Hosea 2

1 "Say of your brothers, 'My people,' and of your sisters, 'My loved one.'

Israel Punished and Restored
2 "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.

3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
turn her into a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.

4 I will not show my love to her children,
because they are the children of adultery.

5 Their mother has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, 'I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'

6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.

7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
'I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.'

8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.

9 "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.

10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.

11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.

12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.

13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,"
declares the LORD.

14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16 "In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master.'

17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.

18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.

19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.

20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.

21 "In that day I will respond,"
declares the LORD—
"I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;

22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.

23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.'
I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people';
and they will say, 'You are my God.' "


I posted my commentary in the comments section

click the "Hosea 2" title at the top to view both the passage and my comments at the same time.

Hebrews 11:17-19

  17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, 
offered Isaac as a sacrifice. 
He who had received the promises 
was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 
18 even though God had said to him, 
"It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." 
19 Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, 
and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Abraham had received an incredible gift from God, a son, which the Lord asked him to sacrifice for His sake, despite what he'd thought he'd heard from God. In fear, and in faith, he obeyed, and prepared the death of his son on the alter. 

The case of Abraham presents two reasonings for sacrificing his son for the sake of obeying the commandments of the Lord: 
  1. That God has the ability to raise people from the dead, and therefore could raise his son from the dead if he were to lay down this sacrifice at the alter, and the the Lord would fulfill His original promises of future generations being born through Isaac. 
  2. That Abraham had heard wrong about the Lord's promises, and the future generations to come, and that God had other, greater plans, and that God could be trusted to provide in spite of the death of his son through the sacrifice he would make. 
Regardless of the outcome, Abraham trusted in God. 
He had faith, he had fear; he obeyed even when the commandment of God 
seemed contradictory to everything he knew
and the Lord provided. 

99 Problems...


but my KICKS ain't one!

the new model off Jay-Z's shoe line (ROCAWEAR) has been released to the press, and let me say - I want them. bad. By definition - baller. and they're conveniently priced at $84. (any awesome designer shoe >$100 is fairly priced in my book)



In other Jay-Z news, check out my favorite remix of the year thus far:


Enjoy!
(5/12/09)

Questions

"I came for your questions of what you don't know 
But you can't see the answers unless I go
So give me your hatred and give your diseased
Give me your tired and I'll take them with me
Cause I'm hanging here losing every part of me
Just to open your eyes to what you would never see
And to answer your questions there's no place that I'd rather be"
- Jon McLaughlin