The love of a Father and a Husband
| "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. 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) |
In chapters 1-3 we are blindsided by the image of Hosea being a faithful husband even though his wife is chronic in her unfaithfulness. In this "lived out parable" we see how God's love goes above and beyond what we could expect. When we expect Hosea to give up on Gomer ("and rightly so" we would say), he does the unexpected to pursue her, woo her and restore her.
Chapter 11 is part of the last section of Hosea which deals with God's ongoing love for His people, and it is one of the most gripping Old Testament pictures of God's relentless and indomitable love.
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 weeping over Jerusalem in the Triumphal Entry and the emotion in His voice as he told the 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 but 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.
