…She will give herself to me there, as she did long ago when she was young, when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt. “When that day comes,” says the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master.’” – Hosea 2:15-16
Hosea is a complicated story in the Old Testament. In it, God tells the prophet to marry a prostitute, surely a taboo situation during his time. God uses this marriage between a man of God and a sinful woman to symbolize the Lord and Israel. Even though this message was primarily for a group of people at a certain point in history, it can still apply to us today. God is still God, the loving and forgiving one in the relationship. And we, like Israel and Gomer (Hosea’s wife), are the ones who keep messing up and turning away from God.
In this passage, God turns the tables on how the creator/created relationship works. We see it as master/slave: God is in complete control, and we have limited access to Him. But that’s not how God wants it to be. If we give ourselves to him, He will free us, and he will instead become our husband - loving, forgiving, protective.
God doesn’t want us to view our relationship as a business arrangement. He wants our relationship to be a love story.
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