Hebrew Word Study – Speak to Her Heart – Divaeti al Livah – Daleth Beth Resh Taw Yod  Ayin Lamed   Lamed Beth Hei

Hosea 2:14: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.”  I remember as a child I was so terrified that I wasn’t saved.   I would constantly pray the sinner’s prayer and hope I said the words right.  I would try with all my might to repent, but still never feel that assurance that everyone talked about.  If I came home from school and no one was home, I would quickly turn on the radio to our Christian radio station, if they were still broadcasting I would know the rapture had not occurred and I was not left behind. 

One day I was reading a Question and Answer book by John R. Rice when someone asked a question identical to mine (and I thought I was the only one who had that problem).  She said she would pray constantly to be saved and try with all her might to repent but never “felt” saved.   Dr. Rice answered by saying: “God wants you a million times more than you want Him.”

Ever since that time, I have searched the Scriptures for confirmation of that statement and almost every day I am always finding confirmation.  He does indeed want us a million times more than we want Him.  

If that were not the case, then way would he have to allure us as we find in Hosea 2:14.  I swear, some of these translators must be or have been dusty old professors sitting up in their ivy towers who hadn’t kissed their wives in twenty years.  The word allure is pathah which is in a piel participial form for crying out loud.  Is allure the best they can do?  Allure would probably fit in a simple verbal form but in Hebrew this is in a piel form which intensifies the verb. Hence we would have to say something more intensive than allure which in my understanding of English would be to seduce. Consider that God loves us, and wants us so much that He is seducing us and most likely trying to seduce us right now, at this moment.  Yet, like some absent-minded professor we are so busy with our present concerns, so focused on the cares of this world that we are totally unaware of God’s attention. 

Once we are seduced he will “bring” us into the wilderness.  “Bring?”  This word is yalad. This is in a hiphil form.  He is not bringing us anywhere, He is carrying us away.   I mean this is Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman walking into the factory in a full-dress officer’s white uniform picking up a dirty, grimy, factory-working Debra Winger and carrying her out and away from her depressing, mundane existence. 

Then it says he will take us out to the wilderness and speak comfortably to us.  Come on, if He is going to carry us out to the wilderness he is going to do more than speak comfortably unto us.  I tell you before a bunch of scholars get together to make yet another translation of the Bible,  Grace Livingston Hill has got to be required reading before they translate the Book of Hosea.  For one thing, the word speak is devar which is to speak with power and authority. It is the Hebrew equivalent of rhema.  In the Hebrew, it does not say he will speak comfortably, but he will speak to our hearts.  However, the word “to” is not there, it is the word al which means “with.”  He will speak with our hearts.  He will look into our hearts and see our deepest longings and desires and speak them to them.  Like George Bailey in Its Wonderful Life,  “You want the moon, I’ll give you the moon?”  The only difference is God can give us the moon. But who wants a barren old rock, I’ll just take Him.  

Now if God is pictured as such a desperate lover, do you think we need to beg and plead with him to forgive us and save us?   All Gomer had to do was  look into Hosea’s eyes and simply  say, in the words of Barbara Lewis, “Baby, I’m yours.”  

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