Marry Her Anyway — God's Strange Command

God told Abraham to take his son — his only son Isaac, the son of the promise, the son he had waited twenty-five years for — to Mount Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering. No explanation. No preview of what would happen on the mountain. Just: go.

Abraham went. He told his servants they would both return, which was either faith or hope or both. He carried the fire and the knife. Isaac carried the wood. And when Isaac asked where the lamb was, Abraham said: God will provide for himself the lamb.

On the mountain, the knife was raised. And then: do not lay your hand on the boy. The test was the obedience, not the act. A ram appeared. They called the place "The LORD Will Provide."

Hosea received a command that also made no human sense. And like Abraham, he obeyed it. The prophet who married a woman who would leave him became the living sermon of a God who loves the people who leave Him — and never stops pursuing them.

Moses was on the mountain receiving the law from God — forty days of direct encounter, the most intimate communication between God and man the world had yet seen. Below the mountain, the people grew impatient.

They went to Aaron: make us gods who will go before us. Aaron collected their gold and shaped a calf. They said: these are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. They held a festival to the LORD — at least they used His name — and sat down to eat and drink and rise up to play.

God told Moses: go down, for your people have corrupted themselves. They have turned quickly out of the way I commanded them. This is zanah in its earliest biblical expression — the people who were miraculously delivered, who had just heard the voice of God, who were days removed from the parting of the sea, who had seen every plague — turning to a golden calf within weeks.

The unfaithfulness that breaks God's heart is never the first step. It is always, as it was here, a turning away from something already given — a grace received and abandoned.

Moses warned Israel about what would happen when they arrived in the good land. When you have eaten and are full, when you have built good houses and live in them, when your herds and flocks multiply, when your silver and gold is multiplied — beware lest your heart be lifted up and you forget the LORD your God.

And then this: you may say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth." The forgetting was not forgetfulness — it was re-attribution. They would take what God had done and give themselves the credit. And the re-attribution would begin the forsaking.

Hosea married Gomer, and Gomer left for a life she thought was better. She took what Hosea had given her and attributed it to other lovers. "I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink."

God said through Hosea: she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil. The forsaking always begins when we stop seeing where the gifts come from.