A number of years ago we were reading the new baby names that came out in the paper. We all couldn’t believe one of the names—Rebel Renegade something. I hope that kid got his name changed. Can you imagine what a parent is speaking over that child?
And yet it happened in the Bible. The Lord told Hosea not only to marry a prostitute, but to name the children after things that would happen.
The first kid was named Jezreel which means “scattered” and that’s exactly what the LORD was going to do. He was going to scatter his people Israel. The Assyrians would come in and do just that.
The second kid was named Lo-Ruhamah which means “not loved”. Not so nice. The Lord said the name was to show that the LORD was no longer going to show love and forgiveness to Israel, the northern kingdom, but just to Judah the southern kingdom. The reason was for their many sins.
The third kid was Lo-Ammi which means “not my people”. This was a name of rejecting that God was rejecting his people as they had already completely rejected him.
Wow. Those names are rough. And they would be shocking. Can you imagine going up to the prophet and saying, “Cute little boy you have there… what’s his name?”
And then to hear, “Not loved.”
To say that would be a shock would be no small thing. But God was using everything to shock the people awake but the hearts of the people were so hard, they didn’t get it.
But in this there is a hope.
God says there is coming a day when the Israelites will be great in number. Where they were once called ‘Not my people’ God would would then call them “sons of the living God’. There would be a day when the nations of northern and southern Israeli oiled unite again and again have one leader. And then it says one day “great will be the day of Jezreel”.
What is the “great day of Jezreel”? Jezreel means “scattered” but it also means “sown seed.”. So we see that this is either the harvest in that Israel is brought back home to become one nation, or it means that God is once again going to plant them in Israel. Either way, the picture is of God’s restoration of his people.
That generation would mostly die away before they would experience that restoration, but the LORD says it will come. God was not going to destroy Israel forever as they would violate his eternal covenant with them, but that he would discipline them.
So yes, it seems rough and harsh that God would instruct Hosea to name the kids something so utterly shocking. God was regularly doing shocking things to wake the people up to repentance, albeit to no avail.
But there was a message of hope. There was going to be redemption. God was going to change the names to planted instead of scattered, my people instead of not my people, and it says that they would once again be loved, forgiven and united.
