Valley of Trouble to Door of Hope

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.” – Hosea 2:14-15

Hidden here in Hosea is an epilogue to the sad story told in Joshua chapter 7. Joshua leads the Israelites in the defeat of Jericho, but all does not end well. One of the Israelites steals from the spoils kept for the treasury of the Lord, and God’s resultant wrath causes them to lose their next battle against Ai. The culprit turns out to be Achan, who is stoned to death. Before his dies, he confesses: “when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Chinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them.” 

The place of Achan’s death is called the Valley of Achor; “achor” means trouble. Trouble found Achan and the Israelites the same way it found Gomer, in the violating of a covenant relationship with God by turning to shinier things. Hosea makes it clear that this is no mere legal infraction; this is the breaking of a love relationship. 

And yet, here in Hosea, God retells the story. You will answer me as you did in the days of Egypt. I will allure you with tender words into the wilderness. You will be given vineyards, and I will make the Valley of Trouble into a Door of Hope. There it is, the whole story of God’s people, Egypt to wilderness to the promise of fertile land, redeemed. Darkness in the valley transformed into passageways of hope. Even later, God will send Jesus, who left Egypt, who spent forty days in the wilderness, who says we are like vines who bear much fruit as we abide in Him. Who walked through the valley of the shadow of death, who experienced the judgment all the Achan's of the world deserved, to open for us a door of eternal hope: forgiveness for our troubling faithlessness, and redemption of our broken narratives. Jesus, who is God’s tender Word to us, the epilogue for all the stories in the Old Testament that have ever gone wrong.