Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.
"Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope.
Hosea 2:14-15a
"Who is this coming up from the wilderness
Leaning on her beloved?"
(Song of Solomon 8:5)
The "her" in the Hosea passage is an unfaithful wife -- symbolically Israel, but this can be a picture of all of us, since we have all been unfaithful to the Lord. An earlier line sums up the fallen human condition (Hosea 2:8): "For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal."
Now in verse 14, the Lord is wooing back His unfaithful wife, alluring her and speaking kindly to her in the wilderness.
What really strikes me is the line
"Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope."
A cross-reference here takes me to Joshua 7:26, the last line in a distressing story about sin and an Old Covenant punishment required to appease the Lord's anger. The name "Achor" means trouble. This will sound strange, but when I first read "I will give her...the valley of Achor as a door of hope," it made my heart sing. Trouble, given to me in love and mercy by the Lord, is His means of leading me to a deeper well of hope.
Why does He not take us directly to this deeper well of hope? Perhaps, in part, this:
"We who attempt to assuage the griefs of mankind must ourselves be acquainted with grief, and become men of sorrows." F.B. Meyer, The Way Into the Holiest |