Studies in Hosea
12 - Hope for the Backslider
At the end of Hosea it’s evident that the game’s up. It’s over. There are no more last chances. The prophet’s preaching was finding fulfilment in daily events, for Samaria, Ephraim’s capital, fell in 722 BC. One can imagine hearing the breaking news “This is the BC World Service – Here are the headlines – Hosea was right.”
Powerful imagery has been used throughout the book. Israel has been compared to a prostitute, an unfaithful wife, a bride, a stubborn heifer, someone terminally ill, the prey of a wild animal, a mouldy inedible cake, a silly dove, a broken bow and a wild ass! But in the last chapter she is being beckoned again. The way is signposted with the landmarks which she passed on her spiritual journey into the far country.
If chapter 13 announced that Israel would be judged in the present, chapter 14 declares that she shall be saved in the future. This is incredibly good news. God’s love will win the day. There’s hope beyond judgement. God’s love is a committed love that will ultimately triumph. God’s mercy endures insult and injury from the one it loves. God moves into reconciliation without grudge or malice. He remains so utterly faithful when we turn out to be utterly faithless to Him. At conversion God’s love changes from a general love to a “never-let-you-go” kind of love. It is love like the Hebrew word ‘chesed’ which, as we discovered in chapter 6, is a covenant word meaning total devotion to someone, more loyalty than love. It means remaining absolutely loyal to the other covenant partner whatever they do.
Chapter 14 begins with ‘back to basics.’ The Message paraphrase reads, “O Israel, come back! Return to your God. You’re down but you’re not out. Prepare your confession and come back to God. Pray to Him, ‘Take away our sin, accept our confession. Receive as restitution our repentant prayers’” (verses 1 - 2). The prayer continues in verse 3 in the NIV: “Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount war-horses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon’s prayer had included these words, “When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you, and when they turn back to you and confess your name, praying and making supplication to you in this temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to their fathers” (1 Kings 8:33 - 34). A sincere repentance, words of true repentance only would suffice.
God promises to ‘heal their backsliding and love them freely’ (verse 4 AV). Three times Hosea uses the word ‘backsliding’ in his fourteen chapters. It is used in scripture only by Hosea and Jeremiah, both of whom spoke to a nation ready to go into captivity. Israel and Judah were guilty of backsliding, guilty of refusing to be led by God and refusing to come to God. The silly dove has finally come to its senses and ceased its flitting. The chronic sufferer has decided to change its doctor (5:13). The wild ass is seeking to eat from the Trainer’s hand (8:9).
God’s response, when they repent, is a love song. It’s the language of love, like the Song of Solomon that rings in their ears and carries them into exile. It mentions “dew (that refreshes) … blossom … lily … Lebanon … fragrance … dwelling in His shade … vine … wine.” Here’s the passage in full (chapter 8:4 - 7 NIV) “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily. Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots; his young shoots will grow. His splendour will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon. Men will dwell again in his shade. He will flourish like the corn. He will blossom like a vine, and his fame will be like the wine from Lebanon.”
Against all deserving, the marriage still holds. He is still hers. How can this be? The transformation has happened by chastening. It’s the triumph of love, the persistence of the “Tremendous Lover”, the vindication of the Lord’s ‘chesed’ - his devoted love for them. Israel has gone through the mill of her own choosing and in the end she’ll be more spiritually beautiful than she was before.
Moffatt translates verse 8, “What more has Ephraim to do with idols? ‘Twas I who humbled him, ‘tis I who will protect him. I am like a cypress evergreen: his welfare ever comes from me.” The folly of idolatry still stalks our land. Robert Murray McCheyne spoke of self-righteousness as the largest idol of the human heart. How God hates it. It sits on Christ’s throne and is a grim idol, like Manasseh’s carved image in the holiest of all. The idol of earthly pleasures in this hedonistic age is a smiling, dazzling idol with ten thousand worshippers, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.
Matthew Henry, who died in 1714 aged 53, writes in his monumental commentary that, according to Jerome, Hosea prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes and lived himself to see and lament it. The concise style of Hosea, in some places, seems like the book of Proverbs, without connection and rather to be called Hosea’s sayings than Hosea’s sermons. His final saying in his last sentence is his fundamental belief, “The ways of the Lord are right.”