Hosea and "the dying of the light"

 We have seen how the fear of the Lord is "the beginning of knowledge". To this we add "the fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride and arrogancy and the evil way" (Proverbs 8:13). The beginning of knowledge being love of good and fear of not aligning with divine order as to good and thereby not properly serving or even hurting the neighbor; so do we read in Hosea also:

"Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days" (Hosea 3:5). 

One draws your attention particularly to the "fear the Lord and his goodness" bit; which brings into sharp relief why the Church today teaches the doctrine of love as the fear of the Lord. 

As should be evident, no fear of goodness could possibly involve mere terror or fear of punishment. This is the fear of wicked people, who are those whom only the fear of punishment restrains. The fear of those who fear the Lord is "perfect love that casts out fear" and not some fear of torment. If anyone fears torment then perfect love has not cast out fear! Then there is no oil in their lamps! Then there is no love in their light, no heat in their hail (1 John 4:18). 

Hail strips their crops, they marry a whore and they marry an adulterer, the supply chain of loving deeds becomes broken! With love not gushing into the heart of the consumer at the end of the supply chain, into any of them personally, the light dies in their spiritual eyes. "And oil is carried into Egypt" (Hosea 12:1). And the oil of love of self and the world displaces the love of God and the neighbor, the oil which in the lamps of foolish virgins lacks. 

If fear of punishment reigns in someone's heart, then let one just put this situation into sharp relief: do you want someone not to murder you simply because they are literally afraid of their Creator?

Or do you want someone not to murder you because they recoil from such a hateful act as from a poisonous snake? 

I know which option I prefer! I prefer for people to want not to run over me while riding my bike because they do not want to cause pain and damage to the neighbor to be loved, not because they dread the consequences of running over me babump. 

But one has said they marry a whore. The source of this statement in Hosea states, "Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredom: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord" (Hosea 1:2).

Go, Hosea, arrange the props of correspondences so that they spell out the spiritual message at hand: namely that His people the Church have falsified the Word of God with the traditions of men, thus "departing from the Lord" as to the understanding of His truths.

We read a couple chapters down in the same prophet, "Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine. So I bought her for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley" (Hosea 3:1-2).

Go yet, Hosea, arrange the props of correspondences so that they spell out the spiritual message at hand: namely that His people the Church have adulterated the goods of Church and changed the Heavenly marriage thus into an infernal divorce.

One draws your attention to the "fifteen pieces of silver", which are props of correspondences arranged to indicate that there is little to no spiritual truth in the Church (silver in the reversed position) and little to no spiritual good in the Church "for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley". The Heavenly marriages or infernal adulteries have been arranged in a precise sequence within the Word of God which can be navigated like the backdoor in a piece of software or like a secret level in a game. But it is no game, or it is the game that we play for keeps. It is our covenant with the Lord and His people or our departure from love and wisdom into sin and error. It is our choosing or not choosing the fear of the Lord and His goodness. 

Of the entire book of Hosea we read, "[b]ecause the book of the prophet Hosea from the first chapter to the last is about the falsification of the genuine understanding of the Word and the resultant destruction of the church, and because whoring there means the falsification of truth, that is why the prophet was ordered to represent that state of the church by taking to wife a whore and having sons by her (chapter 1), and again by taking an adulterous woman (chapter 3) (True Christian Religion 247.

And we find ample corroboration of this compact summary in Hosea:

"When I would have healed Israel, than was the iniquity of Ephraim discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria: for they commit falsehood" (Hosea 7:1). So Hosea does indeed involve an extended look at the falsification of the Word by the Church, which is why it so frequently mentions Ephraim, which means the intellectual aspect or spiritual understanding of the Church in contradistinction to Manasseh, which means the heart or will aspect of the Church. 

As we have seen in Isaiah, the will of the individual or the Church may devour the understanding thereof; and the understanding of the individual or the Church may devour the will thereof. For it says in Isaiah that, " Manasseh shall devour Ephraim, and Ephraim shall devour Manasseh" (Isaiah 9:21). And we can very clearly know what this means by considering the impact of killing the conscience on the understanding, or of killing the understanding on the conscience.

If you commit the evil of pride, how can you avoid the bestial darkness and shadows which bolster the proud with their shield?

If you commit the evils of fornication and adultery, how can you avoid the specific falsehoods which accompany their commission? For all sins commit whoredom or adultery with falsehood. Ephraim thus devours Manasseh and Manasseh Ephraim.

We read further of Ephraim that he is "a silly dove without heart" (Hosea 7:11). The innocence of doves commends itself to us as an emblem of the love of God and the neighbor and the ideation appropriate to that innocence, that becoming as a little child, which we purpose in baptism ultimately to will by His love and accomplish by His power. 

What a silly dove, then, has no heart! For it is a dove without love; it is mere intellectual understanding of the carnal mind without the oil in the lamp, the love of God and the neighbor, the warmth in the eyes and the heat in the heart. 

It is an upside down or reversed dove; and likewise it is an upside down and reversed cake. We read that "Ephraim is a cake not turned" (Hosea 7:8). We read of the oven in which they cook the cake the following:

"For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait: their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire. They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all their kings are fallen" (Hosea 7:7).

How interesting that their very heart or will is the oven! It is in the oven of their hearts or our hearts that the cake is turned and comes out right from the oven; or comes out not turned and thus burned. For it is the oven of the heart or will which cooks the cake of love in the heart or will, which cannot happen successfully unless the baker turns the cake; being a baker who understands how to bake bread properly, thus joining understanding to love in the course of its loving execution. But here we have a baker who does not understand how to bake bread properly, who does not understand and who falsifies the Word to such a degree that it is a cake burned up, a cake not turned, a love not supported by ideation appropriate to love. 

The baker, remember, makes food that you eat. And you eat the fat of the land, you eat love, you appropriate love, you make love part of yourself, you write love on the book of your life forever.

And the butler, remember, holds Pharaoh's cup in the dreams of the butler and baker episode of the life of Joseph. So Pharaoh spares the butler, because the butler does not have an evil will but does have a false understanding; for it is cup and wine reversed. But Pharaoh does not spare the baker, whom he hangs, because the baker represents those with an evil will, an evil heart of love of self and the world which burns up the goods and the truths of the Church, which like Manasseh fain devours Ephraim. 

That is why the baker makes and holds a basket of goods which can be eaten; for things eaten are predicated of the will. Speaking of eating, notice what else Ephraim has done! Let's look again at this verse: "They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all their kings are fallen" (Hosea 7:7). It must here be noted that judges and kings are correspondences of truths in the understanding; so the oven or fire of love of self and the world has devoured and falsified the goods and truths but here especially the truths and understandings of the Church.

We have seen elsewhere roughly the same significance in the devouring by fathers and mothers of their children, by the devouring of enlightenment and compassion and of all the spiritual offspring which might have resulted from the conjunction of these. 

Again, the same meaning may be roughly expressed in terms of turning or deviating to the right or the left and away from the Lord: "Turn not to the right hand or to the left: remove thy foot from evil" (Proverbs 4:27).

Turn not away from compassion (deviation to the right) or enlightenment (deviation to the left). Devour not Manasseh (love in the will) or Ephraim (light in the understanding). But of course this is exactly what the children of Israel were doing! They were as we see "devouring" judges and kings, deviating to the left, falsifying the Word and both believing and teaching false beliefs. 

We see it even otherwise expressed further in Hosea: "Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit: yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb" (Hosea 9:16). The root is charity, and charity is the will of the Church; and Ephraim as we have seen all through is the intellectual aspect of the Church, so that love has grown cold and the understanding of love has gone dark. As such, there will be no offspring of good and truth and good deeds and loving.

If there are offspring at all if the love has grown cold and the understanding of love has gone dark, then these will of necessity be sins and errors, because these are all that can result when "the love of many shall wax cold", as Jesus states in the Olivet Discourse. 

The same has been elsewhere expressed as "sons of the sorceress, seed of the adulterer and the whore", the offspring of taking delight in falsifying the Word of God with the traditions of men (Isaiah 57:3).

Hmm! Notice anything about this verse in relation to Hosea? Hosea personally? Yes, Hosea was commanded to marry a whore (chapter 1) and an adulteress (chapter 3). So we can see just how intricately and densely woven God has made His tapestry of love and the ideation of love, His holy Word. 

So if all this has happened to Ephraim in Hosea, and the whole book of Hosea teaches the falsification of the Word of God by the Whore anti-Church, then what does this look like in real life? Let's see what Jesus says: "You do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).

Wow! The people whom the world thinks of as "the Church" have been represented in the Sadducees as knowing just about nothing at all. These Sadducees, by the way, believed not in the resurrection of the dead and thus life after death. And they believed not in angels. They believed not, in effect, in real religion. This is what is meant by, "When the Son of Man comes, will there be any faith on earth?" (Luke 18:8).

And the book of Hosea involves the death of that faith and the substitution of darkness for light from beginning to end. May the light of God shine within the clouds of your reading of Hosea; and may this light be of use to you in the workhouse of love, where you need light to bake bread; where you need true spiritual information to grow in love in spirit and in truth. We have only scratched the surface of all that Hosea says, which is apparently short and simple but internally so intricate; but sufficient light has been given to us to see just how huge the Word is once you enter it with the Heavenly marriage guiding your reading as also your life. Godspeed.

"Rage! Rage! against the dying of the light!" -- Dylan Thomas