Hosea 11:1-11
The book named after Hosea is (almost) bracketed by two passages that reflect on the
implications of Hosea’s personal experience for his understanding of God and God’s relationship with Israel.
Chapters 1—3 speak of Hosea’s relationship with his wife, Gomer. That relationship becomes a prism through which the book invites people to look at Yahweh’s relationship with Israel. And/or, Yahweh’s relationship with Israel becomes a prism through which the book looks at the relationship between Hosea and Gomer. It is therefore, of course, Israel in its unfaithfulness to Yahweh that provides the lens through which the book looks at womanhood, as embodied in Gomer. This means that some harsh things get said about Gomer that can easily flow over into an attitude to womanhood in general, reinforcing patriarchal attitudes that often prevail in the church. It also means that some tough statements are made about Yahweh as resembling a cuckolded husband incensed with violent fury, statements that may bolster perverted images of God and encourage marital abuse and violence.
In chapter 11, the other side of the main body of the book’s prophecies, Hosea again presents us with the fruits of his reflection on his marital experience. It is a nice fact that this further reflection implies some rather different perspectives on God and on marriage and family. It suggests new insights on their interrelationship and on the way they help us understand each other. (The NRSV’s marginal notes draw attention to some problems about details of the text and translation, but these do not affect the main drift of the passage. The preacher will be advised to concentrate on aspects of the text unaffected by these difficulties, and we will do that here. We can then safeguard ourselves from making a point on the basis of some detail that is uncertain.)
Yahweh gives us a testimony to a long history of parental experience. In the picture Yahweh paints, Israel starts off as an orphan in Egypt. There in Egypt was this lonely child, and Yahweh fell in love with it, the way a couple who cannot have children fall in love with a child in an orphanage. There is a huge reservoir of love in their hearts and it longs to find an object. Yahweh is love, and this love in Yahweh finds its object.
So Yahweh summoned Israel out of Egypt as a son. Israel was adopted into Yahweh’s family. The really weird thing is that Israel has not related to Yahweh as one might then have expected. Instead of calling responsively on Yahweh, they have made a habit of making offerings to the gods of Canaan (v. 2b).
Like a mother or a father, Yahweh taught Ephraim to walk (v. 3a; “Ephraim” means the northern kingdom as a whole). Yahweh picked this child up when it fell over, and tended its grazed knees. But it did not acknowledge that Yahweh was the one who healed it. NRSV has “did not know”, but the verb yada‘ covers the range of “acknowledge, recognize” as well as “know”, and Hosea is fond of this usage. It is not that the child has received a present from an anonymous benefactor. It is that the child has refused to recognize where its benefactions came from.
Like a mother or father with a child that has just learned to walk, Yahweh has led Ephraim along and kept it on reins to make sure it did not wander too far and get into trouble. These are thus humane and loving reins. The love that set the adoption going continues as the parents bring up their child. Keeping control of children by means of “reins”, of course, is an image from animal husbandry, and by the time of v. 4b Hosea is more explicitly picturing Yahweh as like a farmer caring for animals. The wise and caring farmer or parent does not pull on the reins in such a way as to hurt the animal or child, and makes sure they get their food.
But the “child” has failed to “return” to Yahweh (v. 5). The verb is often translated “repent”. “Return” helps to make clear the nature of repentance. It is an act of the will: we turn from walking in one direction to walking in another. The verb reappears in v. 7. Strictly it means “turn” rather than “return”, and there NRSV assumes it refers to the fact that the people are turning (away) and not turning (back). The usage further clarifies the Old Testament’s understanding of the people’s relationship with God. It should involve walking in the way Yahweh points and not turning from this way, but if we do turn away, our business is to turn back.
So far God’s words have comprised a radical indictment of the people, and a threat to bring a radical calamity upon them, and much of their power issues from Hosea’s use of the parenthood metaphor. It has been in keeping with Hosea’s account of his parental experience in chapter 1, and his use of this image there to bring home the terrifying nature of what God will do to Israel. The parent owed this child nothing, but decided to love it, adopted it, delivered it from the place where it was being abused, taught it to walk, tended its hurts, protected it, nourished it…. But it has made no response. It has treated other people as its providers and not recognized who its parent was. It has been invited and challenged to come back, but has declined to do so. Therefore it will be thrown out.
But how could a parent do this (v. 8)? How can a parent divorce their child? Admah and Zeboiim are towns that shared the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut 29:23), but they are obscure places, and that makes the point that Yahweh could hardly treat Ephraim as if it were somewhere that we would find it hard to locate on the map. Yahweh recoils from the idea. Yahweh’s tenderness makes it impossible to act in anger. Yahweh does not go back on the feeling of anger or abandon it. Rather Yahweh determines to contain it, not to execute it (v. 9a). The Bible assumes that there is nothing wrong with anger in itself; it is part of the emotional repertoire that belongs to human beings through their being made in God’s image. It is an appropriate emotional response to the way people sometimes treat each other. The question is what we do with our anger. Are we in control of the occasions when we may properly express it and the moments when we should absorb its force within ourselves? There is more obligation on the stronger of two parties to absorb their anger. That applies to parents in general, and thus to Yahweh in particular.
The reason is that Yahweh is God and not a man (v. 9b). The NRSV has “I am God and no mortal”. It is natural to human beings to be overwhelmed by wrath and to have to express it, but God is different. God is “the holy one”. The distinctive nature of God as the holy one, not a human being, is to restrain and absorb anger, and to let tenderness win out over the instinct to lash out.
All that is true, though Hosea may also make a more subtle point. The Hebrew word for human being as opposed to God or animal is ’adam. That is the word we would expect to find if Hosea is contrasting God and human beings. But the word that comes here is not ’adam but ’ish. That word means man as opposed to woman.
That would imply the assumption that there is something different between the relationship that men and women have with their children. No doubt cultural factors operate here, yet physiological ones also operate. Hosea’s statements about his children in chapters 1—3 are perhaps ones that a woman could never make. But God’s relationship with Israel is more like a mother’s relationship with her children than a father’s. A father is more likely to express anger; a mother is more likely to absorb it. In this respect God is more like a mother than a father. Motherhood involves your whole being in a way that fatherhood does not. Some such awareness lies behind vv. 8-9. Perhaps Hosea learned it from Gomer. Whether that is so or not, Hosea seems to be reflecting the nature of a woman’s experience and letting that contribute to an understanding of God’s relationship with Israel. That provides a positive counterpart to the more negative tone of chapters 1—3.
Actually exile would come upon Israel. But that tenderness of Yahweh’s would mean that exile was not the last word. Israel will be able to come back (vv. 10-11). The children will find that the parents throw them out of the house for a while, but the door is not closed and barred forever.