Like Gomer to Hosea, how unfaithful Israel was to her Lord. The prophet lists the ways in which the nation had sinned.
No faithfulness (4:1 3)
Lack of knowledge (4:4 6)
Imitating the priests (4:7 9)
Prostitution (4:10 14)
Idolatry (5:1 7)
Dishonesty (5:8 15)
Seeking help in the wrong place (5:13 15)
Still, God would have his people to turn, to return to him: “I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me” (5:15). Sometimes, when we know of someone who has spiraled down and down into trouble and despair, we want to ask, “Why didn't you come to me? All you had to do was ask; I would have been there for you!” As his children, our God is there for us. All we need to do is turn to him.
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be;
let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wand’ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander Lord, I feel it
prone to leave the God I love:
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for they courts above. --Robert Robinson (1758)
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