START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Hosea 11:1-11
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OBSERVE:
This prophetic oracle from Hosea captures God’s deep sense of ambivalence about Israel. The Lord loves Israel as a father loves a child; and yet, Israel has estranged itself from the Lord by worshiping other gods.
The Lord begins by focusing on the salvation history of Israel, with the bondage of Israel in Egypt. In one brief sentence, he sums up his fatherly relationship with Israel:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
This deep parental love increases the sense of grief that God expresses at the puzzling behavior of Israel:
The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and offering incense to idols.
In vivid imagery, God describes his relationship with Israel in terms that a grieving parent might use when remembering the childhood of his rebellious offspring. His language is tender and caring:
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them up in my arms;
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness,
with bands of love.
I was to them like those
who lift infants to their cheeks.
I bent down to them and fed them.
But this isn’t mere nostalgia, or a parent reminiscing over a family photo album. This is a warning to the child that he loves. He warns Israel that their behavior will return them to bondage in Egypt, and to the new imperial power of Hosea’s time — Assyria.
He warns that the sword will consume cities and also the oracle-priests who are devouring the people by their plots. The oracle-priests were the false priests who used magic incantations and consulted idols to offer guidance to King Jeroboam II and his people.
Curiously, Israel pursues a kind of “both/and” policy in their religious practices. They consult these oracle-priests and worship their Baals, but they also call upon the Most High, who is the Lord. But the Lord doesn’t heed their call.
Still, the Lord’s attitude toward his Israel is like that of a father who grieves over a wayward child. In a passage filled with pathos, he cries out:
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, O Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart recoils within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.
Admah and Zeboiim were cities that were destroyed as part of the collateral destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Part of the warning to the people of Israel in the days of Moses 500 years earlier included stern admonitions against idolatry, and used these cities as an example of divine judgment (Deuteronomy 29:21-29).
And yet, God’s love for Israel still burns so warmly that he is reluctant to enact this warning against them:
I will not execute my fierce anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
for I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
Ephraim, of course, was one of the two sons of Joseph; and Ephraim became one of the tribes of Israel. In this context, Ephraim is a synonym for Israel, the Northern Kingdom.
God expresses his patient mercy by declaring that he is God and no mortal and won’t come in wrath. But if there is any doubt of his power, he describes himself with a mighty metaphor:
They shall go after the Lord,
who roars like a lion;
when he roars,
his children shall come trembling from the west.They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt,
and like doves from the land of Assyria;
and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.
The fact is that Israel will be exiled. But the roar of the Lord will summon them back home from their places of exile. The father will welcome the prodigal child home again.
APPLY:
While there are many metaphors and images that are used in Scripture to describe the relationship between God and his people, none is more powerful and more intimate than Hosea’s description that God is a loving father who cherishes his children. The people of God are God’s family.
However, this image also brings with it deep feelings of regret and even grief. Just as Israel was loved, taught to walk with God, and cherished as a father cherishes a young child, so have we all been loved by God.
And just as Israel rebelled against their Father, and worshiped their own pleasure and sought alternate sources of power, so have almost all of us who are honest with ourselves.
The parable Jesus tells of the two sons and their father in Luke 15 seems almost a commentary on Hosea 11. Except it is not only the “prodigal” son who leaves his father’s house — the “dutiful” older son refuses to enter the house because of his jealousy and pride. I say that whatever separates a person from God is sin — whether it is carnal sin and profligacy, or self-righteous pride.
The bad news in this passage from Hosea is that there are consequences for our departure from God.
The good news is God, like the father in Jesus’ parable, is always ready and eager to welcome us back.
RESPOND:
This passage has a two-edged blade. On the one hand, I’ve been the parent who loved and grieved a child who was going through a rebellious phase. I can identify with God’s self-description of tenderness and affection — and with God’s deep grief at feelings of rejection. I do rejoice that for me those relationships are healed and hopeful.
But on the other hand, I’ve also been the rebellious, self-willed, self-seeking child who sought happiness and fulfillment outside of God. And it grieves me to have caused my heavenly Father such sorrow. I am so grateful that he has given me ample opportunity to repent and return to him.
Lord, your love for your children is infinite. Thank you that you never give up on us, though we may turn away from you. Amen.
PHOTOS:
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