HOSEA 3


2 So I bought her to me for 15 pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley:

Hosea, at God's instruction buys back to him his wife who had abandoned him and had sunk to the miserable position of a bond-slave, just as Israel had abandoned God and sold themselves into slavery by their sins.

Bro Growcott - I Will Return To My First Husband.



4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:

When the daily sacrifice was taken away by the Fifth Horn of the Grecian Goat in the days of Titus, it was only an interruption, not a final abolition, of sacrifice. It was a suppression of it for "many days," at the expiration of which it will be restored with other things suppressed.

Faith in the Last Days




Such has been the condition of Israel from that day to this. They have been abandoned by the Eternal's Archangel Michael, 

"the Angel of His presence, who saved them" (lsa. 63:9) 

in the days of antiquity; and they are repudiated by the Second Michael, whom they crucified and pierced. So that now they are 

"without a king, without a prince, without a sacrifice, without an erection, without ephod and teraphim"

 , in short, without any "caphporeth", or covering for sin, and, therefore, under sentence of death, "being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them."

What a pitiable condition for a people, formerly Yahweh's, to be in; a people, because abandoned of God for a time, styled Lo-ruhahmah and Lo-ammi. Such are Israel's names

 "till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled,"

 the nation that has not obtained mercy; the nation that is not my people saith Yahweh (Hos. 1:6, 8, 9).

And how blind must be their Rabbis and Scribes, and the multitude led by them, who "whatever may be the real character of the Christianity of the not more enlightened Gentiles around them," cannot see that Israel and Judah are not the people of the Lord.

The Eternal and "Michael their Prince" have turned their backs upon them, and as their royal prophet predicted, "their sorrows have been increased," because "they have hasted after another" than he whom they crucified, and God raised from the dead. As for him, the Nazarene, to whom the angel of the Eternal's presence bowed, he says concerning them in their Lo-ammi state,

 "I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips"

(Psalm 16:4).

Phanerosis - Michael the Great Prince