Put down the raisin cake

Hosea go love Gomer again. That was the command. It was to demonstrate the love God had for the Israelites despite an important aspect that we may overlook: the raisin cake!

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” (Hosea 3 v 1)

What a strange thing to add as a complaint: they love the sacred raisin cakes.

There’s nothing wrong with the raisin cake itself. In 2 Samuel 6:19 David hands out the raisin cakes to the people after the celebration of the ark being back in its rightful place. They are mentioned in a few other places and also in a mourning kind of way of what has been lost, in Isaiah 16:7, “Therefore the Moabites wail, they wail together for Moab. Lament and grieve for the raisin cakes of Kir Hareseth” Those must have been great raisin cakes in Kir Hareseth!

But why does tell Hosea He has a problem with them?

This seems not only micro-managing over something so harmless it just reads a little weird. I mean how do you preach against raisin cakes? But the NIV helps because they include a word before the raisin cakes that some of the other translations and that is ‘sacred’. So what may be the problem here?

“Hosea go and love Gomer again as an example of my love for my people even though they eat the sacred raisin cakes.”

• They are a luxurious item: they love wine (4:10) and they build palaces (8:14) and they eat raisin cakes!
  • Love the temptations of materialism and you will drift from the Lord. Focus on your belly or what you have or even what you don’t have that others have, it will distract you. It will become so important to you that your love for God will diminish.
• They are a sacred item: they are ‘sacred’ raisin cakes. They could have been eaten at the altars of foreign gods.
  • Love these and you love other altars not the true altar. It is symbolic of God’s people trying to compromise in loving God and loving their cultural practices equally. This is not the abandoning of God per se but worshipping Him through other altars also, it is idol worship.
• They are a distraction item: It signifies wilful rejection of God.
  • The people were focusing on dried fruit when they could have given themselves to the God of everything, He owns all the fruit! They settle for second best.

Materialism, Idolatry, distraction combined with complacency, pride and self-centredness meant they turned their back on the One who provides.

But still He loves them!

That is the lesson of the sacred raisin cakes!