{"id":7686,"date":"2016-06-19T00:22:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T07:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7686"},"modified":"2016-06-19T00:22:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T07:22:12","slug":"bed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/06\/19\/bed\/","title":{"rendered":"Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBut come here, you sons of a sorceress,
\nOffspring of an adulterer and a prostitute.
\n\u201cAgainst whom do you jest?
\nAgainst whom do you open wide your mouth
\nAnd stick out your tongue?
\nAre you not children of rebellion,
\nOffspring of deceit,
\nWho inflame yourselves among the oaks,
\nUnder every luxuriant tree,
\nWho slaughter the children in the ravines,
\nUnder the clefts of the crags?
\n\u201cAmong the smooth stones of the ravine
\nIs your portion, they are your lot;
\nEven to them you have poured out a drink offering,
\nYou have made a grain offering.
\nShall I relent concerning these things?
\n\u201cUpon a high and lofty mountain
\nYou have made your bed.
\nYou also went up there to offer sacrifice.
\n\u201cBehind the door and the doorpost
\nYou have set up your sign;
\nIndeed, far removed from Me, you have uncovered yourself,
\nAnd have gone up and made your bed wide.
\nAnd you have made an agreement for yourself with them,
\nYou have loved their bed,
\nYou have looked on their manhood.
\n\u201cYou have journeyed to the king with oil
\nAnd increased your perfumes;
\nYou have sent your envoys a great distance
\nAnd made them go down to Sheol.
\n\u201cYou were tired out by the length of your road,
\nYet you did not say, \u2018It is hopeless.\u2019
\nYou found renewed strength,
\nTherefore you did not faint. (Isaiah 57:3-10)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God graphically describes the disloyalty of his people, trying to get them to understand just how much they have hurt him, how his heart had been broken. \u201cUncovering\u201d yourself and \u201clooked on their manhood\u201d or literally, \u201clooked at their nakedness\u201d are Hebrew idioms indicating sexual activity. Israel\u2019s worship of other gods is described in terms of sexual infidelity; Israel is portrayed as a wife who has traveled far for her affairs with other men only to find that nothing cooled her ardor or made her rethink her infidelity.<\/p>\n

Israel worshipped a wide variety of gods and goddesses. Molech, an Ammonite god, was worshiped by sacrificing children to him. Ashera was a popular deity among the Israelites as well, a fertility goddess whose wooden poles\u2014phallic symbols\u2014stood on hills and other high places throughout the land, while those who worshipped her engaged in sympathetic magic: sleeping with the priestesses devoted to her.<\/p>\n

And yet the Israelites felt no shame; in fact, they ridiculed those who insisted on worshipping God alone, and laughed in God\u2019s face. Arrogantly they insisted on their own ways, doing what they wanted to do regardless of the pain they caused God, feeling no guilt over their betrayal. <\/p>\n

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\u201cBut come here, you sons of a sorceress, Offspring of an adulterer and a prostitute. \u201cAgainst whom do you jest? Against whom do you open wide your mouth And stick out your tongue? Are you not children of rebellion, Offspring … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7688,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7686\/revisions\/7688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}