Daily Devotional for Thursday, July 2

The Chastisement

“Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst,” Hosea 2:3.
At the end of World War II there was an outcry in several countries that had been occupied by the German Nazis against the women of that country that had slept with the enemy or married them and had children with them. As a form of chastisement and warning for others not to do the same in the future, they punished these women openly in the streets. These women would have their heads shaven and, in some cases, were stripped and paraded down the streets of the city. In some instances, they were hung in the public square or faced a firing squad.
Described in similar fashion, the Lord chastised Israel for her whoredoms and threatened to expose her and strip her back to what she was when she was born (Hosea 2:3). He even said that He will try to keep her from going down these paths again in the future; “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths” (Hosea 2:6). This may seem to be rough language from the Lord but they needed to hear the unedited truth of what would be their punishment. The Lord does not tell them this because He hates them, just the opposite; “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6). It is amazing to what lengths the Lord will go to restore His people.

THOUGHT
“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11).

Tim Chambers