Hosea 10
3For now they will say:
“We have no king,1
for we do not fear
Hashem;
and a king—what
could he do for us?
7Samaria's king shall perish
like foam on the
face of the waters. 2
8The high places of Aven3, the sin of
Israel,
shall be destroyed.
Thorn and thistle shall grow up
on their altars,
and they shall say
to the mountains, “Cover us,”
and to
the hills, “Fall on us!"4
1 Rashi
— "'they
shall say, We have no king,' Our king, upon whom we relied, saying, 'He will go forth at our
head and will wage our wars,' is of no avail to us."
Rashi's comment
clarifies the picture that the northern kingdom came to despair of its own
kings, in whom it had previously boasted, in the face of Sennacherib, king of
Assyria. They were made by G-d to
despair of their own kings because their kings had led them into idolatry. However, the language of the prophet suggests
a fatalism on the part of the house of Israel toward Hashem himself, which
suggests the overtone of disdain through sarcasm toward the hope of Mashiach.
2 This is a reference to the last king of the northern kingdom of
Israel, but there is a prophetic allusion at the same time to the king of
Assyria, who took the northern kingdom captive, and therefore took their
judgments upon himself. Ultimately there is a prophetic allusion to the final
king of the north in this same sense, and this is illuminated by The Book of
the Revelation of Yehoshua HaMashiach.
3 אָוֶן as a proper noun:
Aven =
"vanity". The poetic name is a
reference to Bethel.
1) a
name used contemptuously for the following places of idolatrous worship
1a) a
city in Egypt, possibly On (Eze. 30:17)
1b)
Bethel with its calf worship (Hos. 10:8)
1c) A
town or region in Syria (Am. 1:5)
אָוֶן as a common noun:
'aven:
strictly nothingness, trouble, vanity, wickedness, an idol
4 The prophet proceeds directly from the
era of weeds growing upon the place of the altars, the high places of the now
long past idolatry of Samaria, to a time of cataclysm and apocalyptic
judgment. In this way, the prophet
reveals that the sin of Israel will not by utterly purged until the end of this
process of judgment. Even though outward
idolatry may be made to cease by force, there will remain an inward conscience
of the guilt of idolatry that will bring out a deep seated fear of Hashem in
the whole house of Israel in the time of the end.
Revelation 3
12They who overcome will I
make a pillar in the temple of my God, and they shall not go out anymore: and I
will write upon them the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God,
which is new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God: and I will
write upon him my new name.5
Revelation
6
12When he opened the sixth
seal,6 I
looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as
sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig
tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14The sky vanished like a scroll that is being
rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.7
15Then the kings of the
earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and
everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of
the mountains, 16calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of
him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, 17for the great day of their
wrath has come, and who can stand?8
Revelation
7
1After this I saw four
angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds
of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.9 2Then I saw another angel
ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he
called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm
earth and sea, 3saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed
the servants of our God on their foreheads."10
5 The
temple of Mashiach's G-d is elsewhere said to be his body. The promise that those who overcome will be
made fixed pillars and will never in any sense have to leave the Temple of the
body of Mashiach again can be understood as referring to that state of maturity
to which Paul refers in Ephesians 4, when we mature to "the full measure
of the stature of Mashiach." There are three names referred to as if they
were one name, which Yehoshua promises personally to write, or seal, upon those
who overcome.
6 The audience for the Revelation is pictured as being the seven
assemblies in Asia, or any assemblies that they represent, or that take their
place if their menorah is removed from them.
That there are seven seals sealing the Revelation means that the
audience does not automatically have the ability to see or receive the
Revelation simply because they are the chosen audience to whom it is
given. It must be unsealed by the Lamb for
even the audience to whom it is given.
The first five seals involve the process of introduction, preparing the
hearts and minds and souls of the audience to receive and understand the
Revelation that is being opened for them.
The opening of the sixth seal issues in the announcement in full being
given of the beginning of the cataclysmic judgment of the Revelation of
Yehoshua HaMashiach.
7 Those in the audience who have eyes to
see and ears to hear what the Spirit reveals to the Great Assembly of the Seven
Assemblies will see, when the Lamb removes the sixth seal, that the earth
itself is terrified, and the sun also is in fear and hides itself, and the moon
mirrors the blood of the judgments to come in its face; the stars begin to fall
to their knees before their Maker; the fig tree, emblem of Torah Israel,
shudders in the knowledge that she is unprepared for her day of testing and
looses her unripe fruit. They will see
that the sky has lost all its power to rule over life and that the spin of the
earth has gone wild and that it has lost its balance to its core.
8 In Hosea 10 we saw that the children of Israel and their leaders
were prophesied to call out for the earth to fall upon them in the end of the
process of their judgment for idolatry.
Now we see that it is the leaders of the nations who will be crying out
for the earth to fall on them, but not only them, all who were beneath them,
the multitudes of their subjects with them, also crying out for the multitude
of the volcanic mountains of the earth to bury them. And we see that all these are the same ones
who have a memory of the words of the prophets of Torah Israel. And they have now heard and understood, but
with that same unrepentant and fatalistic fear of old, that it is the Lamb who
was slain about whom all the prophets of Hashem's final judgment wrote.
9 It is said immediately after that the withholding of all winds,
all currents of air movement upon the earth is designed to harm the seas, the
trees and the whole earth, every living thing.
This would be a complete and absolute judgment. However, it is stopped before it is
started. Not only is it stopped to save
the chosen witnesses of Hashem from the judgment that is coming on the earth, as
Israel was saved from the judgments upon Egypt in Goshen, but the nature of
those judgments will be seen after this to be changed in nature. Instead of one
overwhelming judgment of taking away all breath from the earth, the judgments
will be measured out according to the testimony of the witnesses of Hashem, as
the judgments on Egypt were meted out according to the word of Moshe and Aaron.
10 The children of Israel are commanded to wear a tefillin box on
their forehead between their eyes, as well as upon their hand, containing a
representative portion of the Torah.
Through the gift of the Holy Spirit the Torah is internalized entirely
by the one who overcomes, as Yehoshua overcame and sat down at the right hand
of G-d. When final judgment is brought upon the empires of this world and their
civilizations, upon the final civilization of all the cities of the globe, that
judgment will end the controversy that G-d has with the nations over his people
Israel, whom he has defined with his Torah.
The
faithful Torah remnant of all the tribes of Israel will be sealed in their
foreheads by the Spirit of Mashiach and their spirit of unity with one another.
For many generations it has remained concealed how it will happen that G-d will
again show that his judgments are upon the nations in order that they would set
Israel at liberty to serve him.
Although
it has long been sealed, it is certain that it will be revealed. For the sake of the salvation of the whole
house of Israel the breath of the whole earth will not be utterly taken away. The judgments when they come will be
mitigated, and it will be made known that the nations have G-d's love for
Israel, and his desire to save Jerusalem to thank for this.
In
Psalm 91 we read an explanation of why this is so. We see in this psalm a promise that those who
overcome will be kept in the day of the great trial of the earth, just as we
see in chapter seven of the Revelation.
In Psalm 91 it is told to us that it is through the true name of G-d
that his servants will be sealed for salvation in the trial in the day when the
judgments come upon the earth. This
corresponds to the focus of Yehoshua's prayer recorded in John/Yochanan 17, and
to his promise given to the representative assembly at Philadelphia in the
introduction to the Revelation.
Psalms 91
1Whoever dwells in the
shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2I will say ofיְהוָה 11 “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God,
in whom I trust.” 3Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. 4He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will
find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5You will not fear the terror
of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the
plague that destroys at midday.
7A thousand may fall at your
side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
8You will only observe with
your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.
9If you say, “ יְהוָה is my refuge,” and you make
the Most High your dwelling, 10no harm will overtake
you, no disaster will come near your tent.12
11For he will command his
angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; 12they will lift you up in their hands, so that you
will not strike your foot against a stone. 13You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will
trample the great lion and the serpent.
14“Because he loves me, I
will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. 15He will call on me, and I
will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor
him. 16With long life I
will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
Psalms 91
(NIV adapted)
11 I have written the name of G-d here in Hebrew, as it is. The first thing to understand, in order to
come to know the name of G-d is that it is not translatable into other
languages. If someone will know and
speak the name of G-d they must know and speak it in Hebrew. If they do not know how to speak the name of
G-d, still, so long as they know what it is in Hebrew and are with someone in
the fellowship of the Spirit who is a speaker of Hebrew and is praying with
them, the promise of this psalm will be fulfilled in them.
12 We see from the Revelation
that this will be fulfilled in the following way: The
forehead of such a one is to be sealed with the name of
the Father, in two further forms to represent the name of the city of G-d, new
Jerusalem, and the name of the Mashiach of G-d.
Jeremiah 16
21 Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know, this once
will I cause them to know My hand and My might; and they shall know that My
name is יְהוָה.
Jeremiah 33
2 “Thus says יְהוָה who made the earth, יְהוָה who formed it to establish it—
יְהוָה is his name: 3 Call to me and I will answer you, and will
tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.
