Studies in Hosea
10 - God’s Perseverance
There is great profit in studying the minor prophets such as Hosea. This is a book for the backslider with its heart breaking story. It tells of extraordinary graciousness on God’s part as He graciously disciplines Israel and punishes her gradually. Grace always precedes judgement. Israel’s sin was the sin of a people who had the Word of God and who knew God, but had now ignored every warning and turned from Him. They no longer knew Him nor worshipped Him.
We’ve reached chapter 12 in our study and it’s a puzzling chapter written in a condensed style. The scorching east wind of God’s judgement is blowing in, oven hot, from the desert. God intends to let the Assyrians come through the land just like the sirocco wind. Judgement is God’s strange work, His alien work, but as Spurgeon noted, “If we obey not the gentle drawings of His love, He will send affliction to drive us into closer intimacy with Himself.” Courting the super-powers offends God.
“Ephraim feeds himself on the wind; he pursues the east wind all day” (verse 1). The NIV Study Bible comments, ‘Pursuing the wind symbolised Israel’s futile foreign policy, which vacillated between Egypt and Assyria.’ Eugene Peterson in “The Message” puts it this way “Ephraim … tells lies non-stop, soul destroying lies. Both Ephraim and Judah made deals with Assyria and tried to get an inside track with Egypt. God is bringing charges against Israel. Jacob’s children are hauled into court to be punished. In the womb, grasping the heel, Jacob, got the best of his brother. When he grew up, he tried to get the best of God. But God would not be bested. God bested him. Brought to his knees, Jacob wept and prayed. God found him at Bethel. That’s where He spoke with him. God is God–of-the-Angel-Armies, God-Revealed, God-Known” (verses 1 - 5).
What’s required is plainly stated in verse 6, “You must return to your God; maintain love (it’s that chesed word again, which means devotion or true love), and justice and wait for your God always.” Ephraim has acted like a merchant using dishonest scales, crooked business practices. This suggests that Israel was no better than a Canaanite. “He loves to defraud” (verse 7) with the result that she has been lulled into a false sense of security by the seductive power of riches. “Ephraim boasts, ‘I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find in me any iniquity or sin” (verse 8).
God is the One who ‘spoke to the prophets, gave them many visions and told parables through them’ (verse 10). They were sent to make men think, to disturb and confront them. Moses was the prophet of the exodus as Samuel was the prophet of the settlement in Canaan. Now another prophet held centre stage – Hosea. He declares that “Ephraim has bitterly provoked God to anger” (verse 14). The Lord had redeemed them from slavery in Egypt, settled them in a land they could neither have won nor bought on their own, and their response has been rank ingratitude.
The note of hope in this gloomy chapter is the references made to Jacob. Hosea focuses on the deceitfulness of Jacob, that crafty shuffler, a most unattractive man who majored in deceitfulness. – just like the nation Israel. But the life of Jacob is a demonstration of God’s perseverance with man. God delights to work in cases like Jacob’s, for he starts where there is no promise of anything and produces something for his glory.
Consider this – Jacob strove with God. Jacob was hard work; from birth to manhood, he was a twister, crooked as a cork screw, skilled in sharp practice – yet God’s forbearance extended even to a rogue like him. Israel, as a nation, has been as bent as Jacob, so presumptuous, but God is the ‘Tremendous Lover’ who loves the unlovable.
Jacob fled to the country of Aram where he served his uncle Laban, that master of manoeuvre, to get a wife. He served 14 years. He went through life taking advantage of others, tripping them up so he could get ahead. Jacob had snatched at his destiny time and again – so had Israel and Judah with land grabs (chapter 5:10), rash treaties (12:1) and infatuation with Baal. Wasn’t the nation of Israel playing the same dangerous game? Trying to dodge God. With the entire universe to occupy God’s interest and attention, isn’t it staggering that He is interested in us?
God is spelling it out so clearly. The Message again: “Not so fast! I’m God, your God! Your God from the days in Egypt! I’m going to put you back to living in tents, as in the old days when you worshipped in the wilderness” (verse 9). God says, “The sins of Gilgal flourish just the same. Row on row of altars – like furrows in a field – are used for sacrifices to your idols. And Gilead, too, is full of fools who worship idols” (verse 11 The Living Bible).
God’s love will not let them go. He’ll transform Jacob into a prince however long it takes – centuries or millennia.
How wonderful that God condescends to be called ‘the God of Jacob’ (Psalm 146:5). He is the God of the misfit, the God of the warped personality, Jacob’s God is the God of long suffering. If you’re more Jacob than Israel, so was he when the call came in the far country (Genesis 31:3). Without stopping to exhort or explain, God disciplined him. The Spirit of God disciplines us all the time. Everything in our lives is directed to this end, to bring us to the place of Israel, a prince with God. Jacob’s trouble was himself – self-will, self-purpose, self-defence, self-desire, self-righteousness. Jacob’s self-life had to be dealt with. God weakened him. It’s the same story with the nation of Israel.