"When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 But the more I called Israel,
the further they went from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals
and they burned incense to images.
3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love;
I lifted the yoke from their neck
and bent down to feed them. Hosea11:1-4
We come to the last section of Hosea which deals with God's ongoing love for His people. Chapter 11 in particular is one of the most gripping Old Testament pictures of God's relentless and indomitable love.
When we looked at chapters 1-3 we were confounded by the image of Hosea being a faithful husband even though his wife was chronic in her unfaithfulness. In this "living parable" we saw how God's love goes above and beyond what we could expect. When the world expected Hosea to give up on Gomer, he did the unexpected to pursue her, woo her and restore her.
Now in chapter 11 the imagery changes:
Here God is portrayed, not as Husband, but as Father.
God is the Father and Israel is the son.
And what sad imagery it is:
From the very beginning the Father has loved Israel.
He has held them in His arms, He has taught them to walk, He has healed them, rescued them and fed them.
But there has been a sad cycle: He calls and they move further away!
This passage vibrates with emotion and sadness. If we imagined that God had physically written these words on a scroll, it would be easy to imagine the tear-stains on the ink.
Think about Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son... I imagine that the Father in that story would read these words of Hosea and say "That's how I feel..."
It's easy to imagine God as a Righteous Judge being angry and indignant at our sin. Hosea's poetry catches us unaware. A Great God who grieves, heartbroken, over His children is not what we would expect...
But it's true.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
