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Cheryl,
My apologies – I simply felt that the length & formatting of the discussion made it potentially cumbersome to put here as a comment – but per your request here is the cut and paste.

A Pagan Relationship with the Christian God

It is a common meme within the christian church that we are to have “a personal relationship with God” – but too often the idea is left at that without exploring what type of ‘personal’ relationship that we are called into.

The book of Hosea offers a stunning insight into the relationship that God has in mind. In this book, God paints a tremendous picture of the relationship between God and His people as a marriage relationship. And particularly striking is Hosea 2:16.

Hosea 2:16 ~ “It will come about in that day,” declares the LORD, “That you will call Me *Ishi And will no longer call Me *Ba’ali.” [NASB]

The use of transliterated words directly will immediately clue us in that this passage is rather difficult to really translate well. But stick with me – I assure you it is worth the effort. It speaks volumes about our relationship to God, and about a common misunderstanding of that relationship and God’s intended metaphor reflected in human marriage.

To set the stage God is speaking to Israel who had gone after other gods, through the metaphor of Gomer who is the prophet Hosea’s unfaithful wife. She has prostituted herself and God declared punishment to correct her unfaithfulness and is now declaring to her that He will restore her to Himself.

Many translations express this verse as: “It will be in that day,” says the LORD, “That you will call me ‘my husband,’ {Ishi} And no longer call me ‘my master.’ {Ba’ali}” [HNV]

But this doesn’t really get across the full Hebraic idea of this passage. To start “Ba’al” is a word which has a primary meaning of “husband” as well as “owner,” master,” or “lord” and was commonly associated with many Cananitic deities. But “husband” is a secondary meaning associated with “Ish” which is most directly translated as “man” (male). So what is the intended meaning of statement?

To understand this we have to look at the person being directly addressed: Gomer. Gomer has “gone after other lovers” (just as Israel had gone after other gods). She had said (Hos 2:5) ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ She had treated them as ersatz husbands, giving them power over her body in exchange for possessions. This is the key to understand this passage.

In effect she had said to these lovers ‘I will treat you as “Ba’al”… in exchange for certain wealth.’ This of course is the core of prostitution and this is the essential relationship concept of the ancient pagan religions. The Romans even codified it in their formula prayers with the phrase “do ut des” ~ “I give that you may give.” They acknowledged this and reminded their gods that nature of the religion was that “I sacrifice this thing so that you will bless me and perpetuate this cycle” This was the religious concept – one appeased the gods for the singular purpose of receiving blessing. The service to the deity was only a means to another end.

It is in this context that God addresses Gomer and through her Israel.
God says to her, in effect, “You pursued ‘husbands’ because you thought to gain possessions. You called them ‘my Ba’al’ so that they might give you flax and wool, wine and oil, silver and gold. But not only were they not your husband and not your master but you didn’t even know what that word means. What I mean by it.”

God does not simply tell her that the relationship would change but declares to her that her very understanding of this relationship would be fundamentally altered. He says to her – you will call me “Ishi.” For us non-Hebrew speakers we gain insight into this word by looking back to its first use in Genesis 2.

“… But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”{ish, ???}
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
[Gen 2:20b-24 ESV]

And the apostle Paul’s commentary on Genesis 2:
The woman was made for the man {ish}. [1 Cor 11:9]

God in effect tells her that she has looked at this relationship as a business exchange – Provision and possessions in exchange for physical mastery. But this was never the point. He says ‘Right religion, My religion, is not about duty-bound exchange. You were made for Me. Made to be with Me; you cannot be complete without Me. All this stuff that you have been chasing is not evil in itself but it has blinded you to what your real deepest core need is, it is was always Me.’ When God says “shall call me ‘Ishi,'” He says ‘I know that you have obeyed your own lusts and given service to other gods, other masters; but you were made for Me. All your self-centered desires lead only to death; but I shall restore you beyond your dreams, and you shall be Mine in a way you never could even have comprehended.’

Not to say that God would not provide as a Lord or that she would not obey Him as Master. Rather He makes it clear that when she really understands what the relationship is about, His provision will be beyond her wildest expectations. He tells her that she will experience a peace and prosperity she never imagined that there will be no war at all or cause for alarm and God’s covenant will extend even to the animals. [Hsa 2:18 & 22] And He tells her that she will obey Him in a way that she had never even dreamed. He tells her that she will be set apart unto Him in righteousness and faithfulness (“betrothed” comes from the same word-root as the Hebraic word for “holy”).

This tendency is one of the most pervasive follies of human religion and of the human spirit – often even within the walls of the congregations of the church herself. Religion often appeals through promises of blessing. But if we follow God only on the promise of blessings in our life then we have missed the core of our calling to Him. Not that those blessings are wrong: health, a good family life, financial security are blessings. But if these are our priority then we offer ourselves to God only as a prostitute – not as a betrothed, not as a lover. He is to be our Husband as our Lord, King and Master [Jer 3:14, Jer 31:32] – but these are corollaries of the central truth: that we are made for Him, that we are to be satisfied first and foremost in Him. All other blessings, though good and though He delights to give them to us are secondary to His own personal presence in our lives.

Tim Keller eloquently captures this perversion of the christian church by saying “It is the difference between those people who pray the ‘Our Father’ and those who talk to their Father.”

And at the end of it all, let us not forget the metaphor which God has used to express this truth. Marriage. For as God’s metaphor our marriages are supposed to reflect this truth; to ourselves, to each other, and to those around us. If I, as husband, were to provide only as my wife honors me – then I would not reflect God but the petty pagan “Ba’alim” of the Caananites, and the wives likewise in their honor. For “man cannot shut up about the gospel.”