,
'Pardon Thou wholly iniquity
And receive (us) with favor.
Assyria will not save us,
We will not ride upon horses (to Egypt);
We will no more say to the work of our hands,
"Ye are our god."'"

And, in the fervor of his poetic soul, the prophet hears God's answer
to repenting and returning Israel:

"I will heal their backsliding,
I will love them freely,
For my anger is turned away from them.
I will be as dew to Israel;
He shall blossom as the lily
And strike his roots deep as Lebanon.
His saplings shall spread out,
And his beauty shall be as the olive tree.
They shall return and dwell in my shadow,
They shall live well-watered like a garden,
They shall flourish like a vine,
Their renown shall be like that of the wine of Lebanon."

But such hopefulness and promise of divine love had no more effect
upon the doomed people than did the attacks upon their sinfulness and
wrongdoing.

The Judean prophet, Amos, it will be remembered, drew a picture of God
as a stern judge and Israel as the criminal. Israel is proved guilty
of all the prophet's accusations, and the Judge pronounces sentence.

The experiences that led the Samarian, Hosea, to prophesy were
different than those of the Tekoan. Understanding the lasting love
that dwelt within him for Gomer, and how he yearned for her return to
him, he cried out to his people, from the depths of a wounded heart,
speaking through the inspiration of a loving and merciful God:

"O my people!
How can I give thee up, O Ephraim!
How can I surrender thee, O Israel!
How can I give thee up as Admah!
Or make thee as Zeboim!
My heart asserts itself:
My sympathies are all aglow.
I will not carry into effect the fierceness of my anger;
I will not turn to destroy Ephraim.
For God am I, and not man,
Holy in the midst of thee;
Therefore I will not utterly consume.
Turn thou to thy God,
Keep kindness and justice,
And wait for thy God continually."

Although Hosea saw that he was laboring to no good effect, he did not
for an instant give up. Time and again he recalled the early days of
love and devotion between God and Israel. He recounted the times when
Israel deserted God, from the Exodus on, but God always received
Israel back, when the people repented of their sins and returned to
acts of justice, righteousness and love.

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