 |
| Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1606), Mountain Landscape with River Valley and the Prophet Hosea. |
The Book of Hosea is 14 chapters long, so we’ll wrap up the last four of them today. They are a fairly unified set of four, and each is given a section heading in the NIV:
11: God’s Love for Israel
12: Israel’s Sin
13: The Lord’s Anger Against Israel
14: Repentance to Bring Blessing
As the titles would suggest, Chapter 11 is reassuring:
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboyim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities. (8-9)
And Chapter 13 is not:
When I fed them, they were satisfied;
when they were satisfied, they became proud;
then they forgot me.
So I will be like a lion to them,
like a leopard I will lurk by the path.
Like a bear robbed of her cubs,
I will attack them and rip them open;
like a lion I will devour them—
a wild animal will tear them apart. (6-8)
The prophesy in Chapter 12 is pretty dire:
…Ephraim has aroused his bitter anger;
his Lord will leave on him the guilt of his bloodshed
and will repay him for his contempt. (14)
And the prophecy in Chapter 14 is pretty hopeful:
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. (5-6)
In short, what is the message of the prophet Hosea? Well, clearly he is in favor of adherence to religious law and against dabbling in competing faiths. Beyond that, what does he tell us about the nature of God, or what is to happen in his future? The answer might be that he tells us so many contradictory things as to let us decide whatever we want, or so many contradictory things as to tell us nothing, or -- reasonably -- so many contradictory things as to suggest that God is too complicated to be easily pinned down in words.
No comments:
Post a Comment