Genesis 40 Series, Part 23, Hosea 6:2
Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #23 in Genesis 40. We have been looking at the “three days” as it came up in Genesis 40. We have been comparing scripture with scripture in various places, and I want to go back to Hosea 6:2:
After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
Last time I mentioned that the two days ties into the early and the Latter Rain, the time in which Christ saved, doing “cures,” pointing to the work of salvation in the day of salvation. Then came the night when no man, referring to Jesus, can work.
We are looking at the word “revive” and how it is used in a few places. Let us go back to Judges 15 where we will find the same Hebrew word translated as “live” in the second part of the verse. It is Strong’s #2421, and we find this word concerning Sampson, who is a type of Christ in this passage. It says in Judges 15:14-20:
And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of JEHOVAH came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi. And he was sore athirst, and called on JEHOVAH, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
The word “revived” is the same word used in Hosea 6. We are going to look more at this passage in order to get a better understanding of this “reviving.” What is it directing us to understand?
First, we have to consider Samson as a type of Christ, and he picked up the jawbone of an ass. It was just the jawbone. Of course the jaw is where the mouth is located. He put his hand to it, as we read: “And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.” He turned it into a weapon, and he went to fight the Philistines, a great detachment of 1,000 men, and that number is multiples of “10,” which points to the “completeness” of the enemies of God in this case. Sinners are the enemies of God, and the Gospel went into a world of enemies, as it were. When a man’s way pleases the Lord, He makes his enemies his friends, and the “man” who pleased the Lord is the Lord Jesus. Christ’s way that pleased God was to pay for the sins of certain ones that were God’s enemies.
Again, here the figure is that he slayed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. Samson, a type of Christ, had his hand within the jawbone itself, and in the Bible the hand represents the “will,” so Samson’s hand is a type and figure of the law of God, or the law of Christ, concerning the jawbone of the ass.
The word “ass” is used in a few places in the Bible. God paints pictures, and that is why Christ always spoke in parables. And Christ was God made manifest in the flesh, and we read, “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them,” in Matthew 13.34. So He spoke in parables 100% of the time. When He taught in public to the crowds, He spoke in parables. He did not speak plainly. He did not say, “People, take my words very literally, and do not look for a deeper meaning. What I tell you plainly, that you should receive.”
But the churches tell people that they are to study the Bible using the plain, literal, historical, grammatical method of interpretation. They are saying that Christ spoke plainly and literally, but He did not. The churches with their so-called wisdom would not go contrary to the way Christ taught, would they? That would not be very smart. After all Christ is the Word made flesh, and He is God Himself, so they should realize that when Christ always spoke in parables, He was doing so intentionally in order to teach the reader of the Bible that this is the way in which they should understand the whole Bible. You would think that even a child could figure that out, but they could not figure it out.
You know, the principle of taking the plain, literal, historical, grammatical method of interpretation was not something that was commonly done by men in earlier centuries, but this practice is especially a hermeneutic developed by the end time theologians of the apostate church that God blinded. They stumble around in the thick darkness, spiritually, and they have developed hermeneutic of Bible study that is completely opposite to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word Himself. Of course we can see the fruits of that kind of Bible study. Just look at the churches. They have become a mockery worldwide, and they are completely insignificant. The world pays them no mind.
Again, we see Samson here as a type of Christ, and his hand is a figure of the will. What about the jawbone? It says in Exodus 13:13:
And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb…
What? That is strange. But that is the Gospel. John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” And here they are going to redeem the firstling of an ass with a lamb? This is because the “ass” is being used as a figure of men. Is that surprising? After all, the Bible says, “All we like sheep have gone astray…” So the figure of an “ass” is used instead of something that sounds much gentler, like a sheep. And yet we are stubborn in our sins, so an “ass” is a very appropriate typology to apply to sinners.
There are other verses in the New Testament, like the ass (donkey) and the foal of an ass that were tied up and bound, and the Lord sent His disciples to fetch them.. Whenever we find in the Bible something that is “bound” and then “loosed,” it is language of salvation because we are bound in our sins, and through the Gospel the Lord Jesus looses us in salvation. Significantly, when they were brought to Him, Christ sat upon them. He sat on the donkey, and “to sit” means “to rule,” and it indicates that He is Lord over the person God has saved. Again, the “ass” is a type and figure that refers to men, and we find this throughout the Bible.
Again, it was the jawbone of the ass, and not the entire ass. He did not take the leg bone or any other bone, but he picked up a jawbone. Why? It is part of the mouth, and his putting his hand in the “jawbone” is basically what God is doing now through me or any faithful teacher of the Bible. Again, we are likened to an ass that has been redeemed, and then God moves within us, does He not? We read in Philippians 2:13:
For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
The “hand” represents the “will,” and Samson’s hand was within, or attached to, the jawbone of an ass. So it indicates that this was His will: “I will use you as a destroying weapon.” And God can use His people as weapons. How does He do that? We study the Bible as He moves within us, and He opens up our understanding of hidden truths, especially at the time of the end, and then He moves in us to proclaim it. When we learn a truth, we cannot keep it to ourselves. We cannot keep it secret. It is a joyous thing to begin to see that which was “hidden,” and to understand it.
To make an analogy, in our modern day people can take submersibles like submarines, and they can go way down into the depth of the ocean, and they see creatures that have never before been seen. Man has never before been able to see all those things in the depth of the seas. When we watch those kinds of shows and we see these creatures we say, “Look what God has done! Look at this creature He has made.”
And it is a similar thing as we look for the hidden truths of God in the Bible. “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” He has given His people the task of searching His Word and uncovering truth, and when we find something we rejoice, and we cannot wait to share it. We want to share His truth once we have carefully and thoroughly checked it out. And that is what we speak. It is all coming from God. Of ourselves, what are we?
We will see here what Samson did if we go to Judges 15:16-17:
And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.
He made an end of speaking because he was speaking: “With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.” Then when he finished speaking, he cast away the jawbone out of his hand. Now what is the jawbone going to do? Nothing. It is dead. Of itself, it is dead, and that is how it is with Bible teachers or any elect child of God. The things we are able to do are all a result of God’s hand (will) moving in us. He turns us like water this way, and he turns us like water that way, and we go to this city to hand out tracts, or we go that city to hand out tracts; or we teach this message, or we teach that message.
God worked in the churches and congregations, and He moved preachers to preach over the course of the church age until the work was completed, or we could say until a thousand men had been slain, as it were. God’s Word is a savour of death unto death (or life unto life), and it did bring death to the enemies of God. It slew them. So the preaching was complete as Jesus made an end of speaking in the churches and congregations. That is what we looked at in our last study with the two witnesses finishing their testimony. They had been speaking, but then their testimony was finished. Satan rose up out of the bottomless pit at that precise time, and the two witnesses were lying dead, just like the jawbone was cast away. The purpose had been accomplished, spiritually.
Again, the end of speaking ties in with the end of the testimony of the churches, and He cast the “jawbone” out of His hand. So what that means is that when there are preachers in the pulpit of the churches that are continuing to preach without the will of God, there is no hand within the jawbone, as it were, and their preaching is dead. It is coming from a dead source. We read in Ezekiel 34 of what is basically being described with the casting away of the jawbone, as God brings judgment on the pastors. It says in Ezekiel 34:2:
Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH unto the shepherds; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?
Here, God is marking their sin, and it says in Ezekiel 34:9-10:
Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of JEHOVAH; Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them.
The shepherds were to cease from feeding the flock. Away goes the jawbone. There is no will of God moving them or blessing their preaching. “With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.” The preaching that is going on in the churches and congregations is no longer significant. They have become part of the world, and they have aligned themselves with the enemies of God.
Again, we read in Joshua 15:16:
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.
The word “Ramathlehi” has one Strong’s number, but it is two words. It is Strong’s #7437. In the concordance, we see it comes from the words “raw-maw'” and “lekh-ee'.” The word “lekh-ee'” means “jawbone,” and the word “raw-maw'” means “high place.” So it is the jawbone of the high place, so we can see that this is the location from which Samson, a type of Christ, removes his hand. Christ is no longer moving in the speaking within the churches, and He has cast it away. The word translated as “cast away” is used in Jeremiah 7:29-30:
Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for JEHOVAH hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith JEHOVAH: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.
The ”hair” is a covering. Jerusalem is likened to a woman because it is a picture of the bride of Christ, and yet they are the earthly outward picture of the bride of Christ that became apostate as they set up their “high places.” God brought judgment on the churches due to their high places. So His sanctuary was cast down, as it says in Daniel 8:11. The Hebrew word translated as “cast down” is the same word translated as “cast away,” as in casting away the jawbone out of his hand, and the churches are no longer operating under the will of God. They are operating on their own.
So the place was called “Ramathlehi,” meaning “jawbone of the high place.” God came to visit the churches and found no repentance for their high places, and the judgment of God on the churches during the Great Tribulation got under way.
Then it says in Judges 15:18:
And he was sore athirst, and called on JEHOVAH, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
We have run out of time for this study. Lord willing, when we get together in our next study we will see how this fits in with the “famine of hearing,” the 2,300 evening mornings that followed the end of the church age in 1988. Again, we will look more intently at that when we get together next time.