“Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths.” Hosea 2:6
December 9, 2024
God in His rule over all our circumstances chooses to set up hedges around His people. God set up a wall of protection around Job to limit what Satan could do to him (Job 1:10; 3:23). In the early 700s before Christ God set up a hedge around Gomer, Hosea’s wife, representing Israel. She had become enslaved to her lovers (Israel’s pagan neighbors) to satisfy her desire for security. This was essentially worship of Baal (a false deity), and other Canaanite gods. God shut Israel up by a woven hedge of thorns to block her way, to frustrate her in the pursuit of pleasure and prosperity. God can do this to us to bring us up short so that we will not attain our desires. For example, “If I can go to such and such a psychiatrist, or seminar, or whatever thing I think will make me better.” But things go from bad to worse. Where are we trying to find our happiness? Maybe my life of continued frustrations is because God is being blocked out of my life (Hosea 2:8). We, like Israel, can ignore the true Giver of what we need.
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“O Sovereign Lord, open my eyes to those goals and wants that are standing in the way of knowing you as I should.”