Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hosea 11:1
When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
1. When Israel was a child ] i. e., in the earliest stage of Israel’s national existence, which is here dated, not, as in Hos 2:3, from the wanderings in the wilderness, but from the sojourn in Egypt. For the figure, see on ‘gray hairs’, Hos 7:9.
called my son out of Egypt ] ‘Called’ him, locally, into the land of Canaan, and morally, to set an example of true religion. Comp. Exo 4:22, ‘Israel is my son, my firstborn; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me.’ The words are quoted in St Matthew (Hos 2:15), who renders from the Hebrew, in connexion with the sojourn of the child Jesus in Egypt. Like the portraiture of the Servant of Jehovah in the second part of Isaiah, the description of Israel as Jehovah’s Son was held to be at least in part applicable to the one perfect Israelite. The national ideal never realized in the nation was realized in the Christ. The divine purpose so often baffled in the one was completed in the other.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
When Israel was a child, then I loved him – God loved Israel, as He Himself formed it, ere it corrupted itself. He loved it for the sake of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as he saith, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated Mal 1:2. Then, when it was weak, helpless, oppressed by the Egyptians, afflicted, destitute, God loved him, cared for him, delivered him from oppression, and called him out of Egypt. : When did He love Israel? When, by His guidance, Israel regained freedom, his enemies were destroyed, he was fed with food from heaven, he heard the voice of God, and received the law from Him. He was unformed in Egypt; then he was informed by the rules of the law, so as to be matured there. He was a child in that vast waste. For he was nourished, not by solid food, but by milk, i. e., by the rudiments of piety and righteousness, that he might gradually attain the strength of a man. So that law was a schoolmaster, to retain Israel as a child, by the discipline of a child, until the time should come when all, who despised not the heavenly gifts, should receive the Spirit of adoption. The prophet then, in order to show the exceeding guilt of Israel, says, When Israel was a child, (in the wilderness, for then he was born when he bound himself to conform to the divine law, and was not yet matured) I loved him, i. e., I gave him the law, priesthood, judgments, precepts, instructions; I loaded him with most ample benefits; I preferred him to all nations, expending on him, as on My chief heritage and special possession, much watchful care and pains.
I called My son out of Egypt – As He said to Pharaoh, Israel is My son, even My firstborn; let My son go, that he may serve Me Exo 4:22-23. God chose him out of all nations, to be His special people. Yet also God chose him, not for himself, but because He willed that Christ, His only Son, should after the flesh be born of him, and for, and in, the Son, God called His people, My son. : The people of Israel was called a son, as regards the elect, yet only for the sake of Him, the only begotten Son, begotten, not adopted, who, after the flesh, was to be born of that people, that, through His Passion, He might bring many sons to glory, disdaining not to have them as brethren and co-heirs. For, had He not come, who was to come, the Well Beloved Son of God, Israel too could never, anymore than the other nations, have been called the son of so great a Father, as the Apostle, himself of that people, saith, For we were, by nature, children of wrath, even as others Eph 2:3.
Since, however, these words relate to literal Israel, the people whom God brought out by Moses, how were they fulfilled in the infant Jesus, when He was brought back out of Egypt, as Matthew teaches us, they were? Mat 2:15.
Because Israel himself was a type of Christ, and for the sake of Him who was to be born of the seed of Israel, did God call Israel, My son; for His sake only did he deliver him. The two deliverances, of the whole Jewish people, and of Christ the Head, occupied the same position in Gods dispensations. He rescued Israel, whom He called His son, in its childish and infantine condition, at the very commencement of its being, as a people. His true Son by Nature, Christ our Lord, He brought up in His Infancy, when He began to show forth His mercies to us in Him. Both had, by His appointment, taken refuge in Egypt; both were, by His miraculous call to Moses in the bush, to Joseph in the dream, recalled from it. Matthew apparently quotes these words, not to prove anything, but in order to point out the relation of Gods former dealings with the latter, the beginning and the close, what relates to the body, and what relates to the Head. He tells us that the former deliverance had its completion in Christ, that in His deliverance was the full solid completion of that of Israel; and that then indeed it might, in its completest fullness, be said, Out of Egypt have I called My Son.
When Israel was brought out of Egypt, the figure took place; when Christ was called, the reality was fulfilled. The act itself, on the part of God, was prophetic. When He delivered Israel, and called him His firstborn, He willed, in the course of time, to bring up from Egypt His Only-Begotten Son. The words are prophetic, because the event which they speak of, was prophetic. They speak of Israel as one collective body, and, as it were, one person, called by God My son, namely, by adoption, still in the years of innocency, and beloved by God, called of God out of Egypt by Moses, as Jesus, His true Son, was by the Angel. The following verses are not prophetic, because in them the prophet no longer speaks of Israel as one, but as composed of the many sinful individuals in it. Israel was a prophetic people, in regard to this dispensation of God toward him; not in regard to his rebellions and sins.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Hos 11:1
When Israel was a child.
The national unit
The meaning is not, necessarily, when Israel was an infant, a child in mere years, but when Israel was a child in spirit, docile, simple of mind, sincere of purpose, true in worship. When Israel lifted his eyes heavenward, and sought for Me, then I stooped over him as a man might stoop over his child to lift him into his arms, and press him closely to his heart. There is a unit of the individual; let us take care lest we rest there, and so miss the ever-enlarging revelation of the Divine purpose in human history. There is not only a unit of the individual, there is a unit of the nation. Israel is here spoken of as if he were one man, a little child; though a million strong in population, yet there was in the million a unit. This is one aspect of Divine providence. We must not regard nations as if they ceased to have status and responsibility, name and destiny before God. A nation is one, a world is one, the universe is one. What does God know of our little divisions and distributions into pluralities and relationships? The nation may have a character. The Church is one, and has a reputation and influence. So we come upon the Divine handling of great occasions. The Lord is not fretted by details. All the details of His providence come out of and return to one great principle of redeeming Fatherhood. The locks are innumerable; the key is one, and it is in the Fathers hand. Let Him hold it. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Gods love to us the pattern of our love to others
The leading topic of this chapter appears to be the calling of the people of Israel out of the prison-house of Egypt. It gives a gracious account of our heavenly Fathers love, and a fearful picture of mans ingratitude. Under figures and emblems there is a lively representation of Gods dealings with His redeemed ones–with the Israel that now is, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The call of Israel from Egypt, as typical of Christ and of His people, is our subject. It is typical of us, as we are called from sin to the holiness of the heavenly Canaan.
I. Gods love to Christ, as a child, manifested to us by His calling Him from egypt. In the fulness of time the beloved of the Father became flesh, and dwelt among us. But no sooner did He appear than His life was threatened. The child was borne for safety into Egypt. In due time Christ was called out of Egypt, brought again to the Holy Land, there to exercise His ministry and perform the will of God.
II. Gods love to us, whilst we were yet at a distance from Him. We who are redeemed are loved with the self-same love with which God loved His only begotten Son.
II. The effect which the possession of this love will naturally produce in our hearts. It will produce love to others. What should be the effect of Gods love in our minds? A disinterested love to our fellow-creatures. Thus shall we have a scriptural evidence that we are of the spiritual Israel, whom God hath loved and called out of Egypt. (G. C. Tomlinson.)
A typical portrait of a people
I. A highly favoured people.
1. God loved them.
2. God emancipated them.
3. God educated them.
4. God healed them.
5. God guided them.
6. God relieved them.
7. God fed them.
II. A signally ungrateful people.
1. They disobeyed, Gods teaching.
2. They gave themselves to idolatry.
3. They ignored God s kindness.
4. They persistently backslided.
III. A righteously punished people. The judgment would be–
1. Extensive; and
2. It should continue; and
3. It should be destructive.
Is not this history of this people typical? Do not they represent especi ally the peoples of modern Christendom, highly favoured of God, signally ungrateful to God, and exposed to punishment from God? (Homilist.)
Backsliding
1. This is the great sin of the visible Church, to which she hath a strong inclination naturally, even in her best frame.
2. Mens hanging sometimes in suspense, and having some inclinations to return, will neither double out their point against the power of corruption within them, nor will it extenuate their backsliding.
3. The great backsliding of Gods people is their backsliding from God and communion with Him; which draweth on all other apostasies and defections.
4. It is of the Lords great mercy that He ceaseth not to follow backsliders with messages from His Word. (George Hutcheson.)
A fivefold view of Gods love
1. It is adopting love. God loved Israel in Egypt, Israel in captivity, Israel among the brick-kilns, and called him His son. It is by no merit or righteousness of our own that we are made sons of God. We become children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Gods love is adopting love. God delights in adopting children, and giving them the spirit of adoption, and taking them to the home of the ransomed family.
2. It is a tender love. The Lord describes the manner of a mother teaching her babe to walk. I taught Ephraim to go. The Omnipotent became as a nurse to Israel. When difficulties arose He bore him in His arms as a man doth bear his little child. And the heavenly Father is ever the same.
3. His inviting love. Called My son out of Egypt. We know how cruel Pharaoh was, and how hard were his taskmasters. But there was One who loved them, who said, I have heard their cry, and have come down to help them. His fiery cloudy pillar was the symbol of his inviting love.
4. It is weeping love. God mourns over their iniquities. Gods love as weeping love was displayed by The Man of Sorrows, whose grief was for the hardness of mens hearts, and whose hot tears over Jerusalem were because she knew not the things which belonged to her peace.
5. His incarnate love. The cords of a man. Incarnate love is the magnet by which souls are drawn to God. The Word was made flesh begins the story of redemption. Christ became man, to stand in mans place and deal with God in mans behalf, and to be able to enter into our feelings and fears as a merciful and compassionate High Priest. (A. Clayton Thiselton.)
Mingled severity and mercy
The scope of this chapter is to clear God from severity, and to upbraid Israel for ungrateful and stubborn carriage, against mercies and means, and yet to promise mercy to the remnant, to His elect ones. At the close of the preceding chapter there were dreadful threatenings against Israel, that the mothers should be dashed in pieces upon their children, and the king utterly cut off. But does not this argue God to be a God of rigid severity? Where is the mercy, goodness, and clemency of God towards His people? God says, For all this I am a God of mercy and goodness, for I have manifested abundance of mercy already, and am ready still to manifest more; but you have been a stubborn and a stout-hearted people against Me. From this general scope observe–
1. God stands much upon the clearing of Himself to be a God of love and mercy. Whatsoever becomes of the wicked, yet God will make it clear before all the world that He is a God of much mercy. God takes it very ill that we should have any hard thoughts of Him; let us not be ready to entertain such thoughts of God, as if He were a hard master. When Israel was a child. That is, at his first beginning to be a people, in his young time, My heart was towards him. When he knew little of Me. When he could do little for Me. When there was much vanity and folly in him, as there are generally in children. When he was helpless and succourless, and knew not how to provide for himself. The love of God to Israel is expressed in these three particulars.
(1) God entered into a covenant with him.
(2) Thou becamest Mine, that is, I had separated thee for Myself, and took thee for a peculiar one to Me, and intended special mercy and goodness to thee.
(3) I confirmed all this by an oath, I sware unto thee. Observe–
2. It is the privilege of the Church and of the saints to be beloved of God. God loves His people; this is their privilege, He loves them with a special love.
3. It is a great aggravation to sin, to sin against love.
4. It is very useful to call to mind Gods old love.
5. All Gods old mercies remain engagements to duty and aggravations to sin.
6. Let not our hearts sink in despairing thoughts, though we see that we are able to do but little for God, and though we are unworthy of His love.
7. Gods love begins betimes to His people; let not His peoples love be deferred too long. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Gods love for the Church
1. Gods love to the Church is her first and great privilege, which prevents her in her lowest condition, when she is unworthy and base. When Israel was a child, witless and worthless, then I loved him. And this is the fountain of all Gods bounty to him.
2. The Lord will make His love to His people conspicuous in their preservation in a low condition, and under much trouble, when He seeth it not fit to deliver them from it.
3. The Lord also will magnify His deliverance from trouble and bondage, not only spiritual, but outward also, in so far as is for their good.
3. As the Lord doth ofttimes manifest His love, and put special honour on His people, by putting them to sufferings and trouble, so He will specially make His delivering of them proclaim His love and estimation of them, and His peculiar interest in them. (George Hutcheson.)
And called My son out of Egypt.
And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, even My first-born; and I say unto thee, Let My son go, that he may serve Me. On these words Hoseas reference rests. The people of Israel are to God as a son to a father; even as a first-born son. That is why He has come down to deliver them. We speak of the purposes of God, as though God had formed some complex schemes at an early period in the worlds history, and now He must work these schemes out. But the God of the Bible is no scheme-maker. He is a Father–we are His sons. It is Israels cry that has brought Jehovah down to deliver them. He is the Father of the fatherless. He hears the cry of the afflicted. But though God is moved by love, He does all things in order. He pities His people before their cry has ascended to Him; but He waits for that cry before He comes down to deliver them. For He will not deliver the unwilling or the proud. So He waits. And He came to the right person. He will do His work by means of a man, and He knows the man to do it. Moses brought Israel out of Egypt. Jehovah, that is the name of Israels Father and Deliverer. I am that I am is practically the translation of Jehovah. It is a somewhat cold name to us, because we know the tenderer name of Father. Hoseas reference looks forward as well as backward; it looks before and after. Hosea saw that his words had a fuller meaning than could be filled by the people of Israel. He saw that they carried a promise which had not been performed even in his day. Like Abraham, he saw Christs day afar off, and was glad. (James Hastings, M. A.)
The flight into Egypt
How can Matthew speak of these words as a prophecy, and of the sojourn of the Divine babe in Egypt as a fulfilment of their prophecy? It has been said that Matthew uses Hoseas words, so to speak, rhetorically or classically, declaring that the story of the infant Jesus in Egypt was a fine instance of Hoseas saying. Or it may be answered that the literal Israel was the type of the spiritual Israel. At all events, the Divine Man was Himself the true, ideal Israel, and as such Jehovah did call Him when a child out of Egypt. Once more, it may be answered, in a more general way, that the present is ever the fruit of the past and the seed of the future. Events are born of events, as successive parts of plants are born of preceding parts; the parts are different, but they are radically only repetitions of the original seed. History repeats itself. The historic is ever the prophetic. Particularly is it true in a case of special Divine election, like that of the Jewish nation, that history will be prophecy. The fulfilments of the prophetic Scriptures, like waves of the sea, are ever-multiplying and enlarging concentric circles. And Jesus Christ is evermore the final and crowning fulfilment. The Divine Man is the universal pleroma–alike the radiant point and the circumference of all things. As God called out of Egypt His son, so out of Egypt does He call His Church. It was literally true of some of the most eminent of the fathers,–Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Cyprian. It is spiritually true of all Gods people. (G. D. Boardman.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XI
This chapter gives a very pathetic representation of God’s
tender and affectionate regard for Israel, by metaphors
chiefly borrowed from the conduct of mothers toward their
tender offspring. From this, occasion is taken to reflect on
their ungrateful return to the Divine goodness, and to denounce
against them the judgments of the Almighty, 1-7.
But suddenly and unexpectedly the prospect changes. Beams of
mercy break frown the clouds just now fraught with vengeance.
God, to speak in the language of men, feels the relentings of a
tender parent; his bowels yearn; his mercy triumphs; his
rebellious child shall yet be pardoned. As the lion of the
tribe of Judah, he will employ his power to save his people, he
will call his children from the land of their captivity; and,
as doves, they will fly to him, a faithful and a holy people,
8-12.
NOTES ON CHAP. XI
Verse 1. When Israel was a child] In the infancy of his political existence.
I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.] Where he was greatly oppressed; and in this I gave the proof of my love. I preserved my people in their affliction there, and brought them safely out of it.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
When Israel was a child; in the infancy of Israel, which is here dated equal with his being in Egypt.
Then I loved him; manifested that tender and paternal affection which I did bear to him, increasing him in numbers, wealth, and honour.
Called my son; adopted him to be my son, and as my son provided for him, and brought him out of servitude; I so loved him as to give Egypt for his ransom, Isa 43:3.
Out of Egypt; where they had sojourned two hundred and fifteen years, and in them suffered many outrages from the Egyptians, who were their enemies, and aimed at extirpating Israel. Now, amidst such enemies, God owned them to be his sons, his eldest son, and redeemed him out of bondage, a fruit of wonderful love never to be forgotten. This in the letter and history is exceeding plain, but there is difficulty in the application of this unto Christ, and his call out of Egypt, of which many interpreters treat at large, which may not now be so much as summarily touched. It is too little to say that the evangelist doth allude to this place, Mat 2:15, and I think it is too much to say this place is cited by Matthew, as in the history of the thing, referring only to Christ being called out of Egypt; but if you will make Israel the first adopted son, type of Christ, the first-born, and the history of Israels coming out to be a type of Christs future coming out, you then give to both their proper share in these words, and the letter and history is verified in both, and the principal import of the words will refer to Christ, as principally intended in them, yet not excluding the type.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. Israel . . . called my son out ofEgyptBENGELtranslates, “From the time that he (Israel) was inEgypt, I called him My son,” which the parallelism proves. SoHos 12:9; Hos 13:4use “from . . . Egypt,” for “from the time that thoudidst sojourn in Egypt.” Ex4:22 also shows that Israel was called by God, “My son,”from the time of his Egyptian sojourn (Isa43:1). God is always said to have led or brought forth,not to have “called,” Israel from Egypt. Mt2:15, therefore, in quoting this prophecy (typically andprimarily referring to Israel, antitypically and fully to Messiah),applies it to Jesus’ sojourn in Egypt, not His return fromit. Even from His infancy, partly spent in Egypt, God called Him Hisson. God included Messiah, and Israel for Messiah’s sake, in onecommon love, and therefore in one common prophecy. Messiah’s peopleand Himself are one, as the Head and the body. Isa49:3 calls Him “Israel.” The same general reason,danger of extinction, caused the infant Jesus, and Israel in itsnational infancy (compare Gen 42:1-43;Gen 45:18; Gen 46:3;Gen 46:4; Eze 16:4-6;Jer 31:20) to sojourn in Egypt.So He, and His spiritual Israel, are already called “God’s sons”while yet in the Egypt of the world.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him,…. Or, “for Israel [was] a child” u; a rebellious and disobedient one, therefore his king was cut off in a morning, and he has been, and will be, without a king many days; yet still “I loved him”: or, “though Israel [was] a child” w; a weak, helpless, foolish, and imprudent one, “yet I loved him”: or, “when a child”; in the infancy of his civil and church state, when in Egypt, and in the wilderness; the Lord loved him, not only as his creature, as he does all the works of his hands, but with a more special love than he loved others; choosing them to be a special people above all others; giving them his law, his statutes, and his judgments, his word and his worship, which he did not give to other nations. So he loves spiritual and mystical Israel, all the elect of God, whether Jews or Gentiles, when children, as soon as born, and though born in sin, carnal and corrupt; yea, before they are born, and when having done neither good nor evil; and so may be expressive both of the earliness and antiquity of his love to them, and of the freeness of it, without any merits or motives of theirs;
and called my son out of Egypt, not literal Israel, as before, whom God called his son, and his firstborn, and demanded his dismission from Pharaoh, and called him, and brought him out of Egypt with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; and which was a type of his calling spiritual Israel, his adopted sons, out of worse than Egyptian bondage and darkness: but his own natural and only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; for these words are expressly said to be fulfilled in him, Mt 2:15; not by way of allusion; or by accommodation of phrases; or as the type is fulfilled in the antitype; or as a proverbial expression, adapted to any deliverance; but literally: the first and only sense of the words respects Christ, who in his infancy was had to Egypt for shelter from Herod’s rage and fury, and, when he was dead, and those that sought the life of Jesus, he was by an angel of the Lord, warning Joseph of it, called out of Egypt, and brought into Judea, Mt 2:19; and this as a proof of the love of God to Israel; which as it was expressed to him in his infancy, it continued and appeared in various instances, more or less unto the coming of Christ; who, though obliged for a while to go into Egypt, must not continue there, but must be called from thence, to be brought up in the land of Judea; to do his miracles, preach his doctrines, and do good to the bodies and souls of men there, being sent particularly to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and, above all, in order to work out the salvation and redemption of his special people among them, and of the whole Israel of God everywhere else; which is the greatest instance of love to them, and to the world of the Gentiles, that ever was known, Joh 3:16 1Jo 2:2.
u “quia”, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius. w “Quamvis sit puer”, Tarnovius, Rivet.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The prophet goes back a third time (cf. Hos 10:1; Hos 9:10) to the early times of Israel, and shows how the people had repaid the Lord, for all the proofs of His love, with nothing but ingratitude and unfaithfulness; so that it would have merited utter destruction from off the earth, if God should not restrain His wrath for the sake of His unchangeable faithfulness, in order that, after severely chastening, He might gather together once more those that were rescued from among the heathen. Hos 11:1. “When Israel was young, then I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. Hos 11:2. Men called to them; so they went away from their countenance: they offer sacrifice to the Baals, and burn incense to the idols.” Hos 11:1 rests upon Exo 4:22-23, where the Lord directs Moses to say to Pharaoh, “Israel is my first-born son; let my son go, that he may serve me.” Israel was the son of Jehovah, by virtue of its election to be Jehovah’s peculiar people (see at Exo 4:22). In this election lay the ground for the love which God showed to Israel, by bringing it out of Egypt, to give it the land of Canaan, promised to the fathers for its inheritance. The adoption of Israel as the son of Jehovah, which began with its deliverance out of the bondage of Egypt, and was completed in the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, forms the first stage in the carrying out of the divine work of salvation, which was completed in the incarnation of the Son of God for the redemption of mankind from death and ruin. The development and guidance of Israel as the people of God all pointed to Christ; not, however, in any such sense as that the nation of Israel was to bring forth the son of God from within itself, but in this sense, that the relation which the Lord of heaven and earth established and sustained with that nation, was a preparation for the union of God with humanity, and paved the way for the incarnation of His Son, by the fact that Israel was trained to be a vessel of divine grace. All essential factors in the history of Israel point to this as their end, and thereby become types and material prophecies of the life of Him in whom the reconciliation of man to God was to be realized, and the union of God with the human race to be developed into a personal unity. It is in this sense that the second half of our verse is quoted in Mat 2:15 as a prophecy of Christ, not because the words of the prophet refer directly and immediately to Christ, but because the sojourn in Egypt, and return out of that land, had the same significance in relation to the development of the life of Jesus Christ, as it had to the nation of Israel. Just as Israel grew into a nation in Egypt, where it was out of the reach of Canaanitish ways, so was the child Jesus hidden in Egypt from the hostility of Herod. But Hos 11:2 is attached thus as an antithesis: this love of its God was repaid by Israel with base apostasy. , they, viz., the prophets (cf. Hos 11:7; 2Ki 17:13; Jer 7:25; Jer 25:4; Zec 1:4), called to them, called the Israelites to the Lord and to obedience to Him; but they (the Israelites) went away from their countenance, would not hearken to the prophets, or come to the Lord (Jer 2:31). The thought is strengthened by , with the of the protasis omitted (Ewald, 360, a): as the prophets called, so the Israelites drew back from them, and served idols. as in Hos 2:15, and as in 2Ki 17:41 and Deu 7:5, Deu 7:25 (see at Exo 20:4).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| God’s Goodness to Israel; The Ingratitude of Israel; God’s Displeasure with Israel. | B. C. 730. |
1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. 2 As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. 3 I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. 4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. 5 He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. 6 And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels. 7 And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the most High, none at all would exalt him.
Here we find,
I. God very gracious to Israel. They were a people for whom he had done more than for any people under heaven, and to whom he had given more, which they are here, I will not say upbraided with (for God gives, and upbraids not), but put in mind of, as an aggravation of their sin and an encouragement to repentance. 1. He had a kindness for them when they were young (v. 1): When Israel was a child then I loved him; when they first began to multiply into a nation in Egypt God then set his love upon them, and chose them because he loved them, because he would love them, Deu 7:7; Deu 7:8. When they were weak and helpless as children, foolish and froward as children, when they were outcasts, and children exposed, then God loved them; he pitied them, and testified his goodwill to them; he bore them as the nurse does the sucking child, nourished them, and suffered their manners. Note, Those that have grown up, nay, those that have grown old, ought often to reflect upon the goodness of God to them in their childhood. 2. He delivered them out of the house of bondage: I called my son out of Egypt, because a son, because a beloved son. When God demanded Israel’s discharge from Pharaoh he called them his son, his first-born. Note, Those whom God loves he calls out of the bondage of sin and Satan into the glorious liberty of his children. These words are said to have been fulfilled in Christ, when, upon the death of Herod, he and his parents were called out of Egypt (Matt. ii. 15), so that the words have a double aspect, speaking historically of the calling of Israel out of Egypt and prophetically of the bringing of Christ thence; and the former was a type of the latter, and a pledge and earnest of the many and great favours God had in reserve for that people, especially the sending of his Son into the world, and the bringing him again into the land of Israel when they had unkindly driven him out, and he might justly never have returned. The calling of Christ out of Egypt was a figure of the calling of all that are his, through him, out of spiritual slavery. 3. He gave them a good education, took care of them, took pains with them, not only as a father or tutor, but, such is the condescension of divine grace, as a mother or nurse (v. 3): I taught Ephraim also to go, as a child in leading-strings is taught. When they were in the wilderness God led them by the pillar of cloud and fire, showed them the way in which they should go, and bore them up, taking them by the arms. He taught them to go in the way of his commandments, by the institutions of the ceremonial law, which were as tutors and governors to that people under age. He took them by the arms, to guide them, that they might not stray, and to hold them up, that they might not stumble and fall. God’s spiritual Israel are thus supported. Thou has holden me by my right hand, Ps. lxxiii. 23. 4. When any thing was amiss with them, or they were ever so little out of order, he was their physician: “I healed them; I not only took a tender care of them (a friend may do that), but wrought an effectual cure: it is a God only that can do that. I am the Lord that healeth thee (Exod. xv. 26), that redresseth all thy grievances.” 5. He brought them into his service by mild and gentle methods (v. 4): I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love. Note, It is God’s work to draw poor souls to himself; and none can come to him except he draw them, John vi. 44. He draws, (1.) With the cords of a man, with such cords as men draw with that have a principle of humanity, or such cords as men are drawn with; he dealt with them as men, in an equitable rational way, in an easy gentle way, with the cords of Adam. He dealt with them as with Adam in innocency, bringing them at once into a paradise, and into covenant with himself. (2.) With bands of love, or cartropes of love. This word signifies stronger cords than the former. He did not drive them by force into his service, whether they would or no, nor rule them with rigour, nor detain them by violence, but his attractives were all loving and endearing, all sweet and gentle, that he might overcome them with kindness. Moses, whom he made their guide, was the meekest man in the world. Kindnesses among men we commonly call obligations, or bonds, bonds of love. Thus God draws with the savour of his good ointments (Cant. i. 4), draws with lovingkindness, Jer. xxxi. 3. Thus God deals with us, and we must deal in like manner with those that are under our instruction and government, deal rationally and mildly with them. 6. He eased them of the burdens they had been long groaning under: I was to them as those that take off the yoke on their jaws, alluding to the care of the good husbandman, who is merciful to his beast, and will not tire him with hard and constant labour. Probably, in those times, the yoke on the neck of the oxen was fastened with some bridle, or headstall, over the jaws, which muzzled the mouth of the ox. Israel in Egypt were thus restrained from the enjoyments of their comforts and constrained to hard labour; but God eased them, removed their shoulder from the burden, Ps. lxxxi. 6. Note, Liberty is a great mercy, especially out of bondage. 7. He supplied them with food convenient. In Egypt they fared hard, but, when God brought them out, he laid meat unto them, as the husbandman, when he has unyoked his cattle, fodders them. God rained manna about their camp, bread from heaven, angels’ food; other creatures seek their meat, but God laid meat to his own people, as we do to our children, was himself their caterer and carver, anticipated them with the blessings of goodness.
II. Here is Israel very ungrateful to God.
1. They were deaf and disobedient to his voice. He spoke to them by his messengers, Moses and his other prophets, called them from their sins, called them to himself, to their work and duty; but as they called them so they went from them; they rebelled in those particular instances wherein they were admonished; the more pressing and importunate the prophets were with them, to persuade them to that which was good, the more refractory they were, and the more resolute in their evil ways, disobeying for disobedience-sake. This foolishness is bound in the hearts of children, who, as soon as they are taught to go, will go from those that call them.
2. They were fond of idols, and worshipped them: They sacrificed to Baalim, first one Baal and then another, and burnt incense to graven images, though they were called to by the prophets of the Lord again and again not to do this abominable thing which he hated. Idolatry was the sin which from the beginning, and all along, had most easily beset them.
3. They were regardless of God, and of his favours to them: They knew not that I healed them. They looked only at Moses and Aaron, the instruments of their relief, and, when any thing was amiss, quarrelled with them, but looked not through them to God who employed them. Or, When God corrected them, and kept them under a severe discipline, they understood not that it was for their good, and that God thereby healed them, and it was necessary for the perfecting of their cure, else they would have been better reconciled to the methods God took. Note, Ignorance is at the bottom of ingratitude, ch. ii. 8.
4. They were strongly inclined to apostasy. This is the blackest article in the charge (v. 7): My people are bent to backsliding from me. Every word here is aggravating. (1.) They backslide. There is no hold of them, no stedfastness in them; they seem to come forward, towards God, but they quickly slide back again, and are as a deceitful bow. (2.) They backslide from me, from God, the chief good, the fountain of life and living waters, from their God who never turned from them, nor war as a wilderness to them. (3.) They are bent to backslide; they are ready to sin; there is in their natures a propensity to that which is evil; at the best they hang in suspense between God and the world, so that a little thing serves to draw them the wrong way; they are forward to close with every temptation. It also intimates that they are resolute in sin; their hearts are fully set in them to do evil the bias is strong that way; and they persist in their backslidings, whatever is said or done to stop them; and yet, (4.) “They are, in profession, my people. They are called by my name, and profess relation to me; they are mine, whom I have done much for and expect much from, whom I have nourished and brought up, as children, and yet they backslide from me.” Note, In our repentance we ought to lament not only our backslidings, but our bent to backslide, not only our actual transgressions, but our original corruption, the sin that dwells in us, the carnal mind.
5. They were strangely averse to repentance and reformation. Here are two expressions of their obstinacy:– (1.) They refused to return, v. 5. So much were they bent to backslide that, though they could not but find, upon trial, the folly of their backslidings, and that when they forsook God they changed for the worse, yet they went on frowardly. I have loved strangers, and after them I will go. They were commanded to return, were courted and entreated to return, were promised that if they would they should be kindly received, but they refused. (2.) Though they called them to the Most High. God’s prophets and ministers called them to return to the God from whom they had revolted, to the most high God, from whom they had sunk into this wretched degeneracy; they called them from the worship of the idols, which were so much below them, and the worship of which was therefore their disparagement, to the true God, who was so much above them, and the worship of whom was therefore their preferment; they called them from this earth to high and heavenly things; but they called in vain. None at all would exalt him. Though he is the most high God they would not acknowledge him to be so, would do nothing to honour him nor give him the glory due to his name. Or, They would not exalt themselves, would not rise out of that state of apostasy and misery into which they had precipitated themselves; but there they contentedly lay still, would not lift up their heads nor lift up their souls. Note, God’s faithful ministers have taken a great deal of pains, to no purpose, with backsliding children, have called them to the Most High; but none would stir, none at all would exalt him.
III. Here is God very angry, and justly so, with Israel; see what are the tokens of God’s displeasure with which they are here threatened. 1. God, who brought them out of Egypt, to take them for a people to himself, since they would not be faithful to him, shall bring them into a worse condition than he at first found them in (v. 5): “He shall not return into the land of Egypt, though that was a house of bondage grievous enough; but he shall go into a harder service, for the Assyrian shall be his king, who will use him worse than ever Pharaoh did.” They shall not return into Egypt, which lies near, where they may hear often from their own country, and whence they may hope shortly to return to it again; but they shall be carried into Assyria, which lies much more remote, and where they shall be cut off from all correspondence with their own land and from all hopes of returning to it, and justly, because they refused to return. Note, Those that will not return to the duties they have left cannot expect to return to the comforts they have lost. 2. God, who gave them Canaan, that good land, and a very safe and comfortable settlement in it, shall bring his judgments upon them there, which shall make their habitation unsafe and uncomfortable (v. 6): The sword shall come upon them, the sword of war, the sword of a foreign enemy, prevailing against them and triumphing over them. (1.) This judgment shall spread far. The sword shall fasten upon their cities, those nests of people and store-houses of wealth; it shall likewise reach to their branches, the country villages (so some), the citizens themselves (so others), or the bars (so the word signifies) and gates of their city, or all the branches of their revenue and wealth, or their children, the branches of their families. (2.) It shall last long: It shall abide on their cities. David thought three months flying before his enemies was the only judgment of the three that was to be excepted against; but this sword shall abide much longer than three months on the cities of Israel. They continued their rebellions against God, and therefore God continued his judgments on them. (3.) It shall make a full end: It shall consume their branches, and devour them, and lay all waste, and this because of their own counsels, that is, because they would have their own projects, which God therefore, in a way of righteous judgment, gave them up to. Note, The confusion of sinners is owing to their contrivance. God’s counsels would have saved them, but their own counsels ruined them.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
HOSEA – CHAPTER 11
LAMENT AGAINST EPHRAIM AND ISRAEL CONTINUED
Verses 1-12:
Verse 1 expresses an historical fact and prophetic event; First, God did call or bring forth Israel, as His first-born or Heir-Son out of Egypt, when she was yet young, as a chosen people, as set forth Exo 4:22; Exo 14:13-14; Exo 14:22; Exo 14:29-30. God redeemed them from Egypt. Second, this is a prophecy fulfilled in our Lord’s calling Joseph to take the child Jesus into Egypt, then later calling him to carry him forth from Egypt, as certified Mat 2:13-15, to redeem men, in definitive fulfillment of every old testament prophecy, as certified by our Lord Himself, after His resurrection, Luk 24:5-17; Luk 24:44-45.
Verse 2 recounts how that Israel, often called of God, through Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the prophets, repeatedly turned away from him, in contempt, with ingratitude, Jer 2:27. They sacrificed to Baal, the idol god, in numerous places, Num 22:41; Jdg 2:11; Jdg 2:13; 1Ki 16:31; 1Ki 18:18; 2Ki 21:3-4; Jer 23:13; Jer 23:27.
Verse 3 confirms that He had loved Ephraim from a child, set him upon his feet, taught him to walk, supported him gently, as a nurse supports a small child, and carried him when he was tired, Deu 1:31; Deu 8:2; Deu 8:5; Neh 9:21; Isa 63:9; Num 11:12. Yet they ignored God’s goodness and kindness, did not recognize His design to restore them. They went selfishly on their lustful ways with ingratitude, Exo 15:26. Of such ingratitude some poet wrote:
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind, As man’s ingratitude.”
While another added:.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth It is to have a thankless child.”
While God laments:
“I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against me.”
Verse 4 describes God’s drawing and leading Ephraim and Israel with cords or bands of love. And he had lifted burdens from them like one would lift a yoke from an ox or saddle from a horse to give it rest, and feed it, Lev 26:13. He had given them abundant water to drink, meat and manna to eat, and clothed and shod them through the desert, with tender care, Psa 78:9-30; Psa 78:36-38; Psa 78:41-43; Psa 78:72.
Verse 5 declares that he, Ephraim, shall not return to Egypt, to secure help against Assyria, as Israel had lately done, for he shall be held as a slave-captive, without power in Assyria. He will return them to Egypt, (bondage) in a figurative sense only, as described Hos 9:3. But the Assyrian shall be king over Israel because they had refused to return to God, 2Ki 17:13; Amo 4:6; 2Ch 7:14. They shall therefore receive just retribution as slave laborers to the Gentiles of heathen and idolatrous Assyria.
Verse 6 describes their certain captive subjection that was to continue for a long period of time. They were to suffer much cruel and violent treatment, with the sword abiding over them, 2Sa 12:10. The sword was to consume Ephraim’s branches or keep every city and village they occupied under the sword, Exo 25:13; Job 17:16; Jer 23:19; Jer 30:23; Lam 4:6; 2Sa 3:29. All this was to come because of their counsels or rulers that they had followed, worshipping idols, Psa 47:9.
Verse 7 describes the obstinacy of God’s people He yet calls “my people,” who were bent toward backsliding, like one fastened to a stake, leaning upon it. Though prophets, like Hosea, Amos, Joel, etc., called them to turn from their idolatry, they turned not to honor God. They turned their face from God, broke their allegiance to Him, dethroned Him from their hearts and lives. This they did repeatedly, even continually. “None at all would exalt Him.” They were obstinate as an oxen, more stubborn than a mule, and dumber than a sheep led to the slaughter, Isa 1:3-8.
Verse 8 describes the conflict of mercy and judgment that God balances in doing right toward His own who do very wrong. He laments how He shall give up Ephraim and Israel. He shall destroy them as He did Admah and Zeboim, two of the cities He destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah, Gen 14:8; Gen 19:24-25; Amo 4:11; Deu 29:23. He then describes His heart or affections as turned, churned, or clashing within Him, as He thought of the judgment they deserved, 1Sa 25:36; Jer 8:18. His repentings refer to the strong compassions within Him as a glow of love and heat, Num 23:19. The term (Hebrew) is the same used of Joseph, translated as His “bowels” (were hot), did yearn, at the presence of His brethren, Gen 43:30; Luk 24:32; 1Ki 3:26.
Verse 9 promises that God will not return to execute, exterminate, or wipe out Ephraim, as conquerors frequently did. He will abate wrath and show mercy again, for He is God, and not depraved man. He does not change His plans or purposes like fickle men, Num 23:19; 1Sa 15:29; Mar 3:6. He is (exists as) the “Holy One” in their midst, even in their captivity and judgment, unchanging in His nature and purpose, Exo 19:5-6 He will not destroy them as He did Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and -Zeboim, Gen 14:8; Gen 19:25.
Verse 10 prophecies of a time when Ephraim shall again walk after the Lord, following her chastisement. God will roar His judgment like a lion against Israel’s foes when Israel turns again to Him in repentance, Isa 31:4; Jer 25:26-30; Joe 3:16. When God roars. His children will then tremble and flock like birds in eagerness from the west to the east, to their homeland, Zec 8:7; Isa 11:11-16.
Verse 11 describes the return of Israel from Assyria and Egypt to Palestine, as a trembling dove that has returned home, after a long and frightful flight, Hos 7:11; Isa 60:8. God pledges in keeping His covenant of Grace, to restore them in their houses or upon their residences, in their own Promised Land, from which they shall serve Him faithfully, departing no more, Eze 28:26.
Verse 12 charges Ephraim and Israel, at this particular time of Hosea’s prophecy, as encompassing God with lies and the house of Israel (organized program of worship) with deceit. Deceitfully they claimed to worship God, yet making sacrifices, offering prayers, and engaging in heathen sex orgies before the idols of Baal, Ashtaroth, and Astarte, worshipping in vain, willfully breaking the very laws of the most High God they were sworn to uphold and defend, Exo 20:1-5; Psa 115:1-9; Jos 24:19; Pro 30:3.
Judah was, however, yet reigning with a legal succession of kings and priests, and maintaining worship in Jerusalem. And she was said to be “faithful with the saints” in harmony with the Levites and priests and prophets, those publicly identified with and committed to carry on the true worship of the (house-order) that Moses built, Heb 3:1-6.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
God here expostulates with the people of Israel for their ingratitude. The obligation of the people was twofold; for God had embraced them from the very first beginning, and when there was no merit or worthiness in them. What else, indeed, was the condition of the people when emancipated from their servile works in Egypt? They doubtless seemed then like a man half-dead or a putrid carcass; for they had no vigour remaining in them. The Lord then stretched forth his hand to the people when in so hopeless a state, drew them out, as it were, from the grave, and restored them from death into life. But the people did not acknowledge this so wonderful a favour of God, but soon after petulantly turned their back on him. What baseness was this, and how shameful the wickedness, to make such a return to the author of their life and salvation? The Prophet therefore enhances the sin and baseness of the people by this circumstance, that the Lord had loved them even from childhood; when yet, he says, Israel was a child, I loved him The nativity of the people was their coming out of Egypt. The Lord had indeed made his covenant with Abraham four hundred years before; and, as we know, the patriarchs were also regarded by him as his children: but God wished his Church to be, as it were, extinguished, when he redeemed it. Hence the Scripture, when it speaks of the liberation of the people, often refers to that favour of God in the same way as of one born into the world. It is not therefore without reason that the Prophet here reminds the people that they had been loved when in childhood. The proof of this love was, that they had been brought out of Egypt. Love had preceded, as the cause is always before the effect.
But the Prophet enlarges on the subject: I loved Israel, even while he was yet a child; I called him out of Egypt; that is, “I not only loved him when a child, but before he was born I began to love him; for the liberation from Egypt was the nativity, and my love preceded that. It then appears, that the people had been loved by me, before they came forth to the light; for Egypt was like a grave without any spark of life; and the condition this miserable people was in was worse than thousand deaths. Then by calling my people from Egypt, I sufficiently proved that my love was gratuitous before they were born.” The people were hence less excusable when they returned such an unworthy recompense to God, since he had previously bestowed his free favour upon them. We now understand the meaning of the Prophet.
But here arises a difficult question; for Matthew, accommodates this passage to the person of Christ. (73) They who have not been well versed in Scripture have confidently applied to Christ this place; yet the context is opposed to this. Hence it has happened, that scoffers have attempted to disturb the whole religion of Christ, as though the Evangelist had misapplied the declaration of the Prophet. They give a more suitable answer, who say that there is in this case only a comparison: as when a passage from Jeremiah is quoted in another place, when the cruelty of Herod is mentioned, who raged against all the infants of his dominion, who were under two years of age,
‘
Rachel, bewailing her children, would not receive consolation, because they were not,’ (Jer 31:15.)
The Evangelist says that this prophecy was fulfilled, (Mat 2:18.) But it is certain that the object of Jeremiah was another; but nothing prevents that declaration should not be applied to what Matthew relates. So they understand this place. But I think that Matthew had more deeply considered the purpose of God in having Christ led into Egypt, and in his return afterwards into Judea. In the first place, it must be remembered that Christ cannot be separated from his Church, as the body will be mutilated and imperfect without a head. Whatever then happened formerly in the Church, ought at length to be fulfilled by the head. This is one thing. Then also there is no doubt, but that God in his wonderful providence intended that his Son should come forth from Egypt, that he might be a redeemer to the faithful; and thus he shows that a true, real, and perfect deliverance was at length effected, when the promised Redeemer appeared. It was then the full nativity of the Church, when Christ came forth from Egypt to redeem his Church. So in my view that comment is too frigid, which embraces the idea, that Matthew made only a comparison. For it behaves us to consider this, that God, when he formerly redeemed his people from Egypt, only showed by a certain prelude the redemption which he deferred till the coming of Christ. Hence, as the body was then brought forth from Egypt into Judea, so at length the head also came forth from Egypt: and then God fully showed him to be the true deliverer of his people. This then is the meaning. Matthew therefore most fitly accommodates this passage to Christ, that God loved his Son from his first childhood and called him from Egypt. We know at the same time that Christ is called the Son of God in a respect different from the people of Israel; for adoption made the children of Abraham the children of God, but Christ is by nature the only-begotten Son of God. But his own dignity must remain to the head, that the body may continue in its inferior state. There is then in this nothing inconsistent. But as to the charge of ingratitude, that so great a favour of God was not acknowledged, this cannot apply to the person of Christ, as we well know; nor is it necessary in this respect to refer to him; for we see from other places that every thing does not apply to Christ, which is said of David, or of the high priest, or of the posterity of David; though they were types of Christ. But there is ever a great difference between the reality and its symbols. Let us now proceed —
(73) Mat 2:15. — fj.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
HOSEAOR GODS AFFECTION FOR AN UNFAITHFUL PEOPLE
Hos 1:1 to Hos 14:9.
IT is our purpose in this series of articles on the Minor Prophets to throw such light upon these twelve Books as to make them meaningful and profitable to our readers. I suppose it may be safely said that the average Christian leaves these Books unstudied, and some of them unreada circumstance due to certain natural difficulties in their interpretation; but in greater measure still, to the poor work of present-day preaching. The custom of taking a text has wrought havoc in Bible study. Our fathers in the ministry were Bible expositors; their successors are textual preachers. The result is described in one of the minor Prophets:
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Words of the Lord:
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord, and shall not find it (Amo 8:11-12).
There are some simple and yet fundamental facts regarding the prophecy of Hosea that are essential to its proper understanding. It was doubtless written by the man whose name it wears. It refers, unquestionably, to the time of Jeroboam the Second, when Elisha, the Prophet of God, was living, and Isaiah, that great Evangel of the Old Testament, was a babe; and when those kings of Judah Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiahwere successively occupying the throne. The date is supposed to be 790 to 725 B. C.
Hosea was the great Evangel of his time. While he was an Elijah the Tishbite, in his stern denunciation of sin, he was a John the Apostle in his sense of Divine love and his eloquent call to repentance.
Some of the Books of the Bible break easily into divisions, and some of the students of Hosea have seen fit to divide it into two such. But our research does not justify the method. To us it is one grand whole, with not a break in thought from first to last. It is a recital of Israels history in her unfaithfulness, and an illustration of Gods goodness to His own people.
For our convenience, however, we divide it into four sections.
THE SYMBOLISM OF GOMERS SIN
And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.
So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim (Hos 8:2-3).
These opening sentences of Hosea have given no small trouble to students. Some have received it historically; while others have insisted that God could not send the Prophet on any such mission, without Himself being a party to sin; and so have attempted to interpret it as a dream or vision. Following the custom which we have found alone to be safe, we believe with those who accept the Book at what it says. And yet we have not found the question involved so difficult of solution as some. When it is remembered that the whole people of Israel had already turned to idolatry, we can understand that any daughter selected from them could be spoken of in this language, since the charge of whoredom, with the false gods of the land, lay against every son and daughter of Israel. And even when the narrative seems to specifically charge this woman with this sin, it does not necessitate Gods participation in evil because He sends Hosea to wed her. You will see, ere the history ends, she is won to a righteous life again. So the Prophet is to her what he has become to all IsraelGods agent of salvation. But her sin is symbolical.
It was a sin against law and love. The seventh commandment antedated Hosea and stood as a protest against the violation of that relation which husband and wife sustain to one another, as the whole decalogue stands as Gods protest against the violation of the relation which He and His people sustain to each other. When, therefore, Gomer forgets the law and despises the love of Hosea, she fitly represents the conduct of the whole kingdom in forgetting Gods Law and despising the Divine love. The man who, today, living under the reign of grace, disregards the moral Law and tramples it beneath his feet with impunity, is guilty of a crime of the first magnitude. But the man who adds to that an equal disregard of the Divine love takes the last step needful in the contemplation of his folly and the sealing of his fate.
Paul wrote to the Hebrews:
If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the Truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
He that despised Moses Law died without mercy under two or three witnesses;
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the Blood of the covenant, wherewith he wets sanctified, an holy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
For we know Him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I wilt recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge His people (Heb 10:26-30).
This sin was again symbolical in that it was against good society.
The moment the foundations of domestic life are undermined the whole fabric of society is endangered. When lust assaults the home it strikes the essential pillar of the State. And when it overrides the law and love of domestic relation, it leaves desolation in its track and brings in a dark day for the people. When such a sin as this can be found in the first houses the very nation has fallen. Dr. Talmage said truly enough that where there is no pure home there are the Vandals and the Goths of Europe; the Numidians of Africa, and the Nomads of Asia. No home, no school; no household, no republic; no family, no church.
But Gomers sin became more significant still, God made it to be a sorrowful instruction! Strange as it seems, it is yet probably according to the natural law in the spiritual world that Gods spokesmen must be sufferers. It was only after the iron had entered Moses soul as he watched the oppression of his own people from his position in the palace, and by his enforced exile spent forty years on the back side of the desert that he was eloquent as Israels leader. Joshua was fitted by forty years of wilderness wandering for his great work of commanding Israel and conquering Canaan.
But no man could read this Book of Hosea without feeling that its authorour Prophethad suffered probably as much as either of these great predecessors. Joseph Parker says, Hoseas sorrow was of the deepest kind. The daughter of Diblaim was the daughter of the devil. He had no peace, no rest, no singing joy within the four corners of his own house. He lived in clouds; his life was a continual passage through a sea deeper than the Red Sea. If we may vary the figure, his wandering was in the wilderness, unblessed; cursed by the very spirit of desolation.
And yet we do believe that strong natures have the very power to transmute their sorrows into eloquent appeals for righteousness; that the very intensity of their suffering adds solidity to their thought and eloquence to its utterance. We seriously doubt if Hoseas wife had not been a scarlet woman, as she was, whether he could ever have properly sympathized with God, the Father, in that Israel turned from Him to moral infidelity, by worshiping at false shrines and living wicked, sensual lives.
John Bright, that marvelous leader of thought in England, started on his career of splendid service in consequence of an unspeakable sorrow. His young wife, to whom he was devoted, lay dead when Richard Cobden called on him. Having expressed, as best he could, sympathy and condolence, Cobden looked up and said, Bright, there are thousands and thousands of homes in England, at this moment, where wives and mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now when the first paroxysm of your grief has passed, I would advise you to come with me and we will never rest until the corn-laws are repealed.
Cobden showed himself a philosopher that day. He knew full well that one way to recover from a personal pain was to take into ones heart as an antidote, the pain of the people.
You will remember what had more to do, perhaps, with the declaration of war with Spain than any other single thing, the destruction of the Maine excepted. It was Senator Thurstons speech. And how did it happen that this Nebraskan, who had never before been eloquent, spoke before the Senate of the United States with such an appeal as to move even opponents to agree with him? That speech opened in these words,
Mr. President: I am here by command of silent lips to speak once and for all upon the Cuban situation, and trust that no one has expected anything sensational from me. God forbid that the bitterness of a personal loss should induce me to color, in the slightest degree, the statements that I feel it my duty to make. I shall endeavor to be honest, conservative and just. Then he proceeded with such an oration as American law-makers of any decade seldom, if ever, heard. Concluding with these words, Mr. President, in the cable that moored me to life and hope the strongest strands are broken. I have but little left to offer at the altar of freedoms shrine. But all I have I am glad to give. I am ready to serve my country as best I can in the Senate or in the field. My dearest hope, my most earnest prayer to God is this, that when death comes to end all I may meet it calmly and fearlessly, as did my Beloved, in the cause of humanity, and under the American flag.
There is but one explanation of such an address as that. The eloquence of it was born of the sorrow of burying a beloved wife in Cuban soil, and feeling in his heart that the pain of the oppressed people of that land had been already the occasion of her death; and to relieve it, was worthy the laying down of his life.
The Psalmist said, I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good, and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue.
It was sorrow. It was that suffering that only a righteous man can feel when sinned against by her whom he loves most, that made Hosea understand the Divine Ones suffering in Israels sin, and adequate to its expression.
PHASES OF ISRAELS INFIDELITY
It found first expression in unwarranted forms. There seems to be a general agreement between students of Hosea that the groves and altars, when first chosen and erected, were unto the Lord. But it does not take long for them to go from unwarranted forms to open infidelity. God did not command any of these at their hands. Her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts, became occasions of Baal-worship. Instead of saying any longer, Ishimy husband, they turned to say, Baalimy lord. It is the history of unwarranted forms in all ages.
When Christ came into the world He found the Church of the Old Testament cold in death, slain by the hands of ceremonialists,the Scribes and Pharisees of His time,who, with their hollow ritualism and hypocrisies, had driven many men to the infidelity of Sadduceeism; so that they said, There is neither angel nor spirit. Truly, as Frederick Robertson said,
No self-righteous formalism will ever satisfy the Conscience of man; neither will infidelity give rise to a devoted spirit. Formalism in religion and infidelity in conduct often go hand in hand.
Charles Dudley Warner tells us that after having traveled around the world he came back to Brindisi, Italy, a so-called Christian country, and entered a so-called Christian Church to see a figure of Christ, the Crucified One, set off in a dark corner with dust gathered on it, while a representation of Mary, the mother, clad with the latest mode of French millinery, flamed before an altar, and their knees bowed there.
It was little better than the Baal-worship of Hoseas time. And if Jesus should come to that church He would have occasion to utter the words which He once addressed to Scribes and Pharisees.
Thus have ye made the Commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
This people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me.
But in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
This degenerate worship was popularized by priest and prince. By reading fourteen verses of the fifth chapter you will see they were its chief patrons. The Prophet of God addressed them Hear ye this, O priests; and hearken, ye House of Israel. Then, after describing their participation in these false and foul ceremonies, he voices God as saying: I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the House of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away: I will take away; and none shall rescue him.
It is a sad day for the Church when the prince, or the man in the place of power, is putrid. It is a darker day when the priest, or the leader in the Church of God, is correspondingly corrupt. When the time came that Tetzel could sell indulgences, with the consent of the priesthood of Rome, the very moral rottenness existing in the Name of Jesus, compelled the Reformation, and gave rise to Luthers opinions, and victory to his appeal. And when, at the present time, a Pastor, either by evil practices, leads his people into iniquity, or by his silence concerning the commercial and other sins of those who contribute to his salary, connives at iniquity, the condition becomes akin to that which Hosea was raised up to rebuke nearly three thousand years ago. And the result for the present day will be the very same as that which came to the Israel of Hoseas time.
It produced the grossest idolatry and immorality.
There is not time to read to you these chapters,4 to 13,but if there were, the reading would only profit you by giving you pain as you looked upon Israels open sore.
It was this principle that Hosea saw and clearly stated so many, many centuries ago,namely, when men become lawless, and are libertines, they cannot hope to keep women upon a plane of chastity and holiness. God distinctly declares that He would not punish their daughters for their sins, in view of the conditions of society, for which priest, prince and peasant were responsible.
George Adam Smith reminds us that history in many periods has confirmed the justice of Hoseas observations, and by one strong voice after another, enforced his terrible warnings. The experience of ancient Persia and Egypt, the languor of the Greek cities, the deep weariness and sated lust which in Imperial Rome made human life a hell. It is only another illustration of the Apostle James words,When lust hath conceived, it bring eth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death (Joe 1:15).
THE FOLLY WHICH INFIDELITY EFFECTS
There can be traced in this volume a striking parallelism between the conduct of the individual and of the nation. Gomers treatment of Hosea was Israels treatment of God.
There is a supreme insensibility to undeserved favor. The Prophet says, She did not know that I gave her corn, etc.
Insensibility to Divine favor has often marked the conduct of man. We easily forget that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights. We quickly attribute our blessings to our own ingenuity, to the bounty of nature, or to luck, and just as easily forget Godthe Giver of all. Strange isnt it that the one creature made in His image, endowed with the highest faculties, blessed of Him thousands of times beyond all other works of His hands, should be insensible to what he had received, and to what he is receiving, and know not God gave corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied * * silver and gold.
If this spirit were all in the world it were not so bad; but Gomer is the Prophets wife, and Israel is espoused of God; and this insensibility to Divine favor has smitten the Church, and her children forget Me, saith the Lord. Sam Jones had a man come to him who said, Jones, the church is putting my assessment too high. How much do you pay? asked Jones. Five dollars a year, was the reply. Well, said Jones, how long have you been converted? About four years. What did you do before you were converted? I was a drunkard. How much were you worth? I rented land, and was plowing with a steer. What have you got now? I have a good plantation and a pair of horses. Well, said Jones, you paid the devil two hundred and fifty dollars a year for the privilege of plowing a steer on rented land, and now you dont want to give the God who saved you five dollars a year for the privilege of plowing your own horses on your own plantation. Insensibility to Divine favor! Moses had occasion for that passage in his song, They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee, and established thee? (Deu 32:5-6).
They were slow to realize the Divine intent of judgment. After announcing His purpose in judgment, I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the House of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him (Hos 5:14). The Lord reveals His reasons by adding, I will go and return to My place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek My face: in their affliction they will seek Me early (Hos 5:15). Deliverance is always the Divine purpose in Gods judgments against His people. The Psalmist said, Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word. And it was only after the Lord had visited them with judgment that Israel could say, Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up (Hos 6:1).
But, like sinners of all ages, Ephraim must be smitten, her root dried up, so that they shall bear no fruit, and they realize themselves utterly cast away because they did not hearken unto the Lord. It is only after Israel hath destroyed herself that she realizes the source of life in God.
How strikingly this experience parallels that of weak men in all ages! Only when the prodigal, clothed in rags, starved to the point of sustenance on the honeysuckle, and sitting with the swine, does he come to himself. As a rule, the man that follows the lusts of the flesh, and goes the way of the libertine, or the drunkard, never sees the meaning of the Divine judgment until his sins have slain his manhood, wrecked his business, scattered his family, consumed his flesh, and left him as perfectly stranded as was ever a vessel when driven high upon the ragged rocks. It is amazing to study the folly of men who have departed from the Lord! Almost universally they are conceited up to the very day when they are undone. They think that they are going to recover themselves. Like Ephraim, strangers have devoured their strength, and they know it not: gray hairs are here and there upon them, and yet they know it not. They feed on the wind and follow after the east wind, and daily increase in desolation. They make a covenant with the Assyrians and boast their righteousness as Ephraim did, saying, In all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin.
God can do nothing else with such men than to bring them low; nothing else than to whelm them with sorrow; nothing else than to strike them to the very earth with judgment; for they must be made to see that their condition is not due to circumstances, but to an evil spirit.
Dr. Chapman tells the story of a woman who was seated in Central Park, New York, with her little child playing about her. Suddenly the child was startled by the barking of a dog. In her frightened state she ran into her mothers arms. When the dog ceased his barking she said, Why are you frightened, dear; he is quiet? Oh, yes, I know, mamma; but the bark is still in him.
One thing always being said by unregenerate men is, If I could only remove to a new location; settle myself with new associates, and in new business employment, I would be all right. All right! And yet evil still in you! Better turn over to Gal 5:19-21, and read, Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like What one needs is not a change of location, but a change of nature, so that the incoming of the Holy Spirit shall give you the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
Such folly is followed only by shame and degradation. The tenth chapter of Hosea illustrates the consequences of Israels conduct.
Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images.
Their heart is divided: now shall they be found faulty: he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images.
For now they shall say, We have no king, because we feared not the Lord; what then should a king do to us?
They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.
The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Beth-aven: for the people thereof shalt mourn over it, and the priests thereof that rejoiced on it, for the glory thereof, because it is departed from it.
It shall be also carried into Assyria for a present to King Jareb: Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel.
As for Samaria, her king is cut off as the foam upon the water.
The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed: the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us.
O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.
It is in My desire that I should chastise them; and the people shall be gathered against them, when they shall bind themselves in their two furrows.
And Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught, and loveth to tread out the corn; but I passed over upon her fair neck: I will make Ephraim to ride; Judah shall plow, and Jacob shall break his clods.
Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you.
Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.
Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled, as Shahnan spoiled Betharbel in the day of battle: the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.
So shall Beth-el do unto you because of your great wickedness; in a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off.
In conclusion we pass to
GODS AFFECTION FOR AN UNFAITHFUL PEOPLE
That affection was expressed in undeserved words and acts. God bares His heart here as He has often done before, crying,
O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away (Hos 6:4),
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt,
I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them (Hos 11:1; Hos 11:3-4).
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together.
I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city (Hos 11:8-9).
Beloved, one lesson that it seems difficult to learn is thisto remember the goodness of God. One should adopt the custom of thinking upon Divine favor. It is only as we forget the source of our blessings, of every good and perfect gift that we grow indifferent to the grace of our God.
Dr. Torrey says, I was talking one night to one who was apparently most indifferent and hardened. She told me the story of her sin, with seemingly very little sense of shame, and when I urged her to accept Christ, she simply refused. I put a Bible in her hands and asked her to read this verse. She began to read, God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, and before she had finished reading the verse she had broken into tears, softened by the thought of Gods wondrous love to her.
It is a strange thing that more people dont answer temptation as did Joseph,How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?
When God executes judgment it is commonly for the purpose of correction. Take the reference in this volume,
Therefore will I return, and take away My com in the time thereof, and My wine in the season thereof, and will recover My wool and My flax given to cover her nakedness,
And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of Mine hand,
I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts, And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them,
And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and for gat Me, saith the Lord (Hos 2:9-13).
What is the purpose? He immediately proceeds to tell us, Therefore(God never employs that word without occasionit is the great conjunction with Him.)
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her,
And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt (Hos 2:14-15).
Beloved, there is a beneficent purpose when the fiery trial is on. The very whips with which He makes Israels back to bleed are not the expressions of His wrath; but, rather, of His love.
Henry Ward Beecher declares that his father used to make him believe that the end of the rod that he held in his hand was a great deal more painful than the end which he applied to Henry. And the great preacher says, It was a strange mystery to me; but I did believe it, and it seemed a great deal worse to me to be whipped on that account.
It ought to be so with the children of God. I once had in my church a woman who punished her children by vicarious suffering. When they misbehaved at the table she denied herself a meal, and she told me that it broke their hearts.
Would to God that we were as sensitive to the suffering which our sin imposes upon the Heavenly Father, and as sensible concerning the purpose which He has in visiting correction against our sins.
But, after all, God gave best evidence of His affection by,
Keeping for His people an open heart. I like to dwell on the last chapter of this Book,
O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; * *
Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously (Hos 14:1-2).
And I like to listen to Gods answer to this cry which He Himself seeks to put into their lips,
I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him.
I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.
His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.
Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? (Hos 14:4-6; Hos 14:8).
It is a beautiful picture! It ought to encourage the children whose hearts have departed from the plain paths of privilege in Christ; it ought to incite hope in the heart of the individual who has played the prodigal and paid the penalty.
I like to reflect upon the words of that sweet-spirited man, F. B. Meyer, as he speaks of Gods attitude toward those who turn again to Him, saying,
Be sure that God will give you a hearty welcome. He has not given you up or ceased to love you. He longs for you. Read the last chapter of the Book of Hosea, which may be well called the backsliders gospel. Read the third chapter of Jeremiah, and let the plaintive pleadings to return soak into your spirit. Read the story of Peters fall and restoration, and let your tears fall thick and fast on John 21: as you learn how delicately the Lord forgave, and how generously He entrusted the backslider with His sheep and with His lambs. Be sure that though your repeated failures and sins have worn out every one else, they have not exhausted the infinite love of God. He tells us to forgive our offending brother unto four hundred and ninety times; how much oftener will He not forgive us? According to the height of heaven above the earth, so great is His mercy.
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.
Hos. 11:1.] The prophet shows how Israel had repaid Gods love in the past with ingratitude and unfaithfulness. Child] First-born son (Exo. 4:22), the infancy in Egypt and the wilderness; son by election. Called] Brought safely out, typical of Christs call (Mat. 2:15), and of redemption through him.
Hos. 11:2. They] Moses, Aaron, and prophets; many calls, but Israel drew back from them, went after gods.
Hos. 11:3. I taught] Lit. set Ephraim on his feet (cf. Deu. 1:31; Deu. 8:2; Deu. 8:5; Neh. 9:21; Isa. 63:9). God supported them as a nurse her child, gently taught them to walk, and carried them when tired (Num. 11:12. See Act. 13:18, marg.). Knew] Ignored Gods kindness, perceived not Gods design to restore them (Exo. 15:26).
Hos. 11:4. Cords of a man] Par. to bands of love, cords with which men are led, more especially children that are weak upon their feet, in contrast with ropes, with which men control wild, unmanageable beasts (Psa. 32:9), are a figurative representation of the paternal humane guidance of Israel [Keil]. Take off] Heb. lift up, i.e. push the yoke higher up, to relieve oxen, that they might eat with comfort and ease. Pusey gives, I was regarded by them as putting the yoke on, ever placing some new yoke or constraint upon them, but the words indicate Gods continued goodness. Laid meat] Gave means of grace and manifestations of mercy in abundance; manna in the desert.
HOMILETICS
GODS PATERNAL CARE AND MANS UNGRATEFUL RETURN.Hos. 11:1-4
There is a wonderful cluster of blessings in these verses, every one of which is significant, and the whole especially puts men under deep obligation.
I. Gods great kindness. God loved, trained, and treated his people with the greatest care, though they sinned and rebelled against him. This kindness is displayed
1. In the love of a parent towards a son. When Israel was a child then I loved him. (a) This love is free. God loved them not because they were better and more numerous than others. He loved them of his own free will, and chose them because he loved them (Deu. 7:7-8). (b) This love is undeserved. When a child, wayward and self-willed, foolish and disobedient. We love children because they are like us, or because they please us. But God loves men that are unlike him in character and helpless in condition (Rom. 5:6). This love is sovereign and undeserved; for we were by nature children of wrath, even as others. When forlorn and outcast, God loves men and adopts them into his family.
2. In the power of a redeemer to a captive. And called my son out of Egypt. God not only called by the voice of his servants, but gave power to obey the call. Men are called for years, but do not, are unwilling and unable to come to God. The Spirit makes us willing in the day of Gods power; reluctance is overcome; we rise and obey the call. Power in a redeemer is a necessity. We cannot trust a Saviour who cannot deliver us. But in Christ omnipotence is linked with love, power is employed for the ends of mercy and the salvation of man. Redemption from Egypt is a type of deliverance from sin, death, and hell. For he shall save his people from their sins.
3. In the tenderness of a nurse for a child. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms. Like a mother or nurse, training a child in leading-strings, God carries men when young, upholds them when weak, and teaches them gradually and gently to walk in his commands. He takes them by their arms, lifts them up from dust and despair, and teaches them to go in pursuit of better things. It is the privilege of Gods people not only to be loved and delivered, but taught and guided. When weak and weary, in paths rough and dark, God is with them, leading them about, and instructing them and keeping them as the apple of his eye (Deu. 32:10). In the wilderness where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place (Deu. 1:31; Act. 13:18).
4. In the skill of a physician towards the sick. I healed them. Gods people are not only cared for, but cured in sickness and sorrow. Sin is self-injury, but God is our happiness and health. Men inflict wounds upon heart and mind, destroy themselves, but in God is their help (Hos. 13:9). God cures their sicknesses and pardons their sins, aids their infirmities and heals their diseases (Psa. 103:3). No other physician can close our wounds and putrefying sores, no earthly ointment can mollify our bruises. I am the Lord that healeth thee.
5. In the kindness of a master towards his servants.
1. Kindness in drawing men into his service. They are alienated and distant from God, naturally ill disposed and unable to come to him. All who come are drawn, Draw me and I will run after thee. Compulsory piety tends to infidelity. Lord Bolingbroke was compelled to peruse volumes of controversial Divinity when far too young to understand them. This perhaps implanted in his mind seeds of aversion to the truths of the Bible. (a) This drawing is by love, with bands of love. Love only can draw, cruelty drives. God uses no violence nor force, never tries harsh when gentle means will do. The law affects us like frost the stream; it hardens and stagnates the soul: but the love of God, like the shining sun and the gentle shower, melts the cold and breaks the heart into gushing streams. Teachers who rule with a rod, and parents who govern with a frown, will not win affection and obedience. God draws by loving-kindness, and wins to his service by love. I treat my enemies so well that I compel them to be my friends, said Alexander the Great. No cord or cable, says Burton, can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with only a silken thread. (b) This drawing is in harmony with our moral nature. With cords of a man. Men are not used like dumb driven cattle, but treated as responsible and rational creatures. In the promises of the gospel, the work of the Spirit, and the character of Christ, we are looked upon as men, and not machines nor brutes. All Gods dealings are in harmony with our mental and moral constitution. The love of Christ constraineth us (2Co. 5:14; 1Jn. 4:19).
2. Kindness in refreshing men in his service. (a) God relieves in distress. I was to them as they that take off the yoke. Like a merciful man who regardeth the life of his beast, he eased them of their burdens, and helped them in distress. Christ delivers from the yoke of bondage, and from the hands of our enemies (Lev. 26:13). (b) God provides in want. And I laid meat unto them. Manna from heaven, water from the rock, and food convenient for them, were provided for his ancient people. In Christ there is no starvation nor stint. Blessings in abundance are given through him. Pardon, peace, and joy; relief from harassing care, and rest in perfect security. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
II. Mans ungrateful return. God has put men under deep obligations by his goodness. If the kind deeds of men bind us to think of them and love them, how much do we owe to God, to whose ceaseless bounty we owe every comfort of life? What he bestows upon us in kindness and constant care should be given back in sacrifice, incense, and devotion. How unsuitable it is, says Edwards, for us who live only by kindness to be unkind.
Ive heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.
1. They reject Divine teaching. As they called them, so they went from them. Moses and Aaron, prophets and apostles, were unheeded. The more they were admonished the more careless they grew; the more pressing the teacher the more refractory the taught. Foolishness is bound in the hearts of children. When they are taught to go, they go from God into ways of sin. Divine instruction is needful and constantly given, yet many turn away in contempt. Christ is preached and the gospel offered, but men go to their merchandise and their farms. Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?
2. They despise Divine favours. They knew not that I healed them. They look to men as the source of blessings, as though by their own power and goodness they procure them. Ourselves and others are thanked, and God forgotten. We do not see the end of Divine chastisement, nor acknowledge Divine goodness in our prosperity. God is constantly ignored, and wilful ignorance leads to base ingratitude. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his masters crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
3. They cling to their wicked course. They sacrificed unto Baalam, went from one god to another, and burned incense to graven images. When men forsake the true God, they cut, and grave, and adore idols of their own. This is self-abasement and self-destruction; a just ground of complaint with God, and a sad perversion in man. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As mans ingratitude.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hos. 11:1. The chap. begins with love; ancient, sovereign, electing love. The next sweet word is sonship. We see immediately after in the same verse, calling, salvation, deliverance. I called my son out of Egypt [Spurgeon].
Hos. 11:1; Hos. 11:3-4. Gods children young to be cared for; weak to be strengthened; ignorant to be taught; needy to be fed; tired to be refreshed.
Holding up.
1. To teach dependence.
2. To sustain the steps.
3. To regulate the walk. God keeps from falling, lifts up when down, gently, kindly, and gradually leads along in the path of virtue. What love and care! Be not afraid to trust in God, he may chide, but will never forsake you. He keepeth the feet of his saints (1Sa. 2:9). He guideth their feet in the way of peace (Luk. 1:79).
Hos. 11:4. Christian life a drawing from sin and the world to God, greater faith and attainments, to more intimate fellowship on earth, and heaven at length. He did not say lead, but draw him. This violence is done to the heart, not to the body. Why marvel? Believe, and thou comest; love, and thou art drawn. Think it not a rough and uneasy violence: it is sweet, alluring; the sweetness draws thee [Augustine]. All the methods and parts of Gods government are twined together as twisted cords of love from God, so ordered that they ought to draw man with all his heart to love him again.
Gods love in his word and in his providence lays us under strong obligation to duty. How thankful should we be that all things are prepared and provided for us day after day. But how aggravating that guilt which despises such love. To sin against mercy is to sin against humanity; and as no surfeit is more dangerous than that of bread, so no judgment is more terrible than that which grows out of love felt and slighted [Trapp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
Hos. 11:1; Hos. 11:4. Drew them. No being ever yet drew another to him by a display of authority and terror. God himself never drew one soul to him by the law, which is only a system of authority and terror; but by the gospel, which is his scheme of mercy and grace. The whole of Christianity may be considered an infinite expediency, devised by the only wise God, to dispossess our minds of bad and unworthy thoughts, to fix in our trembling bosoms confidence, and thus to cause us to return to him. When we wish to influence a man we reason with him, inform his mindwe argue and persuade. This is precisely the method in which God deals with us. He works in us to will and to do of his good pleasure [Jay].
Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe. [Milton].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
RECOGNIZING GODS COMPASSION REMONSTRATING
TEXT: Hos. 11:1-9
1
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
2
The more the prophets called them, the more they went from them: they sacrificed unto the Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.
3
Yet I taught Ephraim to walk; I took them on my arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
4
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love; and I was to them as they that lift up the yoke on their jaws; and I laid food before them.
5
They shall not return into the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall be their king, because they refused to return to me,
6
And the sword shall fall upon their cities, and shall consume their bars, and devour them, because of their own counsels.
7
And my people are bent on backsliding from me: though they call them to him that is on high, none at all will exalt him,
8
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I cast thee off, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboiim? my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together.
9
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee; and I will not come in wrath.
QUERIES
a.
Who is the son whom God called out of Egypt?
b.
Who is the prophet speaking of in Hos. 11:7, him that is on high?
c.
What does Gods nature (Hos. 11:9) have to do with withholding wrath?
PARAPHRASE
When Israel was in its infancy as a nation I loved him and protected and delivered him from Egyptian bondage. And how did Israel repay Me? Time after time, as I sent My prophets with messages of My love and care, Israel rejected them. In fact, he hated the very sight of these well-meaning warners, preferring Baalim and carved images to their Creator and Redeemer. Yet, as a father patiently teaches his child to walk, takes him by his arms, carefully leads him until he has learned to walk safely; so I lovingly took Israel by his arms and taught him to walk in My ways; but they refused to acknowledge that I, Jehovah, was their healer. I drew them to Me gently like men guiding and helping one another with ropes; I bound them to me only with bands of love; I eased all their burdens like a farmer pushes back the yoke upon his oxen so they may eat their food in comfort; I even fed them manna from heaven, food for which they did not work. No, they shall not return to Egypttheir destiny is far more terrible than that. The blood-thirsty Assyrians will be their taskmasters because they deliberately refused to return to My counsel. War and destruction will swirl through their cities; their enemies will crash through their gates, breaking the cross-beams holding them shut, and trap them in their own fortresses. They have chosen to follow their own counsel. My people are so fastened to their backsliding ways they are, as it were, impaled upon apostasy, and they cannot get loose. Although the prophets continually call them upward to God, none of the people rise to the upward call and return to Gods ways. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? shall I surrender thee, O Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? Shall I set thee as Zeboiimas those blackened cities of the plain that were destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah? My heart is in turmoil; My heart is moved to its depths! You deserve, and I could justly execute, My fierce anger, but I am not going to utterly destroy you and completely withdraw My covenant promises. No, I am infinitely faithful, loving and patient. I am able to do what no man can do. I am going to ultimately execute justice and at the same time justify by My grace, those who believe and trust Me. I am going to punish sin and have mercy on penitent sinners when I fulfill My covenant.
SUMMARY
Hosea shows how the people of Israel repaid the Lord for all the proofs of His lovewith ingratitude and unfaithfulness. Israel deserved total obliteration but God, because of His love and faithfulness, will perform a work that man cannot even imagineHe will both execute His justice and justify those who believe.
COMMENT
Hos. 11:1 WHEN ISRAEL WAS A CHILD, THEN I LOVED HIM, AND CALLED MY SON OUT OF EGYPT. This section of Hosea is one of the most beautiful sections of the entire Old Testament. When Hosea touches upon the love of God, he plunges us into an ocean whose depths have never been fathomed. Gods love is all-embracing, all-inviting, all supporting, all-supplying. And, as Hosea so graphically indicates, Gods matchless love underlies every one of His divine warnings. When such love is spurned it only makes more terrible the fearful storms of judgment when they break. Hosea had been brought into fellowship with such love through tragedy in his own home, through which tragedy, the tragedy of wounded love, there had come to him a sympathetic understanding of the Divine heart of God. The verse before us is quoted in Mat. 2:15. It is very evident that Hoseas primary reference is to Israels deliverance from bondage in Egypt under the leadership of Moses (cf. Exo. 4:22-23). God, through the prophet, is appealing to Israel to remember its Heavenly Fathers love demonstrated in the past. The inspired apostle Matthew quotes Hosea and applies it to Christs sojourn in Egypt when He was a babe in the arms of Mary, It is also possible that Hosea intended to predict the future deliverance of the covenant people from the clutches of heathen captivity (which Hosea has already typified by the use of the name of Egypt, Hos. 8:13). In any case, we have here one of the myriad-events of Israels history which typically prophesies an event in the life of the true Israel, the true Son, the Messiah. We quote on this verse from Keil:
The development and guidance of Israel as the people of God all pointed to Christ . . . the relation which the Lord of heaven and earth established and sustained with that nation, was a preparation for the union of God with humanity, and paved the way for the incarnation of His Son, by the fact that Israel was trained to be a vessel of divine grace. All essential factors in the history of Israel point to this as their end, and thereby become types and material prophecies of the life of Him in whom the reconciliation of man to God was to be realized, and the union of God with the human race to be developed into a personal unity.
One need only be familiar with the Epistle to the Hebrews and other New Testament references to the typical relation of Israels history to the Messiah and His church to see that this is true!
Gods relationship to Israel from her infancy through her maturity is vividly portrayed by Ezekiel (Eze. 16:1 ff).
Hos. 11:2 THE MORE THE PROPHETS CALLED THEM, THE MORE THEY WENT FROM THEM . . . A more obstinate people could not be found. Not even the pagan Ninevites in Jonahs day were this obdurate! Jesus found many of the Jews in His earthly ministry equally as unyielding (cf. Mat. 11:20-30; Mat. 12:38-42). A literal translation of this phrase might read, . . . the more they went away from their (the prophets) faces. In other words, the more the prophets preached to the people, the more the people hated the very sight of the prophets. The people could not stand righteousness and goodness because they loved evil (cf. Joh. 3:18-21), Their bent for sinning is expressed in Hos. 11:7 below.
Hos. 11:3 YET I TAUGHT EPHRAIM TO WALK . . . The infinite kindness and patience of the Heavenly Father is likened to the tender love of an earthly parent teaching the babe to walk. Moses referred to the Fathers care, . . . in the wilderness the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son (Deu. 1:31). The everlasting arms of God support His covenant people in all ages and dispensations (cf. Deu. 33:27; Psa. 18:35-36; Isa. 41:10; Isa. 46:4). He healed all their sorrows and wounds incurred in the bondage of Egypt by bringing them prosperity and peace. But they did not reciprocate.
Hos. 11:4 I DREW THEM WITH CORDS OF A MAN, WITH BANDS OF LOVE . . . God draws with loveHe does not drive or force obedience. Even the new commandment of Jesus, the command to love one another, receives its prompting from Jesus own example of love towards those whom He commands to love (Joh. 13:34-35; Joh. 15:12-17). Cords of a man is evidently a phrase intended to convey much the same meaning as our modern tied to her apron strings. Lange describes them: . . . such as those with which men, especially children, would be led, opposed to ropes, with which beasts are tied. God not only draws with loveHe also binds men to Himself by the force of love. It was the love of Christ which constrained the apostle Paul (cf. 2Co. 5:14). It is only through being bound by the bond of peace that we are able to maintain the unity of the Spirit. The peace referred to, of course, is the peace Christ accomplished between God and man through His loving sacrificeso it is the love of Christ, after all, that binds us to Him. Time after time the saints of the Old Testament had the love of God demonstrated to them. God eased the yoke from off their jaws. As a merciful farmer would push the yoke back off the cheeks of his oxen in order that they might eat without discomfort, so God relieved one burden after another for the children of Israel. Not only that, He fed them with manna from heaven and caused them to prosper when they did not deserve it. When one thinks about it, this is the proto-type of the Prodigal Son immortalized in the parable told by Jesus (cf. Luk. 15:11 ff). It is the same experience many an earthly father has had. A father woos his son by love; he seeks to bind his son to him by acts of love (even when disciplining); the father relieves every burden from the son it is humanly possible for him to relieve; the father gives to the son even when the son does not deserve it. And so often the son reciprocates with self-willed rebellion.
Hos. 11:5 THEY SHALL NOT RETURN . . . INTO EGYPT . . . BUT . . . ASSYRIAN SHALL BE THEIR KING . . . There is no contradiction between this verse and Hos. 8:13! In Hos. 8:13 Hosea is using the land of Egypt to typify the bondage which Israel was about to suffer in her imminent captivity. In Hos. 11:5 Hosea states unequivocally that that captivity will take place in Assyria. Thus the present verse must indicate that some of the people of Hoseas day had suggested a return to political paternalism with Egypt. Some felt that they might woo Egypt into helping them against Assyria, And being a satellite of Egypt would be better than facing possible military confrontation with Assyria. But Hosea tells them plainly that they will be ruled by the terrifying Assyrians. And the reason is stated simply. Because they would not repent of their self-willed idolatry and return to worshipping and serving Jehovah. There are no humanistic, sociological, psychological, economic, cyclic-historical explanations offered by the preacher of God, It was simply that the people of God had broken their covenant relationship with Himthey did not obey His word.
Hos. 11:6 AND THE SWORD SHALL FALL UPON THEIR CITIES . . . The word translated fall means literally to circulate. The swords of the Assyrian solders would make the round of the cities of Israel. Bars or the large crossbeam-bolts used to bolt their huge city gates would pose no problem to the Assyriansthey would use their war machines and break through the gates. All of this is to come upon Israel because of their own counsels. They trusted in their own wisdom rather than give heed to the counsel of God (cf. Psa. 127:1; Pro. 29:8; Ecc. 9:13-18). No matter how rich or powerful a nation may become it does not afford security. Why? Because this universe is ruled and operated on a basis of moral law. God created and now sustains the universe and every event within it by principles of justice and righteousness. Any individual or nation that chooses to rebel against these principles must be prepared to suffer the inevitable consequences. It makes no difference how well educated, technologically advanced, economically solvent a people may be, when they trust in their own counsels to the exclusion of Gods counsel (the Bible), they dash themselves to pieces upon the immutable sovereignty of Gods moral laws.
Hos. 11:7 AND MY PEOPLE ARE BENT ON BACKSLIDING FROM ME . . . The word bent is literally fastened upon, or impaled upon apostasy as something is impaled upon a stake, so that it cannot get loose. The people of Israel were transfixed, or hypnotized, as it were, by sin, and they could not seem to give a thought to anything else! They were fascinated by the thrill of itby its deadliness. They were deceived by sin (cf. Heb. 3:13). How much this is like so many people today. There is not a person living that has not been fascinated or deceived by some form of sin or another at one time in his life! Sin is like that! Man, without the word of God in his heart, is like that! (cf. Deu. 6:1-6; Psa. 119:11). Although God sent His servants, the prophets, to call the people upward toward God, it seemed as if not one person in the whole nation listened to their preaching.
Hos. 11:8-9 HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP, EPHRAIM? . . . MY HEART IS TURNED WITHIN ME . . . I WILL NOT EXECUTE THE FIERCENESS OF MINE ANGER . . . Admah and Zeboiim were the cities of the plain that were destroyed when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. In light of Israels deliberate choice to defy Gods moral reign, there is only one thing to do. By all that is just and right, God may give them up, abandon them. This is what man would do. But God is not man (cf. 1Sa. 15:29; Num. 23:19; Mal. 3:6). There was something holding Jehovah back from executing His judgment to the uttermost. Three times God repeats, I will not . . . I will not . . . I will not. He cannot utterly abandon them, although they deserve it. And what was staying the hand of Godwhat kept Him from destroying Israel completely? The answer comes, My heart is turned within me . . . My compassions are kindled together. It was in the nature of God, not in anything that Israel had done. The omniscient God looked down the corridors of time and saw possibilities in a remnant of Israel that men would be unable to see. He saw what this remnant would bethis son whom He had called out of Egypt and nursed and patiently fed. Because of what God is, He sees every human being and their potentialities and possibilities, and in spite of their many backslidings, He is still longsuffering, not willing that any should perish (2Pe. 3:9). The secret of Gods mercy is found in the words, My heart is turned within Me. That is a very expressive word. Turned about, or turned over, literally; but in use it is the word that describes upheaval, turmoil. Listen. God says My heart is in turmoil; My heart is moved to its depths, My heart! Again, My compassions are kindled together, and the word compassion there does not mean sorrow or pity, but solace. G. Campbell Morgan paraphrases thus: My compassions are in spasm, deeply affected. We are in the presence here of the perfect love of Goda love that is not the mere sentimental outgoing of an emotional nature, evanescent and passing; but love that becomes an agony; love that becomes a tragedy.
How it is that the perfect, immutable, holy God could first pronounce judgment upon Israel and then say, I will not? We take the liberty of quoting from G. Campbell Morgans book, Hosea, The Heart and Holiness of God, published by Revell:
Here, all mere intellectuality breaks down; here is something very strange . . . He says I will not give you up; what is the reason? Because of His heart and His compassions? Yes, but go on. I am God, and not man, and I am the Holy One in the midst of thee. There is no lowering of the standard of moral requirement. The Holy One can be compassionate and remain holy because He is God, and not man. Things are possible to Him that are not possible to man.
That is as far as we get in Hosea, It is a long way, but it leaves us asking questions; and filled with wonder, we do not understand it . . . A wonder and a mystery of righteousness and compassion are seen working together . . . When God, in spite of sin, says, How can I give you up? My heart is stirred, My compassions are stirred, but I am holy; how can I give you up? and yet says, I will not give you up, I will not, I will not, we are in the presence of some possibility wholly of God, It must have been a great word for trembling and troubled hearts even then.
But our Bible does not end in Hosea. The name Hosea meant salvation . . . There came One in the fulness of time, whose Name was Jehovah and Hosea: Jesus . . . we find out at last in Jesus, how God can be just, and the Justifier of the sinning soul.
This way of accomplishment Hosea did not see. In communion with God he had learned facts about the Divine Nature which seemed to be conflicting, and he delivered his message and uttered the words; but at last He came, Who is the Brightness of the Fathers glory and the express Image of His Person, and in Him I see how righteousness and peace meet together, and God can be just and the Justifier,
Through Him the claims of justice which are against my soul are all met. Through Him the glory of holiness is maintained; for His redemption of the human soul is not a pity that agrees to ignore sin; but a power that cancels it and sets free from its dominion. Through Him the loved one is regained, restored, renewed, and all the lights that flash and gleam upon the prophetic page, astonishing my soul, come into focused unity in Jesus. God says of you, of me, How can I give thee up? I will not . . . I will not . . . I will not.
But how? I am God and not man, I am the Holy One. Through Christ He has made the way by which sinning souls can be conformed to His image, His likeness, His will. The Gospel is gleaming in Hosea. It is shining in full radiance in Christ.
This is the very essence of the gospel! The good news is that God is both just and the Justifier (Rom. 3:21-26). In other words, God keeps His word to punish sin (this He did in His Son, Jesus Christ, and we participated in it vicariously) and He at the same time forgives the sinner who, by faith, acknowledges and accepts and acts upon Christs death in his place. Christ became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (cf. 2Co. 5:14-21). Christ died for us all. He became our substitute, our ransom; therefore we all died in Him.
What God did in reality and spiritually in Christ, He did typically and temporally with Israel. The remnant of Israel, saved by the justifying mercy of God as it exercised its faith and responded to this mercy, typified all. the covenant people of God (from all nations) in the Messianic age. Salvation is still by the grace and mercy of God to all who will respond by an exercise of faith. But that faith must be exercised in conformity to Gods revealed plan found now, for all nations and races, in the New Testament.
QUIZ
1.
Where is Hos. 11:1 repeated in the New Testament?
2.
How is Hos. 11:1 a prophecy connected to the Messiah?
3.
Why did the people of Israel hate the sight of the prophets?
4.
What is the meaning of the phrase cords of a man?
5.
Why is the behavior of the Israelites like the Prodigal Son?
6.
What reasons are given by Hosea for the imminent judgment of impenitent Israel?
7.
How deeply involved in sin and backsliding was this nation?
8.
How could God say in one breath He was going to punish Israel and then say He would not give them up?
9.
How is God able to be both just and the Justifier of the penitent?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XI.
(1) Comp. Hos. 9:10 and Exo. 4:22-23. In this context there cannot be a prophecy of the Christ, for obstinate conduct and rebellion would thus be involved in the prediction. It is true that Mat. 2:15 quotes the passage in illustration of the fact that the true Son of God was also submitted in His youth to the hard schooling of a cruel exile. The calling out of Egypt of the Messiah gave a new indication of the cyclical character of Hebrew history. The passage helps us to understand what is meant by the formula, that it might be fulfilled, &c.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR THE PRODIGAL SON, Hos 11:1-11.
Once more the prophet reverts to the early history of Israel (compare Hos 9:10; Hos 10:9). He points out how great, strong, and tender has been the divine love (Hos 11:1; Hos 11:3-4), and how unappreciative and ungrateful the chosen people (Hos 11:2; Hos 11:7); hence justice demands the execution of judgment (Hos 11:5-6). But Israel is still the son of Jehovah, and the divine compassion goes out for the prodigal (Hos 11:8); therefore the punishment will be tempered by mercy; and after the judgment has accomplished its disciplinary purpose, Israel will be restored to the divine favor (Hos 11:9-11). Hos 11:12 (in Heb 12:1) is connected more closely with chapter 12.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1. A child The childhood of Israel is the earliest stage of its national existence, here identified with the stay in Egypt (compare Hos 2:3; Hos 9:10).
I loved him Or, I began to love him (compare Hos 9:15).
Called my son out of Egypt Literally, called for my son, that is, to be my son. Out of all the nations of the earth Jehovah selected Israel to sustain filial relations to him. Other passages (Exo 4:22; Deu 14:1, etc.) imply that Jehovah regarded Israel as his son even while in Egypt, not that he called him from Egypt to become his son. This seeming difference of conception has led commentators to propose various emendations. The simplest, supported in part by LXX., is to omit the preposition le. With this omission the text reads, “I called my son.” It should be noted, however, that, especially in later Hebrew, the preposition le is used to introduce the direct object (G.-K., 117n). Following this rule even the present text might be read, “I called my son.” 1b is interpreted as Messianic in Mat 2:15.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
And called my son out of Egypt.’
With these beautiful words God describes His relationship with His chosen people as one of sovereign love. Out of His love for them He had called Israel as His son out of Egypt where they were in slavery. Compare Exo 4:22-23 where He described Israel as ‘His firstborn’ and demanded that they be freed on that basis, and Deu 14:1, where He declares them to be His children. His redemption of Israel from bondage in Egypt (Exo 20:2) is being portrayed as the act of a loving Father delivering by the payment of a ransom His child who had been enslaved. He had paid a ransom in order that Israel might be set free.
And we do well to note at this stage who ‘Israel’ were. They were not all direct descendants of Abraham. They included descendants of Abraham’s 318 fighting men and their families (Gen 14:14), and a ‘mixed multitude’ of peoples from many nations who, having taken part in the Exodus (Exo 12:38), were received into the covenant at Sinai, and were circumcised at Gilgal (Jos 5:2-9). They also included any who had later chosen to throw in their lot with Israel and enter by circumcision into the covenant (Exo 12:48). Thus they were already a multinational people. For ‘Israel’ was never made up simply of people descended from Abraham himself (that was a legal fiction). They rather saw themselves as adopted by Him, on the basis that ‘those who are of faith, those are the children of Abraham’ (Gal 3:7). But all of them were loved equally by God and were seen as His children, having been accepted into the covenant as ‘Israel’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
YHWH Describes How He Had Called His Son (Israel) Out Of Egypt And Watched Over Him As A Faithful Father, Training Him In The Right Way, Only For His Son’s Heart To Remain In Egypt So That He Would Inevitably Return There Again. Nevertheless God Promises That He Will Not Give Them Up, And That One Day He Will Call Them Out Of Egypt Again And He Will Cause Them To Dwell With Him ( Hos 11:1-12 ).
In this tender passage YHWH describes how He ‘called His son (Israel) out of Egypt’ (compare Exo 4:22-23; Deu 14:1). And how, in spite of the fact that He had led them, and watched over them and fed them (both in the wilderness and then in Canaan), they had spurned His love and turned to the Baalim and to graven images (both in the wilderness (Exodus 32) and now in Canaan), because their hearts were still ‘in Egypt’. And the consequence is to be that they will ‘return to Egypt’ (i.e. by being exiled among foreign nations or refugees in Egypt) because they have refused to turn to Him. Nevertheless He is determined not to finally give them up, and promises that although they at present only seek Him in a formal way, without there being any real heart in it, He will in His sovereignty one day bring them again out of their Egypt and ‘cause them to dwell in their houses’. It was in order to demonstrate that this promise was about to be fulfilled that Jesus (as the Supreme Representation of Israel) went as a young child into Egypt, and then returned to Palestine (Canaan) at the call of God, symbolising that the promised return of Israel to God through Him was about to happen, something which Matthew especially brings out by citing this passage (Mat 2:15).
In spite of Ephraim’s failure Judah is at this stage seen as the exception because they still ‘ruled with God’ (had a Davidic king) and were ‘faithful with the Holy One’ (continued the observance of the covenant in accordance with the Law). This might suggest that these words were written in the days of Hezekiah when this was again true.
It should be noted that whilst the alterations in method of address (changing from third person to first person and back again, and from singular to plural and back again) may be a little confusing to us they were not confusing to Hosea’s listeners. In such niceties Hebrew grammar was not as precise as we are.
Analysis of Hos 11:1-12 .
a
b The more they (the prophets) called them, the more they went from them, they sacrificed to the Baalim, and burned incense to graven images (Hos 11:2).
c Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, I took them on my arms, but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who lift up the yoke on their jaws, and I laid food before them (Hos 11:3-4).
d Will they not return into the land of Egypt, and Assyria be their king, because they refused to return to Me? And the sword will fall on their cities, and will consume their bars, and devour, because of their own counsels (Hos 11:5-6).
e And my people are bent on backsliding from me, though they call them to (Me) on high, none at all will exalt (Me)’ (Hos 11:7).
f How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I cast you off, Israel? How shall I make you as Admah? How shall I set you as Zeboiim? My heart is turned within me, My compassions are kindled together (Hos 11:8)
e I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man, the Holy One in the midst of you, and I will not come in wrath (Hos 11:9).
d They will walk after YHWH, Who will roar like a lion, for He will roar, and the children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria (Hos 11:10-11 a).
c And I will make them to dwell in their houses, says YHWH (Hos 11:11 b).
b Ephraim compasses me about with falsehood, and the house of Israel with deceit (Hos 11:12 a).
a But Judah yet rules with God, and is faithful with the Holy One (Hos 11:12 b).
Note that in ‘a’ Israel’s relationship with God was good, and they were blessed by God and in the parallel Judah’s relationship with God is good. In ‘b’ Israel had turned to the Baalim and to graven images, and in the parallel they compassed God with falsehood and deceit. In ‘c’ God watched over His people as though they were His household, and in the parallel He will make them to dwell in (His) houses. In ‘d’ they will return to Egypt and Assyria, and in the parallel they will return from Egypt and Assyria. In ‘e’ Israel call to God on high, but do not exalt Him, and in the parallel God is exalted as the Holy One among them. Central in ‘f’ is the heart cry of God for His people in His compassion for them.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
ISRAEL’S GROWING SPIRITUAL BANKRUPTCY AND DEGRADED BEHAVIOUR ARE DESCRIBED ALONG WITH THEIR RELIANCE ON IDOLS, FOREIGNERS, UNWORTHY KINGS AND THEMSELVES, AND THIS IN CONTRAST WITH YHWH’S STEADFAST LOVE FOR HIS FAILING SON ( Hos 6:4 to Hos 11:12 ).
Hosea continues to describe the condition in which Israel find themselves, and rebukes their reliance on other things than YHWH. Conditions in Israel would appear to be politically much worse, and these words were therefore probably mainly spoken during the years of turmoil following the death of Menahem and his son Pekahiah, that is, during the reigns of Pekah and Hoshea. During this period there was an off-on relationship with Assyria which eventually caused the downfall of Pekah and the initial submission of Hoshea to Assyria, followed by his later turning to Egypt (and not to YHWH) in the hope of breaking free from Assyria’s yoke.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Hos 11:1 When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
Hos 11:1
Mat 2:15, “And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”
Hos 11:2 As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.
Hos 11:3 Hos 11:4 Hos 11:3-4
Hos 11:8 How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.
Hos 11:8
Deu 29:23, “And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah , and Zeboim , which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Proof of Jehovah’s Love
v. 1. When Israel was a child, v. 2. As they, v. 3. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms, v. 4. I drew them with cords of a man, v. 5. He shall not return into the land of Egypt, v. 6. And the sword shall abide on his cities, v. 7.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
In Hos 11:1-4 Jehovah enumerates the benefits conferred on Israel all along from the time of their departure out of Egypt. But parallel with this enumeration runs the history of Israel’s ingratitude.
Hos 11:1
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. Driver uses this verse to exemplify the principle that when the reference is to what is past or certain, rather than to what is future or indefinite, we find the predicate or the apodosis introduced by , though not with nearly the same frequency as perfect and vav causes
(1) with subject or object pre-fixed;
(2) after time-determinations.
The life of a nation has its stages of rise, progress, and development, like the life of an individual man. The prophet goes back to that early period when the national life of Israel was in its infancy; it was then that a few patriarchs who had gone down to sojourn in Egypt were becoming a people; the predicate precedes, to emphasize, that early day when Israel became God’s peculiar people. The vav marks the apodosis recording God’s love in choosing that people, calling them into the relation of sonship, and delivering them out of Egypt. Thus Kimchi says, “When Israel was vet a child, i.e. in Egypt, then I loved him, therefore I am more angry with them than with the rest of the nations; for from their youth onward I have loved them, and delivered them out of the bands of their enemies. But when they transgress my commandments it is incumbent on me to chastise them as a man chastises his son.”
(1) The people of Israel is called God’s son in consequence of God choosing them and bringing them into close relationship to himself, such as that of a son to a father. The commencement was the message to Pharaoh by Moses in the words, “Israel is my son, even my firstborn: and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me.” This sonship was solemnly ratified by the giving of the Law at Sinai; and the condition clearly stated that, in the event of their preserving the knowledge of God, fulfilling his Law, and doing his will, they would at all times enjoy Divine protection, defense, and blessing, while from generation to generation they were addressed by that honorable title.
(2) As the deliverance hem Egypt is always described as a “leading” or “bringing out,” and never elsewhere as a “calling out,” some expositors maintain that the words, “out of Egypt,” signify from the time Israel was in Egypt, and are parallel to “when Israel was a child,” both referring to time, the time of national infancy. From that period God began to manifest his love, and in its manifestation he called him by the endearing name of “son”my son. The words of this verse are applied by St. Matthew to the sojourn of Jesus in Egypt. The older interpreters refer
(a) the first part of the verse to Israel and the second part typically to the history of Messiah’s childhood, in whom that of Israel reached its completeness. Rather
(b) the verse was applied typically to Israel, and to Jesus as the antitype; to the former primarily, and to the latter secondarily. Thus the head and the members are comprehended in one common prediction.
Hos 11:2
As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.
(1) Adverting to his own call mentioned in the first verse, God here refers to the many subsequent calls which he addressed to them through his servants the prophets and other messengers.
(2) The subject of the verb is erroneously understood by some, as, for example, Aben Ezra and Eichhorn, to be the idols, or their false priests or prophets; while
(3) Jerome is also mistaken in referring the words to the time of Israel’s rebelling when Moses and Aaron wished to lead them out of Egypt. The correct reference is that first stated, and the sense is that, instead of appreciating the invitations and monitions of the prophets of God, they showed their utter insensibility and thanklessness, turning away from them in contempt and scorn. Nay, the more the messengers of God called them, the more they turned a deaf ear to those who were their truest friends and best advisers. Pursuing their idolatrous practices, they sacrificed to Baal, that is to say, the various representations of that idol, and burned incense to their images, whether of wood or stone or precious metal. Thus Kimchi correctly comments as follows: “The prophets which I sent to them called to them morning and evening to turn to Jehovah, so (much the more) did they go away from them, not hearkening to their words nor desisting from their evil works.” The word , even so, denoting the measure or relation, corresponds to to be supplied in the first clause. The imperfects imply continuance of action or a general truth.
(4) The Septuagint rendering, followed by the Syriac, is , “from my presence: they;” as if they had read on instead of the present text.
Hos 11:3
I taught Ephraim also to fro, taking them by their alms; but they knew not that I healed them. This picture of God’s guiding and guarding care of Ephraim is very touching and tender. It is that of an affectionate parent or tender nurse teaching a child to walk by leading-strings; taking it up in the arms when stumbling or making a false step; and in case it fell curing the wound. Thus, nurse-like, God taught Ephraim, his wayward perverse child, to use his feet (so the original word imports), all the while lending considerate help and seasonable aid. He took them by the hand to guide them, that they might not stray; he took them in his arms to hold them up, that they might not stumble and to help them over any obstacle that might lie in the way; and when, left to themselves during a short season, and in order to test their strength, they did stumble and fall, he healed their hurt. And yet they did not apprehend nor appreciate God’s gracious design and dealings with them in thus guiding and guarding them, and in healing their diseases both temporal and spiritual. There is, perhaps, an allusion to Exo 15:26, “I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” This promise, it will be remembered, was vouchsafed immediately after the bitter waters of Marah had been sweetened by the tree which, according to Divine direction, had been cast therein. Thus Kimchi: “And they have not acknowledged that I healed them of every sickness and every affliction, as he said, ‘I will put none of these diseases upon thee.'” The reference is rather to all those evidences of his love which God manifested to them during their forty years’ wandering in the wilderness; or perhaps to his guidance of them by ‘his Law throughout their entire history. Rashi remarks that “they knew it very well, but dissembled [literally, ‘trod it down with the heel,’ equivalent to ‘despised’] and acted, as if they did not know.” The word is properly taken both by Kimchi and Gesenius
(1) for ; the former says; “The tav stands in place of he: this is the opinion of the grammarians;” the latter regards it as a solitary example of Tiphel; others again consider it a corrupt reading instead of the ordinary form of Hiph.
(2) Some take it for a noun, as J. Kimchi, who says it is “a noun after the form of , and although the word is Milel (while in it is Milra), yet it is the same form;” thus the translation is, “As for me, my guidance was to Ephraim;” so Jerome, “I have been as a nurse to Ephraim;” likewise also Cyril. The former explanation is simpler and also otherwise preferable.
(3) The Septuagint has the incorrect rendering , “I bound the feet of Ephraim,” which Jerome explains, “I bound the feet of Ephraim that they might not fly further from me,” though his own rendering is that given above.
The word has also occasioned some difficulty and consequent diversity of explanation.
(1) Some explain it to be an infinitive construct equivalent to the Latin gerund in -do, as elsewhere. Thus in the Authorized Version it is “taking them by their arms;’ but the common form of the infinitive of this verb is ; besides, the suffixes and are contradictory.
(2) Olshausen and Ewald read in the first person, the received text having, according to the latter, maintained its place only through ; but this is conjectural and wants manuscript authority.
(3) Still worse is Abarbanel’s interpretation, who understands the subject of the verb and the suffix of the noun as referring to Ephraim; thus: “He (Ephraim) took them (i.e. the idols) on his arms.”
(4) The correct explanation, as we think, is that of Kimchi and Gesenius, who take the verb for by a not unusual aphaeris of the lamed: “He took them in his arms,” the transition from the first to the third person being justified by the pictorially descriptive style of the passage. The following comment of Kimchi is worthy of attention: “The prophet only mentions Ephraim (instead of all Israel), because it was he that made the calves. He says, ‘And how does Ephraim reward me for this that I bestowed on them so many benefits, and accustomed them to go on their feet, and did not burthen them with my commandments and my service?’ And because he has compared Ephraim to a boy, he uses the word, ‘I led them by strings.’ Just as one leads a boy that he may accustom himself to go little by little without trouble, so I led them from station to station, when I brought them out of Egypt; I led them gradually without overexertion, the cloud going before them by day, and the pillar of fire by night.”
Hos 11:4
I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love. This verse contains a further representation of Jehovah’s fatherly guidance of Israel. The cords of a man are such as parents use in leading weak or young children. Bands of lore qualify more closely the preceding expression, “cords of a man,” and are the opposite of those which men employ in taming or breaking wild and unmanageable animals. The explanation of Rashi is similar: “I have always led them with tender cords such as these with which a man leads his child, as if he said with loving guidance.” Aben Ezra and Kimchi, in their explanations, carry out more fully the same idea. The former says, “The bands of love are not like the bands which are fastened on the neck of a plowing heifer;” the latter, “Because he compared Ephraim to a heifer, and people lead a heifer with cords, he says, ‘I have led Israel by the cords of a man, and not the cords of a heifer which one drags along with resistance, but as a man draws his fellow-man without compelling him to go with resistance: even so I have led them after a gentle method;’ and therefore he afterward calls them (cords of a man) bands of love.” The LXX; taking from , in the sense of” injure,” “destroy,” have the mistaken rendering … , “When men were destroyed I drew them.” The other Greek versions have the correct rendering. And I was to them as they that take off the yoke. The word herim does not mean “to lift up on” and so “impose a yoke,” as some think, nor “to take away the yoke,” but “to lift it up.” The figure is that of a humane and compassionate husbandman raising upwards or pushing backwards the yoke over the cheeks or dewlaps of the ox, that it may not press too heavily upon him or hinder him while eating. The reference is, according to Kimchi, to “taking the yoke off the neck, and letting it hang on the jaw, that it may not pull but rest from labor one or more hours of the day.” The fact thus figuratively expressed is, not the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, but the loving-kindness of Jehovah in lightening the fulfillment of the Law to Israel.
(2) The LXX. omit the word , yoke, and strangely translates the clause, “I will be to them as a man smiting (another) on the cheeks.” And I laid meat unto them.
The older and many modern interpreters,
(1) taking as the first person future apoc; Hiph; from , translate, “And I reached them food to eat,” namely, the manna in the wilderness. This would require , which some substitute for the present reading.
(2) Ewald, Keil, and others take as an adverb in the sense of” gradually,” “gently,” translating, “And gently towards him did I give him feral,” or “I gently fed him.” Some, again, as Kimchi, take
(a) as a noun, after the form of ; and others
(b) take it to be an anomalous form for , the first person future Hiph; like for (Jer 46:8).
(3) In this clause also the Septuagint, probably reading as follows: , translates, , “I will have respect to him; I will prevail with him.” Continuing the several clauses of this verse, we may express the meaning of the whole as follows: “Cords of a man” denote humane methods which Jehovah employed in dealing with and drawing his peoplenot such cords as oxen or other animals are drawn by; while “bands of love” is a kindred expression, explaining and emphasizing the former, and signifying such leading-strings as those with which a parent lovingly guides his child. The means employed by God for the help, encouragement, and support of his people were kind as they were bountiful. His benevolent and beneficent modes of procedure are further exhibited by another figure of like origin; for just as a considerate and compassionate man, a humane husbandman, gives respite and relief to the oxen at work by loosening the yoke and lifting it up off the neck upon the cheeks; and thus affords not only temporary rest and ease, but also allows an occasional mouthful or more of food, or even abundant provender, to the animal which toils in the yoke while plowing or at other work; so Jehovah extended to Israel, notwithstanding their frequent acts of unfaithfulness, his sparing mercy and tender compassions, supplying them in abundant measure with all that they needed for the sustenance and even comforts of life. Thus their sin in turning aside to other gods, which were no gods, in quest of larger benefits and more liberal support and succor, was all the more inexcusable.
Hos 11:5-7
The next three verses (5-7) describe the severe chastisement Israel incurred by ingratitude for, and contempt of, the Divine love.
Hos 11:5
He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. These words sound like an announcement that the season of Divine grace, so long extended to that sin-laden people, had at length expired; and that on account of their stubborn and on-grateful rebellion against Jehovah they would be forced, to go into exile and become subject to the monarch of Assyria.
(1) They had been threatened with a return to Egypt and its bondage in Hos 8:13, “They shall return to Egypt;” and Hos 9:3, “Ephraim shall return to Egypt;” vet now God, without any change of purpose, changes his mode of procedure, not allowing them to return to Egypt, but dooming them to a worse bondage under the Assyrians.
(2) Having been tributary to Assyria from the time of Menahem, they had revolted and applied to Egypt for help; now, however, no help would be permitted to come from Egypt nor even an opportunity of applying for it allowed. The power of Assyria would be paramount; instead, therefore, of native kings and Egyptian auxiliaries, Israel would have to submit to that iron yoke. However desirous of returning to Egypt, they would have neither the power nor the privilege of doing so. And this poor privilege of a choice of masters they were refused as a just retribution, because they had not repented of their sin and returned to God. Various methods have been resorted to, to harmonize the apparent contradiction alluded to, that is, between the affirmative and negative statements about Israel’s return into Egypt.
(1) Dathe, Eichhorn, and De Wette agree with the LXX. in reading instead of , and connecting it with the preceding verse; but the other versions, as well as the manuscripts, support the received text.
(2) Jerome and Rosenmller explain it of the people’s desire to conclude an alliance with Egypt in order to throw off the yoke of Assyria, being frustrated by the superior power of the latter; thus the sense is that they shall not return any more to Egypt, as they had lately done by their ambassadors, to seek help from that land or its people. Then he assigns the reason why they would not again send ambassadors to Egypt for the purpose indicated, because the Assyrian alone would be their king. The objection to this is that lo yashubu must refer to the whole people rather than to their ambassador going to and fro between the countries.
(3) Ewald, Maurer, and others cut the knot by taking lo interrogatively, as if it were halo, and thus equivalent to an affirmative, i.e. “Shall they not return to Egypt and the Assyrian be their king?” The expected answer would be in the affirmative. Neither grammar nor context sanctions this interrogative sense.
(4) According to Hitzig, Keil, Simson, and others, we are to understand Egypt in the previous places, viz. Hos 8:13 and Hos 9:3, as received of the land of bondage, where in the present passage the typical sense is inadmissible, owing to the contrast with Assyria. Into Egypt Israel should not return, lest the object of the Exodus might seem frustrated, but a worse lot lay before themanother and harder bondage awaited them; the King of Assyria would be their king and reign over them, and all because of their impenitence and refusal to return to Jehovah. The following is the explanation of Kimchi: “They should not have returned to the land of Egypt to seek help; I had already said to them, ‘Ye shall henceforth return no more that way;’ for if they had returned to me, they would not have needed help from Egypt. And against their will Assyria rules over them, and they serve him and send him a present year by year. And why is all this? Because they refused, etc.; as if he said (they refused) to return to me; for if they had returned to me, foreign kings (literally, ‘kings of the nations’) would not have ruled ever them, but they would have ruled over the nations as they had done in the days of David and Solomon, when they did my will; and so have I assured them, ‘Thou shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.'” The root of is cognate with , to hold back, refuse; the le strengthens the connection of the objectival infinitive with the governing verb; the ellipsis of is obvious.
Hos 11:6
And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them. A more accurate rendering would be, and the sword shall sweep round in its cities, and destroy its bolts and devour. Nay, they could not free themselves from invasion and attack. The sword of war would whirl down upon their cities and consume the branches, that is, the villages, or the city bars, or the strong warriors set for defense. Some understand the word so variously interpreted in the sense of “liars,” and refer it to the prophets, priests, and politicians who spake falsehood and. acted deceitfully. The word is rendered
(1) “the sword,” as the principal weapon in ancient warfare anti the symbol of war’s destructive power shall sweep round in, circulate, or make the round of the cities of Israel; but
(2) others,” whirl down,” “light on ;” thus both Rashi and Kimchi. Again, is, as already intimated, variously rendered. The most appropriate translation
(a) is (literally, “poles for carrying the ark,” Exo 25:13) “bolts or bars” for securing gates, the root being , to separate.
(b) Some explain it as a figure for “mighty men;” so Jerome and the Targum, as also Rashi: “It destroys his heroes and consumes them.” this is the meaning of the word preferred by Gesenius.
(c) Ewald understands it in the sense of “fortresses,” especially on the frontier, by which a land is shut against or opened to the enemy.
(d) Aben Ezra and Kimchi take it to mean “branches,” i.e. villages, and are followed by the Authorized Version. “The explanation of ,” says Kimchi, “is ‘ branches,’ and it is a figure for villages, for he had already mentioned his cities; and villages are related to cities as branches to a tree; in like manner they are called ‘ daughters,’ being related to a city as daughters to a mother.”
(e) The LXX. render it by , having read , as also the Syriac. Because of their own counsels. The cause of all their calamitous invasions, which city gates barred and bolted could not shut out, was their evil counsels in departing from the Lord, as Kimchi correctly explains: “All this comes upon them in consequence of their evil counsel, because they have forsaken my service to serve other gods.” Rashi draws attention to the peculiarity of the accentuationtasha and sellugto separate it from the preceding word. The Septuagint here again blunders, obviously reading , and translating, “And shall eat (the fruit) of their evil counsel.”
Hos 11:7
And my people are bent to backsliding from me. This first clause of the verse is very expressive, every word almost having an emphasis of its own. With all their sinfulness and shortcomings, Israel was still the people of Godmy people; they were guilty of the sin of backsliding, and of backsliding from God, the best of benefactors and their chief good. Nor was it occasionally and after long intervals of time that they backslided; it was their habit, their tendency. They were suspended on, or rather fastened on, backsliding. Though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him; margin, together they exalted him not. This second clause signifies either
(1) that the prophets called Israel from their idols to the Host High, yet none exalted him (literally, “together they did not or would not exalt him”) by abandoning their idols and abstaining from backsliding; or,
(2) “though they call him (Israel) upwards, yet not one of them all will lift himself up,” that is, they togetherone and allrefused or neglected to lift themselves upward towards God or goodness.
The word is equivalent to , the same as , from , equivalent to , so that it signifies, according to Keil,
(1) “suspended,” “hung up, hanging fast upon,” “impaled on; ‘ Hengstenberg,
(2) “swaying about from inconstancy,” and “in danger of falling away;” but Pusey seems to combine both in the original sense of the word, and explains it as follows: “Literally, hung to it! as we say, ‘a man’s whole being hangs on a thing.’ A thing hung to or on another sways to and fro within certain limits, but its relation to that on which it is hung remains immovable, Its power of motion is restrained within these limits. So Israel, so the sinner, however he veer to and fro in the details and circumstances of his sin, is fixed and immovable in Iris adherence to his sin itself.” Though Rashi and the Targum of Jonathan make as synonymous with , thus: “When the prophets teach them to return to me, they are in suspense whether to return or not to return; with difficulty do they return to me,”they are, however, distinguished as turning away from and turning to Godaversion from and conversion to him; while the suffix is objective, that is, “My people are hung to apostatizing from me.”
The phrase is variously interpreted, by some as
(1) “upwards,” the prophets being the subject; thus Rashi: “To the matter that is above him (Israel) the prophets call him unitedly; but my people do not lift themselves up nor desire to do it.” Corruption was so deeply seated in Israel, that the idle mass gave no response to the voice of the prophets urging them upwards.
(2) Aben Ezra and Kimchi both take as an adjective, and synonymous with , the Most High. Kimchi explains as follows: “He says, My people oscillate between distress and freedom; sometimes distress comes upon them, and again they are in the condition of freedom, and this takes place for their backsliding from me, as if he said, because of the backsliding and rebellion which they practice against me The prophets call them constantly to return to God most high.” So Aben Ezra: “The interpretation is, the callers call him to the Most High, and they are the prophets of God; but they all in one way raise not the head.”
(3) Jerome takes it for , a yoke, and renders accordingly: “But a yoke shall be imposed on them together, that is not taken away.”
The verb signifies,
(1) according to Gesenius and many others, “to celebrate with praises,” or “extol.” It is rather
(2) “to lift one’s self up,” “rise upwards;” nor is it necessary with this sense to supply , his head, with Grotius, nor yet to understand it written for or in the sense of , with Joseph Kimchi. Similarly the Syriac: “They call him to God, but they think together, conspire, and do not raise themselves.” The word is “all together,” and therefore is “no one.” The LXX. translate
(3) the second clause as follows: “But God shall be angry with his precious things, and shall not at all exalt him,“ having probably read
Hos 11:8
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? This verse paves the way for transition to promise. Although the Israelites on account of such conduct had merited complete annihilation, yet Jehovah, for his love and mercy’s sake, substitutes grace for justice, and will not destroy them from off the face of the earth. One rendering
(1) gives the clause the turn of an exclamation rather than of an interrogation; thus: “How readily and justly could I [or should I, or how thoroughly could I if I punished thy rebellion as I deserved] give thee up to destruction!” We prefer
(2) the ordinary rendering, by which it is treated as a question: “How shall I give thee up to the power of the enemy, and not only that, but destroy thee?” Calvin’s exposition seems indeed to favor the former: “Here,” he says, “God consults what he is to do with the people; and first, indeed, he shows that it was his purpose to execute vengeance such as the Israelites deserved, even wholly to destroy them; but yet he assumes the character of one deliberating, that none might think that he hastily fell into anger, or that, being soon excited by excessive fury, he devoted to ruin those who had lightly sinned, or were guilty of no great crimes By these expressions of the text God shows what the Israelites deserved, and that he was now inclined to inflict the punishment of which they were worthy, and yet not without repentance, or at least not without hesitation. He afterwards adds in the next clause, This I will not do; my heart is within me changed.” Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. The , literally, “upon,” “with,” then, “in,” or “within:” “My heart is turned or changed from anger to pity in me.” The expression, , signifies, according to Rashi, “one warmed,“ as in Gen 43:30, where this same word is rendered in the Authorized Version,” yearned:” “His bowels did yearn upon his brother,” or “warmed towards.” But
(2) many modern interpreters understand the word in the sense of” gathering themselves together:” “The feelings of compassion gathered themselves together;” nichumim, from Piel , a noun of the form , less definite than rachamim, bowels, as the seat of the emotions, “gathered themselves together,” or “were excited all at once.” The cities of the plain included Admah and Zeboim, Sodom and Gomorrah, all of which, in consequence of their sins, were overthrown and perished in one common calamity. In Deu 29:23 these cities are all named, though Admah and Zeboim are not mentioned by name in the narrative of the catastrophe contained in Genesis. Though Israel had been as guilty and deserving of wrath as these, God expresses strong reluctance to deliver them over into the hands and power of their enemies, or to give them up to destruction. His heart revolted at the thought, and turned aside from the fierceness of his anger, though so fully deserved, into the direction of mercy; a new turn was given to his feelings in the direction of compassion. All his relentings or repentings togetherone and allyearned or were at once aroused. Repenting on the part of God is an expression suited to human comprehension, implying no change of purpose on the side of God, but only a change of procedure consistent with his purpose of everlasting love. “The Law speaks in the language of the sons of men.”
Hos 11:9
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim. The promise of this verse is in harmony with the spirit of compassion expressed in the preceding. It is at once the effect and evidence of that feeling of Divine compassion. God would neither execute the burning heat of his wrath, for so the words literally mean, nor destroy Ephraim utterly, or again any more as formerly. The historic event referred to may be the destruction effected by Tiglath-pileser, ally of Ahaz King of Judah against Pekah King of Israel and Rezin King of Syria, when he carried away captive the inhabitants of Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, as we read in 2Ki 15:29, “In the days of Pekah King of Israel came Tiglath-pileser King of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazer, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.” But while this is probably the primary allusion, there is an ulterior reference to the future restoration of Israel. For I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city (or, come into bumming wrath, Keil). A reason is here assigned for the exercise of the Divine commiseration just expressed; this reason is God’s covenant of everlasting love. He is God, and must be measured by a Divine standardnot man, implacable and revengeful; though his people’s provocation had been grievous, God was in the midst of them as their God, long-suffering and steadfast to his covenant of love and purposes of mercy. He would not enter
(a) into the city as an enemy, and for the purpose of utter destruction, as he had entered into the cities of the plain for their entire and final ruin; or,
(b) if the alternative rendering be preferred, he would not come into burning wrath. The fiery heat or fierceness of God’s wrath tends to destruction, not the amendment of the impenitent. The expression, “I will not return,” may also be understood as equivalent to
(1) “I will not turn from my pity and promises;” or, “I will not turn away from Israel;” but
(2) it suits the context better to translate on the principle of two verbs expressing one idea in a modified sense, i.e. “I will not return to destroy,” that is, “I will not again destroy Ephraim.” Jerome’s explanation favors the first, and is, “I will not act according to the fury of my anger, nor change from my clemency to destroy Ephraim; for I do not strike to destroy for ever, but to amend… for I am God and not man. Man punishes for this purpose of destroying; God chastises for the purpose of amending.” As God, his purpose of mercy was changeless; as the Holy One in Israel, he was infinitely pure and absolutely perfect, “the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.” The meaning
(1) already given of coming into the city is supported by ancient versions, Hebrew expositors, and some of the ablest Christian commentators; yet
(2) we prefer that which understands in the sense of “the heat of wrath,” deriving it from effervescence, which is that given in Keil’s translation. There is
(3) an explanation strongly advocated by Bishop Lowth and adopted by Rosenmller. It is as follows in the words of the bishop: “Jerome is almost singular in his explanation: ‘I am not one of those who inhabit cities; who live according to human laws; who think cruelty justice.’ Castalio follows Jerome. There is, in fact, in the latter member of the sentence, , a parallelism and synonym to in the former. The future has a frequentative power (see Psa 22:3 and Psa 22:8), ‘I am not accustomed to enter a city: I am not an inhabitant of a city.’ For there is a beautiful opposition of the different parts: ‘I am God, and not man.’ This is amplified in the next line, and the antithesis a little varied: ‘ I am thy God, inhabiting with thee, but in a peculiar and extraordinary manner, not in the manner of men.’ Nothing, I think, can be plainer or more elegant than this.” The bishop’s rendering of the whole verse is
“I will not do according to the fervent of my wrath,
I will not return to destroy Ephraim:
For I am God, and not man;
Holy in the midst of thee, though I inhabit not thy cities.”
Hos 11:10
They shall walk after the Lord: he shall roar like a lien: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west. Others translate, “After the Lord shall they go as after a lion that roareth.” But this necessitates a double ellipsis of “after which.” They would go after the Lord in obedience to his summons. That summons is represented as far-reaching and terrible. Calling his people to return, the Lord roars as a lion, to denote at once the loudness of the call, and the awful majesty of the Lord when thus calling his people to return. “As a lion,” says Kimchi, “which roars that the animals whose king he is may assemble to him, so the Israelites shall assemble on hearing the voice of the Lord when he roars.” The roaring of the lion may signify his terrible judgments on Israel’s enemies, when he calls his people home from the lands of their dispersion. The result would be a speedy return of his children from the lands of the Westthe countries round or beyond the Mediterranean.
Hos 11:11
They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt. The trembling here is eager haste, or precipitate agitation, in which they would hurry home, and that from west and east and southfrom west as we infer from Hos 11:10, from Assyria in the east and Egypt in the south. They would thus hurry as a bird home to its nest in the greenwood; as a dove no longer a silly dove, but flying home to its window. This chapter is regarded by some as ending here. Others include Hos 11:12.
Hos 11:12
Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: hut Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the saints. The first clause sets forth the faithlessness and insincerity of Israel, and that in contrast with Judah. Thus understood, the verse properly belongs to the present chapter. But others understand the last clause differently, and deny the contrast, viz. “Judah is yet defiant towards God and towards the All-Holy One, who is faithful.”
HOMILETICS
Hos 11:1-4
A rich display of God’s mercy, love, and long-suffering.
One chief design of Scripture is to recommend to sinners the goodness and grace of God “The whole Scripture,” says Luther, “aims especially at this, that we doubt not, but certainly hope, trust, and believe that God is gracious, merciful, and long-suffering.”
I. GOD‘S LOVE IS UNMERITED. This is evident from the condition of Israel when he became the object of this love. That condition was one of childhood, and so of childish ignorance, of childish impotence, of childish folly; for folly is bound up in the heart of a child. Nay, if we compare Eze 16:4-8, we find the natural state of the nation to have been still worse; that wretched state is there vividly exhibited under the similitude of a poor perishing infant in the most pitiable condition. So with persons individually as well as nationally. When, to use the figure of the prophet, we were polluted, literally trodden down, and perishing in our own blood, he passed by us end looked upon us, and his tone was a tone of love.
II. GOD‘S LOVE IS A LOVE OF BENEVOLENCE. He calls Israel his son. The relation of a son to a father is a very near and dear one. The privilege of sonship is very great. David esteemed it no light thing to be a king’s son-in-law. How unspeakably greater it is to be a son of God by adoption as well as by creation, and thus to be an heir of glory I “Is Ephraim my dear son?” God inquires; and again he says, “I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” But though the privilege of being a son of God is great and the dignity high, it does not necessarily exempt us from sore trials and severe sufferings; it rather secures for us such paternal chastening as for the present is not joyous but grievous, nevertheless afterward productive of the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Though Israel was God’s son, yet Israel was for years in Egypt.
III. GOD‘S LOVE IS A LOVE OF BENEFICENCE. God not only wishes well but does well to every son whom he receiveth into his family. Though Israel had been long in Egypt, he was not allowed to remain there. God in due time called his son out of Egypt. It was a night much to be remembered when that call reached them. God speaks the word and it is done; his call is effectual for the purpose intended. However great our distress, it only requires a word from God to relieve us; and that word is as easily spoken as the call which one man addresses to another when he would invite him from some distance to his side. Strange indeed it may appear to us that God’s people Israel had been so long left in Egypt, and equally strange it is that the dearly beloved of his soul are often delivered into the hand of their enemies. “It is a strange sight indeed to see a child of God, an heir of heaven, a co-heir with Jesus Christ, one dearer to God than heaven and earth, subject to the power, the caprice, and lusts of wicked, base, ungodly men; yea, it may be, for a time slaves to Satan.”
IV. GOD‘S LOVE IS FREQUENTLY UNREQUITED LOVE. As God by his messengers called Israel, Israel turned his back upon those messengers and a deaf ear to their call. Nay, like disobedient children or stubborn servants, they actually turned in the opposite direction. As God’s mercy was manifested in delivering them out of the furnace of affliction and then calling to obedience; so their stubbornness appeared in, and their sin was aggravated by, their refusal to hearken to that call, and still more by their running in a direction the right opposed. Thus we read in Jeremiah, “They turned unto me the back, and not the face.”
V. GOD‘S LOVE IS TENDER LOVE.
1. It combines the tenderness of a parent with the carefulness of a nurse. When the way was dark and obscure, he guided them as by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Thus he pointed out the way and showed them the direction in which they were to walk. Thus he taught them to go. When obstacles lay in the way and difficulties blocked it, he lifted them up by the arms and carried them over all hindrances. Similarly we read in Deuteronomy, “In the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went.” Now he took them by the hand and led them again; he lifted them up and carried them in the arms, ever conducting them in the right way.
2. So with us all more or less the path in life is untrod upon; frequently we are at a standstill; often we are sorely perplexed to know which way we should go; often and often we go astray and wander from the way. Again, there are stumbling-blocks in the way, and we stumble and fall over them. What need we have to depend on Divine love all the way, ever praying, “Lord, take us by the hand and lead us; Lord, hold up our goings in thy paths that our footsteps slip not; Lord, keep our feet from falling, our eyes from tears, and our soul from death”!
3. The way may be strait, as when Israel was hemmed in between mountains, the sea before them and Pharaoh’s host behind; or it may be difficult, and so steep as well as steep, it; or it may be dangerous, for in the way through the wilderness there is the place of lions’ dens and the mountains of the leopards; but, notwithstanding all such drawbacks, we have reason to bless God for leading us forth by the right way. And when we are in greatest straits and the way is hardest, we have only to cry to God in our trouble; and as he led Israel of old, so will he lead us also forth by the right way. “They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” Thus God not only bears his people, but bears with his people; and commissions his ministering servants to do likewise, as he commanded Moses, “Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child.”
VI. GOD‘S LOVE IS RESTORATIVE. In spite of all God’s love and care, we run into the way of danger through our own frowardness or folly. We stumble and fall, getting many a sore bruise and severe knock. Yet God in his love restores us; he heals us. As the child, when hurt, runs to the parent for sympathyto the mother kiss the wound and make it well; so, when unhappily we have strayed from the way, and got bruised and hurt and painfully wounded through our own willfulness, we are encouraged to return to God, and he will heal us. God might, indeed, if he dealt with us in strict justice, leave us to ourselves and to the sad consequences of our own sinful waywardness, and refuse to lead us any more. Not so, however. As he says by the Prophet Isaiah, “I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him, and to his mourners.”
VII. GOD‘S LOVE IS PERSUASIVE MORALLY, NOT MECHANICALLY. He deals with us as a rational being, treating us neither as machines nor yet as “dumb driven cattle.” The lower animal must sometimes be drawn, or forced with a degree of violence; but God does not draw men in this way. In drawing them he uses neither hard cords nor iron bands. He draws us by rational means, addressing himself to our intelligence and appealing to our affections. Thus Paul says, “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” He draws us by persuasion and argument. He draws us with gentleness, and not by force. He employs the mildest means and the tenderest motives. He draws us in a manner suitable to the dignity of our nature. Made in the image of God, originally created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and still possessed of great susceptibilities, strong affections, warm emotions, and tender sensibilities, we are treated by God with a considerate regard to the high qualities with which he has endowed us. Accordingly he draws us with human cords and Divine love. The instrumentality employed is human, and the love that employs it is Divine.
VIII. GOD‘S LOVE IS ALLEVIATING LOVE. As the humane husbandman lightens the labor of the weary beasts, and lifts up the yoke on its jaws in order to ease it and give it some respite, so God lifts up the weight that presses on the back of poor humanity. He sustains us under our burdens, or even shares with us the load. Sometimes he removes the yoke entirely; oftener he gives respite and refreshment; always he sanctifies the load of labor, or care, or trouble, or suffering, or sorrow of whatever kind which his own hand has laid on the back of his people, and never does he lay more on them than he enables them by his grace and strength to bear.
IX. GOD‘S LOVE IS SATISFYING LOVE. The figure is continued in the words, “And laid meat unto them.” The same kind hand that lifts up the yoke, by way of respite and relief, supplies provender for the purpose of refreshment. God laid meat before his people in the desert, when he rained down manna and sent them quails. The same bountiful Benefactor spreads a table before us daily, and makes our cup run over. Better still, and surer token of his love, is the abundant spiritual provision he has made for the souls of his people, in giving them the bread that cometh down from heaven. “We are satisfied with the goodness of his house, even of his holy temple.”
Hos 11:5-12
The ingratitude of Israel and its punishment.
Both are remarkably manifested in these verses. After all God’s loving-kindness they refuse to turn to God.
I. THEIR PERVERSENESS. History repeats itself. This is true ecclesiastically as well as civilly, under the Jewish economy as in the Christian dispensation. Once before, at an early period in Hebrew history and on a remarkable occasion, the Israelites, discouraged by the teachings of the spies, debased by previous servitude, deficient in moral courage, and, worst of all, distrustful of Divine providence, refused to march into Canaan. They murmured against God and against Moses. “Back to Egypt,” was their cry. And back they went, not to Egypt, but to wander in the wilderness for eight and thirty years longer, as a justly merited punishment for their unthankfulness and rebellion against God. Similarly on the occasion to which the prophet here refers. They bad grievously sinned against God, yet they fancied they would find refuge in Egypt; they had rebelled and resisted all the means employed to bring them back to God, but they would not return to him. And now they cry, like their forefathers, “To Egypt,” as if shelter and safety could be obtained there. But God frustrates their silly, sinful purpose. A worse than the bondage of Egypt awaits them; they were destined to go into captivity to Assyria.
2. So with stubborn and stout-hearted sinners still. They will go anywhere, or resort to any expedient, even returning to Egypt, rather than return to God. For a time the prodigal would rather be a swineherd, and share the husks on which the swine fed, than return to the abundance of his father’s house. “Some stubborn children care not what miseries they suffer rather than return and humble themselves to their parents;” so some stubborn spirits seem disposed, in their folly and desperation, to return to their former state of bondage and misery rather than repent and submit themselves to God. Let such beware lest, owing to their impatience and impenitence, a worse thing befall them.
II. THEIR PUNISHMENT. The three chief scourges by which God chastises a disobedient people are famine, pestilence, and the sword.
1. Of the three, the sword is, perhaps, the worst. At all events David thought it so. When he was called to make choice between seven years of famine, three days’ pestilence, and three months’ flight before the pursuing sword of the enemy, he preferred falling into the hand of God rather than into the hand of man, choosing the pestilence rather than the sword.
2. And yet the sword also has its commission from God, as we learn from the exclamation of the prophet, “O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still.” But it is added, in answer to this inquiry, “How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon, and against the sea-shore? there hath he appointed it.”
3. The Prophet Hosea pictures the severity of the stroke either by the wide area which the sword swept over, or the length of time it continued to distress them; also by the fact that the cities which were looked upon as the strong fortresses, at all events the strength of the land, were the main objects of attack. Elsewhere in the fields or open country the ravages of war are not quite so dreadful as in the city with its crowded population, where human beings, densely massed together, are literally mowed down. Nor yet were the villages spared, nor did their bars shut out the enemy.
4. The duty of prayer is incumbent in time of war. This lesson is inculcated by the example of the psalmist. After speaking in the fifty-fifth psalm of having seen violence and strife in the city, while men hurried to and fro upon the walls, with other sad accompaniments of troublous timesmischief, sorrow, wickedness, deceit, and guilehe announces the course he pursued: “As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and call aloud: and he shall hear my voice;” while peace and deliverance were the happy outcome of his prayers: “He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me: for there were many with me.”
III. THEIR PRONENESS TO BACKSLIDE. Proneness to backsliding was not peculiar to the people or the period of Hosea’s prophesyings. The unregenerate heart is invariably the source of backsliding. When a religious profession is influenced only by external motive and not by internal power, men may be expected to backslide. In the days of our Lord it was sorrowfully said of some that they went back and walked no more with Jesus. In seasons of religious revival, of many who make a profession of religion, that profession, in the case of some, proceeds from an outward impulse, certain convictions, or even the power of sympathy, and soon as the time of excitement is over they backslide; their convictions did not ripen into conversion; the root of the matter was never in them. The same is occasionally found in the case of some young communicants. At the first communion, the boy in the freshness of his youth, the girl in the purity of her childhood, feel much ardor of affection and manifest much fervor of devotion; but what from unfavorable surroundings, or evil communications, or little sins unchecked, the love of their espousals grows cold, and backsliding ensues. Even in the case of persons truly converted, a degree of coldness creeps over them; they seem to grow weary of the ways of God; they become apathetic, and backslide for a time. Beware of grieving the Holy Spirit; beware of resisting the strivings and stirrings of conscience; beware of putting the hand to the plough and then turning back or turning aside to folly; in a word, beware of backsliding. Be warned by that solemn Scripture, “If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”
IV. THE PERPLEXITY CAUSED TO THE ALMIGHTY. With reverence be it spoken, the conduct of Israel seems to have puzzled the all-merciful One himself. Judgment was due, but love holds it in check; the vials of wrath were ready to be poured out, but the voice of mercy intercedes; punishment was well deserved, but the hand of pity pushes it aside. They had been called to the Most High, to acquaint themselves with him, to acknowledge him, and to accept him as their God and King; but they stopped their ears against those calls. They refused to lift themselves up from their low groveling course of conduct, and they refused to exalt the Most High, or to bless that glorious Name which is above all blessing and praise. We cannot exalt God, or make him more glorious than he is, “yet then God accounts himself to be exalted when he is known and acknowledged as the high, supreme, first Being; when we fear him as God; when we humble ourselves before him as before a God; when we are sensible of the infinite distance there is between him and us; when we are willing to consecrate what we are, or have, or can do, to the furtherance of his praise; when his will is made the rule of all our ways, and especially of his worship; when we make him the last end of all; when it is the great care of our souls and work of our lives to do what possibly we can, that he may be magnified and lifted up in the world; and when we account the least sin a greater evil than can be recompensed by all the good which heaven and earth can afford us;when we do thus, God accounts himself exalted by us.” But Israel had acted in opposition to all this; hence the controversy, the perplexity, the puzzling questions which follow. Four questions are followed by four answers.
(1) “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” to which the answer is, “Mine heart is turned within me.”
(2) “How shall I deliver thee, Israel?” to which the reply is, “My repentings are kindled together.”
(3) “How shall I make thee as Admah?” to which the response is, “I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger.”
(4) “How shall I set thee as Zeboim?” to which the rejoinder is, “I will not return to destroy Ephraim.”
V. THE PURPOSE DENOUNCED. He will not execute the fierceness of his wrath, nor return to destroy Ephraim, nor enter into the city. Here we note a remarkable contrast in God’s dealings with us. He compares himself to a man in the exercise of mercy. It is different in regard to the execution of his wrath; then he is God and not man. In expressing his mercy he speaks after the manner of men; in the yearnings of his bowels, in the extent of his mercifulness, he expresses himself as man, though more, infinitely more, than man. But when he speaks of wrath, he assures us he is God and not man. A man of war may, with the soldiers under him, come upon a town or city, capture it, and plunder it; months or years elapse, and he returns to the same place again, lays siege to it, and sacks it, leaving it in a much worse state than at first. But God will not so return to destroy. He is God, not man. Free from all the weakness of human passion, from all vindictiveness of feeling, from all fickleness of purpose, from all the littlenesses of the human spirit, he dens not revoke his purposes nor recall his promises of mercy, neither does he retain his anger for ever, nor renew the outpouring of the vials of his wrath.
1. He is, besides, the Holy One: even in his vindicatory justice he is holy; no unholy element of any kind mingles with his wrath. Holiness is at once an attribute of his nature and a characteristic of all his administrations. Oh, to be holy as God is holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect! His presence is with his people, according to his promise, “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people;” nay, more, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”
2. When, in the close of verse 9, God says, “I will not enter into the city,” it is “to be taken in reference to the manner of God’s proceedings in the destruction of Sodom; after he had done conferring with Abraham, he entered into the city, and destroyed it by fire and brimstone. God many times stands at the gates of a city, ready to enter in and destroy it, but humiliation in prayer and reformation keep him out Oh! let not our sins cause a merciful God to go out, and a provoked God to enter in.”
VI. THE PREDICTION UTTERED.
1. The walking after the Lord here predicted is to follow the Lord whithersoever he leadeth. The Savior is given fur a Leader to his people; he is represented as the Captain of salvation, and just as a good soldier follows his superior officer at the head of the storming party or in the perilous breach, in the onward march and in the unwelcome but necessary retreat; so the Christian soldier, loyal to his Lord, follows him fully, faithfully, fearlessly, through evil report as well as good report, closely, carefully, and constantly. “These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” The path may appear perilous, the way may he difficult; we may have to turn our backs on our dearest delights, on our sweetest comforts; we may be ignorant of the immediate goal to which the Lord leads us, or the use he intends to make of us, or what he means to do with us; yet none of these things shall doter us. If we only make sure that the Lord is leading us, we run no risk in following him; and though he lead us by a way that we know not, we are sure it is the right way, the safe way, and in every respect the best way in the end. The opposite course is that pursued by those who walk, not after the Lord, but after the lusts of their own hearts, or their own inclinations, or their own inventions, or their own counsels, or the example of wicked men.
2. The prediction includes a hasty return in obedience to the Divine summons. God’s calling people to return to him is not inaptly compared to the roaring of a lion. By judgments on the adversary, or by a solemn awe on the spirits of his people, or by terrible things in righteousness, God summons men to submission and obedience.
3. When God speaks the word in whatever way, his children hurry home out of many lands from the far West, the distant East, and the remote South. Thus it is in seasons of revival, thus it shall be more literally in the millennial period, and in the time of the restitution of all things When the Spirit shall be poured out from on high in Pentecostal power and in Pentecostal plenty, men shall, as at the first Pentecost, when they were assembled from many lands, join themselves to God’s people. They shall not only come hastily, but swiftly. Their hasty arrival is compared to a flight resembling that of the dove, which flies swiftly, as implied in the psalmist’s words, “Oh that I had wings like a dove!” They shall, moreover, arrive in great numbers, as doves fly in flocks, as implied in the words of the prophet, “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their windows?”
4. A place of rest is promised them. When men walk after the Lord and unite themselves lovingly with his people, they are assured both of rest and refreshment. Whether this may have had a literal fulfillment, in the return of members of the ten tribes from Assyria with their brethren of Judah from Babylon, and others of the same people from Egypt, we do not know for certain; but this much is sure, that such a return of God’s people to him shall actually take place in the day of the restitution of all things; while its figurative application repeats itself in every real revival of religion, when sinners, truly penitent like the prodigal, shall return from many a far country of sin and shame and sorrow to their Father’s house and home, renouncing the swineherd’s husks for that rich spiritual abundance of bread enough and to spare.
VII. THE PRETENCES OF ISRAEL. The people of Israel, or the ten tribes with Ephraim at their head, that is, rulers and ruled, are here charged with lies and deceit. Their professions of worship were nothing better than lying pretences; their political schemes were little less than deceitful maneuvers. Their piety and their policy were alike hollow and futile. With such false worship and carefully devised strokes of policy, which were but deceitful tricks, they compassed God as though they could deceive the omniscient One himself. The following illustration from an old divine seems apt, though homely: “I am, in respect of their sins, as a man beset round, who would have egress, but when he goes one way there he is stopped, and another way he is stopped there too. God compares himself to such a man, as if, in going on in the ways of mercy, he is there stopped by some course of sin, and entering on another part he is there stopped again.” How many there are whose acts of worship are so many solemn lies! Their professions of piety are mere pretences; their prayers may be eloquent and comprehensive, but they do not proceed from the heart; their presence in the sanctuary is only bodily, their thoughts being away about their worldly business, or reaming over mountains of vanity. Many there are who are ready to acknowledge God, his greatness and glory, his glorious majesty, his almighty power, his infinite wisdom, and his sovereign disposal of all human affairs; but they do not realize the august nature of the Divine attributes, nor the wondrous workings of his providence. Many, too, confess their great sinfulness, and profess deep humiliation on account of it; but their confession is not accompanied by contrition, nor is their professed humiliation either provable by facts or practical in its effects.
3. Strange, passing strange, it is that men thus impose on themselves, or attempt to deceive God! “They did flatter him with their mouth,” says the psalmist, “and they lied unto him with their tongues.” And if this is the conduct men venture on in relation to God, how much more likely they are to compass their fellow-men with lies, or overreach them by deceit! If they carry their deceit into the sacred exercises of religion and the solemn services of the sanctuary, how much more may we expect to find fraudulent transactions and deceitful dealings in their intercourse with fellow-men!
VIII. THE PRE–EMINENCE OF JUDAH. While Israel or the ten tribes were besetting God with their lies and provoking him by deceit, their worship being idolatrous and their service false, Judah for so far continued in the true worship. With not a few drawbacks and many defects, they had hitherto adhered to the ordinances he had prescribed, the place he had chosen, and the mode and ministers of religion he had appointed. Such is the drift of the verse according to the Authorized Version. Assuming this to be the right rendering, we find Israel left without excuse. They could not plead the example of Judah. If an evil example had been set them by Judah, it might have in some sort extenuated, but could not have excused, sin in Israel. The absence of such example was no small aggravation of their guilt.
3. It redounded to the honor of Judah that in the day of Israel’s defection they persevered in the way of truth, and maintained the true worship of Jehovah. It is recorded to the credit of those Sardians who remained faithful in a corrupt place and a degenerate age, “Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.”
4. When we serve God we reign with him. It is righteousness that exalts a nation and elevates an individual. To serve God is our highest glory, and to enjoy him our greatest happiness. To serve God is the most honorable service; hence our blessed Lord has made us kings as well as priests unto God. Luther, commenting on this verse, speaks of certain errorists “not venturing to embrace the true doctrine for fear their rule should be lost. So is it with many people; they are afraid of the loss of their rule if they should entertain the true ways of God’s worship; they think that the true ways of God’s worship cannot consist with their rule and power, and therefore they had rather retain them and let the true worship of God go.”
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN
Hos 11:1
Called out of Egypt.
These words refer primarily, of course, to the historical event of the Exodus. But they are also prophetic words, and as such they have been already verified, and still await further verification. When a stone is thrown into a pond, a series of ever-enlarging concentric rings is formed, which extend perhaps to the banks of the water; so in like manner, although the first fulfillment of a prophecy may be near at hand, the prediction may also receive various further and wider fulfillments, until at last it is completely verified, on the largest scale, at the end of the world. The words before us have several applications. They apply
I. TO THE JEWISH NATION. God elected Israel as his “firstborn son” among the nations (Exo 4:22), thus constituting the Hebrews the aristocracy of the human race. He set his love upon them when they were a community of slaves. He heard their groaning by reason of their bondage. When the people were lying like toads under the harrows of their taskmasters, he interposed to save them. He raised up Moses to be their emancipator. Jehovah wrought on their behalf the tea plagues of Egypt. He led them, by a mighty miracle, through the bed of the Red Sea, while Pharaoh and his army perished in the waters. Jehovah protected and supported and guided Israel in the wilderness. He rained bread from heaven upon them, and brought them streams also out of the rock. He kept their clothes and shoes from wearing out. He led them by the cloudy pillar. He delivered them from their enemies. He entered into covenant with them, taught them his Word and will, and brought them at last into a goodly inheritance in Canaan. No other nation ever received such marks of honor. To Israel alone “pertained the adoption” (Rom 9:4).
II. TO JESUS CHRIST. Matthew says that this word of Hosea was fulfilled when the Child Jesus was brought up out of Egypt (Mat 2:15). If Israel was “God’s son, even his firstborn,” Jesus is “the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.” The history of Israel typified and foreshadowed his career. He is the true seed of Abraham, the true Representative of the ancient Hebrew nation. “All the magnificence of prophecy, limited to Israel, would be bombast; Christ alone fulfils the idea which Israel stood for” (F.W. Robertson). The paternal love of God was exhibited more richly in the protection and deliverance of his holy Child Jesus than even in the great blessing of the Exodus. It was to avoid the danger of destruction that the infant Savior and his mother were taken down into Egypt. The Lord of heaven and earth, just now a wailing infant, must hide for a little season under the shadow of the Pyramids. By-and-by he shall be “called out of Egypt” to return to the Holy Land, and to become at length what Israel ought to have beenthe great Witness for God, and Teacher of his wilt to all the nations of the world.
III. TO THE CHRISTIAN. Believers are all the sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ. And the redemption from Egypt was a type of deliverance through him from sin and death. Just as to the Hebrews in the time of Hosea “Egypt” stood for Assyria, or Babylon, or any land which they were to associate with a state of bondage (Hos 8:13; Hos 9:3, Hos 9:6), so now to us Gentiles “Egypt” is the symbol of our unregenerate state, and the Egyptian bondage is a type of the bondage of sin. All men are by nature the slaves of sin, and Satan is a much harder taskmaster than the Egyptian overseers. The natural man labors helplessly under the burden of evil. But God calls his people “out of Egypt” with an effectual and a holy calling. He redeems the believer from the bondage of guilt (Gal 3:13), from subjection to the Law (Gal 4:5), and from the slavery of sin (Tit 2:14). The very word “Redeemer,” which is so dear to the renewed heart, was first consecrated as a sacred name at the time when God “called his Son out of Egypt.” To the Christian the song of Moses is also the song of the Lamb (Rev 15:3); and the preface to the ten commandments (Exo 20:2) expresses the most forcible and yet tender of all inducements to lead a holy life.
IV. TO THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. The Church of Christ is the true Israel, God’s adopted firstborn son. And this world, in which the Church presently sojourns, may be compared to the land of bondage. It is “this present evil world;” and God’s people look to be delivered from it, just as ancient Israel expected deliverance from Egypt. The time is fast coming when the Lord Jesus shall finally redeem his people from all evil. Often in the New Testament the word “redemption” is used to denote the consummation of the Church’s hope. Jesus told his disciples that the occurrence of the signs of his second advent would announce to them that their “redemption was drawing nigh” (Luk 21:28). The whole Church is waiting for “the redemption of our body” (Rom 8:23). Here, though believers “serve the Law of God with their mind,” they yet groan constantly under the burden of indwelling sin. But the hope of Israel”that blessed hope”is that Jehovah shall “call him out of Egypt.” The Lord Jesus shall one day translate his Church to heaventhe land of perfect spiritual freedom and eternal joy. There bondage shall in every sense be gone forever. So long as Israel is in this world, he is “a child;” but in glory he shall become a man, and “put away childish things.” God loves him now as a child; and his adopting grace is the pledge that the ransomed Church shall one day stand by the glassy sea, and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.C.J.
Hos 11:1-4
Crowned with tender mercies.
This is an extremely beautiful passage. It recalls, in a few most touching expressions, Jehovah’s love and condescension and tenderness towards his ancient people. But, alas! the very record of God’s kindness becomes the means of throwing into deeper relief the blackness of Israel’s sin.
I. GOD‘S KINDLY DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL. These had been manifested continuallyin the infancy of the nation, during its childhood, and throughout its youth and manhood. Jehovah had been to the Hebrew people:
1. A loving Father. (Hos 11:1) He loved them, and chose them to be his own inheritance, He spoke of Israel as his “son,” even during the bondage in Egypt (Exo 4:22). He showed his fatherly love by accomplishing for his people the grand deliverance of the Exodus. And the Lord is the same still to the spiritual Israel. Those blessings which were shadowed forth in the theocratic adoption belong now to Christians. We are “predestinated unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself” (Eph 1:5) The believer receives the nature of God. He bears his Name. He enjoys free access to him. He obtains needed protection and provision. He is subjected to suitable training and discipline. And he has an eternal inheritance in reversion (1Jn 3:1, 1Jn 3:2).
2. A careful Nurse. (Hos 11:3) Jehovah had himself tended his son Israel during the forty years of childhood in the Arabian desert. He “bare him” (Deu 1:31), “took hint by the hand” (Jer 31:32), and tenderly supported him. As a nursing father, he had used soft and kindly leading-strings, tie knew his people’s needs. He was “touched with the feeling of their infirmities.” He took upon himself the entire charge of the nation. For their schooling he gave them object-lessonssetting up the tabernacle and its ritual as a spiritual “kindergarten.” When they wandered from him he brought them back, and patiently “healed them” from those distresses which their apostasy had entailed. And God is the same careful Nurse to his spiritual children. He bears the believer, and bears with him. The Holy Spirit teaches the child of God “to go,” and “leads him in the way everlasting.” He raises him when he falls, heals his bruises, and is “a very present Help in trouble.” The path of duty may lead the believer into slippery places, but “underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deu 33:27).
3. A kindly Monitor. (Hos 11:4, first part) If Hos 11:1 refers to the Exodus, and Hos 11:3 to the forty years in the wilderness, Hos 11:4 : may be applied to Jehovah’s dealings with Israel throughout his entire history as a nation. All along the Lord treated his people, not as prisoners or slaves, but as sons. He “drew them with cords of a man;” i.e. his methods of government were humane, and had their seat in reason. He drew them” with bands of love;” i.e. his arguments or influences were tender and persuasive. The mercies showered upon Israel were countless. The Divine forbearance with the people was wonderful. One special mark of God’s favor was his raising up the prophets, one after another, to “call them” (Hos 11:2) from their idols, and to “draw them” back to himself. And does not the Lord deal just thus with men still? His methods of touching the heart are humane and affectionate. We see the “gentleness” of God in his kindly providence, in his wonderful redemption, and in the means and motives towards holiness which he employs. He calls to the sinner, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isa 1:18). He tells the believer that a consecrated life is “your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1).
4. A considerate Master. (Hos 11:4, second part) The Lord did not act towards Israel as brute beasts are often treated by ungentle drivers. A kind farmer treats his ox humanely, both when it is treading out the corn and when it is feeding in the stall; he withdraws the muzzle, or loosens the yoke-strap, that the animal may cat with comfort. Now, God had always acted so towards the Hebrews. In the innumerable blessings which he sent them, in the means of grace which he maintained amongst them, and in the immunities which they enjoyed as his chosen people, God said to them, “My yoke is easy.” So, in like manner, does the Lord still deal with his redeemed people. He “removes their shoulder from the burden,” taking off the yoke of guilt, the yoke of sin, the yoke of the Law, the yoke of unrest, the yoke of fear. And he “lays meat unto them””the hidden manna” of his grace, and “the fatness of his house.”
II. ISRAEL‘S VILE TREATMENT OF GOD. (Hos 11:2, Hos 11:3) The nation had proved altogether unworthy of its sunny and glorious past. The people had been:
1. Ungrateful. They persistently forgot both the fact of their redemption and the continued presence of their Redeemer. The prophets “called them,” but in vain. God “healed them,” but they ascribed their deliverances to others.
2. Unfaithful. Israel requited the tender love of Jehovah with base apostasy. They opposed and rejected him. “They turned their back unto him, and not their face” (Jer 2:27). They shamefully denied him by their sacrifices to Baal.
3. Obstinate in their wickedness. The career of the northern kingdom especially had been one of universal and continuous desertion. People and priests, princes and kings, had alike conspired to return hatred for Jehovah’s love. And now, at length, Ephraim’s hour of gracious opportunity seemed past. Only by a miracle could the avalanche of judgment be arrested. What a lesson to ourselves is unfolded in this representation of the outrageous guilt of Israel! We must beware of trusting in our national advantages or our spiritual privileges. How often have we, too, acted ungratefully and unfaithfully I God’s wonderful tender mercies are a sore aggravation of our sin.
“Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws. They send us bound
To rules of reason. Holy messengers;
Pulpits and Sundays; sorrow dogging sin;
Afflictions sorted; anguish of all sizes;
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in!
Bibles laid open: millions of surprises;
Blessings beforehand; ties of gratefulness;
The sounds of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace; eternal hopes and fears I
Yet all these fences, and their whole array,
One cunning bosom sin blows quite away.”
(George Herbert)
C.J.
Hos 11:4
The magnet of love.
“I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” These words refer, in the first instance, to ancient Israel, and remind us how kindly and tender had been the Lord’s dealings with them. In applying the text to ourselves, we shall consider it under two aspects. We have here
I. A REPRESENTATION OF GOD‘S WAY OF DEALING WITH MEN. The supreme power over the world of mankind is not the relentless power of natural law. The forces of nature dominate the physical universe; but man is a moral being, and is conscious of moral freedom. The force which draws his mind is reason”cords of a man ;” and the power which influences his heart is tenderness”bands of love.” God uses these forces:
1. In his common providence. His love for his creatures is analogous to parental affection: it is as human, and more tender than that of a mother for her child. His mercy is long-suffering and indestructible. It leads him “daily to load us with benefits.” And even the cords of affliction with which he sometimes binds us are “bands of love ‘ cast around us to draw us to himself.
2. In the plan of redemption. “The Word was made flesh” in order to draw men by cords of human sympathy. What blessing the Incarnation has brought to the reason of man! In looking upon the Lord Jesus Christ we see truth in the concrete. He is himself “the Truth,” “the Word of Life.”
“Though truths in manhood darkly join
Deep-seated in our mystic frame,
We yield all blessing to the Name
Of him that made them current coin;
“For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers,
Where truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.
“And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds,
More strong than all poetic thought.”
(Tennyson)
What blessing, also, the Incarnation has brought to the heart of man! The Lord Jesus is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. He was the “Son of Mary,“ and he “shed the human tear.” So he is qualified, as our merciful and sympathizing High Priest, to enter into all our feelings, and thereby to bind us to himself and to God.
3. In the invitations of the gospel. The Lord, in these, appeals to us as rational and moral beings. The invitation, e.g; “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isa 1:18), suggests that the most rational of all the actions of the human mind is to accept of Christ as the Savior; and that a life of faith in him is the only reasonable and manly and truly successful life. The gospel voices, moreover, are “bands of love.” The prodigal son, so soon as he returned to reason, was led by the remembrance of his father’s love to return home
The Word of God. The Bible is a Divine Book, but it is also intensely human. The sacred writers display everywhere a profound knowledge of human nature. The spirit of the Book is humane and tender; it draws” with bands of love.” In the universities of Scotland, the Professor of Latin is usually called “Professor of Humanity,” from the supposed beneficial effects of the study of Roman literature; but surely the supreme humanizing influence in letters is the Word of God.
(2) The sacraments. As “signs,” baptism and the Lord’s Supper are “cords of a man.” They appeal to the physical senses as well as to mind and heart. They are like pictures or illustrative diagrams of the great truths of redemption. The sacraments are also “seals;” and, as such, “bands of love.” Each of them is, as it were, a keepsake, or love-token, given by the Redeemer to his Church. Once more, take
(3) Prayer. Prayer is the converse with God of his human children. It has for its key-note the child’s cry, “Our Father.” It is the voice of childlike trust in the humanity, the tenderness, the father-pity of our Maker and Redeemer.
5. As the motive-powers to holiness of life. Our text expresses the master consideration which impels the believer to a career of Christian consecration. The Apostle Paul urges the same in Rom 12:1 : “Your reasonable service,” i.e. “cords of a man;” “by the mercies of God,” i.e. “bands of love.” The meaning is that in a life of devotion to God all the rational faculties find their chief end, and that to such a life “the love of Christ constraineth us.”
II. A LESSON OF CONDUCT FOR OURSELVES. The words before us reveal the secret of influence. They point out the magnet with which we are to attract our fellow-men in all the relations of life. God Almighty draws with the loadstone of love; and in this we are to be “imitators of God, as dear children” (Eph 5:1). Here is a lesson to:
1. Parents. The family bond is love. We must throw “cords of a man” around our children, if we would train them to live to the Redeemer. Our training must be humane, and in harmony with the moral nature of its subjects. A father ought, as soon as possible, to enlist his child’s reason on the side of obedience. When our children do well, let us praise them without stint. When they do wrong, and we must show displeasure, let us welcome the earliest tokens of penitence, and be very ready to forgive. Next to Divine grace itself, the bands of paternal love are the strongest that can attract the child-heart.
2. Teachers. Humaneness of spirit is the mainspring of an educator’s influence. The most effectual stimulus to learn is not that which is supplied by the rod, but that which is given by the “cords of a man.” The secret of Dr. Arnold’s influence at Rugby was his intense human sympathy, added to the regal supremacy of his spiritual character. In sabbath school work, especially, we must use these “cords” and “bands;” we must come to our classes “in love, and in the spirit of meekness.”
3. Pastors. The preacher is to be himself a man, every inch of him. His influence in the community ought to be a masculine influence, tie is to be “a preacher of righteousness.” And he must take care to use “bands of love.” His lifework is to “win” souls; and there is no way of winning without love (1Co 13:1). Like the high priest, the pastor ought to be one “who can bear gently with the ignorant and erring” (Heb 5:2). No Christian teacher has ever been more successful than the Apostle Paul; and Paul drew “with cords of a man” (1Co 9:19-23), and “with bands of love” (1Th 2:7, 1Th 2:8).
4. Employers. This relationship, alike in business and domestic life, should be characterized by kindness. Masters ought to “forbear threatening” (Eph 6:9), and extend sympathy and confidence to their workmen. The responsibilities of an employer do not end with the punctual payment of wages. He is not to think of his workmen merely as “hands,” i.e. as machines by using which he hopes to make money; but rather as his own flesh and blood, in whose welfare he ought to take a warm interest. And so, also, in the sphere of domestic service. Mistresses ought to treat their servants as part of the family, and see to their comfort as they see to their own. Happiness will enter our households through the door which has written over it these words: “I drew them with bands of love.”
5. Neighbors, in their mutual intercourse. We who profess to be Christ’s people ought to show the grace that dwells in us by striving to be eminent in courtesy and gentleness. We ought to be so even to the ungodly and profane, and to those who treat us as enemies “A soft answer turneth away wrath.” And if love is the fire that will melt an enemy, is it not also the tie which binds believers together into a goodly fellowship? A strong and healthy Church is one the members of which “increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men’ (1Th 3:12).
CONCLUSION. To draw with these “cords” and “bands” is always, at least, self-rewarding. It is true that love will sometimes fail with its object. Jehovah himself failed with Ephraim during long centuries. Similarly, some whom we attempt to draw may say persistently, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” In such circumstances we ought to remember that duty is ours, and that results are with God. “Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my Strength” (Isa 49:5).C.J.
Hos 11:5-7
The Divine goodness despised.
Ephraim had acted as if the mercy of God were unconditional; and he persistently contravened the one condition, via repentance, upon which alone that favor could be continued. He was thus guilty of despising the Divine loving-kindness; and hence these words of grievous denunciation. We learn from them
I. THE FOLLY OF CARNAL CONFIDENCES. (Hos 11:6) The ten tribes had followed “their own counsels,” but these were the result of wicked infatuation. The calves which the men of Israel kissed led to the national ruin. Egypt would afford the tribes no asylum; there was no hope of relief from her as an auxiliary against Assyria. It was indeed strange that the people should think of returning to Egypt, the land of their ancient bondage. Now, however, they are to endure a more dreadful tyranny than their fathers had suffered there. The devouring sword of the Assyrian is to make the round of the cities of Israel. The northern kingdom, with its rich territory and its sacred placesShiloh, Shechem, Ebal and Gerizim, Sharon, Carmel, and the valley of Jezreelis to pass into the possession of the heathen. Such was only the natural result of Israel’s wickedness, and it stands in history as an affecting warning against ungodly counsels. “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord” (Jer 17:5-8). “My brethren, it is a great mercy of God to be so wholly taken from all carnal props, from all vain shifts and hopes, as to be thoroughly convinced that there is no help in any thing, or in any creature, in heaven and earth, but only in turning to God, and casting the soul down before mercy; if that saves me not, I am undone forever” (Jeremiah Burroughs, in loc).
II. THE POWER OF SIN TO HOLD FAST THE SOUL. (Hos 11:7) Israel was “bent on backsliding” from Jehovah. They were “fastened to defection” (Calvin); or, “impaled upon apostasy as upon a stake” (Keil). The prophets “called“ and exhorted the people, but in vain. They refused to raise themselves, in order to return to the Most High. Such is the effect of sin when long persisted in. All of us have by nature this fixed aversion to God and Divine things, unless he interpose in his grace to wean us from our idols. Even while the Word is calling us to rise, the flesh persistently drags us downwards, and with a dead weight which only the might of the Spirit of God can overcome. Many professors of religion suddenly fall away, because, the “good work” never having been begun in them, they cannot restrain themselves from at last following visibly the “bent” of nature. And how hard it is, even for the Lord’s true people, to escape from the entanglement of old habits of sin! During the process the soul may be often convulsed, if not almost torn asunder. A good man will sometimes continue throughout life to follow a trade or profession about the moral lawfulness of which his conscience is continually uneasy. Only by steadfastly looking to Christ, and allowing his love to flow into the heart, can we be set free from the dangers of backsliding. Clothed with his strength, the believer, instead of being “impaled upon apostasy,” shall daily “crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Once more, this passage reminds us that
III. TO “REFUSE TO RETURN” TO JEHOVAH IS THE SIN OF SINS. (Hos 11:5) Ephraim had done more and worse than to reject the Lord as the chief good. He had, besides, scorned the Divine grace and mercy which had so long and lovingly “called” him to “return,” and promised to “heal his backsliding.” For such foul and shocking ingratitude the ruin of the northern kingdom was a. righteous retribution. And so now, in these gospel times, the denial of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Savior is the crowning sin of man. To reject him is to “refuse to return” to Jehovah. It is to oppose the clearest light, and to despise the dearest love. It is to elect to serve Satan rather than God. This sin of sins does not render it necessary that sentence be pronounced against those who are guilty of it: the sinner’s unbelief is of itself his sentence. “He that believeth not hath been judged already” (Joh 3:18). If we neglect the great salvation, there can be no escape for us from eternal shame and ruin. Sins against law do not exclude the possibility of the exercise of mercy, but the persistent rejection of mercy must close the door of hope against the soul forever (Pro 1:24-33).C.J.
Hos 11:8-11
Mercy seasons justice.
Jehovah’s love for Israel had been conspicuous during the infancy of the nation (Hos 11:1-4); but it seems even more wonderful now, in the time el Ephraim’s moral decrepitude and premature decay. There is no more exquisitely pathetic passage in Holy Scripture than the one before us. It is of a piece with Jeremiah’s prophecy respecting the restoration of the ten tribes (Jer 31:20). The denunciation of punishment contained in verses 5-7 suddenly dissolves into an ecstasy of tenderness, which is followed by a promise of blessing.
I. THE LORD‘S MERCY TO EPHRAIM. (Verses 8, 9) Moses had predicted (Deu 29:23) that the lapse of the nation into confirmed idolatry would be punished with a curse upon “the whole land,” like that which overtook the cities of the plain (Gen 19:1-38). But just when’ we might expect the lawgiver’s words to be at once fulfilled, there is an outburst of Divine compassion. Here the Lord is:
1. Apparently changeful. It often seems as if, instead of there being one center of thought in this book, there were rather two foci. In Hosea’s message threats and promises alternate, and sometimes commingle. In verse 8 the Lord, speaking after the manner of men, appears as if in doubt as to his course of action. Is justice to have its way to the end, or is any place to be found for mercy? Jehovah’s attitude is like that of the tender-hearted monarch who trembles when the death-warrant is placed before him, and hesitates whether he will sign it. But he declares at length that he cannot sacrifice his brooding yearning love for Ephraim even to the most righteous anger. He is resolved to exercise his mercy; he will display his grace more conspicuously than his justice. In all this, however, the Lord is:
2. Really unchangeable. He is “God, and not man.” The apparent conflict within his heart is only apparent. All the time that he has been threatening vengeance, his bowels have been melting with love. He cannot forget that Ephraim is his “son.” Yet the Lord’s mercy does not blind the eyes of his justice. He says here, in effect, that Ephraim fully deserved the irreparable doom of the Cities of the Plain. And he must inflict judgment upon the present generation of Israelites. But the three years’ siege of Samaria, and the long Assyrian captivity, with the total oblivion of the northern kingdom as such, are not “the fierceness of his anger.” On the other side of these judgments there will be rich mercy for Israel. In the New Testament gospel, in like manner, we “behold the goodness and severity of God.” Jehovah says now, more distinctly than ever, “As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Eze 33:11). Calvary shows that God is “just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).
II. THE GROUND OF THIS MERCY. (Verse 9) It has a twofold basis.
1. The nature of God. Jehovah speaks after the manner of men; but he is “God, and not man.” Were he not God, he would not tolerate the wicked world for a single day. Because he is “God,” and “the Holy One,” he “in wrath remembers mercy.” The Divine compassion is self-originated; it wells up out of the infinite fountain of the Divine nature. God has the heart of a father; but he is without the infirmities of a human parent. His mind is not discomposed by frail human passions; and he never in his thoughtsas finite men dostraitens the abundance of his grace.
2. The Divine covenant with Israel. “In the midst of thee” (verse 9). “I wilt dwell among them” had been Jehovah’s promise to the Hebrew nation. Of this promised presence there had been many symbols; as, e.g; the burning bush, the tabernacle, Jerusalem, and the temple. “And what was the purport of the covenant which God made with Israel? Even that God would punish his people; yet so as ever to leave some seed remaining” (Calvin). In the New Testament gospel we see God’s mercy similarly grounded. Its basis is the Divine nature. That nature is love. “God so loved the world.” And its basis is also the Divine covenant; for we live under a new and better dispensation of the covenant of grace (Heb 8:6-13).
III. ITS FAULT IN EPHRAIM‘S RESTORATION, (Verses 10, 11) These verses shall be fulfilled in Messianic times. In the last days, the “Lion” of the tribe of Judah “shall roar,” earnestly calling the Hebrews to repentance.
1. The restoration will consist in heart-renewal. “They shall walk after the Lord,” i.e. spiritually. The time is coming when the house of Israel shall accept of Jesus as the Messiah, and clothe themselves with his righteousness, “The children” of the exiles “shall tremble” with convictions of guilt, with conscious unworthiness, and yet with eagerness to accept the gospel call They shall return to a relation of intimate friendship and fellowship with God.
2. It will be national and universal. The Jews shall at last return from all the various lands to which they have been banished. The Lord shall “gather together the outcasts of Israel.” Students of prophecy, indeed, are not agreed whether there is to be a literal restoration to Palestine; but all expect an infinitely more blessed consummationthe admission of Israel as a people into the kingdom of Christ, as the result of their repentance and faith in him. This oracle applies also to all the spiritual seed of Abraham. Jew and Gentile, in these gospel times, are adopted into God’s household upon precisely the same footing. The west (verse 10) stands mainly for Gentile Europe; Egypt represents (verse 11) the whole continent of Africa beyond itself; and “Assyria” in like manner the continent of Asia. “They shall come from the east and from the west,” etc. (Luk 13:29). The doom denounced in Hosea has been inflicted; and in that fact have we not a pledge that the promises which this prophet makes shall also be fulfilled? “Two rabbis approaching Jerusalem saw a fox running upon the hill of Zion; and Rabbi Joshua wept, but Rabbi Eliezer laughed. ‘ Wherefore dost thou laugh?’ said he who wept. ‘Nay, wherefore dost thou weep?’ demanded Eliezer. ‘I weep,’ replied the Rabbi Joshua, ‘because I see what is written in the Lamentations fulfilled because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.’ ‘And, therefore,’ said Rabbi Eliezer, ‘do I laugh; for when I see with mine own eyes that God has fulfilled his threatenings to the very letter, I have thereby a pledge that not one of his promises shall fail, for he is ever more ready to show mercy than judgment.'”
LESSONS.
1. In the gospel “mercy and truth are met together.” God “spared not his own Son,” that he might not have to “give up” such as Ephraim.
2. The hindrance to salvation is not in God, but in the sinner’s wicked will. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not!” (Mat 23:37).
3. If God deals so tenderly with the sinner, how complete must be the security of the believer! “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be renewed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee” (Isa 54:10).C.J.
Hos 11:12
(See next chapter)C.J.
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND
Hos 11:3 (first clause)
The tenderness of Divine discipline.
Amidst Hosea’s strong denunciations of sin, such a description as this of Divine tenderness to wayward men is sweet as a song amidst a storm. Both sternness and sweetness must of necessity appear before us in order to give a true apprehension of the method of God’s dealing with human souls. That method is as varied as are the works of the same God in nature, where every flower and leaf, every wind and stream, has its own place and its own use. We cannot expect to find a uniform religious experience amongst men. We have no right to demand of others the agony of shame or the rapture of pardon we ourselves know, or to declare that their experience is unreal because it is different from our own. The metaphors of the Bible might teach us this. One series represents the Word as the hammer, that breaks the rock with resistless power; as the sword, which pierces the inmost soul and kills the old life; as the fire, that burns out the dross of character and fuses the whole nature in a glow of love to God. But there arc metaphors which represent the same Word as being like the sun, gradually diffusing light, slowly developing the flowers and fruits; as the attractive force, so subtle that it can only be known by its result; as the key which fits, and silently turns the lock, so that the door is opened and the heavenly guests come in to abide there in holy fellowship. It is in harmony with all we know of the variety of God’s dealings with men, that the same prophet who speaks of the unwilling heifer dragged onward by ropes, should also speak of the little child who is lovingly upheld by his father when he takes his first tottering steps.
I. THE FIGURE THAT SETS FORTH THE TRUTH.
1. Its boldness. None but an inspired man, who was conscious of inspiration, would have dared thus to describe the God he humbly reverenced. Sometimes a painting represents the glories of sunset, or the swell of the sea after a storm, the colors of which are so vivid that the onlooker at first says, “That is unnatural.” A second-rate artist might have shrunk from such a bold representation, but the great artist revels in the splendor of the scene; he feels that he must represent to others what was revealed to him; and so hands down to the future what had appeared at first a startling revelation of glory, even to himself. A people accustomed, like the Jews, to the signs of awful reverence with which Jehovah was approached would have been more surprised than we, who know God in Christ, to hear the prophet speak of him as a Father, or Mother, or Nurse, holding the child by the arms as he totters and trembles over his first footsteps.
2. Its beauty. Any natural figure drawn from a human home is beautiful. It is well that family life has so often been made the basis of religious teaching. There are few scenes more universally familiar than this. When we exercise care and forethought for our children, and our hearts go out in tenderness to them in their helplessness, we know what God is to us. When we remember the sense of rest and sympathy and help which was ours in childhood’s home, we become more conscious of what we may find, yet so often fail to find, in our heavenly Father’s love.
3. Its truthfulness. Israel had become a great nation because of the Divine care which overshadowed them in their feeble infancy. In Egypt they had no national life, but were degraded serfs for whom revolt was useless. Brought out by Divine power, they became conscious of new powers and possibilities. In the wilderness they were fed, not only with manna, but with the rudiments of piety, which were well adapted to their infancy. By penalties which immediately and visibly followed disobedience to Law, they learnt that God was King, that he was near, that he was wise; and imperfect though the revelation was, it was the most they could receive. God spake as they were able to bear it. He dealt with them as we deal with children. Nor is he less wise or less tender in our culture, but bears with us while we are feeble in thought and resolve, and blesses us in the first trembling steps we essay in the way of righteousness.
II. THE TRUTH SET FORTH BY THE FIGUREnamely, that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
1. In his condescension he does not despise us. Ezekiel describes a newly born child, taken up in its poverty and misery by tender hands, as a representation of what Israel had been to God. We have known such examples of human kindness: the foundling left to the stranger, whose motherly heart went out in pity, as she resolved that, in spite of all her own cares, the little one should not perish for want because of its parent’s sin. Much more unworthy are we of the Divine regard, for each may say, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son.” Even in earthly advantages we never won nor deserved, how many of us have been blessed! The home where no evil words are heard, where those who love us are daily witnesses for God, the heritage of a good name and wholesome habits, the tears and entreaties and prayers which win us to the love of righteousness,all these are signs that God can say of many now in wisdom’s way, “I taught you to walk, taking you by the arms.”
2. In his wisdom he does not force us. We are not automatons. They may do wonderful things without noise, or disobedience, or wrangling; but God has not made us thus. We are, as the text suggests, children, who can make their own effort, but to it they must be prompted, in it they must be supported and helped. When the stirrings of a new life are felt in the soul, the question comes, “Who then is willing to consecrate himself to the Lord?” and it is only the self-consecrated servants God will have. It is a poor thing to employ the forced labor of those whose bodies are their owner’s, but whose souls loathe him; but a blessed thing to have the loyal and loving service of the child, to whom a glance or a whisper means a command which it is his joy to obey.
3. In his graciousness he does not curse us. Children are weak and wayward; they forget what they are told, and do what is amiss; but their father says to himself, “They are but children,” and he cannot be bitter or unjust. When Peter denied his Lord, falling through moral weakness, an angry curse might have driven him to despair; but “the Lord turned and looked on him,” and as he went out, weeping bitterly, he yet could say, “The Lord loves me still.” Christ drew him back with cords of love.
4. In his patience he does not demand of us instant perfection. Picture the scene suggested here. A child is about to take his first step. The mother is beside him, encouraging every step, or half-step, with a smile. Her eye does not wander from him for a moment; her hands are out to encourage, to support, to save, as she says, “Try, dear, try.” When at last the effort is made, she catches him up in her arms and kisses him; and if you wondered at so much gladness and love being shown over such a feeble attempt, she would be annoyed at your dullness, because she sees in this the promise of the future. By such a homely illustration does Hoses set forth the Divine tenderness. God’s “gentleness makes us great.” Christ Jesus expected nothing wonderful from his disciples; but patiently lived with them and taught them, forgiving, encouraging, and upholding, till they became brave and stalwart heroes of the cross. Only let us keep near him, and as we recognize the difficulties of our way and the weakness of our nature, let the prayer of the psalmist be ours, “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.”A.R.
Hos 11:4 (first clause)
The attractiveness of God.
These words are true for all ages and peoples. Human laws are limited, but Divine laws are universal. Gravitation, for example, draws material things to each other, whether they be the ice-floes that float in the polar seas, or the creepers which hang in heavy festoons in tropical forests; whether in the land where liberty loves the light, or in the kingdom where tyrants brood and conspirators glower in the darkness. The bold use of the second verse in this chapter by Matthew (Mat 2:15) shows how in the special historical fact may be discerned the general and universal principle. The Divine care of Israel was but a manifestation of the Divine care of the Babe of Bethlehem, and of every one led out of bondage and darkness into light and liberty. The soul’s exodus and pilgrimage is as real now as then, and of those rejoicing in nearness to God he can say, “I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” Let us consider the evidence and the influence of the Divine attractiveness.
I. ITS EVIDENCE.
1. As exhibited in the mission of Christ. Instead of coming in the clouds of heaven to compel the homage of the world, he came in the likeness of men, and won the love of those round him in Bethlehem and Nazareth as a human child. “He grew in favor with God and man.” During his ministry the same method was pursued; he drew disciples around him “with the cords of a man, even with bands of love.” His chosen disciples were not those whose enthusiasm was aroused by works of superhuman character; on the contrary, such as these had to be repressed, as they were when they would take Jesus by force to make him a King. John and Peter and others who were specially his own were won by his love, were drawn with the cords of a man. It was those who were thus drawn who were ready for the higher blessing. While a wicked and adulterous generation in vain sought after a sign, despised sinners and humble children were enriched beyond all expectation. Still Christ seeks to win such confidence, and to win it by the same means. He speaks not from the throne of glory, but from the cross of Calvary. Divine love is pleading with us through the weakness of mortality. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
2. As exhibited in the experience of Christians. If we would know the laws of mental life we do not seek them in the phenomena of physical life, and it would be equally absurd to expect the physiologist from his study of brain-movements, or the metaphysician from his acquaintance with the laws of intellect, to unveil to us the secrets of spiritual experience. The subtle movements of religious life can only be known by religious men. They, without one discordant voice, declare that they have been and are sensible of Divine drawings. Listen to such utterances as these: “By the grace of God I am what I am;” “We love him, because he first loved us;” “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.” What are these but confirmations of the text, and of our Lord’s declaration, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”? Here is a quotation from Augustine, which shows how he had been drawn to the Savior he had so long ignored: “How sweet did it at once become to me to want the sweetnesses of those toys! and what I feared to be parted from was now a joy to part with. For thou didst cast them forth, and for them enteredst in thyself sweeter than all pleasures, though not to flesh and blood; brighter than all light, but more hidden than all depths; higher than all honor, but not to the high in their own conceits.” Every saint on earth and in heaven can say
“He drew me, and I followed on.
Glad to confess the voice Divine”
II. ITS PURPOSE. Why does God thus lovingly affect the souls of men?
1. He would draw us to his feet for pardon. The prodigal was not forced home. In his abject misery thoughts came to him of his father’s love, and with them the idea of returning stole in. So the thought of God’s great goodness should incite the worst sinner to return to the Lord, who will abundantly pardon. “Knowest thou not that the goodness of the Lord leadeth thee to repentance?”
2. He would draw us to his arms for protection. To feel that God is about us is at once our strength and defense, our comfort and joy. Refer to Joseph in Potiphar’s house, to Jacob at Bethel, and to Moses before the burning bush, etc; for illustrations of this. Still in this world, which is sobbing with sorrow, dark with foreboding, saddened by sin, the ark of safety may be found, and the door is open.
3. He would draw us to his home for rest, If life were to be lived out here, it would not be worth living. But as strangers and pilgrims we are passing through the world, sometimes driven onward by grief, sometimes allured onward by joy, but ever journeying towards “the rest that remains for the people of God.” Beside us, in life, in death, in eternity, is One who, with love greater than that of any father to his child, still declares,” I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.”A.R.
Hos 11:8
God’s yearning over rebels.
Our text tells the old story of man’s rebellion and God’s love. The subject has its human and its Divine aspect, which we will consider in turn.
I. MAN‘S REBELLION is implied in the text and described graphically in other parts of the prophecy.
1. Its signs, as they are illustrated in the moral condition of Israel.
(1) The dethronement of God. He was no longer the object of worship or the source of authority. Baal was worshipped in the high places, and Astarte in the groves. In other words, confidence in one’s own power, or contentment with sensuous pleasures, now displaced devotion to God. This is not brought about with startling rapidity. There is no sensible shock felt when a man breaks with God. There is a progressiveness in evil almost imperceptible. Israel first professed to worship God in the calf, but at last worshipped the devil in Astarte. Sin is generally progressive in the hold it gets upon its victims. Judas Iscariot is an example of this.
(2) The confidence in man. Many shrewd men in Israel held aloof from idolatrous worship as degrading superstition, yet were equally with the worshippers in rebellion against God. For national deliverance they would not trust to Baal, but they would trust in Egypt, which was equally distrust of Jehovah. Many now are free from the folly and the degradation of heathendom, yet are in God’s sight rebels against his authority. In their judgment they are righteous enough to do without his pardon, strong enough to do without his aid, wise enough to do without his revelation.
2. Its consequences.
(1) Disappointment. (Read Hos 11:5) Hoshea was subject to Assyria, but joined Egypt to win independence. The result was that the Assyrian king destroyed Israel, carrying the people away into an exile from which there was no return. Similarly, one who from a spirit of self-reliance says of Christ, “We will not have this man to rule over us,” becomes the slave of human opinion, of popular customs, of evil passions, etc. Others who live in forbidden pleasure find in old age, not only the pleasure gone, but the retribution come, physically as well as morally. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?” Happy is it if the prodigal grows sick of the husks the swine eat, before it is too late to return to the Father’s house, where there is bread enough and to spare.
(2) Punishment. In the wilderness days the people, in plagues and defeats, had signs of this. Here it was foretold that the sword should abide on their cities (Hos 11:6). And in our text reference is made to a standing example of Divine retributionthe destruction of the cities of the plain. Admah and Zeboim are selected, as the smallest or least known, to indicate that the most insignificant would not escape the judgment of God. In reference to the coming punishment of the impenitent, even our loving Savior speaks awful and ominous words. It is in the New Testament, the special revelation of God’s love, that we read of “the fire that cannot be quenched;” of “the second death;” of the” outer darkness, where shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.”
II. GOD‘S COMPASSION.
1. It is described by the prophet. He represents God as saying, “How shall I make thee as Admah?” etc. “Thy sin merits a punishment fearful as was that, yet my heart is heavy within me at the thought of its coming to thee, my child; yea, my strong compassions are kindled by my love.” Such language is in harmony with the whole teaching of Scripture. “God is not willing that any should perish,” etc. Note: It would be well if all the children of God in this were like him. Some, however, are indifferent to the sins of their fellows, as if sins were of little consequence, or as if they themselves had no more sense of responsibility than Cain acknowledged when he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Others are indignant and angry with the fallen, as were the Pharisees in the house of Simon. But in the eye of him who abhors evil, the sinner, going away from hope and light and heaven is too pitiful for resentment, though too willful for excuse. Therefore he says, “How shall I give thee up?” etc.
2. It is proclaimed in the gospel. The coming of the beloved Son is well described by the Lord himself, in his parables of the wicked husbandmen, of the good shepherd seeking the one sheep that was lost, etc. See in these the unmerited love, the infinite tenderness, of him who so loved us as to give his only Son for our redemption. In the ministry of him who was the express Image of God’s Person we see proofs of the truth in the text; not only in his miracles, but in his invitations, notably in the words, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!” In the commission given to the apostles the text reappears. What pathetic meaning in the words, “beginning at Jerusalem”! In the experience of the redeemed this assurance is re-echoed. Saul of Tarsus, the chief of sinners, obtained mercy as a pattern for those who should hereafter believe.
CONCLUSION. Beware of presuming on Divine long-suffering. What more mad and perilous than to leap into the angry sea because the lifeboat is there! What more ungenerous and unmanly than the conduct of him who says in his heart, “I will be hard, because God is so tender; I wilt withdraw further from him, because I know he loves me”! “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?”A.R.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
Hos 11:1
When Israel was a child.
There is something wonderfully touching in this representation of God’s affection and compassion towards the nation of his choice. The father, distressed in heart because of his son’s waywardness and disaffection, recalls the period of that son’s childhood, when parental care and love watched over and upheld. and guided him. Now that Israel has done wickedly in departing from God, in the midst of deserved upbraiding and rebuke, the Lord appeals to the memory of early and better days. Israel symbolizes humanity, and Jehovah’s watchful care and tender love to Israel is representative of his feelings towards and his treatment of the children of men. Three stages are here noticeable.
I. LOVE to Abraham, God had revealed himself as an attached and affectionate Friend; he was designated “the friend of God.” Towards the second father of the nation, Moses, Jehovah had manifested himself in a manner remarkable for intimacy. The love which marked the call of Abraham was displayed in the treatment of his descendants. But “God is love,” and mankind is the object of his fatherly regard. Love revealed in Christ appeals to our hearts. “We love him, because he first loved us.”
II. ADOPTION. Jehovah is represented as regarding and treating Israel as his son, as thinking with a fatherly fondness and tenderness of Israel’s early days: “When Israel was a child.” It is the glory of revelation that it has taught us to look up and to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” The effect of our Savior’s work is that his disciples may have the adoption of sons; the Spirit of God within them is the Spirit of adoption.
III. DELIVERANCE. Jehovah “called his son out of Egypt.” A reminder of merciful interposition and mighty deliverance was a fit summons to submission and reconciliation. It is, indeed, a Divine appeal. By the memory of the great Redemption, the God of righteousness calls for our obedience and devotion. He has redeemed us that we may be a holy, filial, and devoted people, recognizing his fatherly favor, and evincing our gratitude for his delivering hand which has interposed on our behalf.T.
Hos 11:3
Healing grace unrecognized.
The gentle, considerate, and tender manner in which Jehovah had treated Ephraim is very strikingly portrayed in the figurative language of the first part of this verse. Ephraim is depicted as a little child who is just learning to walk. The Lord condescends to represent himself as taking Ephraim by the arms, upholding the feeble, tottering form, and guiding the uncertain, unsteady steps. Such treatment augments the sin of insensibility and ingratitude on the part of those who have been dealt with so compassionately, and yet have forgotten their Helper.
I. THE CHARACTER IN WHICH GOD REVEALED HIMSELF IN ISRAEL. He was their “Healer,” which implies that they had been wounded, sick, and helpless. When Israel had been in such a case, their covenant God had again and again interposed upon their behalf to succor, to heal, to save them.
II. THE INSENSIBILITY WHICH ISRAEL HAD DISPLAYED TO SUCH GRACIOUS TREATMENT.
1. This insensibility was a proof that the spiritual benefit intended had not been realized. Men often resemble Israel in receiving temporal advantages and bounties from the hand of God, without learning the lesson of devout acknowledgment and filial affection.
2. This insensibility was an occasion of sorrow to the Divine Benefactor. God is not indifferent to such a response rendered to his kindness and love; it distresses his fatherly heart.
3. This insensibility called for repentance and a better mind; or must needs involve, if persevered in, debasement and punishment.T.
Hos 11:4
Cords of a man.
Language is lavished to impress upon Israel the gracious, the undeserved, but generous and forbearing treatment received from the Most High. As though an exhibition of the justice of obedience and piety were insufficient, there is added many a representation of the mercy which has marked the Lord’s treatment of his ungrateful and rebellious people.
I. GRACIOUS ATTRACTION Instead of driving men with authority, God draws them with a truly humane and tender persuasion. We see this in the whole Christian scheme, in the gift of Jesus Christ, in his spiritual dispensation, in which he is” drawing all men unto himself.” No violence, but a sweet and hallowed constraint is, in the gospel, brought to bear upon the heart. We feel that the motives addressed to us are very different from what we might have expected, and from what human authority would probably have employed.
II. MERCIFUL RELIEF. God’s treatment of Israel is represented as resembling that of the husbandman wire suffers the laboring ox to pause in his toil, and who lifts the oppressive and galling yoke to afford the beast a little welcome relief. Similarly, God has not dealt with us after our sins. In the midst of wrath he has remembered mercy. It is his delight to unloose the heavy burden, and to let the oppressed go free. Christ’s prized invitation is an instance in point: “Come unto me, all ye that labor…. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
III. BOUNTIFUL PROVISION. The Hebrew was forbidden to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. The conduct here recorded goes beyond a mere permission to lend; for the generous owner is depicted as setting food before the hungry animal. A homely but just and impressive image of the Divine treatment of those who look to him. “He openeth his hands, and satisfieth,” etc. He gives them” bread from heaven to eat.” The provisions of the gospel are spread before the hungering, needy seal, and the invitation is addressed to all who are in want: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!”T.
Hos 11:8
How shall I give thee up?
It was an idolatrous and rebellious generation to which Hosea prophesied. Sundered from Jerusalem, Israel had lapsed from the worship and service of Jehovah. The prophet was not satisfied merely to discover in forcible language the sin of the people, merely to threaten with deserved punishment. He was touched with the spectacle of apostasy. He expressed the mind of the Lord in mingling expostulations and promises with denunciations and threats. The most pathetic language of the text implies
I. EFFORTS ALREADY MADE FOR THE SALVATION OF THE SINFUL. Evidently this was not a first appeal; many and urgent counsels and entreaties had been already addressed to Israel. Looking over a wider field, we may recognize that God has in mercy visited men, in the messages of revelation, in the Law Which declares his will, by the prophets who have presented motives and appeals, and especially by his own Son, his own Spirit, his own gospel. His aim in all has been to lead men to repentance and faith, to bring them to eternal life.
II. THE THWARTING OF SUCH EFFORTS BY HUMAN NEGLECT AND WILLFULNESS. The free nature with which God the Creator has endowed man is capable of rebellion; and he can only save us upon our repentance and renewal. But what resistance do his gracious designs meet from sinful men! In some cases, obstinate love of sin, determined opposition to truth, prolonged insensibility; in other cases, transient gleams of good, followed by relapse; in yet other cases, shameful apostasy;account for this alienation of the heart from a God of mercy. Yet observe
III. GOD‘S GRACIOUS RELUCTANCE TO ABANDON EVEN REBELS.
1. This arises from his, own compassionate nature. Exhibited e.g. in the long-suffering during the days of Noah; by the Lord Jesus in his grief over Jerusalem.
2. And from his desire that the gift of his Son may not be in vain. He is the Savior, in order that he may save. The Father delights in the satisfaction of the Son, when he sees of the travail of his soul.
3. And from his regard for men‘s interests and happiness. As the mechanic wishes the engine he has made to work well, as the husbandman wishes to reap a harvest from the land upon which he has labored, as the statesman hopes for the success of the measure he has devised, as the parent longs for the realization of the plans he has formed for his child, so the Lord and Father of us all desires our salvation. He knows that there is no happiness for men except in their subjection and devotion to him. He can have no motive in seeking our welfare except Divine, unwearying, and unmerited love; and he asks, “How can I give thee up?”
APPLICATION.
1. If God so bears with us, we Christians, and especially Christian ministers, must not be ready to “give up” even obstinate sinners.
2. God pleads again with the unbelieving and the wavering, saying, “Why will ye die?”T.
Hos 11:9
God and not man.
Well is it for us that them are respects in which God is as man; that he is sympathizing and (as we say) humane. But better is it for us that in other respects God is not as man; for, had he been subject to like passions with ourselves, he would not have borne with us, and we should have been utterly consumed.
I. A REVELATION OF DIVINE SUPERIORITY. God, in his treatment of mankind, has shown himself to be altogether superior:
1. To human ignorance. He knows us as we cannot know one another, and all his counsels have been counsels of consummate wisdom.
2. To human vacillation. We are prone to be swayed, now by this motive and again by that; there is no such thing as perfect consistency and steadfastness in man. But God is above all such human weakness. “I am the Lord that changeth not, therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed.” “God is faithful,” and we may trust him with an implicit confidence.
3. To human impatience. The hasty impatience of man with his fellow-man is in striking contrast with the forbearance of the supreme Ruler. Long-suffering is ever represented in the Scriptures as his especial attribute, and there is none for which we have more reason to be grateful. Had he not been a patient God he would not have borne with any one of us, for all have taxed and tried his patience.
II. AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO HUMAN CONFIDENCE. It is well always to begin with the consideration of God’s character and attributes. But we cannot end there. We naturally and properly turn our regard towards ourselves, and see what is the bearing of the Divine attributes upon our necessities. This we may learn from the assurance that we are in the hands of One who is God and not manwe may learn to cast ourselves with unhesitating confidence upon the Divine faithfulness and grace. No human pettiness shall we meet with from him, but large-hearted forbearance, sympathy, bounty, and love.T.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS
Hos 11:1-7
A typical portrait of a people.
“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them. He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels. And my people are bent to backsliding from me; though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him.” In these verses we have three things worthy of note.
I. A HIGHLY FAVORED PEOPLE. What is said here concerning the people of Israel?
1. God loved them. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him.” “Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn” (Exo 4:22). The early period of the existence of the Hebrew people is frequently represented as their youth (Isa 54:15; Jer 2:2). Why the Almighty should have manifested a special interest in the descendants of Abraham is a question which the Infinite only can answer. We know, however, that he loves all men. “God so loved the world, that he gave,” etc.
2. God emancipated them. “And called my son out of Egypt.” He broke the rod of their oppressor. He delivered them from Egyptian thraldom. This material emancipation of the Jews is a striking emblem of the great moral emancipation.
3. God educated them. “I taught Ephraim also to go.” Some read this line, “I have given Ephraim a leader”referring to Moses. Moses was only the instrument. “I taught Ephraim also to go”as a child in leading-strings is taught. When they were in the wilderness God led them by a pillar of cloud.
4. God healed them. “I healed them.” “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exo 15:26).
5. God guided them. “I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” With human cords I drew them, with bands of love. He did not draw them by might; he attracted them by mercy.
6. God relieved them. “I was to them as they that take off the yoke, on their jaws.” As the kind farmer raises from the neck and cheek of the ox the heavy yoke so as to leave him freedom to eat his food, so I raised from your neck the yoke of Egyptian bondage.
7. God fed them. “1 laid meat, unto them.” He rained manna about their camp. He gave them bread from heaven, and water horn the rock. What a kind God he was to those people! And has he not been even more kind to us, the favored men of this laud and age?
II. A SIGNALLY UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE.
1. They disobeyed God‘s teaching. “As they called them, so they went from them.” “They”the lawgivers, judges, priests, prophets, whom he employed. “They went from them.” That is, the people went from their Divine teacherswent from them in heart.
2. They gave themselves to idolatry. “They sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.” Idolatry was their besetting sin. It marked their history more or less from the beginning to the end. What is idolatry but giving that love to inferior objects that is due to God and God alone?
3. They ignored God‘s kindness. “They knew not that I healed them.” They ascribed their restoration either to themselves or others, not to God.
4. They persistently backslided. “And my people are bent to backsliding from me.” They forsake me and are bent on doing so. Such is the signally ungrateful conduct of this people.
III. A RIGHTEOUSLY PUNISHED PEOPLE. “He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.” Whilst they would not be driven back to Egypt again, judgment should overtake them even in the promised land, and the judgment would be:
1. Extensive. “On the cities,” and on the “branches.” The large town and the little hamlets.
2. Continuous. “Abide on his cities.”
3. Destructive. “Consume his branches.”
CONCLUSION. Is not the history of this people typical? Do not they represent especially the peoples of modern Christendom, highly favored of God, signally ungrateful to God, and exposed to punishment from God?D.T.
Hos 11:8, Hos 11:9
Justice and mercy in the heart of God.
“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy’ Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.” The Bible is pre-eminently an anthropomorphitic book, that is, a book revealing God, not directly in his absolute glory, nor through the affections, thoughts, and conduct of angels, but through manthrough man’s emotions, modes of thought, and actions. It sometimes brings God before us in the character of a Husband, that we may appreciate his fidelity and tenderness; sometimes in the character of a Warrior, that we may appreciate his invincibility and the victories that attend his procedure; sometimes as a Monarch, that we may appreciate his wealth, splendor, and authority; sometimes as a Father, that we may appreciate the reality, depth, and solicitude of his love. It is in this last character, the character of a father, that these verses present him to our notice. No human character, of course, can give a full or perfect revelation of himall fall infinitely short. The brightest human representation of him is to his glory less than the dimmest glow-worm to the central fires of the universe. And yet it is only through man that we can get any clear or impressive idea of him. It is only through human love, human faithfulness, human justice, that we can gain any conception of the love, faithfulness, and justice of the Eternal The verses lead us to consider several things.
I. Mercy and justice as CO–EXISTING in the heart of the great Father. “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim?” To give up to ruin, to deliver to destruction, burn up, as Admah and Zeboimcities of the plainwere burnt up, is the demand of justice. “Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.” This is the voice of men. Here, then, in the heart of this great Father is justice and mercy. What is justice? It is that sentiment that demands that every one should have his due, that virtue should be rewarded, that vice should be punished. What is mercy? A disposition to overlook injuries and to treat beings better than they deserve. These two must never be regarded as elements essentially distinct; they are branches from the same root, streams from the same fountain. Both are but modifications of love. Justice is but love standing up sternly against the wrong; mercy is but love bending in tenderness over the helpless and the suffering. Now, in the heart of God this love assumes these two phases or manifestations.
1. Material nature shows that there is the stern and the mild in God. Winter reveals his sternness, summer Ms amiability and kindness.
2. Providence shows that there is the stern and the mild in God. The heavy afflictions that befall nations, families, and individuals reveal his sternness; the health and the joy that gladden life reveal his mercy.
3. The spiritual constitution of man shows that there is the stern and the mild in God. In the human soul there is an instinct to revenge the wrong, often stern, inexorable, and heartless. There is also an instinct of tenderness and compassion. Whence came these? From the great Father. In God, then, there is justice and mercy.
II. Mercy and justice as EXCITED BY MAN in the heart of the Father.
1. The moral wickedness of Ephraim evoked his justice. Ephraim, unfaithful, sensual, false, idolatrous, justly deserved punishment. Justice awoke, demands destruction; it says, “Let Ephraim be given up, make no more efforts for its restoration and happiness; let it be delivered into the hand of the enemy, let it be torn to pieces. Rain fire from heaven upon it, and let it burn to ashes, as did Admah and Zeboim.” Human wickedness is always stirring, so to say, the justice of the infinite heart.
2. The filial suffering of Ephraim evoked his mercy. Elsewhere (Jer 31:20), we have these remarkable words: “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.” God calls Ephraim his son, and Ephraim was in suffering, and hence his compassion was turned. Why does the eternal Father show mercy unto mankind? They deserve destruction on account of their sins; but men are his children, and his children in suffering.
III. Mercy STRUGGLING AGAINST justice in the heart of the great Father. There is a father who has a son, not only disobedient, but unloving and malignantly hostile; he spurns his father’s authority, and pursues a course of conduct antagonistic to his father’s will and interests. Often has the father reproved him with love and entreated him to reform, but he has grown worse and worse, and has become incorrigible. The wickedness of the son rouses the sentiment of justice in the heart of the father, and the father says, “I will give you up, I will shut my door against you, I will disown you, and send you as a vagabond on the world; never more shall you cross the threshold of my home, never more will I speak to you.” This is justice; but then the thought that he is his son rouses the other sentiment, love, and here is the struggle: “How shall I give thee up?” Such experience as this is, alas! too common in human life. Such a struggle between mercy and justice is going on now in the heart of many a father in London. The passage gives us to understand there is something like this in the heart of the infinite Father. Justice crying out, “Damn!” mercy crying out, “Save!” This is wonderful. I cannot understand it; it transcends my conception; and yet this passage suggests the fact.
IV. Mercy TRIUMPHING OVER justice in the heart of the great Father. “Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim.”
1. Mercy has triumphed over justice in the perpetuation of the race. Justice said, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam did eat of the fruit, but lived and became the father of a countless and ever-multiplying race. Why? Mercy triumphed.
2. Mercy has triumphed over justice in the experience of every living man. Every man is a sinner, and his sins cry out for destruction; and he lives on because mercy has triumphed.
3. Mercy has triumphed over justice in the redemptive mission of Christ. In relation to the whole family tree, justice said, “Cut it down, for it cumbereth the ground;” but mercy interposed, and said, “Spare it a little longer.” How comes it to pass that mercy thus triumphs? Here is the answer. “For I am God, and not man.” Had I been a man it would have been otherwise. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”D.T.
Hos 11:12
The lies of a people.
“Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit.” The Almighty here represents himself as a man beset with lies on every hand, as if he could not move either one way or the other. Let us notice
I. THE NATURE OF THE LIES OF A NATION. Lies are as abundant in England today as they were in Ephraim centuries ago. The social atmosphere is infested with falsehoods.
1. There are commercial lies. From the largest warehouse to the pedlar’s paltry stall lies abound. They infest the commercial world more densely far than insects the summer air.
2. There are theological lies. Doctrines are propounded and enforced from the press and theological chairs utterly untrue to eternal realities.
3. There are religious lies. Sentiments and aspirations are expressed in the prayers, psalmodies, and liturgies of congregations, untrue to facts, untrue to the experience of those who give them utterance.
4. There are literary lies. The journals and volumes that stream from the modern press teem with falsehood. Surely, if the Almighty were to speak of England as he spoke of Ephraim in olden times, he would say it “compasseth me about with lies.”
“How false are men, both in their heads and hearts!
And there is falsehood in all trades and arts.
Lawyers deceive their clients by false law;
Priests, by false gods, keep all the world in awe.
For their false tongues such flatt’ring knaves are raised,
For their false wit scribbles by fools are praised.”
(John Crown)
II. THE CAUSE OF THE LIES OF A NATION. All lies spring from at least three sources.
1. Vanity. A desire to appear before our compeers in the world greater than we are, leads to the exaggeration of our virtues, if we have any, and to the denial of our infirmities and faults.
2. Greed. Greed is a prolific source of falsehood. Greed creates the lies that crowd our markets.
3. Fear. Fear creates lies as shields of defense. Religious lies spring in a great measure from fear. Nearly all the lies that fill the world are the children either of vanity, greed, or fear.
III. THE EVIL OF THE LIES OF A NATION. All lies are bad things.
1. They are bad in themselves. They are repugnant to the God of truth. They are a miasma in the moral atmosphere, essentially offensive as well as pernicious.
2. They are bad in their influence. Lies deceive and ruin. Every system built on lies, commercial, scientific, political, and religions, is like a house built on the sand that must tumble down before the rushing storms of reality.
“Let falsehood be a stranger to thy lips:
Shame on the policy that first began
To tamper with the heart to hide its thoughts!
And doubly shame on that inglorious tongue
That sold its honesty and told a lie!”
(William Havard)
D.T.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Hos 11:1-4
God’s early love for Israel.
The mind, pained by ingratitude, naturally reverts to the kindnesses formerly showered on the unworthy recipient. God hero reminds Israel of his early love to the nationhow he had adopted it as his son, called it out of Egypt, taught it to go alone, drawn it with love, and bountifully provided for it. No sin is so odious as filial ingratitude (Isa 1:3). None is so grievous to the heart of a parent. It is this sin which God here charges on Israel.
I. THE CHILDHOOD OF ISRAEL. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him” (Hos 11:1).
1. Israel had a childhood. Every nation has. There is a time when, in the natural development of society, the patriarchal stage passes over into the political. This time came to Israel in Egypt. The patriarchal family had grown into a horde. It had lost its domestic character, yet it had no polity. It might never have had one had the people remained in bondage. God gave them freedom, and with it nationality. Thus the nation was created.
2. The individual has a childhood. He is cast on God’s care from the womb (Psa 22:9, Psa 22:10). One can sometimes almost trace a special providence in the care of children. Those who can look back on special mercies in childhood and early life are in the position of Israel here.
3. The spiritual life has a childhood. It has its feeble beginnings. There are those who are but “babes in Christ” (1Co 3:1). They are as “new-born babes,” needing “the sincere milk of the Word,” that they may “grow thereby” (1Pe 2:2). God is tenderly careful of such, considerate of their weakness and. watchful in their nurture.
II. GOD‘S LOVE TO ISRAEL IN HIS CHILDHOOD. “I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt,” etc. (Hos 11:1, Hos 11:3, Hos 11:4 :). God’s love to Israel was shown:
1. In his adoption. He chose the nation, and called it “My son, my firstborn” (Exo 4:22). “Israel was a type of Christ, and for the sake of him who was to be born of the seed of Israel did God call Israel ‘My Son.'” In Christ the honor is extended to each individual believer (1Jn 3:1). The relation expressed is one of peculiar endearment and of pre-eminent privilege. It is connected, in the case of believers, with the impartation of a new principle of life in regeneration (1Jn 3:9). The children of believers are “holy” (1Co 7:14). God claims them in baptism as his children. The name “sons of God” shall be restored to Israel on their conversion (Hos 1:10).
2. In calling him out of Egypt. Freedom is an attribute of God’s children (Rom 8:21). When God made Israel his son he bound himself to deliver him. He gives freedom to all his spiritual children. The call to leave Egypt was, moreover, a proof of God’s faithfulness and love, in view of the promises made to the fathers. It bore also a prophetic character (Mat 1:15). Egypt having, by express Divine selection, been chosen a second time as a place of refuge for God’s Sonfor him of whom Israel, God’s firstborn, was but a typethe former call became prophetically a pledge that in this case also the Father’s summons would in due time arrive. Arrive, accordingly, it did. The word, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” found a new and higher fulfillment. On the Divine side, the fulfillment was neither unforeseen nor undesigned.
3. In training him to go alone. “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by the arms.” God gave the nation freedom. He further taught it to use its freedom. Freedom, without power to use it, is a sorry gift. In the training of Israel we observe:
(1) Wisdom. The people, as they came from Egypt, were unfit for independent national existence. They could not go alone. The bondage they had experienced had broken their manliness. They were servile, cowardly, fickle, petulant, disunited. They had to be guided at every steptreated like children who cannot walk alone. But the point is, that God sought to train them to walk. It is not his wish that his children should go in leading-strings. He would train them to self-reliance. He therefore put the people in situations fitted to develop their own powers. His training was wise.
(2) Care. God was kind and tender with Israel while yet they were weak. He did not try them above what they were able. In difficult situations he brought help to them in time. He was like a nurse who stands near while the child is walking, ready to catch it if it totters, and to support it when it can walk no further. Thus God deals with all his children (cf. 1Th 2:7). Wisdom, goodness, and care are manifest in his leading of them, especially in the beginning of their way.
4. In drawing the people with love. “I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” The people needed to be drawn. They were often recalcitrant and ill to manage. God emphasizes here:
(1) The humanness of his drawing of them. “Cords of a man.” There was a humanness in the manner of his approach to themspeaking to them in human words, through human servants, and with the persuasions of human affection. The heart of God was found to be like the heart of man. The Almighty tempered his glory, and spake to Israel as Father to Son. His cords were those of a man in another sense. He drew them by rational considerations, He treated them as rational beings, and appealed to them throughout on rational grounds. God draws men in this way still. The Bible is the most human book in the world. Christ is God become man. The Spirit acts through rational motives on the will.
(2) The gentleness of his drawing of them. “Bands of love.” God employed, not stern, but gentle methods to overcome the people’s refractoriness. He sought to draw them to himself by kindness. Especially in the earlier stages of the wilderness discipline do we find him making large and merciful allowances for them. The people are constantly rebelling, but seldom do we read of God so much as chiding them; he bore with them, like a father bearing with his children. He knew how ignorant they were; how much infirmity there was about them; how novel and trying were the situations in which he was placing them; and he mercifully gave them time to improve. This was the drawing of love, of which every one who knows God has also had ample experience.
5. In bountifully providing for them. “I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.” God provided for Israel all that was necessary for their sustenance, and not only thus supplied their creature wants, but was kind in his manner of doing, it. He was also the Healer of their diseases (Exo 15:26)
III. ISRAEL‘S REQUITAL OF THIS LOVE. (Hos 11:2, Hos 11:3) Israel had made God a shameful return for all his goodness to them. They:
1. Refused obedience. “As they [the prophets] called them, so they went from them.” They flatly turned their back on duty. They went further in sin the more they were warned.
2. Dishonored God in the very article of his Godhead. “They sacrificed to Baalim, and burned incense to graven images,” thus breaking the first and second commandments.
3. Renounced God as a Healer. “They knew not that I healed them” (cf. Hos 5:13).J.O.
Hos 11:5-7
Fatal courses.
So the wise man teaches, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Pro 16:25). We have here
I. ISRAEL‘S BANE. They insisted on thinking their own way better than God’s. This is brought out in the different expressions: “They refused to return” (Hos 11:5); “Because of their own counsels” (Hos 11:6); “My people are bent on backsliding from me” (Hos 11:7); “None at all would exalt him” (or exalt themselves, raise themselves up to God). They were in error, but they would not be persuaded of it. They were hugging a delusion, but they clung to it as wisdom. They thought their own way right, and the way which the prophets pointed out to them silly, stupid, contemptible. This is the folly of the sinner. He sets himself up as wiser than God. He snaps his fingers at those who call him to the Most High (Hos 11:7). The folly of his way might seem self-evident, but, unwarned by the lessons of the past, he sounds its praises as if reason and experience were entirely on his side.
II. ISRAEL‘S PUNISHMENT. The roads of sin, unhappily, lead to destruction, whether those who walk in them are persuaded of the fact or not. So Israel found it. Their own counsels, which they preferred to God‘s, cost them:
1. Relegation to bondage. (Hos 11:5) The freedom God had bestowed upon them (Hos 11:1) he would again deprive them of. Their destination, however, would not be the literal Egypt, but Assyria. The principles of God‘s moral administration abide, but they seldom embody themselves in precisely the same outward forms.
2. A whirling sword. (Hos 11:6) The sword would whirl and devour till it had devastated the whole kingdom. A type of the more terrible wrath that will consume the sinner.J.O.
Hos 11:8-11
Divine relentings.
God’s wrath, had it burned against Ephraim according to his deserts, would have utterly consumed him. It would have made him like Admah and Zeboim, cities of the plain, “which the Lord overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath” (Deu 29:23). But Divine compassion sets limits to Divine wrath God would punish, but, in remembrance of the covenant made with the fathers, would yet spare a part, and in the end would recover and restore. For “city” (Hos 11:9), read “heat (of wrath).”
I. COMPASSIONATE, YET PUNISHING. (Hos 11:8)
1. God‘s wrath is limited by his com. passion. “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?” In the threatening, God speaks as if he would destroy Israel altogether. He states what their sins deserve, and what, having regard to his wrath only, he would be bound to inflict. Their sins kindled an indignation which, had it burned unchecked, would have consumed them from the face of the earth. He now shows how compassion works to limit this God, having set his love on Ephraim, cannot give him up. Wrath is not the only principle in the Divine breast, and wrath having uttered itself in threatenings, pity is called forth by the thought of the woe with which the threatenings are charged. So God says, “Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled” (cf. Psa 58:1-11 :38, 39). Were it not for God’s compassions, sinners would not be so long borne with, nor would their punishments so often stop short of destruction (Lam 3:22).
2. God‘s compassion does not alter the determination to punish. Though God’s repentings were kindled, this did not mean that Ephraim was to escape the punishment of his sins. Right must be maintained. If Godthe “Holy One”is not sanctified in men, he must be sanctified upon them. God declares only that he will turn from the “fierceness” of his angerthat he will not utterly destroy Israel (Hos 11:9). The sinner, therefore, need not build hopes on the Divine mercy, as though he could sin and yet evade penalty. His sins may even reach a point at which mercy can do no more for him.
II. REPENTING, YET IMMUTABLE. God s repentings are kindled, yet the guarantee given that he will not destroy Ephraim is that he is “God, and not man””the Holy One,” an attribute of whose character is faithfulness (Hos 11:9). The apparent contradiction is to be resolved, not by turning what is said of the Divine relentings into a mere anthropomorphism, but by rememberingwhat immutability involvesthat the same principles which operate in the Divine breast in the execution of his purposes operated also in the forming of them. God, that is, in the forming of his purposes bad in view both what justice would dictate and what love would desire. His purpose was framed in the interest of both. The evolution of the purpose in history brings God into living relations with men, and calls the forces of the Divine nature into active and intensely real exercise.
1. God is not man in his long-suffering. Man would not bear with man as God bears with sinners. He would not forgive as God forgives. He would not show the same patience in working for his fellow-man’s recovery. He would not be so easily entreated. He would not stoop, as God stoops, to love the worthless. He would not make the sacrifice which God has made for the salvation of enemies (Rom 5:6-8).
2. God is not man in his unchangeability. He “is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent” (Num 23:19). He is not swayed by passing feelings to change his intentions. “I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal 3:6). God had in view the promise to the fathers, and would not be false to it. God’s faithfulness is the saint’s consolation and the repentant sinner’s hope. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1Jn 1:9). “He abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2Ti 2:13).
III. REJECTING, YET PROMISING TO RESTORE. (Hos 11:10, Hos 11:11) Israel was to become a “people” to Jehovah (Hos 1:9), but not absolutely. They would ultimately be restored. A day of grace was set for them. The return would be:
1. In response to a Divine call. “He shall roar as a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.” God’s call would be loud, far-reaching, effectual. God’s call precedes the sinner’s return. Believers are designated “the called.” This call came m a preliminary way to Israel at the time of the return from captivity under Cyrus (Ezr 1:1-3). It was then but very partially answered, it comes spiritually in the preaching of the gospel. The complete fulfillment is yet in the future.
2. Joyful and prompt. They “shall tremble from the west. They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria.” The trembling would be in holy joy and fear. The return would be in haste, as a bird flies to its nest, and a dove to its dovecote. It would be from west and east, i.e. from all quarters whither God had scattered them.
3. Permanent. “And I will place them in their houses, saith the Lord.” The prediction will have its main fulfillment in the reception of Israel back into the kingdom of God. It may have a lower temporal fulfillment in the restoration of the nation to their own land.J.O.
Hos 11:12
(See next chapter)J.O.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Hos 11:1. When Israel was a child, &c. Israel is my son: I have loved him as a son, and delivered him from Egypt. “I have regarded him as my child; I have taken the same care of him as a father does of a son.” The prophet seems to allude to the words of Moses, Exo 4:22-23. St. Matthew has quoted this passage of Hosea, and applied it to the return of our Saviour from Egypt. He says, that then these words of the prophet were fulfilled; I have called my son out of Egypt. The departure of the Jews from that country was only a figure of that of the Saviour; and the name of the first-born, which the Scripture on that occasion gives to Israel, was literally and exactly verified only in the person of Jesus Christ. Eusebius, however, and several other ancient writers, are of opinion, that St. Matthew did not take this passage from Hosea, but from the words of Balaam, Num 24:8. But we shall say more concerning this matter on Mat 2:15.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
III. MERCY
Hosea 11
God cannot utterly destroy Israel, whom He has always loved, though they have so basely requited Him, but will again show Mercy unto them
Hos 11:1-11
1 When Israel was a youth, then I loved Him,
And out of Egypt I called my son.
2 They [the Prophets] called them; so (often) they turned away from them;
They sacrificed to the Baals,
They burnt incense to the idol-gods.
3 And I led Ephraim along,1
He took them2 upon his arm;
Yet they knew not that I healed them.
4 With the bands of a man I drew them,
With cords of love;
And I was towards them,
As those that would raise the yoke-strap over their jaws,
And I reached out to them to eat.3
5 They will not return to the land of Egypt,
But Assyria,4 it is their king,
For they refused to return.
6 And the sword goes its rounds in their cities,
And destroys their bars [defenses],
And devours them for their devices.
7 And my people incline to fall away from me;5
They [the Prophets] call them (to look) upwards,
All together they refuse to raise themselves.
8 How should I give thee up, Ephraim?
How should I surrender thee, Israel?
How should I make thee like Admah,
Set thee like Zeboim?
My heart is turned within me;
My repentings are kindled together.
9 I will not execute the fierceness of my anger,
I will not again destroy Ephraim:
For I am God and not man;
In the midst of thee is a Holy One,
And I will not come in wrath.
10 They will follow the Lord:
Like a lion He will roar;
Yea He will roar, and children from the sea will come trembling [hasten];
11 Will hasten like a bird from Egypt,
And like a dove from Assyria:
Then will I make them dwell in their houses, saith Jehovah.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Hos 11:1. Jehovah calls to mind the love which He had displayed to Israel ages before. But it was rewarded with unfaithfulness, and they must be the more severely punished. See Exo 4:22 f. Israel was Jehovahs first-born son, because they were chosen as the people of his inheritance. Hence the love of God, which redeemed them from Egypt, in order to give to their fathers the Land of Promise. On the citation of this passage in Mat 2:15 f., see the Doctrinal Section.
2. They called, namely, the prophets. As the prophets called, so () they refused to listenturned away from their (the prophets) faces. , see Hos 2:15. [Henderson: The use of the verb: to call, in the preceding verse, suggested the idea of the subsequent messages which had been delivered to the Israelites by the prophets, to which Hosea now appeals, in order to contrast with the means which had been employed for their reformation, the obstinate character of their rebellion.M.]
Hos 11:3. A further description of the love of God displayed towards Israel, chiefly in the march through the wilderness. He took them upon his arms. The sudden transition to the third person is to be explained from the fact that it is the prophet that is speaking in the name of Jehovah, and that this can therefore easily pass over into a discourse by Jehovah. Comp. Deu 1:31; Exo 15:26, for the same thoughts.
Hos 11:4. With bands of a man = such as those with which men, especially children, would be led, opposed to ropes, with which beasts are tied,=cords of love in the next hemistich. This image leads on to the similar one of the yoke laid upon cattle to yoke them in for work. In this image gentle treatment is implied; for comparison is made with one who takes the yoke, or rather the strap with which it is secured, and which passes through the month, and draws it back over the jaws so that the animal may eat conveniently. Jehovah in his conduct towards Israel is like such a gentle master. Literally: I was to them as those who raise the yoke over their jaws. But the opinion of Keil is far-fetched, who thinks that there is a definite allusion to the commands laid upon the people, which God had made light for them, partly by many displays of his mercy, and partly by the means of grace in their religion. The tert. comp. is simply the gentleness, the kind consideration shown to them in his dealings towards them. [Though, of course, this general reference includes, with other manifestations of kindness, the special application made by Keil. For the construction and rendering of the last clause, see the Grammatical Note.M.]
Hos 11:5. They shall not return to the land of Egypt. An apparent contradiction of Hos 8:13; Hos 9:3. But, as may be seen there, Egypt is in those passages only a type of the land of bondage. But here Egypt is employed in the literal sense, just as in Hos 11:1, to which our verse alludes. The people of Jehovah shall not return to the land from which He called them, in order that it may not seem as though the design of the exodus and the march through the desert were frustrated through their impenitence. But they shall enter into another bondage. To return, namely, to Jehovah.
Hos 11:6. , from , to describe a circle, to move in a circle, as it were, to make the rounds; spoken of a sword=to rage. Their bars, the bars of the strong cities=their gates. These will be destroyed, and the cities be captured, and laid waste. [Others, as Gesenius and Cowles, take the word in a metaphorical sense, which is frequent: rulers, defenders. But the former is preferable, as being more directly connected with the strong cities. E. V. adopts the first derived sense of the word: branches. Calvin, following the same view, interpreted branches as=villages, the branches of the cities. In this he is followed by Fausset.M.]
Hos 11:7 returns again to the sin of the people. is here used intransitively: hang over, to incline. above (comp. Hos 7:16). They (the prophets) call them. , here probably intransitive (the strengthened Kal)=raise themselves, strive to rise. [The passage may be thus paraphrased: My people are bent on turning away from me. Though the prophets call upon them to look above (to the Most High), yet with one accord they refuse to raise themselves up.M.]
Hos 11:8. Still Jehovah cannot utterly blot out his people. The love with which He has loved them still endures and breaks forth strongly. How could I give thee up, etc. This is still at first a continuation of the threatening. Chastisement even to utter destruction, is justified=how I should, how just it would be to give thee up! But with this expression thus justifying the punishment, the threatening is exhausted and satisfied. It is just the contemplation of the great measure of the suffering which would really be deserved which leads to the feeling that such punishment, however justifiable, cannot be executed, and that it shall be restrained=I should do this, but how terrible it would be! no, it cannot be. Thus the threatening having reached its climax, brings itself to its end. Others translate: how should I?=how should it be possible, that, etc.?=I cannot do so. But then there is no transition from Hos 11:7 to Hos 11:8. [This, the most common view, is certainly correct. There is no need of any intermediate words between the threatening and the relenting. The true theory with regard to the relation between God and the people is this, that God must be considered as all the time melting with love towards the people whom He must reject. Hence the frequent and seemingly unprepared words of promise in the book, suddenly appearing after long denunciations. No transition is needed. It is supplied by that constant yearning love of which wrath and mercy are the negative and the positive poles. The other view has to encounter the very difficulty which it seeks to obviate. For the transition would only be more abrupt from the justification of extreme punishment to its abandonment; and the difficulty is greater, because such transition would occur in the middle of a verse, and not with the beginning of a new one.M.] Like Admah,like Zeboim: comp. Deu 29:22, where these two cities are expressly mentioned, as having been destroyed together with Sodom and Gomorrah, which in Gen 19:24 stand alone. My heart is changed within meso that wrath has disappeared. [For a like use of the preposition , comp. Jer 8:18; Ps. 42:6, 12; Psa 43:5.M.]
Hos 11:9. I will not return to destroy Ephraim. After my heart has been once changed with the resolve not to punish, I will not change it again. This is supported by the consideration that God is God and not a changeable man. is here probably=glow, heat of wrath. [E. V. has: into the city, which would have been , and which gives no pertinent sense. This rendering is now almost universally abandoned, but it is, strange to say, approved by Pusey and Fausset, the latter of whom speaks of the other translation as held needlessly.M.]
Hos 11:10. The consequence of the Lords compassion; He will call, and the people, following Him, will return home from banishment. They shall go after the Lord. This probably involves both the changed, converted heart, and the walking in Gods ways thence resulting. Will roar like a lion. The point of comparison is not the terrifying influence of the sound, but its extent. It reaches far and near. Thus must the cry be when it calls the people to their restoration. Or is it implied that these displays of mercy towards Israel are coupled with judgments upon the heathen? Hosea does not allude to this elsewhere. Trembling will be a consequence of this call, but it implies chiefly haste united with anxiety not to neglect the summons, and therefore the eagerness of obedience. Hence also the comparison with birds.
Hos 11:11. From the sea = from the west, as well as from Egypt and Assyria. The notion is: from all quarters of the earth (comp. Isa 11:11).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Israel became Gods son, by virtue of their being chosen as Gods peculiar people, according to Exo 4:22 f. The bestowal of this privilege, confirmed by the deliverance from Egypt, and sealed by the ratification at Sinai, forms the first step in Gods redemptive work, which is completed by the incarnation of his Son for the redemption of the world. The whole development and leading of Israel as Gods people terminate upon Christ not as though Israel were begotten as the Son of God, but in such a way as that the relation which the Lord of Heaven and earth established and preserved between Himself and this people prepared and foreshadowed the union of God and Man, and laid the way for the Incarnation of his Son by training this people as a vessel of the Divine mercy. All the important events in Israels history bore upon this, and thereby became types and actual prophecies of the life of Him, in whom the reconciliation of God and man should be effected, and the union of God with the human race unfold itself as a Personal Unity. In this sense is the second half of Hos 11:1 quoted in Mat 2:15, as a prophecy of Christ (Keil). But here we must stop. The further remark of Keil, in justification of the reference of this passage to Christ, goes too far and is not direct, when he says that it was made because the residence in Egypt and the leading out from it had the same significance in the unfolding of Christs life, as they had for the people of Israel. As Israel in Egypt, free from contact with the Canaanites, grew into a nation, so was the child Jesus concealed in Egypt from the enmity of Herod.
2. There is here presented to Israel in an affecting manner the love with which God had assumed the care of them in their beginnings, when they were still young, and made them what they were. And such love is represented as being so tender, all-considerate, helpful, and advancing, that it finds its image only in the love of a father or mother to a child. Jehovah called Israel his son in their early days, when He brought them out of Egypt. Exo 4:22 f. He had always acted towards them as became that relation, and displayed to them the love of a father toward his child, even his youngest child. As Jehovahs love and faithfulness to Israel in the years of their manhood finds its fitting symbol only in the love and faithfulness of a husband, so his love and care of Israel in their childhood is compared with the solicitous, tender love of a father. So much the more inexcusable then is the conduct of Israel towards God, the opposition which they displayed towards Him from the beginning. This base ingratitude characterized them continually, and does also in the present. Their present conduct is only the direct continuation of the former. Observe the description of such conduct of Israel toward their God in Hos 11:2 : idolatry before the very eyes of the God who had displayed such love to them; Hos 11:7 : failure to recognize Gods purposes of salvation; see also Hos 11:7; Hos 11:9. A special proof of Jehovahs love was the sending of the prophets; they call the people upwards=that they should return to God, but they will not raise themselves; they remain below, averse from God.
3. No wonder, therefore, if a people, who reward so basely and mistake the love of God, are visited by Him with the severest judgments (comp. Hos 11:6; Hos 11:8). But retributive and punitive justice finds in our Prophet, as we may satisfy ourselves in every chapter, where accusation and threatening are pealed forth incessantly, such appalling expression, that we can no longer decline the question: Are not these things spoken revengefully? is it not a spirit of vindictiveness that has inspired such words? It cannot be claimed that human revenge bears any part here, for it is not the offering of personal injuries of which the prophet announces the punishment, but he is indignant in Gods behalf, over Israels sins against God, and announces their punishment. In this, moreover, it is to be borne in mind that the prophet was never a mere passive organ (as the mechanical inspiration theory would have it) of the prophetic utterances, that his own faculties certainly were not at the time overborne, but were elevated, and that these announcements of judgment in the midst of a ruined generation are to be regarded as energic expressions of the life of faith, faith in the Holy One of Israel. On the other hand, the subjectivity of the prophet is not to be unduly emphasized, as though his purely human feelings and emotions were really the source of these threatenings. We must hold to the truth that the prophets were heralds of that which was revealed to them by the Spirit of God (comp. Hos 6:5), and that their separate efficiency was exerted only by completely entering by faith into this divine revelation, in their affirmation of it through faith. But the question then assumes this form: Though the Prophet himself does not merit the reproach of a selfish spirit, should not this reproach so much the rather fall upon God Himself, whose (conscious) organ the prophet was? But it is evident that the retribution announced is to be sent in a spirit of strict justice; it is to be a punishment of sin justly deserved. The punishment is closely related to the sins rebuked, and in close connection with them; it is punishment and not vengeance, which usually exceeds the measure of desert. But certainly we are not merely to trace back these threatenings to a dead law of just recompense; the punishment is not merely in accordance with the moral order of the world, according to which sin is followed by its own punishment. It is a personal action, as certainly as the infliction and the threatenings proceed from a personal God. And thus the course of action is not and cannot be unaccompanied by personal or feeling. But this feeling is the emotion of love, love grieved, vilely disowned and rejected. It is true that it must be angry, that it cannot be content without being reciprocated, but must be most intimately stirred up, and the greater, the more deeply seated it is, the more it seeks the good of its object, the more conscious it is that it has neglected nothing, and has been to blame in nothing. For this very reason the punishment assumes the appearance of revenge, and even wears its garments, while in truth it is only sin that is meeting with its deserved punishment according to an inner necessity, and not as the consequence of arbitrary passion. And as this love of God is unselfish and pure and seeks only the good of its object, so this revenge of God bears, so to speak, its corrective, that is, its aim in itself. The threatening has, then, a fearfully wide range, and is uttered with a violence which has something painful in it, since the Holy God, free, on his part, from all blame and neglect, appears against the sinner, upon whom alone the responsibility lies. But He does not simply display his anger; He does not cease to love. His wrath does not find its satisfaction in itself by the punishment or destruction of the unfaithful loved one. Actual destruction, which vengeance would demand, is never undertaken. In the background of the threatenings stands the full and flowing stream of love in assurances of mercy and compassion, which, though made in expectation that the people will return, are yet made before such return takes place, and for the purpose of promoting that end. How little the Law, though proceeding from Gods well-intentioned love towards Israel, realized its aim, is manifest; Israel had completely broken the covenant founded upon it, and instead of showing themselves to be worthy of the promises attached to it, only rendered themselves amenable to the curse, which they must bear unto the uttermost. Thus love appears in the form of free grace, compassionating the unworthy and coming forth to meet them, so leading to the stand-point of the New Covenant. Hence all these promises, rising up behind the severe threatenings of judgment, are rightly to be regarded as Messianic, even though they are not outwardly marked as such. That an actual annihilation of Israel is not intended, but that the prediction of punishmentthus revealing its origin in pure love which thinks of its object alone, and thus being distinguished from all self-avenginghalts before the last step is reached, has notably been clearly expressed already by the Prophet in his reference to the remnant that is still left. It finds in our chapter also its clear expression in Hos 11:8. Jehovah could and should give up Israel like Admah and Zeboim (not merely destroy the kingdom, deliver it over to Assyria), but He will not do so; and just when the threatening reaches its height, the assurance of fullest mercy breaks forth, and is expressed beautifully in Hos 11:8-11. If Gods love in the beginning of his interest in Israel was something great and exalted (Hos 11:1-4), it is something greater now, as being in the form of compassion (Hos 11:9-10), in which He refuses to give up his people, all unworthy as they had become of the love He had shown them (comp. Hos 11:11). A return to Jehovah is then announced as the fruit of this compassion, and the removal of the state of subjection to punishment by a restoration to the inheritance they had trifled away is promised as its manifestation. No further description of the future deliverance is as yet given.
4. As to the fulfillment of this promise, see the remarks on chs. 1 and 2 It may suffice to repeat here that we are not to hold to any fulfillment which would contradict the actual course of Gods revelation. Hence we must not think of a future return of the external Israel into their own land from Assyria, if it were only from the consideration that Assyria exists no longer, and Israel is no longer in bondage to such a nation, and we cannot take the one (Israel, the Holy Land, the return) as literal, and the other (Assyria, captivity) as figurative. We must rather say, from the stand-point of the fulfillment of the Old Testament, i.e., from the stand-point of the New Testament, and in accordance cordance with the actual course of events: the compassionate mercy of God towards his faithless people, which the Prophet sees win the victory over wrath, has been revealed in Christbut still as being far greater than he sees it; what is clear to him is only the of that which in Christ has actually occurred, and what is still going on, in the forgiveness of sin and deliverance from its through free grace. The Prophet hopes for this in behalf of his people Israel, but only because they are Gods people. But it will be true of all who shall become Gods people too, even though they be not of Israel; they will experience this compassionate favor of God, which is essentially identical with the love, in which God has chosen to Himself a people (from the nations), and completes it so that it realizes its purpose in spite of the breach of the covenant on the part of men, manifested in opposition to the Law and apostasy from God. The voice of mercy, which shall resound so powerfully, and towards which those hasten who stand under Gods judgment, has reached far and wide the Gospel, and will again be sounded forth, when Christ shall gather his own from all ends of the earth, and portion out to them the everlasting inheritance which they had forfeited by sin.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Hos 11:1. Thou also hast experienced such love of God from thy childhoods years, in temporal and yet more in spiritual things. This love of God is an incontestable truth. It is as important as it is necessary to be reminded of it continually.
Rieger: God delights to trace back in his Word and in mans conscience everything to its first beginning.
[Fausset: God, by sending the Spirit of his Son into the hearts of his people (Gal 4:6) as the spirit of adoption, calls them his, while they are still in the Egypt of this world. Indeed He separates them to Himself from the womb, and calls them by his grace, as He did Paul (Gal 1:15.M.]
Hos 11:2. Rieger: God is ever calling men back to their first love: but one goes to his farm, another to his merchandise, and most to their worldly idols.
Hos 11:3. Gods condescension to all our needs. He knows our weakness and treats us accordingly. We must be led along and taken by the arm; else we do not advance, but stumble and fall every moment.
Hos 11:4. Starke: God throws over us the cords of love even to day, when He calls us through the preaching of his Word, gives us his sacraments, promises and supplies us with every good thing, and visits us with precious afflictions: so we would pray that God would draw us further still after Himself.
Rieger: God directs us according to our weakness and the riches of his love. And when He must press us with a yoke, He gives us something with it that helps us to bear it, and leaves us at least food and clothing. And He would warn us against falling back in our pride upon our own help, and neglecting to wait for his counsel. But as Israel was always inclined to turn again to Egypt, and would seek help there against Gods judgments, so does self-sufficient man always act, resorting to everything rather than submit to the counsel of God.
[Fausset: The Son of God becomes man, in order to draw men as such by the cords of sympathy, as partaking of a common nature with us. His bands of love sit so lightly on those who wear them that they are no hindrance to us in enjoying all that is really good for us, and which God has so richly laid before us.M.]
Hos 11:7. We are called upwards continually: and yet we will not go! All calling upward is then in vain! Our flesh draws us downwards like weight of lead, and neutralizes the drawings of the Spirit upwards.
Hos 11:8-9. Starke: God is disposed, when angry, quite differently from men. Men are intent upon vengeance, but God upon reconciliation.
Rieger: The thought that we have to do with God and not with man, makes it often difficult to our terrified conscience, to seek and believe in the forgiveness of sins. But this is merely a motive to the divine magnanimity to bestow richer favors upon us.
[Matthew Henry: Those who submit to the influence may take the comfort of Gods holiness.]
Footnotes:
[1]Hos 11:3., from = , Hiphil from : to make to walk, to lead, construed with , [Comp. Jer 12:5; Jer 22:15, and see Ewald, 122 a, Green, 94 a. The corresponding Syriac (shargel) means: to mislead.M.]
[2]Hos 11:3. Instead of .
[3]Hos 11:4., usually regarded as first fut. Hiphil, from , instead of =and I inclined myself. Others take it to be an adverb: softly, gently. would then be best connected with it: and gently towards them, I gave them food. for .
[4]Hos 11:5. is adversative. emphasizes Assyria in contrast to Egypt.
[5]Hos 11:7. The suffix is here used in a subjective sense=apostasy from me.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
DISCOURSE: 1169
CHRIST CALLED OUT OF EGYPT
Hos 11:1. When Israel was a child, then I loved him; and called my Son out of Egypt.
WITHOUT supposing a primary and secondary sense of Scripture, it is impossible to interpret the prophetic writings, so as to make them accord with the construction put upon them in the New Testament. Indeed, on many occasions, we are necessitated to apply them also in a spiritual or mystical sense, so as to bring out from them that full instruction which they are intended to convey. Not that we are at liberty to indulge our own conceits in explaining Gods blessed word, or to put upon it any sense which a fanciful imagination may suggest; but if we follow the inspired writers of the New Testament, we are safe. The passage before us has doubtless an historical import, in relation to the ten tribes of Israel: nor can we doubt but that it has a prophetical meaning in reference to our blessed Lord. And I think the whole analogy of Scripture justifies us in affixing to it also a mystical meaning, in reference to the Church of God in all ages.
In accordance with this view, let us consider,
I.
Its historical import, as relating to the Jewish people
The prophet is reproving the ten tribes for their ingratitude to God; and in the words before us he shews them what signal mercies God had vouchsafed to them, from the earliest period of their existence.
He had loved Israel when a child
[When Israel were yet but few in number, God had loved them; yea, when their great ancestor was yet in the womb, God had shewn to him his distinguishing grace and mercy: choosing him, whilst Esau, the elder brother, was rejected [Note: Mal 1:2-3.]. If they looked for the true cause of this, they would find it in God, and in God alone: who had chosen them of his own sovereign will and pleasure, and had loved them purely and solely because he would love them [Note: Deu 7:7-8.]. Nothing could exceed their weakness or unworthiness, at the instant when God brought them into covenant with himself [Note: Eze 16:6.]: and therefore they were bound to bear this in remembrance, and to requite this love with a total surrender of themselves to God.]
He had brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand
[God had set them apart as a peculiar people for himself. And, in demanding their liberation from Pharaoh, he honoured them with the name of his son, his first-born [Note: Exo 4:22-23.]. And vain was Pharaohs opposition to his will. By ten successive plagues, God subdued that proud monarch; and on the very day that had been foretold four hundred and thirty years before, brought them forth with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm: not so much as one was left behind: and this has been referred to, by all the inspired writers, as the most wonderful display of power and grace that ever was vouchsafed to any creatures since the foundation of the world.]
But let us view,
II.
Its prophetical import, as relating to our blessed Lord
It had been ordained of God, that every possible evidence should concur to establish beyond a doubt the Messiahship of Jesus
[Nothing could be conceived more unlikely than that Jesus the Messiah should be brought forth out of Egypt. He was to be born at Bethlehem [Note: Mat 2:5-6.], and to be educated at Nazareth [Note: Mat 2:22-23.]. How, then, should it be possible for him to be brought out of Egypt? Behold, the rage and envy of Herod shall stimulate him to seek his utter destruction; and to secure it, by the destruction of all the infants from two years old and under, in all the vicinity of the place where Jesus was born. But, to defeat this murderous plot, an angel shall instruct Joseph to take the infant and its mother by night into Egypt; and there shall they be preserved in safety, till Herod himself is dead: and thus, without any design on the part of man, yea, through the murderous rage alone of this jealous prince, is the prophecy fulfilled; and the most convincing evidence is given, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour of the world.
In this view, as confirming the faith of all Believers to the very end of the world, is this prophecy pre-eminently important; since it was beyond the power of man ever to imagine such an incident; and since it took place only through the cruelty of him who sought to destroy Christ as soon as he was come into the world.]
Let us further consider,
III.
Its mystical import, as applicable to the Israel of God in all ages
It is well known that the whole deliverance of Israel from Egypt was a type of the deliverance of Gods Israel from sin and Satan, death and hell. Taking, then, the passage in that view, we see in it,
1.
The sovereignty of his grace
[There is not a child of God, at whatever period he was converted to the faith of Christ, but was loved of God before the foundation of the world. Of every one of them it may be said, God hath loved us with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness hath he drawn us [Note: Jer 31:3.] To this all the Scriptures bear witness [Note: Eph 1:4-5. 2Ti 1:9.] And therefore, if we be Gods children, we must bear in mind to whose sovereign grace alone we owe it: We have not chosen him; but he has chosen us [Note: Joh 15:16.].]
2.
The work which he has ordained to accomplish in all his people
[Every one of them does he bring out of Egypt. However long we may have been in bondage there, he looses our bonds, and brings us into the glorious liberty of his children. See what he did for his people of old, and then you will see what he will do for us: did he cause them to go from their bondage, and to commit themselves altogether to the guidance and protection of their God? That is what he will do for us: neither sin nor Satan shall detain us any longer under their dominion: but we shall devote ourselves altogether to the Lord, to be to him a holy and a peculiar people ]
3.
The efficacy of his grace in their behalf
[Not one was left behind: not one feeble person was found, at that juncture, amidst all the tribes of Israel. And shall there be one amongst all his people, whom he has redeemed, unable to withstand his spiritual enemies? No, not one: It is not the will of our Father that one of his little ones should perish. There may be a diversity in the mode of their preservation, as at the shipwreck of St. Paul: but not one shall be lost; nor shall a hair fall from the head of any one amongst them [Note: Act 27:34; Act 27:44.].]
Address
1.
Have any of you been called to God as from early childhood?
[O, bless God for this unspeakable gift. How much have you avoided, which might have ensnared and destroyed your souls! Verily, to be called to the knowledge of the truth in early life, is a far richer blessing than to have been called to the possession of crowns and kingdoms.]
2.
Are any of you brought into a state of deep affliction?
[This is no proof that God does not love you, or deal with you as his children. Israel of old were scarcely escaped from Egypt, before they were menaced with destruction at the Red Sea. And our blessed Lord was scarcely born into the world, before it was necessary that he should be carried to Egypt, to avoid the sword of the destroyer. Indeed, you will find that God in general calls his people to trials. John the Baptist must be in the deserts, till the time of his shewing unto Israel [Note: Luk 1:80.]: our blessed Lord must be forty days tempted of the devil in the wilderness, before he shall enter on the office to which he had been baptized [Note: Mat 4:1. Mar 1:9-13.]: St. Paul shall be three days and three nights without sight; and even then shall go into Arabia before he enters fully on his apostolic office [Note: Act 9:9 and Gal 1:17.]. Thus does God generally cause his peoples faith to be tried [Note: Heb 12:8.]; and allures them into the wilderness, before he speaks comfortably to them [Note: Hos 2:14-15.]. if, then, your faith be tried, know that it is needful for your best interests [Note: 1Pe 1:6-7.], and that it is by your tribulations that he will further in you the work of patience and experience and hope [Note: Rom 5:3-5.].]
3.
Are there amongst you those who have never yet come out of Egypt?
[Be sure, that if you fancy yourselves children of God, whilst yet you have no desire to relinquish this vain world, you do but deceive your own souls. Your faith, if it be genuine, will overcome the world [Note: 1Jn 5:4.]; and the cross of Christ, if ever its saving power be felt, will cause you to be crucified to the world, and the world to be as a crucified object unto you [Note: Gal 6:14.]. They who are the Lords people indeed, are not of the world, even as he was not of the world [Note: Joh 17:14; Joh 17:16.]. I call you, therefore, to shew whose you are, and whom you serve: as for serving God and Mammon too, it is impossible [Note: Mat 6:24.]; and to attempt it, is an act of treason against God [Note: Jam 4:4. the Greek.]. Come out, then, from Egypt and its pollutions, as God has commanded you: and then he will be a Father unto you; and ye shall be his sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty [Note: 2Co 6:17-18.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
CONTENTS
We have here a most gracious account of divine love; and a most melancholy account of human ingratitude. There is much of the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel in this Chapter.
Hos 11:1
Though I am free to confess, that what is here said may every Word of it be applied to the calling Israel out of Egypt; yet, as we have the authority of an infallible Expositor, Mat 2:15 , to assure us that what is here said of the call of God’s Son out of Egypt, expressly referred to the Lord Jesus Christ; I hesitate not to consider the whole of Israel’s history, as to this event in Egypt, merely typical of Christ, and would wish to lose sight of everything that is said of that history, any further than as it may serve to show how important the call of God’s beloved Son from Egypt was, which the Lord thought proper to have represented in figure so many ages before. Here the history of Israel’s call from Egypt becomes interesting, very highly so, and we do well to keep it in remembrance, and to make use of it for this end. But we sadly overrate anything, and everything, if we lose sight of Christ in the type, or place the one with the other on the same ground. When Israel was a child, then I loved him, saith Jehovah? When was this? Not surely in the beginning of forming the Church, when coming out of Egypt. When was it then? Not in the first giving the Covenant to Abraham, or the promise to Adam, that the seed of the Woman should bruise the serpent’s head. It was long before this! Yea, it was before the foundation of the world. It was at that period in eternity, if any angel of light had a being to count it, when as Jesus himself saith, in the character of Wisdom Mediator, the Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before his works of old; when, as the Lord saith, I was set up from everlasting. Pro 8:22 to end. Considered in this light, and what follows is most blessed indeed, the Lord Jesus graciously condescends to take the name of his people; and as graciously allows his people to call themselves after him. See Isa 49:3 ; Eph 3:14-15 . He is declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead. Rom 1:4 . And they are said to be sons of God by adoption and grace. Joh 1:12 . And if Jesus be called out of Egypt; so are they, by sovereign grace, called out of the Egypt of a fallen bondage nature, and shown thereby to be beloved in Christ by the Father, as the Father hath loved Christ, as God-man-Mediator. Joh 17:23 . Precious Lord Jesus! how blessed it is to behold thee in all thy pre-eminency!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Hos 11:4
Hosea, who lived at the decline and fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, had to speak mostly of doom. The Prophet, loving his country with, a passionate devotion, had no hope for the future except from the mercy of God using the inevitable chastisement to bring Israel back to a purer faith and a nobler life.
I. In the earliest days of all God taught the nation to walk, holding it by the arms, with patience and affection, as a mother teaches her child, encouraging him, but not too quickly lest he should overtask his strength; and when he falls taking him up in her arms, comforting and healing him. And then as the nation grew strong and could walk, and like a child now grown to manhood was set tasks and had to bend to serious burdens, like the oxen which did all the draught work in Palestine, the figure changes from that of a loving faith Or mother teaching a child to that of a considerate master driving a team of oxen. When Israel was grown up and had to carry heavy burdens, which is the lot of all men, God was to them as a considerate Master, never leaving them, making them feel that He was with them through it all, setting them to the tasks, and gently leading them, and strenuously upholding them, taking His place beside them, treating them with human sympathy, drawing them with cords of a man, with bands of love.
II. They are homely figures of a father with the patience of love towards his little child, and of a wagoner with the kindness of sympathy towards his labouring cattle; but what figures could be more expressive of the thought which Hosea is seeking to express of the constant loving providence of God? His love faileth never. He would still as of old, still even at the eleventh hour, draw them with cords of a man, with bands of love. Is not this explanation of Israel’s history the true reading of our own experience. The secret of all God’s dealings with us is love. Even in the experience that was hardest to understand, one day it comes to us with the force of a revelation that God has been teaching and training us. It is this that makes the religious man, and distinguishes him from the irreligious. Upon all men are laid the trials and tasks of life; to all men come the burden and the yoke. The religious man knows that God is in all his experience, ever drawing him with cords of a man, with bands of love. This consciousness of a Divine sympathy makes a man strong, and assures him that his life is worth living since it commands the interest of heaven.
III. Hosea saw the past history of Israel to be the very romance of Divine love. It was the key to explain all His dealing with them, from their childhood right on through the long years of training. The revelation of God’s Divinity has been a revelation of His humanity, drawing them with the cords of a man, with bands of love. How much more clearly should the Christian Church see this than Hosea, after the greatest of all object-lessons in Jesus Christ! The whole story thrills with human tenderness, with human sympathy, sympathy with men in their joy and their sorrow, sympathy with the little child, and with all on whom the yoke pressed, the labouring and heavy-laden. Can He fail to draw all men unto Himself? With the cords of a man He is drawing men: in the bands of love He is binding the world together. Who can resist the appeal of His broken body and shed blood?
Hugh Black, Christ’s Service of Love, p. 109.
References. XI. 4. Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons (1st Series), p.l. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No. 934. XI. 8. J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 261. XII. 9. Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, p. 365. XII. 10. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv. No. 206. XIII. 11. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iii. p. 29. XIII. 14. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (9th Series), p. 69. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1994.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Cords and Bands
Hos 10
“In a morning shall the king of Israel utterly be cut off” ( Hos 10:15 ).
There are various interpretations of this vivid passage. The one which is to be, in my judgment, preferred is that which regards the king of Israel in the light of one who has risen upon the troubles of his nation as the dawn rises upon the darkness. Hoshea was the last king of Israel. When the people hailed him on his accession they said in their hearts, This is he who shall bring liberty and joy and fame to Israel. They regarded him as a morning after a long weary night. They said, This same shall comfort us; he is a strong man and wise, and his heart is bound up with the fortunes of Israel, and he shall be the deliverer of the people. They were doomed to disappointment; the bright dawn perished, the light of hope went out the sky that was to have been filled with glory carried with it a sullen cloud. The king of Israel was cut off, he disappointed the people; whatever talents he had were not spent in the interests of his nation; whether incapable or false, he let fall the fortunes and destinies of his people. How many men there are who have disappointed their families! If we said, There are many men who have disappointed the world, the sentiment might be received with general applause it is one of those heroic deliverances which leave every person unharmed but we say, How many people there are who have disappointed their families! Then we come closely home to men; then we set up a process of self-examination, ending in a process of self-conviction and self-reprobation. See, however, if this be not true. The parents have said concerning the child, “This same shall comfort us,” and he has failed to shed one beam of light on the kind old hearts. The parents have said, “This same shall be wise, honest, honourable, chivalrous, heroic; men shall know that he lives and shall bless the day of his birth,” and suddenly the light has set, the promise has sunk in disappointment, and they who prophesied gracious things of the child are broken in heart. If what is called, atheistically, fate has anything to do with the disappointments which we inflict upon our kindred and our country, we must in some degree submit. We need not, however, be parties to the disappointment; we can be good if we cannot be great; we can be faithful if we cannot be brilliant; we can help a child if we cannot teach a king. The only thing we have to aim at in life is to win the recognition, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” not Brilliant soldier, Splendid genius, Unprecedented statesman, but Good and faithful servant, making the best of everything, watching every opportunity, rising early to catch the light and to prevent the singing lark, to go before as if to seek out occasions of beautiful, unselfish, yea, self-sacrificing service. Blessed is he whose early promise comes to noble fruition, and blessed are they who own him as their child. Do not let us be discouraged because we cannot do great things. All good things are great; the moral is the eternal.
The Lord continues his lament over his chosen one, and puts his plaint into the tenderest form of expression:
“When Israel was a child, then I loved him” ( Hos 11:1 ).
The meaning is not, necessarily, when Israel was an infant, a child in mere years, but when Israel was a child in spirit, docile, simple of mind, sincere of purpose, true in worship. When Israel lifted his eyes heavenward and sought for me, then I stooped over him as a man might stoop over his child to lift him into his arms and press him closely to his heart. There is a unit of the individual; let us take care lest we rest there, and so miss the ever-enlarging revelation of the divine purpose in human history. There is not only a unit of the individual, there is a unit of the nation. Israel is here spoken of as if he were one man, a little child; though a million strong in population, yet there was in the million a unit. This is one aspect of divine providence. We must not regard nations as if they ceased to have status and responsibility, name and destiny before God. A nation is one; a world is one; the universe is one. What does God know of our little divisions and distributions into pluralities and relationships? The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, and the sea is one, and all his creation is dear to him as an only child. So the nation may have a character. The Church is one, and has a reputation and an influence. So we come upon the divine handling of great occasions. The Lord is not fretted by details. All the details of his providence come out of and return to one great principle of redeeming Fatherhood. The locks are innumerable; the key is one, and it is in the Father’s hand: let him hold it. Father in heaven, never cease to hold the key thyself with thine own right hand!
Sometimes the Lord condescends to tell what he has done for the world. When men forget him he must remind them of what they have seen and what has been done for them. Ingratitude has a short memory:
“I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them” ( Hos 11:3 ).
The picture is one that befits the life of the nursery. We have seen how a child is taught to walk; we have watched, partly with amusement, and partly with apprehension, early efforts at locomotion how unsteady the eye, how uncertain the action of the little limbs. Still the lesson was to be taught; it was the beginning of a career. It is easy to measure the first walk, but who can lay a line upon all we do which that first walk begins? Devious is the way of life; a thousand paths break away from the central road, and some adventurous spirits go down by-paths to get their first sight of the devil. God’s complaint is that “they knew not that I healed them.” We have given up in many instances the divine personality, the living, loving, redeeming Fatherhood of God; and with what are we now satisfied? With fine words, with pompous syllables, with the continuity of law. Many a man will accept the theory of the continuity of law as if he were accepting the simplest proposition. The continuity of law is as great a mystery as the continuity of God. Yet we are deceived by names. Law is abstract, law is impersonal, and is something to be talked about, but never to be seen; but personality means criticism, companionship, benediction, reproach, malediction, heaven, hell. Men do not like to be pressed upon so forcibly. Think of any man in full possession of his senses supposing that continuity of law is a simpler expression than the Fatherhood of God. We never saw God; we never saw law; we never saw anything. We might see more if we looked more closely; we might see further if we cleansed the lense through which we look, that lense the heart; and blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They are sensitive, they are responsive; every ray of light tells upon them; every whispered word, though it has been millions of ages in coming from world to world, falls on them like a gospel, and they answer it with praise. We now put away the personality of God, and accept the law of development. The mystery is, that so many persons should imagine they have given up the complex for the simple, whereas they have simply stepped out of dawn into midnight, out of sunlight into nolight; they have needlessly created mysteries, and needlessly forgone the tenderest charms, companionships, and benedictions of life. “They knew not”: there is moral obstinacy, denseness, stupidness; they did not know the divine touch. Had it been a rude touch, a violent seizure, they would have exclaimed and inquired about it; but who has soul enough to know a touch, a whispered word, a sign meant for the deepest recesses of the spirit? Who does not outbody God, outflesh him? What soul there is is so deeply buried in the flesh that men do not know God in the light of the morning, in the glory of the noonday, in the harvest that ripples like a golden sea in the autumn; they do not know God in the morning meal, in the nightly rest, in the wind that seems to be a spirit of pity when it blows around the shorn lamb.
“They did not know.” Is there any word we dislike more in the family than the word “I forgot”? Can the heart forget? forget to open the window, to assist the child, to take a message, to speak kindly to the sick and the ailing and the feeble. Forgot! O blank heart, foolish, foolish mind! Yet we who are so justly irritated by human and social forgetfulness are charged in many a chapter of divine history with not knowing that the Lord has filled both our hands, and caused to flow before our dwelling-place a river of blessing; nay, more, we have been curious in our mental action, for we have suggested a thousand conjectures to get rid of God. This desire to thrust out the Lord is one of the clearest proofs of the real moral condition of mankind that we could have. The charge against Ephraim is the charge made against ourselves.
“I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love” ( Hos 11:4 ).
The figure is that of subjugating the heifer. Beasts were drawn with cords, it may have been with iron or chains; they were forced into servility; they were beaten and chastised into humiliation; they were made to obey the human will. The Lord represents himself as drawing his people with cords of a man, with bands of love; he will persuade them, he will lure them, he will reason with them, he will sit down and comfort them, he will gently lead his people into truth and righteousness and security. None can chastise like God; our God is a consuming fire; a whip of scorpions is nothing to the thong with which he could flagellate the human race if he pleased; but he will love man, come down to man, make himself of no reputation, and take upon him the form of a servant that he may save man. Call this poetry it is poetry that touches the heart, that inflames the imagination, that satisfies the soul when the soul realises most truly its own personality, necessity, and destiny. The whole gospel scheme is a scheme of persuasion. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us”; herein is the mystery of love that man should die for his enemies. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Everywhere there are the cords of a man, the bands of love, the elements of persuasion, a wrestling, entreating, persuasive God. Regard it in what light we may, there is nothing to compare with it for ineffable tenderness, for the sacred unction that touches the heart when the heart most needs a friend.
“And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels” ( Hos 11:6 ).
The Lord takes the wise in their own craftiness; he allows men to work up their programmes, and bring them to a fine point; he permits builders to go so far up with their tower; he allows men to whet their swords, and to lift those weapons of war as if in defiance, but he will only allow them to take down the sword in such a way as to bring the gleaming point of it into their own heart The meaning of this passage is that the very opposite shall occur to that which the counsellors proposed. Men shall dig pits for others, and fall into them themselves; men shall build a gallows on which to hang their enemies, and they shall swing from the gallows-tree themselves, and none shall pity them as they perish in the air; the bad man shall plan his plot, and lo, when he would go home to watch the outcome of it, he cannot lift his feet: he made the snare, let him break it if he can. Here is the action of a mysterious power in life, that men are always made, when they oppose God, to do the very things they did not want to do; they will build a place in which they will be secure from the Lord God Almighty, and lo, they are obliged to see that very tower that was to have excluded the Eternal turned into a sanctuary for his adoration.
Another complaint is very graphically and tenderly expressed:
“And my people are bent to backsliding from me” ( Hos 11:7 ).
The figure is that of a man who seizes a crossbeam; holding to that beam with his hands, he swings from it; there is an oscillatory motion, but there is no progress; the hands clutch the crossbeam. So the Lord says, “My people are bent to backsliding from me”; they seem to be making progress, but are making none; the centre is always the same, the movement is pendular; it passes from point to point, but the points are always the same; the centre never changes: they are bent on iniquity, they are attached to lies. Who has not seen this very figure personalised in his own case? We have wanted to do two different things at the same time, and that miracle has lain beyond the possibility of our power; we have wanted to keep the Sabbath day, and do what we like on the day succeeding, and the days would not thus be yoked together by our evil hands; we have wanted to be nominal Christians and real downright atheists, and the Lord would not permit this infamous irony. My people are bent upon backsliding from me; they keep hold, and the body moves as if progress were being made; but I judge not by the oscillation, but by the clutching fingers, and these fingers are still laid upon things that are forbidden. What then will the Lord do? He will suddenly destroy these men; he will burn them with unquenchable fire; he will treat them as chaff is treated they shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace, and go up as smoke. Nay, hear the Lord, and say if that prophecy be true:
“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together” ( Hos 11:8 ).
This is the voice of a pleader. Ephraim had done wrong, but the Lord said, He may still do right, and I will not give him up utterly. How shall I deliver thee, Israel, when I have set my love upon thee, and fixed mine expectation upon all thy progress? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? (two cities of the plain, salted with fire, devoured and poisoned with brimstone.) How shall I burn Ephraim? There are some things we do not want to burn; we hold them long over the fire before throwing them into the hungry flame; we say, Let us try once more, let us begin again? How shall I burn Ephraim? How shall I reduce Israel to ashes? How can I set fire to my only son to the prodigal that wounded me, to the life that disappointed me? Even yet the prodigal may come home. I have burned Sodom and Gomorrah; I have burned Admah and Zeboim; I have choked the plain with brimstone, but I cannot give up these hearts, though they grieve me every day. How shall I, how shall I, how can I? That is the voice of eternal love. God never willingly destroys. He is a God of salvation; he wants the worst to be saved; he wants none to be burned. God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. The Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. Nothing would be easier for God than to burn up the universe; but to save it what does that require?
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
VIII
THE BOOK OF HOSEA PART 2
Hos 4:1-14:9
What has previously been presented in figure and symbol in the first section of the book is now plainly and literally stated. Jehovah’s controversy with Israel is set forth in Hos 4:1-5 . Someone has called this “The Lord’s Lawsuit” in which he brings grave charges against Israel for sins of omission followed by sins of commission. The sins of omission which led to the sins of commission are that there were no truth, no goodness, and no knowledge of God in the land. These omissions led to the gravest sins of commission, viz: profanity, covenant-breaking, murder, stealing, and adultery. The evidence in this case was so strong that there was no plea of “not guilty” entered, and Jehovah proceeded at once, after making the indictment, to announce the sentence: Destruction!
This verdict of destruction was for the lack of knowledge, which emphasizes the responsibility of the opportunity to know. They had rejected knowledge and had forgotten the law of Jehovah, and as the priests were the religious leaders and instructors of the people, the sentence is heavy against them, but “like people, like priest” shows the equality of the responsibility and the judgment. There is no excuse for either. He who seeks to know the agenda, God will reveal the credenda. The sentence is again stated, thus: Rejection, forgetting her children, shame, requite them their doings, hunger and harlotry. Such a sentence hung over them like a deadly pall.
In Hos 4:11-14 whoredom and wine are named together, not by accident but because they are companion evils, which is the universal testimony of those who practice either. Here they are said to take away the understanding, or as the Hebrew puts it, the heart. Both are literally true. That the understanding is marred and blighted by these evils is evidenced in the case of the thousands who have rendered themselves unfit for service anywhere by wasting their strength with wine and harlots. That the heart, the seat of affections, is destroyed by these evils witness the thousands of divorce cases in our courts today. By such a course the very vitals of man are burnt out and he then becomes the prey to every other evil in the catalogue. Let the youth of our country heed the warning of the prophet. Here Israel, engrossed with these sins, is pictured as going deeper and deeper in sin and degradation until they pass beyond the power of description. Notice that the Lord here holds the men responsible and pronounces a mighty invective against the modern double standard of morals. In God’s sight the transgressor is the guilty party, whether man or woman.
Though Israel has played the harlot, Judah is warned in Hos 4:15-19 that she may not follow the example of Israel. The places of danger are pointed out and the example of Israel is used to enforce the warning. Israel is stubborn; Ephraim is joined to his idols; let him alone. Israel is wrapped in the winds of destruc-tion and shall soon be put to shame, therefore, take heed, Judah.
There are several notable things in the address of Hos 5:1-7 : First, the whole people priests, Israel, and the royal house was involved in the judgment because each one was responsible for the existing conditions, their great centers of revolt against Jehovah being pointed out as Mizpeh, east of the Jordan; and Tabor, west of the Jordan. Second, the fact that Jehovah himself was the rebuker of them. God is the one undisputable judge and he will judge and he will judge them all. Though the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all,
Third, God’s omniscience: “I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me.” So he knows us and there is nothing hid from him. Fourth, men are hindered from turning to God by their gins. Fifth, positive instruction awaits the sinner (Hos 5:5 ). Sixth, sacrifices and seeking are too late after doom is pronounced. Repentance must come within the space allotted for it; otherwise, it is too late.
The cornet and trumpet in Hos 5:8-15 signifies the alarm in view of the approaching enemy. In the preceding paragraph the prophet signified their certain destruction and now he indicates that it is at hand, again assigning the reason, that Judah had become as bold as those who remove the landmarks, and Ephraim was content to walk after man’s commandments. Then he shows by the figure of the moth and the woodworm that he is slowly consuming both Israel and Judah, but they were applying to other powers for help to hold out and that the time would come when he, like the lion, would make quick work of his judgments upon Israel and Judah; that they will not seek him till their affliction comes.
Paragraph Hos 6:1-3 is the exhortation of the Israelites to one another at the time of their affliction mentioned in the last verse of the preceding chapter and should be introduced by the word, “saying,” as indicated in the margin of Hos 5:15 . The expressions, “He hath torn” and “he hath smitten,” evidently refer to the preceding verses which describe Jehovah’s dealing with Israel and Judah as a lion. This exhortation represents them after their affliction, saying to one another, “Come, and let us return unto Jehovah,” etc. The “two days” and the “third day” are expressions representing short periods, not literal or typical days. They are then represented as pursuing knowledge which is the opposite to their present condition in their lack of knowledge. Now they are perishing for the lack of knowledge but then they will flourish as land flourishes in the time of the latter rain. There is a primary fulfilment of this prophecy in the return after the captivity but the larger fulfilment will be at their final return and conversion at which commences the revival destined to sweep the world into the kingdom of God. As Peter says, it will be “the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord” (Act 3:19 ).
A paraphrase of Hos 6:4-11 shows its interpretation and application, thus: “O Ephraim, O Judah, I am perplexed as to what remedy next to apply to you; your goodness is so shallow and transitory that my judgments have to be repeated from time to time. I desire goodness, i.e., works of charity, the right attitude of life, and the proper condition of the heart, rather than sacrifice. But instead of this you have, like Adam in the garden of Eden, transgressed my covenant and have dealt treacherously against me, as in the case of the Gileadites and the case of the murderous priests in the way to Shechem, and oh, the horribleness of your crimes! and, O Judah, there is a harvest for you, too.”
In the charges against Israel in Hos 7:1-16 the prophet gives the true state of affairs, viz: that the divine desire to heal was frustrated by the discovery of pollution, and by their persistent ignoring of God; that the pollution of the nation was manifest in the king, the princes, and the judges; that Ephraim was mixing among the people and had widespread influence, over the ten tribes, yet he was as a cake not turned; that he was an utter failure, being developed on one side, and on the other destroyed by burning; that he was unconscious of his wasting strength and ignored the plain testimony of the Pride of Israel; that as a silly dove, he was indicating fear and cowardice. Then the prophet concludes the statement of the case by a declaration of the utter folly of the people whom God was scourging toward redemption, to which they responded by howling, assembling, and rebelling.
Now we take up Hos 8 . From the statement of the case the prophet turned, in Hos 8:1-14 , to the pronouncement of judgment by the figure of the trumpet lifted to the mouth, uttering five blasts, in each of which the sin of the people was set forth as revealing the reason for judgment. The first blast declared the coming of judgment under the figure of an eagle, because of transgression and trespass. The second blast emphasized Israel’s sin of rebellion, in that they had set up kings and princes without authority of Jehovah. The third dealt with Israel’s idolatry, announcing that Jehovah had cast off the calf of Samaria. The fourth denounced Israel’s alliances and declared that her hire among the nations had issued in her diminishing. The fifth drew attention to the altars of sin and announced the coming judgment.
These judgments in detail are given in Hos 9 . Its first note was that of the death of joy. Israel could not find her joy like other peoples. Having known Jehovah, everything to which she turned in turning from him, failed to satisfy. How true is this of the individual backslider! The unsatisfied heart is constantly crying out, Where is the blessedness I knew, When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and his word?
The second note was that of actual exile to which she must pass: back to the slavery of Egypt and Assyria and away from the offerings and feasts of the Lord. The third was that of the cessation of prophecy. The means of testing themselves would be corrupted. The fourth declared the retributive justice of fornication. The prophet traced the growth of this pollution from its beginning at Baal-peor, and clearly set forth the inevitable deterioration of the impure people. The fifth and last was that of the final casting out of the people by God so that they should become wanderers among the nations.
In Hos 10 we have the prophet’s recapitulation and appeal. This closes the section. The whole case is stated under the figure of the vine. Israel was a vine of God’s planting which had turned its fruitfulness to evil account and was therefore doomed to his judgment. The result of this judgment would be the lament of the people that they had no king who was able to deliver them, and chastisement would inevitably follow. The last paragraph is an earnest and passionate appeal to return to loyalty.
Some things in Hos 10 need special explanation: First, note the expression here, “They will say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us.” This furnishes the analogue for the final destruction of the world and the judgment as given in Luk 23:30 and Rev 6:16 . Here the expression is used to indicate the horrors of the capture and destruction of the kingdom of Israel, the sufferings and distress of which are a foreshadowing of the great tribulation at the end of the world.
Second, the reference to Gibeah in Hos 10:9 needs a little explanation. This sin of Gibeah is the sin of the shameful outrage which with its consequences is recorded in Judges 19-20. That sin became proverbial, overtopping, as it did, all the ordinary iniquities, by its shameless atrocity and heinousness. By a long-continued course of sin, even from ancient days, Ephraim had been preparing for a fearful doom.
The third reference is to Shalman who destroyed Betharbel (Hos 10:14 ). There are several theories about this incident. Some think that “Shalman” is a short form of “Shalmaneser,” that Shalmaneser IV, who in the invasion which is mentioned (2Ki 17:3 ) fought a battle in the valley of Jezreel, in which he broke the power of Samaria in fulfilment of Hos 1:5 and about the same time stormed the neighboring town of Arbela, but who this “Shalman” was and what place was “Betharbel” are only matters of uncertain conjecture. All that is positively known is that the sack of Betharbel had made upon the minds of the Israelites an impression similar to that which in the seventeenth century was made far and wide by the sack of Madgeburg.
According to our brief outline the title of section Hos 11:1-14:8 is “Pollution and Pity.” This third cycle of the prophecy sets forth the pity which Jehovah has for his sinning people, and contains a declaration of Jehovah’s attitude toward Israel notwithstanding her sin. Chapters 11-13 are for the most part the speech of Jehovah himself. He sums up, and in so doing declares his sense of the awfulness of their sin, pronouncing his righteous judgment thereupon. Yet throughout the movement the dominant notes are those of pity and love, and the ultimate victory of that love over sin, and consequently over judgment. Three times in the course of this great message of Jehovah to his people (Hos 11:1-13:16 ), the prophet interpolates words of his own.
This message of Jehovah falls into three clearly marked elements which deal: (1) with the present in the light of past love (Hos 11:1-11 ); (2) with the present in the light of present love (Hos 12:7-11 ) ; (3) with the present in the light of future love (Hos 13:4-14 ).
The prophet’s interpolations set forth the history of Israel indicating their relation to Jehovah, and pronounce judgment. They form a remarkable obligate accompaniment, in a minor key, to the majestic love song of Jehovah, and constitute a contrasting introduction to the final message of the prophet. The first of them reveals the prophet’s sense of Jehovah’s controversy with Judah, his just dealings with Jacob, and, reminiscent of Jacob’s history, he makes a deduction and an appeal (Hos 11:12-13:6 ). The second traces the progress of Israel to death (Hos 12:12-13:3 ). The third declares their doom (Hos 13:15-16 ).
Then in general, Jehovah’s message in Hos 11:1-11 is as follows:
In this first movement, Jehovah reminded the people of his past love for them in words full of tenderness, setting out their present condition in its light, and crying, “How shall I give thee up?” Which inquiry was answered by the determined declaration of the ultimate triumph of love, and the restoration of the people.
There are two incidents of Israel’s history cited in this first part of Jehovah’s message. The first incident cited is the calling of Israel out of Egypt, which is quoted in Mat 2:15 and applied to our Lord Jesus Christ as a fulfilment of this prophecy. Hosea clearly refers to the calling of Israel out of Egypt, the nation being elsewhere spoken of as God’s son (Exo 4:22 ; Jer 3:9 ). But there is evident typical relation between Israel and the Messiah.
As Israel in the childhood of the nation was called out of Egypt, so Jesus. We may even find resemblance in minute details; his temptation of forty days in the desert, resembles Israel’s temptation of forty years in the desert, which itself corresponded to the forty days spent by the spies (Num 14:34 ). Thus we see how Hosea’s historical statement concerning Israel may have been also a prediction concerning the Messiah, as the Evangelist declares it was. It is not necessary to suppose that this was present to the prophet’s consciousness. Exalted by inspiration, a prophet may well have said things having deeper meanings than he was distinctly aware of, and which only a later inspiration, coming when the occasion arose, could fully unfold BROADUS on Mat 2:15 . The second incident in the history of God’s people cited is the destruction of Adman, Zeboim, Sodom, and Gomorrah, all of which are mentioned in Deu 29:23 as destroyed by Jehovah for their wickedness. The warning is a powerful one to Ephraim, or Israel, who are here threatened with destruction.
The prophet’s message in his first interpolation (Hos 11:12-12:6 ) is a lesson from the history of Jacob showing Israel’s relation to him. The prophet here goes back to the earliest history of Jacob showing God’s dealing with him from his conception to his settlement at Bethel, where God gave him the promise of a multitude of descendants. This bit of history includes the struggle between him and Esau before birth, and his wrestling with the angel.
In Hos 12:7-11 Jehovah sets out their present sin in the light of his present love. The sin of Ephraim and its pride and impertinence are distinctly stated and yet over all, love triumphs. Jehovah declared himself to be the God who delivered them from Egypt, and who would be true to the message of the prophets, to the visions of the seers and to the similitudes of the ministry of the prophets. There is an allusion in verse 7 to Jacob’s deception of Isaac, which characteristic seems to have been handed down to his posterity, as here indicated.
In the prophets second interpolation (Hos 12:12-13:3 ) he traces the progress of Israel to death, beginning at the flight to the field of Aram, through the exodus from Egypt and the preservation to the present, in which Ephraim was exalted in Israel, offended in Baal and died. Their certain doom is here announced.
Then follows Jehovah’s message in Hos 13:4-14 in which he sets forth the present condition of Israel in the light of his future love. Sin abounds, and therefore judgment is absolutely unavoidable. Nevertheless, the mighty strength of love must overcome at last.
There are several things in the passage worthy of special note. First, the allusions here to Jehovah’s dealings with them from Egypt to their destination in Canaan, their exaltation and his destruction of them. Second, the allusion to their history under kings, beginning with Saul, whom he gave them in his anger and whom he took away in his wrath. The statement may apply to the long line of kings of the Northern Kingdom, but it fits the case of Saul more especially and throws light on the problem of Saul’s mission as king of Israel. Third, the promise of their restoration under the figure of a resurrection (Hos 13:14 ), which is quoted and applied to the final resurrection by Paul (1Co 15:55 ) and which shows the typical import of this passage. It is like a flash of light in the darkest hour of despair.
Dr. Pusey on this passage has well said:
God by his prophets mingles promises of mercy in the midst of his threats of punishment. His mercy overflows the bounds of the occasion upon which he makes it known. He had sentenced Ephraim to temporal destruction. This was unchangeable. He points to that which turns all temporal loss into gain, that eternal redemption. The words are the fullest which could have been chosen. The word rendered “ransom” signifies rescued them by the payment of a price; the word rendered “redeem” relates to one who, as the nearest of kin, had the right to acquire anything as his own by paying the price. Both words in their exactest sense, describe what Jesus did, buying us with a price . . . and becoming our near kinsman by his incarnation. . . . The words refuse to be tied down to temporal deliverance. A little longer continuance in Canaan is not a redemption from the power of the grave; nor was Ephraim so delivered.
The expression, “repentance shall be hid from mine eyes,” means that God will never turn from his purpose to be merciful to Israel.
In the prophet’s last interpolation (Hos 13:15-16 ) he goes back to the death sentence showing the complete destruction of Ephraim and Samaria by the Eastern power, Assyria. The reference to Ephraim’s fruitfulness goes back to the promise of Jacob to Joseph, “He shall be a fruitful bough,” though Ephraim had turned this fruitfulness to evil and thus is brought to desolation.
Hos 14 gives us the final call of the prophet with the promise of Jehovah. The call was to the people to return because they had fallen by iniquity. It suggests the method of returning, as being that of bringing words of penitence, and forsaking all false gods. To this Jehovah answered in a message full of hope for the people, declaring that he would restore, renew, and ultimately reinstate them. There is no question but that this final word of prophecy has a reference to the return from the exile but that this return does not exhaust the meaning of this prophecy is also very evident. The larger fulfilment is to be spiritual and finds its expression in the final conversion of the Jews as voiced by Peter: “Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord” (Act 3:19 ).
The book closes with a brief epilogue, which demands attention to all the prophet has written, whether for warning, or reproof, or correction in righteousness, or encouragement to piety and virtue. Like the dictates of the Word, so the dispensations of his providence are to some the savor of life, to others the savor of death. So it is added that, while the righteous walk therein, in them the wicked stumble.
In closing this chapter I will say that Hosea occupies a period of transition in developing the messianic idea from the earlier prophets to Micah and Isaiah, in whose writings abounds the messianic element:
(1) Hosea, like Amos, predicts the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, but he looks beyond it to a brighter day, when the children of Israel will be as the sand of the sea in number, will be accepted of Jehovah as sons and daughters, and Judah and Israel will have one head, Christ (Hos 1:10-2:1 , et al).
(2) Hosea’s experience with an unfaithful wife is an object lesson of God’s forgiveness of Israel. Their spiritual adultery must lead them into exile but Jehovah will betroth Israel to himself in righteousness, and take the Gentiles into the same covenant (Hos 2:2-3:5 ; Rom 9:25-26 ).
(3) Hos 11:1 was fulfilled in the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt with the babe, Jesus (Mat 2:15 ). So Jesus the antitype of Adam, Israel, and David.
(4) Hos 11:8-11 expresses Jehovah’s promise to restore Israel.
(5) Hos 13:14 is a messianic promise foreshadowing the resurrection.
(6) Hos 14:1-8 is a messianic promise of Israel’s final repentance, God’s reinstatement of them and their abundant blessings in the millennium.
I quote Dr. Sampey: In general, the earlier prophets describe clearly a terrible captivity of Jehovah’s people, to be followed by a return to their own land, where they were to enjoy the divine blessing. The everlasting love and compassion of Jehovah are repeatedly described, and the future enlargement of Israel is clearly set forth. The person of Messiah, however, is not distinctly brought before the reader. Isaiah and Micah will have much to say of the character and work of the Messaih Himself
QUESTIONS
1. What the character of this division, as contrasted with the first three chapters of Hosea?
2. What Jehovah’s controversy with Israel as set forth in Hos 4:1-5 ?
3. Why the verdict of destruction, as set forth in Hos 4:6-10 ?
4. What two practices are named together in Hos 4:11-14 , and what their effect upon the mind of man?
5. What warning to Judah in Hos 4:15-19 ?
6. What the notable things in the address of Hos 5:1-7 ?
7. What the significance and the application of the cornet and trumpet in Hos 5:8-15 ?
8. What the interpretation and application of Hos 6:1-3 ?
9. Paraphrase Hos 6:4-11 so as to show its interpretation and application.
10. What the charges against Israel in Hos 7:1-16 ?
11. How does the prophet pronounce judgment and what the significance in each case (Hos 8:1-14 )?
12. Describe these judgments in detail as given in Hos 9 .
13. State briefly the prophet’s recapitulation and appeal (Hos 10:1-15 ).
14. What things in Hos 10 need special explanation, and what the explanation in each case?
15. According to our brief outline what the title of section Hos 11:1-14:8 , and what in general, are its contents?
16. What the general features of the message of Jehovah?
17. What the general features of the prophet’s interpolations?
18. What, in general, is Jehovah’s message in Hos 11:1-11 ?
19. What two incidents of Israel’s history cited in this first part of Jehovah’s message, and what their interpretation and application?
20. What the prophet’s message in his first interpolation (Hos 11:12-12:6 )?
21. What, in general, Jehovah’s message in Hos 12:7-11 ?
22. What allusion to an incident in the life of Jacob in this passage?
23. What the substance of the prophet’s second interpolation (Hos 12:12-13:3 )?
24. What, in general, Jehovah’s message in Hos 13:4-14 ?
25. What things in the passage worthy of special note?
26. What the prophet’s message in his last interpolation (Hos 13:15-16 )?
27. What the contents of Hos 14 ?
28. Give a summary of the messianic predictions in the book of Hosea.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Hos 11:1 When Israel [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
Ver. 1. When Israel was a child, then I loved him ] On, because Israel was a child I loved him. Young things are lovely; young children especially, for their innocence and ignoscence. Some sense it thus, Israel was a child, and had nothing of worth or lovely in him; yet I loved him freely, Deu 7:7 Hos 10:9 , called him out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, led him through the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, Isa 63:13 , possessed him of the promised land. Out of which though I shall shortly cast him for his ingratitudes, yet there is hope of his restoration, by the Messiah my Son, whom when I have called out of Egypt, he shall gather together again the dispersed of Israel, and bring life and immortality to light by the gospel. The foundation of which restoration he here maketh to be his own free grace. He hath holpen his servant (or his child, , Luk 1:53 ) Israel, in remembrance of his mercy. “God so loved the world, that be gave his only begotten Son,” &c., Joh 3:16 . Here then beginneth our prophet’s first evangelical sermon, as Tarnovius observeth, who also readeth the text thus: Albeit Israel was a child, such a forlorn outcast child, as is described Eze 17:1-24 Eze 23:1-49 , yet I loved him, and adopted him for my son; not for any defect on my part (for I had an only begotten Son, in whom I am well pleased), or for any desert on his part, for I found him in his blood, in his blood, in his blood, when I cast my skirt of love over him, and said unto him, Live, Eze 16:6 . Yea, and for his salvation’s sake, I have called, that is, I have decreed to call, out of Egypt (whither he fled from Herod, and where he abode two or three years at least) my child Jesus, whose office it is to “save his people from their sins,” Mat 1:21 . And although I might justly have deprived them of such a Saviour for ever, because when he came to his own, his own received him not (yea, rejected him to whom their own signs given to Herod did so aptly and evidently agree), yet out of Eygpt, to show the constancy of my love to Israel, have I called (by mine angel, as Jacob by a messenger called his wives to him into the field, Gen 31:4 ) my Son Christ, Mat 2:23 , who is God’s Son, first, by eternal generation, Pro 8:22-23 ; secondly, by personal union, Psa 2:7 . And thus God called out of Egypt, first Israel his people, and then Christ, the head of his people; in whom at length this prophecy was fulfilled.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Hos 11:1-4
1When Israel was a youth I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.
2The more they called them,
The more they went from them;
They kept sacrificing to the Baals
And burning incense to idols.
3Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk,
I took them in My arms;
But they did not know that I healed them.
4I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love,
And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws;
And I bent down and fed them.
Hos 11:1-4 Hosea is characterized by its fresh and varied metaphors to describe God and His actions. Two of the most powerful and personal metaphors are (1) God as faithful lover, chapters 1-3 and (2) God as loving parent (male and female), chapter 11. God has revealed himself to fallen humanity by choosing things that humans have experienceddeeply personal and powerfully moving things and has said, I am like that to you. This is why family metaphors and analogies are used so often in the Bible in relation to God. All humans have experienced the deep feelings of human love and many have experienced parenthood. Through these experiences God has clearly revealed himself and the depth of His love and loyalty (cf. Hos 11:8-9).
Hos 11:1 When Israel was a youth I loved him This is very similar in emphasis to Hos 9:10; Hos 10:1. It focuses on YHWH’s love and choice of the descendants of Abraham (cf. Deu 4:32-40) in Egypt to uniquely be His people (cf. Amo 3:2, which reflects Exo 19:5-6), which was a prophetic fulfillment of Gen 15:12-21.
God chose a man to choose a family to choose a nation to represent Him to the world (cf. Gen 12:3; Exo 19:5-6). Out of this family would come the Messiah (i.e., typological use of this text in Mat 2:15 in the life of Jesus).
And out of Egypt I called My son The term son in the singular in the OT can refer to (1) the nation of Israel (e.g., Hos 1:10; Exo 4:22); (2) the King of Israel (e.g., 2Sa 7:14; Psa 2:7); or (3) the Messiah (e.g., Psa 2:7, quoted in Act 13:33; Heb 1:5; Heb 5:5). This reference is used of Jesus as a child being taken to Egypt to protect Him from Herod in Mat 2:15, however, in this context it refers to the nation of Israel. Notice the emphasis on election, I called (BDB 894, KB 1128, Qal PERFECT). In the OT election is primarily for service (Israel’s place in YHWH’s redemptive plan), while in the NT it is primarily for salvation (cf. Eph 1:3-14).
Hos 11:2 they called them This refers to the prophets (cf. LXX translation and 2Ki 17:13-18; Isa 6:10; Jer 7:25-26). However, Israel acted just like human teenagers. The more God called them (the Septuagint and the Syriac have God instead of they), the more they did just the opposite (cf. Hos 11:7 b).
David A. Hubbard, Hosea (Tyndale OT Commentaries), re-divides line 2 and thinks that they refers to tempters like the Ba’al of Peor fertility-worshiping women of Numbers 25. The lines would become the more they called them, The more they went from me (p. 187). The Jerome Biblical Commentary asserts they refers to all the local Ba’al altars (p. 262). To a wayward son, bent on self and sin, the call of idolatry was louder and stronger than the call of a loving parent (i.e., Prodigal Son of Luke 15).
Whichever theory is true the settled wayward character is emphasized! Her past commitments are lost in her current desires.
Ba’al This refers to the male Canaanite fertility god. For a full discussion of the Canaanite pantheon see Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, by William Foxwell Albright.
They kept sacrificing to the Baals, And burning incense to idols These two lines of poetry are parallel. Nothing is known of animal sacrifices to Ba’al, therefore, the sacrifices (BDB 256, KB 261, Piel IMPERFECT) may refer to offering incense (BDB 882, KB 1094, Piel IMPERFECT).
There was some sacrificing of children to Molech, the fertility fire god. This may be referred to in Hosea in some of the passages about the slaughter of children.
Hos 11:3 it was I who taught Ephraim to walk This is a rare VERB form (BDB 920, KB 1183, Tiphel) with an unusual meaning for the root (foot). Hos 11:3-4 show the love of God expressed in the metaphor or analogy of YHWH as a loving parent, both father and mother (emendation of Hos 11:4 b,c). The father either (1) went before His child to walk or (2) went before His child in example and/or protection.
But they did not know that I healed them Can you feel the pain of YHWH in this phrase? His own people, who He saved out of Egypt and uniquely revealed Himself to, were attributing His love gifts to them as coming from the Canaanite fertility gods! Wounded love!
The VERB healed (BDB 950, KB 1272, Qal PERFECT) is often used for God forgiving sin, as seen in Hos 5:13; Hos 6:1; Hos 7:1; Exo 15:26; the parallelism of Ps. 163:3; and Isa 1:5-6, examples of national sin described in terms of a physical disease (also note Isa 53:5 and 1Pe 2:24-25).
Hos 11:4 with cords of a man, with bonds of love This refers to a child-training leash. God’s discipline is as much a sign of His love as any of His mercy actions (cf. Heb 12:5-13). Loving parental discipline is the key to understanding God’s actions and guidelines to sinful mankind, who are in the process of destroying themselves in the freedom and knowledge of the tree of good and evil. He will not let us go unchallenged! He will not stand by and let us destroy ourselves.
yoke The Hebrew term yoke (BDB 760) seems out of place in this context (however, it could refer to Hos 10:11). Yet, by changing a vowel and doubling the last consonant, it is possible to insert the Hebrew term infant (BDB 760, cf. Hos 14:1), which seems to fit the context of parental care much better (cf, NIDOTTE, vol. 3, p. 401). A possible translation would be like the New American Bible and The Jerusalem Bible as one who lifts an infant to his cheek. This is possibly a reference to YHWH as a nursing mother.
God is not a male or female. He is an eternal, personal, spirit present throughout time, space, and all dimensions of reality. He created male and female as a means of reproduction on this planet. He incorporates the best of both in Himself.
There are several places where this femininity is specific.
1. Gen 1:2, brooded over the waters – this is a female bird word
2. Hos 1:4; Isa 49:15; Isa 66:9-13 – God as a nursing mother
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
I loved him. Compare Jer 2:2. Mal 1:2.
called My son, &c. = called to My son. Reference to Pentateuch (Exo 4:22, Exo 4:23). App-92. Quoted in Mat 2:15.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 11
God continues His lament and all. He said,
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt ( Hsa Hos 11:1 ).
Now, this verse has been used in Matthew’s gospel as a prophecy concerning the fact that Jesus would be taken to Egypt when a baby. And you remember when the wise men inquired of Herod where the Christ child should be born, Herod inquired of the scribes and they said, “According to the scriptures, in Bethlehem.” And so he sent the wise men to Bethlehem where they found a young child with His mother. And they worshipped Him and offered Him gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh. And while they were there, the Lord spoke to the wise men. Herod said, “Go seek for the child and when you have found Him come and tell me so that I might also come and worship Him.” Of course, Herod had no intention of worshipping the child.
Herod was a very vicious, cruel, really paranoid individual. He always thought people were plotting to take his throne away. He killed his wife because he thought she was in a plot. He killed his sons. In fact, there was a saying, “It was safer to be Herod’s pig than it was to be his son,” because he was so paranoid about losing his power. Now, Herod was a magnificent builder. You go to Israel today and you still see those tremendous mind-boggling monuments that were left by Herod the Great. You see the Herodian, you see Masada, you see those portions of the walls of Jerusalem that were built by Herod, and it just absolutely boggles your mind, these huge building projects and how lavish and ornate they were. All built by Herod. He was a tremendous builder, built the city of Caesarea and built these great monuments. But he was fearful constantly that he was gonna… that there were assassination plots and all, and so he was always killing off those that were around him. And it was dangerous to be in the close circle with Herod because he’d get suspicious and say, “Oh ho, you’re looking at my throne” and then he, the next thing you know, your head was on a charger.
So, when he heard the wise men, here they came, and they asked him, “Where is He to be born who is the King of the Jews?” That was his title. So, they told him of the star. He said, “Go and find the young child, and when you have found him, come and tell me that I might come and worship Him too.” Intending, of course, to assassinate Jesus Christ. So the wise men were warned by the Lord not to return to Herod, but they went directly back to their places in the east. And the angel of the Lord warned Joseph to take the mother and the child and flee to Egypt. And then Matthew quotes this verse from Hosea, “For out of Egypt shall My Son be called.”
Now, you see as you read the verse that the primary understanding is that God is talking about how that He brought Israel, the people Jacob when they were a child and God loved them, and He brought His Son out of Egypt. That primarily the understanding and the interpreting would be that of the nation of Israel coming out of Egypt and into the land that God promised. But by the Holy Spirit and the commentary of Matthew, we know that there is a twofold understanding to the scripture, and that it also is in reality a prophecy of the flight of Mary and Joseph to Egypt when Jesus was just a child, remaining of course in Egypt until the death of Herod.
And as they called them, so they went from them: and they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images ( Hsa Hos 11:2 ).
Now when Israel was just a child, just a new nation, God loved them. He brought them out of Egypt. He called them, but they went from them and then they began soon to sacrifice unto the false gods.
I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them ( Hsa Hos 11:3 )
When they were child, I taught them really to walk.
I took them by the arms;
And held them. I was just developing them, helping them in their development.
but they knew not that I healed them ( Hsa Hos 11:3 ).
They didn’t really recognize the place of God in their national life. Though God had brought them into existence, though God was nurturing them, taking care of them, taking them by the arms, helping them to walk; yet they did not recognize that it is God’s hand that is upon us and that is developing. Even as we now seem to fail to realize the place that God had in the birth of this nation and in the development of this nation.
And God said,
I drew them with cords of a man, and with bonds of love: bands of love ( Hsa Hos 11:4 ):
Oh, how God loved them.
and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them ( Hsa Hos 11:4 ).
But now they are thinking, some of them, of going back to Egypt to escape the Assyrians. God had brought them out of Egypt. But oh how tragic when we go back to those things from which God once delivered us or even think about going back to those places from which God has delivered us. But though they are thinking about going to Egypt.
the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return ( Hsa Hos 11:5 ).
So rather than going to Egypt, they are going to be conquered by Assyria.
And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels. And my people are bent to backsliding from me: and though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him ( Hsa Hos 11:6-7 ).
Their hearts were just turned and they were determined to just leave the worship of God.
How shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? ( Hsa Hos 11:8 )
Listen to God’s cry. Listen to this plaintive cry of God for these people. Even though they’ve turned their back on Him, even though they won’t acknowledge Him, even though they’re worshipping these other gods, God is unwilling to let them go. Oh, love that will not let me go.
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? my heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together ( Hsa Hos 11:8 ).
God’s cry, “Oh, how can I give you up? How can I let you go?”
And thus God said,
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man: the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city ( Hsa Hos 11:9 ).
And then the glorious promise here of that day that is coming when God will restore Israel to his place of prominence in the kingdom.
They shall walk after the LORD: he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west ( Hsa Hos 11:10 ).
Now, when Jesus Christ, the lion of the tribe of Judah, comes again, He is going to let out a roar like a lion. He came in meekness and humility, as a lamb to be sacrificed for the sins of the world. Isaiah said of Him, “As a sheep that is before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth” ( Isa 53:7 ). And He came as a lamb, as a sacrificial lamb in order that He might be the sacrifice for our sins. But when He comes again, He’s coming as a lion, the king of the beasts, in triumph, in power, in glory. “Then shall they see the Son of man,” He said, “coming with clouds and great glory” ( Mat 24:30 ). And He, when He sets His foot there upon the Mount of Olives, He’s gonna roar like a lion. Oh, I can hardly wait to hear that. Man.
There are several places in the Old Testament where this is mentioned. The next reference will be in our next week’s reading. Joel, chapter Hos 3:16 ,has a reference there to His roaring like a lion. But when you get to the book of Revelation chapter 10 and Christ returns, sets one foot upon the sea and one upon the land and holds the scroll open now in His hands and the declaration is made, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, it said, “and he shall roar as a lion who has triumphed over his prey.” So the fulfillment of Hos 11:10 here will take place; its fulfillment is described in Revelation chapter 10. So you might want to read that in conjunction with His roaring here like a lion.
They shall tremble [that is, the nations from the west] as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria: and I will place them in their houses, saith the LORD. Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: but Judah is still retaining its position with God, and is faithful with the saints ( Hsa Hos 11:11-12 ).
So the Northern Kingdom is apostate; it’s to be destroyed. Judah, for the time being, is still faithful, but their day’s also coming. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Hos 11:1. When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
Gods love was very early love. He began with the nation of Israel when it was a mere handful of men in Egypt. There he multiplied them; and, in due time, he called them out from among the heathen. Gods love to some of us manifested itself at a very early period of our lives, when we were yet children. It is among our most joyous memories that we have known the Lord from our youth up. Happy man, happy woman, of whom God can say, as he said concerning his ancient people, When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
Hos 11:2. As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.
The nation of Israel did not fulfill the promise of its youth; it was not faithful to God. The people heard from the lips of Moses the command Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: yet they turned aside continually to the idols of the nations. Have not some of us also, although we have been loved by God, been faithless to him? Can we not look back, with great regret and sorrow, upon our many stumblings and backslidings? If it be so, let us repent of our sin, and never repeat it.
Hos 11:3. I taught Ephraim also to go,
Just as nurses teach children to walk: I taught Ephraim also to go,
Hos 11:3. Taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
God has done great things for many of us who, possibly, have never noticed his hand at work on our behalf. Lives which were in great peril have been saved, yet the goodness of God has never been acknowledged by those whom he has delivered. Men have been raised up from beds of sickness, yet the great and good Healer has never been thanked for what he has done for them. Oh, how sad it is that God should do too much for us, and yet that we should not even thank him for doing it.
Hos 11:4. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.
As men do with the bullocks that have been ploughing, lifting the yoke from them, and giving them rest and food before they have to begin ploughing again. So did God to Israel, and so has he done to us. He lifted from us the heavy burden of our sin, and he gave us rest and heavenly food. But oh, what a poor return we have made for all the thoughtful kindness of our God! If any man here imagines that he can boast of his conduct towards his God, he does not feel as I do. Rather dear friends, I think that we all ought to humble ourselves in the Lords presence when we remember what ill returns we have made for all that he has done for us.
Hos 11:5-6. He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.
If men will sin, they shall suffer; and Gods people will be the first to suffer for their sins against the Lord, as he said by the mouth of the prophet Amos, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. If a man lets other mens children go unchastened, he will chastise his own children, if he is worthy of the name of a father; and God will do the same. He will not destroy us, but he will chasten us if we backslide from him.
Hos 11:7-8. And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt him. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?
There seems to be a contest in the heart of God; at least, that is how he describes it himself, as though mercy pleaded with justice, and love contended with wrath: How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?
Hos 11:8. How shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim?
I cannot destroy thee, as I destroyed the guilty cities of the plain in the days of old.
Hos 11:8. Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.
O backsliders, if Gods repentings are kindled, will not yours also be kindled? If you have left him, and yet he will not give you up, Will you give him up? Will you not return to him? Listen to his own words:
Hos 11:9. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man;
What a mercy this is for us! If the Lord had been man, he would have cast us off long ago; but, as he is God he is infinitely patient, and he loves to forgive: I am God, and not man;
Hos 11:9-10. The Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city. They shall walk after the LORD:
See what his almighty grace will do to make these wanderers come back to him.
Hos 11:10. He shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.
Even his roaring like a lion will only make them tremblingly come back to him.
Hos 11:11-12. They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria: and I will place them in their houses, saith the LORD. Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the saints.
This exposition consisted of readings from Hosea 11, , 14.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Hos 11:1-9
RECOGNIZING GODS COMPASSION REMONSTRATING-
TEXT: Hos 11:1-9
Hosea shows how the people of Israel repaid the Lord for all the proofs of His love-with ingratitude and unfaithfulness. Israel deserved total obliteration but God, because of His love and faithfulness, will perform a work that man cannot even imagine-He will both execute His justice and justify those who believe.
Hos 11:1 WhenH3588 IsraelH3478 was a child,H5288 then I lovedH157 him, and calledH7121 my sonH1121 out of Egypt.H4480 H4714
Hos 11:1 WHEN ISRAEL WAS A CHILD, THEN I LOVED HIM, AND CALLED MY SON OUT OF EGYPT. This section of Hosea is one of the most beautiful sections of the entire Old Testament. When Hosea touches upon the love of God, he plunges us into an ocean whose depths have never been fathomed. Gods love is all-embracing, all-inviting, all supporting, all-supplying. And, as Hosea so graphically indicates, Gods matchless love underlies every one of His divine warnings. When such love is spurned it only makes more terrible the fearful storms of judgment when they break. Hosea had been brought into fellowship with such love through tragedy in his own home, through which tragedy, the tragedy of wounded love, there had come to him a sympathetic understanding of the Divine heart of God. The verse before us is quoted in Mat 2:15. It is very evident that Hoseas primary reference is to Israels deliverance from bondage in Egypt under the leadership of Moses (cf. Exo 4:22-23). God, through the prophet, is appealing to Israel to remember its Heavenly Fathers love demonstrated in the past. The inspired apostle Matthew quotes Hosea and applies it to Christs sojourn in Egypt when He was a babe in the arms of Mary, It is also possible that Hosea intended to predict the future deliverance of the covenant people from the clutches of heathen captivity (which Hosea has already typified by the use of the name of Egypt, Hos 8:13). In any case, we have here one of the myriad-events of Israels history which typically prophesies an event in the life of the true Israel, the true Son, the Messiah. We quote on this verse from Keil:
The development and guidance of Israel as the people of God all pointed to Christ . . . the relation which the Lord of heaven and earth established and sustained with that nation, was a preparation for the union of God with humanity, and paved the way for the incarnation of His Son, by the fact that Israel was trained to be a vessel of divine grace. All essential factors in the history of Israel point to this as their end, and thereby become types and material prophecies of the life of Him in whom the reconciliation of man to God was to be realized, and the union of God with the human race to be developed into a personal unity.
One need only be familiar with the Epistle to the Hebrews and other New Testament references to the typical relation of Israels history to the Messiah and His church to see that this is true!
Zerr: Hos 11:1. This verse is both history and prophecy. Its first meaning is history, for in Hos 2:15, the time when Israel literally came out of Egypt is called the days of her youth. That is virtually the same language as our present verse. And we know It Is prophecy also, for Mat 2:15 quotes it and says that the calling of Jesus out of Egypt was a fulfillment of the words of the prophet. The moral of the statement is that God cared for His people when they were the most helpless, bringing them out of a condition from which they could not have escaped by their own strength.
Gods relationship to Israel from her infancy through her maturity is vividly portrayed by Ezekiel (Eze 16:1 ff).
Hos 11:2 As they calledH7121 them, soH3651 they wentH1980 fromH4480 H6440 them: they sacrificedH2076 unto Baalim,H1168 and burned incenseH6999 to graven images.H6456
Hos 11:2 THE MORE THE PROPHETS CALLED THEM, THE MORE THEY WENT FROM THEM . . . A more obstinate people could not be found. Not even the pagan Ninevites in Jonahs day were this obdurate! Jesus found many of the Jews in His earthly ministry equally as unyielding (cf. Mat 11:20-30; Mat 12:38-42). A literal translation of this phrase might read, . . . the more they went away from their (the prophets) faces. In other words, the more the prophets preached to the people, the more the people hated the very sight of the prophets. The people could not stand righteousness and goodness because they loved evil (cf. Joh 3:18-21), Their bent for sinning is expressed in Hos 11:7 below.
Zerr: Hos 11:2. God sent the call to Israel, but it was done through representatives, and the pronoun they refers to them. The entire history of Israel is a record of rebellion against the true prophets and other leaders sent by the Lord to warn them against the evil nations around them. Baalim was the name of the invisible or imaginary gods, and the graven images were the ones carved out of wood, stone and metal.
Hos 11:3 IH595 taught Ephraim also to go,H8637 H669 takingH3947 them byH5921 their arms;H2220 but they knewH3045 notH3808 thatH3588 I healedH7495 them.
Hos 11:3 YET I TAUGHT EPHRAIM TO WALK . . . The infinite kindness and patience of the Heavenly Father is likened to the tender love of an earthly parent teaching the babe to walk. Moses referred to the Fathers care, . . . in the wilderness the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son (Deu 1:31). The everlasting arms of God support His covenant people in all ages and dispensations (cf. Deu 33:27; Psa 18:35-36; Isa 41:10; Isa 46:4). He healed all their sorrows and wounds incurred in the bondage of Egypt by bringing them prosperity and peace. But they did not reciprocate.
Zerr: Hos 11:3. The Lord offered his teaching to Ephraim (Israel), but he did not profit thereby. Taking them by their arms denotes the tender care and assistance that God extended to them. Knew not that I healed them means that the people of Israel did not realize the benefit that would have been enjoyed by them if they had accepted the offers of mercy from God.
Hos 11:4 I drewH4900 them with cordsH2256 of a man,H120 with bandsH5688 of love:H160 and I wasH1961 to them as they that take offH7311 the yokeH5923 onH5921 their jaws,H3895 and I laidH5186 meatH398 untoH413 them.
Hos 11:4 I DREW THEM WITH CORDS OF A MAN, WITH BANDS OF LOVE . . . God draws with love-He does not drive or force obedience. Even the new commandment of Jesus, the command to love one another, receives its prompting from Jesus own example of love towards those whom He commands to love (Joh 13:34-35; Joh 15:12-17). Cords of a man is evidently a phrase intended to convey much the same meaning as our modern tied to her apron strings. Lange describes them: . . . such as those with which men, especially children, would be led, opposed to ropes, with which beasts are tied. God not only draws with love-He also binds men to Himself by the force of love. It was the love of Christ which constrained the apostle Paul (cf. 2Co 5:14). It is only through being bound by the bond of peace that we are able to maintain the unity of the Spirit. The peace referred to, of course, is the peace Christ accomplished between God and man through His loving sacrifice-so it is the love of Christ, after all, that binds us to Him. Time after time the saints of the Old Testament had the love of God demonstrated to them. God eased the yoke from off their jaws. As a merciful farmer would push the yoke back off the cheeks of his oxen in order that they might eat without discomfort, so God relieved one burden after another for the children of Israel. Not only that, He fed them with manna from heaven and caused them to prosper when they did not deserve it. When one thinks about it, this is the proto-type of the Prodigal Son immortalized in the parable told by Jesus (cf. Luk 15:11 ff). It is the same experience many an earthly father has had. A father woos his son by love; he seeks to bind his son to him by acts of love (even when disciplining); the father relieves every burden from the son it is humanly possible for him to relieve; the father gives to the son even when the son does not deserve it. And so often the son reciprocates with self-willed rebellion.
Zerr: Hos 11:4. Cords of a man and bands of love denote the same thing. God was kind and tender with his people and did not use harsh cords with which he might draw a beast along. Take off the yoke is stated with the same significance, meaning that He would relieve his people of the hardships that an enemy would have imposed upon them. He not only lifted the load from their bodies, but offered food for their nourishment.
Hos 11:5 He shall notH3808 returnH7725 intoH413 the landH776 of Egypt,H4714 but the AssyrianH804 shall be his king,H4428 becauseH3588 they refusedH3985 to return.H7725
Hos 11:5 THEY SHALL NOT RETURN . . . INTO EGYPT . . . BUT . . . ASSYRIAN SHALL BE THEIR KING . . . There is no contradiction between this verse and Hos 8:13! In Hos 8:13 Hosea is using the land of Egypt to typify the bondage which Israel was about to suffer in her imminent captivity. In Hos 11:5 Hosea states unequivocally that that captivity will take place in Assyria. Thus the present verse must indicate that some of the people of Hoseas day had suggested a return to political paternalism with Egypt. Some felt that they might woo Egypt into helping them against Assyria, And being a satellite of Egypt would be better than facing possible military confrontation with Assyria. But Hosea tells them plainly that they will be ruled by the terrifying Assyrians. And the reason is stated simply. Because they would not repent of their self-willed idolatry and return to worshipping and serving Jehovah. There are no humanistic, sociological, psychological, economic, cyclic-historical explanations offered by the preacher of God, It was simply that the people of God had broken their covenant relationship with Him-they did not obey His word.
Zerr: Hos 11:5. The backsliding ways of Israel would have entitled him to be sent back into the bondage in Egypt, but the Lord would not use that form of punishment this time. However, he must have some form of chastisement, hence the decree was to suffer the Assyrian king to invade the land and take its people away into exile.
Hos 11:6 And the swordH2719 shall abideH2342 on his cities,H5892 and shall consumeH3615 his branches,H905 and devourH398 them, because of their own counsels.H4480 H4156
Hos 11:6 AND THE SWORD SHALL FALL UPON THEIR CITIES . . . The word translated fall means literally to circulate. The swords of the Assyrian solders would make the round of the cities of Israel. Bars or the large crossbeam-bolts used to bolt their huge city gates would pose no problem to the Assyrians-they would use their war machines and break through the gates. All of this is to come upon Israel because of their own counsels. They trusted in their own wisdom rather than give heed to the counsel of God (cf. Psa 127:1; Pro 29:8; Ecc 9:13-18). No matter how rich or powerful a nation may become it does not afford security. Why? Because this universe is ruled and operated on a basis of moral law. God created and now sustains the universe and every event within it by principles of justice and righteousness. Any individual or nation that chooses to rebel against these principles must be prepared to suffer the inevitable consequences. It makes no difference how well educated, technologically advanced, economically solvent a people may be, when they trust in their own counsels to the exclusion of Gods counsel (the Bible), they dash themselves to pieces upon the immutable sovereignty of Gods moral laws.
Zerr: Hos 11:6. There was not much actual warfare between Assyria and Israel, but the sword of the invader was present as a threat, and hence made the invasion effective.
Hos 11:7 And my peopleH5971 are bentH8511 to backslidingH4878 from me: though they calledH7121 them toH413 the most High,H5920 none at allH3808 H3162 would exaltH7311 him.
Hos 11:7 AND MY PEOPLE ARE BENT ON BACKSLIDING FROM ME . . . The word bent is literally fastened upon, or impaled upon apostasy as something is impaled upon a stake, so that it cannot get loose. The people of Israel were transfixed, or hypnotized, as it were, by sin, and they could not seem to give a thought to anything else! They were fascinated by the thrill of it-by its deadliness. They were deceived by sin (cf. Heb 3:13). How much this is like so many people today. There is not a person living that has not been fascinated or deceived by some form of sin or another at one time in his life! Sin is like that! Man, without the word of God in his heart, is like that! (cf. Deu 6:1-6; Psa 119:11). Although God sent His servants, the prophets, to call the people upward toward God, it seemed as if not one person in the whole nation listened to their preaching.
Zerr: Hos 11:7. People are bent means they are inclined to backsliding. They is explained at verse 2. The people were so interested in their idols that they paid very little attention to the call for worship of the true God.
Hos 11:8 HowH349 shall I give thee up,H5414 Ephraim?H669 how shall I deliverH4042 thee, Israel?H3478 howH349 shall I makeH5414 thee as Admah?H126 how shall I setH7760 thee as Zeboim?H6636 mine heartH3820 is turnedH2015 withinH5921 me, my repentingsH5150 are kindledH3648 together.H3162
Hos 11:9 I will notH3808 executeH6213 the fiercenessH2740 of mine anger,H639 I will notH3808 returnH7725 to destroyH7843 Ephraim:H669 forH3588 IH595 am God,H410 and notH3808 man;H376 the Holy OneH6918 in the midstH7130 of thee: and I will notH3808 enterH935 into the city.H5892
Hos 11:8-9 HOW SHALL I GIVE THEE UP, EPHRAIM? . . . MY HEART IS TURNED WITHIN ME . . . I WILL NOT EXECUTE THE FIERCENESS OF MINE ANGER . . . Admah and Zeboiim were the cities of the plain that were destroyed when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. In light of Israels deliberate choice to defy Gods moral reign, there is only one thing to do. By all that is just and right, God may give them up, abandon them. This is what man would do. But God is not man (cf. 1Sa 15:29; Num 23:19; Mal 3:6). There was something holding Jehovah back from executing His judgment to the uttermost. Three times God repeats, I will not . . . I will not . . . I will not. He cannot utterly abandon them, although they deserve it. And what was staying the hand of God-what kept Him from destroying Israel completely? The answer comes, My heart is turned within me . . . My compassions are kindled together. It was in the nature of God, not in anything that Israel had done. The omniscient God looked down the corridors of time and saw possibilities in a remnant of Israel that men would be unable to see. He saw what this remnant would be-this son whom He had called out of Egypt and nursed and patiently fed. Because of what God is, He sees every human being and their potentialities and possibilities, and in spite of their many backslidings, He is still longsuffering, not willing that any should perish (2Pe 3:9). The secret of Gods mercy is found in the words, My heart is turned within Me. That is a very expressive word. Turned about, or turned over, literally; but in use it is the word that describes upheaval, turmoil. Listen. God says My heart is in turmoil; My heart is moved to its depths, My heart! Again, My compassions are kindled together, and the word compassion there does not mean sorrow or pity, but solace. G. Campbell Morgan paraphrases thus: My compassions are in spasm, deeply affected. We are in the presence here of the perfect love of God-a love that is not the mere sentimental outgoing of an emotional nature, evanescent and passing; but love that becomes an agony; love that becomes a tragedy.
Zerr: Hos 11:8, The gist of this verse is a lamentation of the Lord over the unfaithfulness of His people. He regrets that he will need to give them up and deliver them into the hands of a foreign nation for punishment. Admah and Zeboim were two of the cities that were destroyed in the days of Lot (Gen 14:2; Gen 19:25). It does not mean that Israel was to be literally destroyed as were those cities, but the rejection was to be as certain. Turned means changed or reversed; repentings means compassion or leniency; kindled means to contract or be reduced. The sentence denotes that Gods attitude is changed toward the people of Israel because of their unfaithfulness. Hos 11:9. Not execute the fierceness of mine anger denotes that if they were treated as they deserved they would be destroyed. But God is more long- suffering than man, hence He will chastise his people and give them another chance. Not enter into the city ns a destroying enemy, but He will suffer their cities to be taken over by the foreign army in order to have them chastised.
How it is that the perfect, immutable, holy God could first pronounce judgment upon Israel and then say, I will not? We take the liberty of quoting from G. Campbell Morgans book, Hosea, The Heart and Holiness of God, published by Revell:
Here, all mere intellectuality breaks down; here is something very strange . . . He says I will not give you up; what is the reason? Because of His heart and His compassions? Yes, but go on. I am God, and not man, and I am the Holy One in the midst of thee. There is no lowering of the standard of moral requirement. The Holy One can be compassionate and remain holy because He is God, and not man. Things are possible to Him that are not possible to man.
That is as far as we get in Hosea, It is a long way, but it leaves us asking questions; and filled with wonder, we do not understand it . . . A wonder and a mystery of righteousness and compassion are seen working together . . . When God, in spite of sin, says, How can I give you up? My heart is stirred, My compassions are stirred, but I am holy; how can I give you up? and yet says, I will not give you up, I will not, I will not, we are in the presence of some possibility wholly of God, It must have been a great word for trembling and troubled hearts even then.
But our Bible does not end in Hosea. The name Hosea meant salvation . . . There came One in the fulness of time, whose Name was Jehovah and Hosea: Jesus . . . we find out at last in Jesus, how God can be just, and the Justifier of the sinning soul.
This way of accomplishment Hosea did not see. In communion with God he had learned facts about the Divine Nature which seemed to be conflicting, and he delivered his message and uttered the words; but at last He came, Who is the Brightness of the Fathers glory and the express Image of His Person, and in Him I see how righteousness and peace meet together, and God can be just and the Justifier,
Through Him the claims of justice which are against my soul are all met. Through Him the glory of holiness is maintained; for His redemption of the human soul is not a pity that agrees to ignore sin; but a power that cancels it and sets free from its dominion. Through Him the loved one is regained, restored, renewed, and all the lights that flash and gleam upon the prophetic page, astonishing my soul, come into focused unity in Jesus. God says of you, of me, How can I give thee up? I will not . . . I will not . . . I will not.
But how? I am God and not man, I am the Holy One. Through Christ He has made the way by which sinning souls can be conformed to His image, His likeness, His will. The Gospel is gleaming in Hosea. It is shining in full radiance in Christ.
This is the very essence of the gospel! The good news is that God is both just and the Justifier (Rom 3:21-26). In other words, God keeps His word to punish sin (this He did in His Son, Jesus Christ, and we participated in it vicariously) and He at the same time forgives the sinner who, by faith, acknowledges and accepts and acts upon Christs death in his place. Christ became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (cf. 2Co 5:14-21). Christ died for us all. He became our substitute, our ransom; therefore we all died in Him.
What God did in reality and spiritually in Christ, He did typically and temporally with Israel. The remnant of Israel, saved by the justifying mercy of God as it exercised its faith and responded to this mercy, typified all. the covenant people of God (from all nations) in the Messianic age. Salvation is still by the grace and mercy of God to all who will respond by an exercise of faith. But that faith must be exercised in conformity to Gods revealed plan found now, for all nations and races, in the New Testament.
Questions
1. Where is Hos 11:1 repeated in the New Testament?
2. How is Hos 11:1 a prophecy connected to the Messiah?
3. Why did the people of Israel hate the sight of the prophets?
4. What is the meaning of the phrase cords of a man?
5. Why is the behavior of the Israelites like the Prodigal Son?
6. What reasons are given by Hosea for the imminent judgment of impenitent Israel?
7. How deeply involved in sin and backsliding was this nation?
8. How could God say in one breath He was going to punish Israel and then say He would not give them up?
9. How is God able to be both just and the Justifier of the penitent?
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The third cycle of the prophecy sets forth the love which Jehovah had for His people, notwithstanding their sin. This section sets forth Jehovah’s love toward His sinning people, and, for the most part, is the speech of Jehovah Himself. Thrice in the course of Jehovah’s message to the people, the prophet interpolates words of his own. In studying the section it is necessary to take the words of Jehovah in sequence, and then the interpolations of the prophet in sequence also.
The message of Jehovah falls into three clearly marked movements, which deal, respectively, with the present in the light of past love, the present in the light of present love, the present in the light of future love.
In the first, Jehovah reminded the people of all His past love for them in words full of tenderness, setting their present condition in its light, and crying, “How shall I give thee up?” His own inquiry was answered by the determined declaration of the ultimate triumph of Iove and the restoration of the people.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Bands of Love
Hos 11:1-11
This is a very tender chapter, full of moving appeals. God looks back on the happy, blessed past, as a fond parent on the innocent childhood of a son who is now causing endless pain and grief. He recapitulates the call from Egypt, and relates how, in obedience to His appeal, Israel came out of the idolatries of that country. He describes Israel as a tiny child beginning to walk, and says, I taught him to go. He compares the Israel of those days to horses or oxen, relieved of the yoke, before whom food is set. Let us remember that God is also willing to teach us to go, and to carry us when we are weary.
The blessed childhood of Israel had become like an overcast morning. They were bent on backsliding. But Gods love is not easily repelled. What more pathetic words were ever uttered by broken-hearted parents than Hos 11:8-9! That is the motive of our plea still. If we were dealing with man, we might despair. But we are dealing with One who forgives us according to the riches of His grace. If a back-slider should read these touching appeals, let him be encouraged to retrace His steps one by one, sure that the Father waits to welcome him where the by-path has broken off from the main road.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Chapter 11
Bands Of Love
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt. It is plain, from a consideration of Mat 2:15, that God had in view His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, when the prophet uttered these words. Clearly, and unmistakably, the Holy Babes sojourn in the land of Egypt is declared to be, That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My Son.
And yet a careful reading of the first few .verses of this chapter will make it equally clear that the prophet himself, doubtless, had none other than Israel nationally before him when he spoke the words quoted. He was dwelling on Israels past deliverance from the house of bondage, when Jehovah loved him and called him, as His son, out of the land dominated by the Pharaohs.
Is there then contradiction here? Far otherwise. There is the most perfect agreement, which another passage at once manifests. In 2 Cor. 3 we learn from ver. 17, read in connection with the ^entire chapter, that the Lord is the Spirit of the Old Testament. He is everywhere presented to the anointed eye. Hence the apostle wrote by divine inspiration when he declared that Hoseas words prophetically foretold the coming up of Gods Son out of Egypt. In wondrous grace He would, as it were, begin as His people began, in regard to His earthly pilgrimage. So, as a Babe whose life is sought by Herod, He is carried over the route taken by Jacob when driven by famine to Egypt; and from that land whence His people had been delivered when oppressed by Pharaoh, He later returns to Palestine. Thus would He be identified with them in their wanderings, that they might understand how the Holy Spirit spoke of Him when He said, In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence saved them (Isa 63:9).
Called out of Egypt, He was ever the One in whom the Father found delight. In this how blessedly opposite to Israel! Redeemed by power from Egyptian tyranny, they went far from Him, though He called them in tenderest love. Turning away, they sacrificed unto Baalim, and worshiped images of mans design (ver. 2).
Yet He had taught Ephraim to take his earliest steps, as it were; holding his arms and directing his way. But they soon, like an ungrateful child, forgot Him to whom they owed so much, and knew not that He had healed them. Tenderly He recalls those early days when He drew them with cords of a man and with bands of love, delivering them from the yoke, and providing all that they needed for their sustenance and enjoyment (vers. 3, 4)-what saint but will see in words so lovely the story of his own deliverance from sin and Satan, when first brought to the knowledge of Christ! Long enthralled in worse than Egyptian bondage, how unspeakably precious was the earliest revelation of His grace to our souls, when He drew us to Himself from our wickedness and waywardness by the bands of love; which were indeed the cords of a man-the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all! Let us challenge our hearts as to what return we have made to love so deep and tender. What is the Baal that has lured some of us so far from Him who once was everything to our hearts, when we took our first steps out into the wilderness with Him to whom we owed so much? Rest assured, fellow-believer, till every idol is destroyed, we shall never know again the freshness and joy of those early days, if we have allowed .other lords to have dominion over us.
Once set free from Egypt, Israel, nationally, could never return there. But because of their sins, they were given into the hand of the Assyrian; as will, in a more awful manner, be the case in the last days, when the sword shall abide upon them, because of their own counsels (vers. 5, 6).
Such must be the bitter fruit of forgetting their God and taking their own foolish and sinful way. From the first they had been bent to backsliding from Him, though He had called them again and again to repentance. But they persisted in their folly till there was no remedy (ver. 7).
Yet His yearning heart causes Him to cry, How shall I give thee up? … My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together (ver. 8). He could not bear to make them as the cities of the nations upon whom His wrath had fallen without any mixture of mercy. Zeboiim and Admah (see Gen 14:8) were two of the cities of the plain blotted out in the day when Sodom and Gomorrah fell beneath His judgment (Deu 29:23). Of a similar doom Moses warned Israel if they failed to keep His holy law. Thus they were righteously under that awful sentence; but God, falling back upon His own sovereignty, declares, I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not a man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city-i. e., to utterly consume it (ver. 9).
It is most blessed to realize that God, who, once He has given His word in grace, will never repent, or permit that people to be cursed whom He has blessed (as He made known to Balaam), yet reserves to Himself the right to turn from the greatness of His wrath, however richly deserved, and manifest His loving-kindness to the people of His choice upon their repentance. Therefore, though He might righteously have utterly destroyed Ephraim, He preserved a remnant, in grace, who shall yet be to the praise of His glory in the land of their fathers; when they shall walk after the Lord, in the day that He shall roar like a lion, causing His once-blinded people to tremble at His word; when He shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea (Isa 11:11). At His call they will come, weeping because of their sin, yet rejoicing in His love; as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria, to be placed in their houses, never again to be removed, according to the word of Jehovah (ver. 11).
This verse completes another distinct division of the prophecy, which extends from their first call out of Egypt to their restoration to the land and to God in the days of the millennial kingdom.
The last verse is properly the introduction to chapter 12, and brings in a new subject, which closes with the end of chapter 13. When Hosea prophesied, as frequently noted, the iniquity of Judah was not yet so manifest as that of the ten tribes whom Jeroboam had led astray from the very beginning, turning them away from Jehovah, and setting up the golden calves for their worship. They had been idolatrous from the first, and all their kings had followed in the steps of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin. Therefore sentence was early pronounced on them because God had to say, Ephraim compasseth Me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit. There had never been any response to the many warnings and entreaties sent them by the Lord.
But with Judah it was far otherwise. Among them, decline was a matter of slow, and sometimes thwarted, progress. Hence we read, But Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the Most Holy (ver. 12, margin). Up to the time when Hosea prophesied, there was still a measure of devotion to Jehovah in Judah. Moreover, revival after revival followed the fervent calls to repentance uttered by the prophets; but it will be observed that as the years went on, they too became less and less responsive to the voice of God, until they lost all concern for His holiness.12
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Hos 11:4
This is not a day for difficult doctrines, but for the simplest and humblest feelings. The appeal is not made to our understanding nor even directly to our conscience. With the cords of a man we are drawn. The human affections in which all men share, the feelings which even the poorest, the meanest, the most ignorant partake in; the pity, the tenderness, the love that can only be called forth by love-these are now the cords by which our Father draws us, the cords of a man.
I. We are sometimes cold and dead. There are times when our feelings towards God seem to lose their warmth. We can obey and we do, but we feel like servants, not like children, and we are unhappy because we cannot rouse any warmer feelings in ourselves. When this is so, where can we go but to the Cross of Christ? Can our hearts long resist the pleading of that story, or can we refuse to come when the Father begins to draw us with the cords of a man, with bands of love.
II. Perhaps under a decent exterior we hide some sinful habit which has long been eating into our souls. Our besetting sin has clung to us, and we cannot get rid of it. If this be so, yet once more let us turn to God, and gaze upon the Cross of Christ. Let us think of that sorrow which was beyond all other sorrows, and that love which caused all the sorrow. Let us look on this till our thoughts are filled with the sight, till our hearts answer to the affection which could thus suffer, till we feel the cords draw us, the cords of a man, and we sit at the foot of the Cross and never wish to leave it.
III. Or perhaps we have never really striven to serve God at all. We have lived as best suited the society in which we were, as most conduced to our own pleasure. Whenever the thought of God or conscience comes across us, we immediately find that but a dull subject to think on, and we turn to pleasanter and more exciting themes. What then shall warm our hearts but this plain story of sadness? Here shall all men find the medicine to heal their sore disease. Proud thoughts, self-conscious contentment, cannot stand here. We come as sheep that have gone astray. We hasten to the Shepherd whose voice we hear calling us from afar. He hath sought us long. We think not of the pastures, but of Him; to lie in His bosom, to be carried in His arms, to hear His words of comfort once more, to see His face, to feel that we are pressed to His heart.
Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 1.
Consider the place of love in the Gospel.
I. The Gospel is a revelation of love. Herein lies its power, the secret of its strength. It reveals the love of God. It tells how He, in whose Divine holiness there beats not, as in the best of us) one pulse of sympathy with evil, yet loves with an unqualified love all the souls which He has made. In the immense, immeasurable love of God there is room for all His creatures. He loves, and therefore He pleads. He loved first, and therefore He gave His Son to be the life of the fallen.
II. In addition to the revelation of love, there is, in the Gospel, an invitation of love. There is something always pathetic to the unsophisticated ear in the petition of love. Hearts athirst, hearts dried up, just for lack of love, sometimes see in the far distance, something, some one, whom they feel they could have lived and died for. Pitiable, most pitiable, when we think of it, is the wilderness of the unloved. And yet there was a love for them, would they but have had it; a love better than of son or daughter, better than of wife or husband; a love indestructible, satisfying, eternal. The place of love in the Gospel is first a revelation, and then, a permission and an invitation. (3) In the Gospel there is a communication or transmission of love. He who has been loved, and therefore loves, is bidden, by the love of God to love his brother also. And then, in that transmission, that tradition, that handing on of the love, the whole of the Gospel, its precept as its comfort-is in deed and in truth perfected. Little indeed do they know of the power of the Gospel, who think either that obedience will replace the love of God, or duty be a substitute for the love of man. Christ teaches us that both towards God and towards man love goes first and duty follows after.
C. J. Vaughan, Last Words at Doncaster, p. 87.
The words of the text suggest: (1) The humaneness of God’s discipline; (2) the importance of human relations as well as Divine.
I. The humaneness of God’s rule is seen (1) in the way in which God conceals His laws under the forms and influences of human society. Dependence-we learned the lesson when we hung upon our mother’s breast; obedience-we were broken into it by all the varied discipline of our early home; reverence-our souls learned reverence by the perception of sanctity of character in some one whom we had before learned to love; authority-we felt its constraint in human excellence before we knew the source of all authority to be in God. (2) God makes use of human influences to draw us to Himself. Among such influences are the necessary restrictions of society. (3) The sense of responsibility is another influence by which God draws men to Himself. The pressure of responsibility has made many pray who never prayed before; the human obligation has been a cord to draw to God.
II. Consider the sanctity of human relations and the way to use them. They are the temple of the living God, the channels of His grace; sacred as the form that enshrines an eternal power. To be true to all human relations is not to be godly; but God intends this to be the way to godliness. There is not a human affection that will not gain in beauty, a human obligation that will not increase in sanctity, a human life that will not bloom anew, when the End and Author of its grace and being is recognized and adored in God.
A. Mackennal, Sermons from a Sick Room, p. 49.
References: Hos 11:4.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 934; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 141. Hos 11:8.-J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 261. Hos 12:4.-E. Paxton Hood, Preacher’s Lantern, vol. iii., p. 346. Hos 12:10.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 206. Hos 12:12.-Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 327. Hos 13:1.-J. A. Macfadyen, Old Testament Outlines, p. 268. Hos 13:1, Hos 13:2.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 103. Hos 13:2.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 185. Hos 13:5.-Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 307. Hos 13:5-8.-Ibid., Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1441.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
Israel: Hos 2:15, Deu 7:7, Jer 2:2, Eze 16:6, Mal 1:2
called: Exo 4:22, Mat 2:15
Reciprocal: Lev 11:45 – be holy Deu 33:3 – he loved Psa 129:1 – from Isa 43:4 – I Have Isa 49:15 – yet Jer 31:3 – I have Jer 31:32 – in the Eze 16:8 – thy time Eze 16:22 – General Hos 9:10 – found Act 2:10 – Egypt Rom 9:4 – the adoption
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A Bird’s-Eye View of Hosea
Hos 11:1-10
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
As introductory to our study of the Book of Hosea, we propose to show how God wrote His messages in Hosea, as well as by him.
There is a verse in the Book of Hebrews which says: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the Prophets.” The word “by” is the Greek word, “en,” which means in. God certainly did speak by the Prophets; that is, they wrote as they were led along by the Holy Ghost. He also spoke in the Prophets; that is, the deeds and lives of the Prophets oftentimes gave a definite and Divinely appointed message.
1. In Hosea God spoke of how He took unto Himself a people of the whoredoms. To Hosea, the Lord said: “Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and the children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord.” Hosea obeyed and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblain.
There is a wonderful application in all of this to us. God loved us while we were yet sinners. He found us in the wilderness and said unto us, Live. We can all remember how our feet were stuck in the miry clay of sin and shame, and of how He placed them upon the Rock Christ Jesus.
Had we been left in our sins there is no depth to which our unholy natures might not have led us.
2. In Hosea God set forth the wanderings of His people Israel and His curses upon them. When his first-born son was presented to Hosea, the Lord said unto him, “Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the House of Israel” (Hos 1:4). All of this was fulfilled. The Children of Israel did cease to be a nation. Unto this hour they are scattered among the nations, and no living man can tell where they are. We speak of the lost ten tribes. To us they are lost, indeed, but not to God. He has kept His eye on them during the centuries.
When Hosea’s second child was born God said unto Hosea, “Call her name Lo-ruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the House of Israel; but I will utterly take them away.”
When the third child was born to Hosea, God said: “Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not My people, and I will not be your God.”
From that day until now, Israel has been scattered among the nations as corn is scattered in a sieve.
3. By Hosea God wrote: “Then shall the Children of Judah and the Children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land” (Hos 1:11).
I. THE SINS OF ISRAEL SET FORTH (Hos 2:8-9)
The opening verses of chapter 2 under the picture of the folly of Gomer, Hosea’s wife, describes Israel’s titter sin and wretchedness. Not only is the wife under the curse for having done shamefully, but her children, also, are under it. Their mother played the harlot. She went after her lovers. Therefore, the Lord said: “I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.”
1. Let us observe some of the sad misconceptions of Israel. Hos 2:8 says, “She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold.” Let us not, however, judge Israel too harshly. How many Christians are there who are in danger of forgetting that it is God from whom all blessings flow?
The negation of God as the bestower of good, breeds pride and self trust which always comes before a fall.
2. Let us observe that Israel took God’s gifts and prepared them for Baal (Hos 2:8, l.c.). Here again Israel does not sin alone. How many saints, at least saints so-called, use their corn, and wine, and oil, and silver, and gold, as tokens of their affection for Baal. They go to worldly amusements, and functions, and there they make their donation of those very things which God gave unto them for Divine service.
3. Let us observe the result of Israel’s perfidy. God said, in Hos 2:9, I will “take away My corn * *, and My wine * *, and will recover My wool and My flax.” Our crops are also eaten up with the cankerworms because we have refused to bring unto the Lord our tithes and offerings. This is the message of Malachi.
The same God, who so dealt with Israel, will so deal with His people, the Church.
II. ISRAEL’S DOOR OF HOPE (Hos 2:13-15)
1. God’s pronunciation of the curse upon His people.
Hos 2:9 says: I will “return, and take away My corn in the time thereof.”
Hos 2:10 says: I will “discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers.”
Hos 2:11 says: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease.”
Hos 2:12 adds: “And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees.”
Hos 2:13 follows: “I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them.”
Let the young people who study these words remember that he who leaves his God will be punished of God, for, “whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.”
It is an evil thing and bitter to forsake the Living God, and the Lord, in His love will follow us up with the curse. When Jonah disobeyed Jehovah and took ship to Tarshish, God followed him with a great storm. God still follows the unfaithful with sorrows and travails.
2. God’s future allurement. In Hos 2:14 we read: “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.” We believe this is a future scene, and awaits the day when the Lord will turn His hand to restore Israel. In the 12th chapter of Revelation we read: “To the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished * *, from the face of the serpent.” It is there that God will speak comfortably unto His people.
3. God’s valley of Achor, becomes a door of hope. The word “Achor” means bitterness. What God is evidently saying is that Israel’s judgments will be steppingstones by which her heart will be prepared to seek the Lord.
Sometimes those who wander from God like Naomi, say: “The Mighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.” No doubt that is true, but His dealings prove that He is calling you back to Himself. The bitter cup proves to be no more than a door, through which the rays of hope are shining.
III. GOD’S BLESSINGS IN THE LATTER DAYS (Hos 2:18-20)
1. The coming day of Israel’s safety. The expression, “In that day” carries our minds to the time of Christ’s Return to earth, and to Israel’s restoration, as twelve tribes under one King. It is then that God will make a covenant with the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. It is then that God will break the bow, and the sword, and the battle out of the earth and make them lie down safely. Read Isa 11:6, Isa 11:7.
2. The coming day of Israel’s betrothal. God says in Hos 2:19, “I will betroth thee unto Me for ever.” Then He adds: “I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness.” That, however, was not enough, so the Lord said another thing, “I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness.”
A betrothal bespeaks a marital union. Jesus Christ will rejoice among His people when He comes. He will rejoice with singing, and rest in His love. In that day Israel’s stony heart will be replaced by a heart of flesh. As they, in the past, blasphemed His Name among the nations, so will they also honor that sacred Name.
3. The coming day of Israel’s restoration. In Hos 2:23 we read that God will sow His people unto Himself in the earth. Just now He has scattered her and she is a fruitless vine. By and by, after her betrothal is completed He will send her forth to evangelize the world. In that day she shall bring forth fruit unto God. She who had not, in the past, obtained mercy will then obtain it. She who was not a people, will become a people and the Lord will be her God.
IV. A DIVINE SIMILITUDE (Hos 3:1-5)
1. “Go yet, love a woman * *, according to the love of the Lord toward the Children of Israel.” The first part of the Divine similitude was given when God commanded Hosea to take unto himself a wife of the children of sin. We remember how this woman whom he married was the mother of Hosea’s three children, and how afterward she left her husband and went back into a life of sin.
In chapter 3, God commanded Hosea to go and take his wandering wife unto himself again. So Hosea bought her unto himself. Then he said unto her: “Thou shalt abide for me many days; * * thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee.”
These words which Hosea said to Gomer his wife, the Lord is even how saying to us. If we will be for Him, and not for another, He will be for us.
2. The similitude completed. After Hosea had done as we have just stated the Lord said: “For the Children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, * * afterward shall the Children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.”
Does not all of this carry a wonderful lesson to us? We who have been unfaithful to God, He will not cast off forever. If we confess our sins we will find Him faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us.
V. THE INNER CAUSE FOR ISRAEL’S FOLLY (Hos 4:5)
1. The 4th chapter opens with the statement,” There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.” The result of this great lack led Israel to swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and to all impurity. The result of this lack brought God’s judgments upon His people and everything which concerned them.
Every unbeliever of today who denies truth and mercy and the knowledge of God will soon become involved in immorality. When we go to God’s picture of the. Gentile world, as it is found in the 1st chapter of Romans, we read that they refused to retain God in their knowledge. Read Rom 1:18-32.
2. The 4th chapter continues with this statement,” My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” They did not, at the first, lack the knowledge of God, because they had not known Him; however, they rejected the knowledge of Him. Therefore, they disobeyed His laws, forgot their knowledge of Him, and were eaten up by their sin. It was like people, like priest.
There is a verse which says, then shall ye know Him if ye follow on to know the Lord. When we, however, reject the knowledge of God, He turns us over to our own ignorance. It is ever true that when people reject the light, they are engulfed in darkness.
3. The conclusion of all of this is stated in Hos 4:17. “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.” There comes a time when God no longer strives with His people. Let us be very careful to listen to His voice, and seek always to do His will, lest we fall after the same example of unbelief.
VI. A FEW TERSE STATEMENTS RELATIVE TO EPHRAIM (Scriptures as noted below)
1. In Hos 5:11 we read:” Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment.” This was the sequence of Israel’s lack of knowledge. We cannot expect to know the will of God, unless we seek His face. To refuse Him is the steppingstone to our complete undoing.
2. In Hos 6:4 we read:” O Ephraim what shall I do unto thee? * * for your goodness is as a morning cloud.” We immediately think of the words spoken to the Galatians, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you?”
3. In Hos 7:8 we read:” Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned.” This is a unique comparison. The 2d verse says, “They consider not in their hearts.” Read also Hos 7:6.
There is much of world mixing in these days. There are also many people who are half-baked Christians, burned on one side, and raw on the other. They have a Sunday religion, but on Monday they follow after evil.
4. In Hos 8:1-14 is the expression,” Ephraim hath made many altars to sin.” Whenever one falls away from their integrity, they lead others with them. No man liveth unto himself. No life is without its influence, and when that influence is not for good, it is for evil.
5. In Hos 9:1-17 is this message. “As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird.” The Lord is our glory. His life within us is our beauty. When, however, we leave Him and run after other lovers, our glory departs. Instead of a blessing and a praise in all of the earth, we become a stigma and a shame to our Lord.
VII. THE FINAL RESUME (Hos 11:1; Hos 11:3)
1. In chapter Hos 11:1, Hos 11:3 the Lord is looking backward to Israel’s childhood. It was then that He taught Ephraim how to walk, taking her by her arm. It was then that He drew her with bands of love. He called her out of Egypt. He took away the yoke that was laid upon her. Can we not remember the time when God found us, and bought us with His Blood? God pity us if we have forgotten our first love.
2. In Hos 11:8 the Lord is crying out,” How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” The Lord knew that it would become necessary for Him to execute judgment upon His people, and yet He longed after them with deep yearning. Here is the way it is written: “Mine heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together.”
The Lord’s corrections and judgments are passed upon His children because He loves them.
3. In Hos 13:14 the Lord promises to redeem Ephraim. He says: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” The Lord permitted Ephraim to suffer much, but He would not suffer them forever to be delivered up to destruction. For a little while He hid His face, but with everlasting mercy will He yet redeem them.
4. In Hos 14:1-9 we have the prophecy of Ephraim’s return. God first of all calls upon His people to approach Him with words of confession. God then says, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely.”
Let God’s healing of Ephraim’s backsliding, assure the hearts of those who wander that, if they confess their sins, He is faithful and just to forgive them.
AN ILLUSTRATION
They of Ephraim who have so long lost the face of Jehovah will find Him again when He returns. Not long ago there was a researcher of art in Italy who, reading in some book that there was a portrait of Dante painted by Giotto, was led to believe that he had found where it had been placed. There was an apartment used for the storage of wood, hay and the like. He sought and obtained permission to examine it. Clearing out the rubbish and experimenting upon the whitewashed wall, he soon detected the signs of the long hidden portrait. Little by little, with loving skill, he opened up the sad, thoughtful, stern face of the old Tuscan poet.
Sometimes it seems to me that thus the very sanctuary of God has been filled with wood, hay and stubble, and the Divine lineaments of Christ have been swept over and covered by human plastering. When such thoughts come to me I am seized with an invincible desire to draw forth from its hiding place and to reveal to men the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ. It matters little to me what school of theology rises or what falls, if only Christ may rise and appear in all His Father’s glory, full-orbed upon the darkness of this world.-Henry Ward Beecher.
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
Hos 11:1. This verse is both history and prophecy. Its first meaning is history, for in chapter 2: 15, the time when Israel literally came out of Egypt is called the days of her youth. That is virtually the same language as our present verse. And we know It Is prophecy also, for Mat 2:15 quotes it and says that the calling of Jesus out of Egypt was a fulfillment of the words of the prophet. The moral of the statement is that God cared for His people when they were the most helpless, bringing them out of a condition from which they could not have escaped by their own strength.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Hos 11:1. When Israel was a child, &c. The Israel of this chapter is the whole people, composed of the two branches, Judah and the ten tribes. But the house of Israel is the kingdom of the ten tribes, as distinct from the other branch. Horsley. By the time of Israels childhood is meant the patriarchal age, and the time of their continuance under the Egyptian bondage. Then I loved him Manifested a tender and paternal affection to him, increasing him in numbers, wealth, and honour. And called my son out of Egypt Namely, by Moses, whom God commanded to acquaint the Israelites that they must remove out of Egypt. Israel is called Gods son, and his firstborn, Exo 4:22-23; and therein was an eminent figure of the Messiah, in whom all Gods promises were fulfilled. This prophecy, therefore, is applied by St. Mat 2:15, to our Lords return out of Egypt, after his being taken thither by his parents in his infancy, and kept there some time for fear of Herod. And the strict, literal sense of the words, more properly belongs to him than to Israel. And this is observable in many other prophecies, which can but improperly be applied to those of whom they were at first spoken; and, taking them in their strict, literal sense, are only fulfilled in Christ: see particularly Psa 22:16; Psa 22:18. Although the son, says Bishop Horsley, here immediately meant, is the natural Israel, called out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron; there can be no doubt that an allusion was intended by the Holy Spirit to the call of the infant Christ out of the same country. In reference to this event, the passage might be thus paraphrased: God in such sort set his affection upon the Israelites, in the infancy of their nation, that, so early as from their first settlement in Egypt, the arrangement was declared of the descent of the Messiah from Judah, and of the calling of that son from Egypt.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Hos 11:1. When Israel was a child I loved him. I led Joseph like a flock, by the hands of Moses and Aaron. I protected him among the kings of Canaan. I fed and multiplied him in Egypt; and when the time was come, I allowed oppression to drive him out. I sent Moses, who called my Son out of Egypt, to a land flowing with milk and honey. And as Adam was a figure of Him who was to come; so Isaac was a type of Christ, and the whole law a shadow of good things to come. I gave omen of greater good in future time; that out of Egypt I would call my Beloved Son, fully to accomplish the work of their redemption. If we allow the sneers of jews and infidels to have any weight against this quotation, Mat 2:15, we allow them to have weight against all the shadows of the ancient law.
Hos 11:3. I taught Ephraim to go. I drew him with the cords of a man. Hebrews Adam, which the versions render man, a worm of the dust. As a child is led in strings, so the Lord led the Israelites by his cloud in the desert, fed them with bread from heaven, and water from the rock, and gave them the promised land. Ezekiel, in chap. 16., has the like sentiments; and kindness of this sort will even excite gratitude in a brute.
Hos 11:5-6. The Assyrian shall be his king the sword shall abide on his cities. To feel the force of this prophecy, we must read the history of Israel in the book of Kings, the Chronicles, Josephus, and other Hebrew books, as Zeder lam, &c. Hosea prophesied during part of the reign of Jeroboam the second; and surely never were the visitations of providence more exactly painted by any historian, than they are described by this prophet. The strokes of war were so successive that the ten tribes were cut short. The people were slain and dispersed. Above all, from the time of Salmanezer to the days of Cyrus, which comprised about one hundred and thirty years. How then could this prophet foresee that the Assyrian monarchs would be their kings, unless inspired by the Word of the Lord, whose eyes penetrate into all futurity.
Hos 11:11. They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt. They shall come to Zion, and fly as a dove out of Assyria. The word tremble is not found, except in modern versions. Isaiah says they shall fly as doves to their windows: Isa 60:2. So also shall the gentiles come to the gospel light.
REFLECTIONS.
After all the terrors of our ministry, after all the rigours of the law, it is grace that softens and melts the heart. It is love that burns on the altar. The touchstone of all arguments, in bringing Ephraim to repentance, was the tender and paternal love of God to his ancestors. When Israel was a child I loved him: why then, oh Ephraim, not love him again, for he has first loved you. Ah, why should my heart love its idols, and treat the Holy One with neglect and contempt.
Let us calmly reflect on the goodness of God to us in infancy and youth, when we lay in the womb, and hung upon the breast. Let us reflect on the astonishing patience and mercy of God to a sinful people. The eighth verse is a most surprising passage. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? Shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? Shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. This tender expostulation is enough to melt the most obdurate heart. Justice seemed to require that they should be given up; but mercy pleaded for them, though it scarcely knew how to do it. The Lord here represents himself as a tender father, struggling with himself, whether he should disinherit and give up a rebellious son or not. This is doubtless only described after the manner of men, to exalt the divine mercy and encourage sinners to repentance. Let us reflect on this most amazing mercy of the Most High, and take encouragement from it; for who is a God like unto ours, pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin?
It is a great honour to continue steady and faithful, when others deal deceitfully. It is our duty to be faithful with the saints, to keep close to Gods holy rules and ways, though they are neglected by others; to walk with the saints, though they are few and despised. Many, like Ephraim, attend the worship of God deceitfully; hear the word and commend it, but will not do it; they promise fair, but never perform. This is lying to God; and all liars, especially such as these, shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. But the faithful shall have favour with God, and much comfort; and their works shall be found to praise, and honour, and glory, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Hos 11:1-11. The Divine Fathers Love for Israel.In Israels youth Yahweh loved him, and called him from Egypt to be His son, but he proved disloyal, sacrificing to the Baalim (Hos 11:1 f.). Yet it was Yahweh who guided and protected him as a father, and healed him in sickness (Hos 11:3). The figure now changes (but see notes). Yahweh has treated Israel as a humane master who gently leads and eases the yoke for the tired team of oxen (Hos 11:4). The ungrateful son must return to Egyptbe exiled; his cities shall be given up to the sword, because of incurable idolatry (Hos 11:6 f.). Here the prophet movingly expresses Yahwehs love for His people: How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How devote Israel, loved from youth, to destruction? And yet must not the annihilating judgment take its course? Does not Yahwehs holiness inexorably demand it? (Hos 11:8 f.). But there shall be a return from exile (Hos 11:10 f., post-exilic).
Hos 11:1. Render called (him) to be my son or (reading lbn) called to him, my Son: LXX called his sons (and since Egypt I have been calling his sons, Marti). Israels sonship dates from the Exodus (cf. Exo 4:22).
Hos 11:2 a. Read (LXX), But the more I have called to them, so much the more have they departed from me.
Hos 11:2 b. Render sacrifice, burn (present tenses).
Hos 11:3 b. Marti and Nowack read, But they knew not that I carried them, that I healed them from sickness. Yahweh is the good physician (cf. Exo 15:26).
Hos 11:4 a. man: perhaps kindness (hesed) should be read (parallel to love).
Hos 11:4 b. The text is uncertain (the yoke is not placed on the jaws, but on the neck). Read (cf. LXX), And then I became to him as a man-smiter; I turned against him (lw) and overcame him (so Marti).
Hos 11:5. Omit not (l transferred to end of Hos 11:4). As places of exile Assyria and Egypt are employed indifferently in Hosea.
Hos 11:6. Text corrupt. Read probably, And the sword shall consume in his cities, and devour in his fastnesses.
Hos 11:7. Very corrupt. No satisfactory emendation has been proposed.
Hos 11:8. Admah and Zeboim play the same rle in Hosea as Sodom and Gomorrah in Amos and Isaiah (cf. Amo 4:11, Isa 1:7-10). According to tradition they belonged to the five cities of the plain (cf. Gen 10:19; Gen 14:2; Gen 14:8, Deu 29:23).
Hos 11:9. Render, Shall I not execute? Shall I not return? etc.and I . . . city: (mg. is impossible) read probably, and shall I not extirpate (Heb. wel abhr)? [If construed absolutely (I will not execute, etc.), the verse is a promise of mercy. But this hardly suits the clause about Gods holiness; holiness demands severe purgation.]
Hos 11:10 depicts the return from exile; it is doubtless a post-exilio gloss.make them to dwell in: read, bring them back to.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
11:1 When Israel {a} [was] a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.
(a) While the Israelites were in Egypt, and did not provoke my wrath by their malice and ingratitude.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Israel’s rebelliousness 11:1-7
Again this section, which is all divine speech, begins with a reference to something in Israel’s history to contrast the past with the present (cf. Hos 9:10; Hos 10:1; Hos 10:9).
"The passage at its outset has similarities to the form of the legal complaint made by parents against a rebellious child (Deu 21:18-21; cf. Isa 1:2-20 where hope is held out that the child [Israel] may yet repent and receive compassion rather than death)." [Note: Stuart, p. 175]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Proof of rebelliousness 11:1-4
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The Lord reminded His people that when Israel was in its early days as a nation, like a youth, He loved the nation (cf. Exo 4:22-23). As often, loving refers to choosing (cf. Gen 12:2-3). God chose Israel for special blessing among the world’s nations and in this sense loved him. He called and led His "son" Israel out of bondage in Egypt (cf. Deu 14:1; Deu 32:6; Isa 1:2-20; Jer 3:19; Jer 3:22; Jer 4:22; Jer 31:9; Jer 31:20).
"We need not find the slightest difficulty in Israel’s being called Jehovah’s son and not His wife. In a book of so many brief and normally unconnected oracles, with their wealth of metaphors and pictorial imagery, it is worse than pedantic to see a contradiction." [Note: Ellison, p. 143.]
Matthew wrote that Jesus Christ fulfilled this verse (Mat 2:15). Jesus did so in that as the Son of God in another sense God the Father called and led Him out of Egypt when He was a child. Matthew did not mean that Hosea had Jesus Christ in mind or predicted His exodus from Egypt when he wrote but that Jesus’ experience corresponded to what Hosea had written about Israel. He saw the experience of Jesus as analogous to that of Israel. Jesus’ experience completed the full meaning of Hosea’s statement and in this sense fulfilled it. [Note: See Dyer, pp. 733-34, for several comparisons and contrasts between the history of Israel and the history of Jesus Christ.]
"This is a reference not only to the exodus of Israel from Egypt but also to the fact that all of God’s dealings with Israel were based upon the love that He would show in calling His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, back from the comparative safety of Egypt in order that He might suffer and die to accomplish His great redemptive work." [Note: The New Scofield . . ., p. 925.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE FATHERHOOD AND HUMANITY OF GOD
Hos 11:1-12
FROM the thick jungle of Hoseas travail, the eleventh chapter breaks like a high and open mound. The prophet enjoys the first of his two clear visions-that of the past. Judgment continues to descend. Israels sun is near his setting, but before he sinks-
“A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear hills, whence first he rose.”
Across these confused and vicious years, through which he has painfully made his way, Hosea sees the tenderness and the romance of the early history of his people. And although he must strike the old despairing note-that, by the insincerity of the present generation, all the ancient guidance of their God must end in this!-yet for some moments the blessed memory shines by itself, and Gods mercy appears to triumph over Israels ingratitude. Surely their sun will not set; Love must prevail. To which assurance a later voice from the Exile has added, in Hos 10:10-11, a confirmation suitable to its own circumstances.
“When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
And from Egypt I called him to be My son.”
The early history of Israel was a romance. Think of it historically. Before the Most High there spread an array of kingdoms and peoples. At their head were three strong princes-sons indeed of God, if all the heritage of the past, the power of the present, and the promise of the future be tokens. Egypt, wrapt in the rich and jeweled web of centuries, basked by Nile and Pyramid, all the wonder of the worlds art in his dreamy eyes. Opposite him Assyria, with barer but more massive limbs, stood erect upon his highlands, grasping in his sword the promise of the worlds power. Between the two, and rising both of them, yet with his eyes westward on an empire of which neither dreamed, the Phoenician on his sea-coast built his storehouses and sped his navies, the promise of the worlds wealth. It must ever remain the supreme romance of history, that the true son of God, bearer of His love and righteousness to all mankind, should be found, not only outside this powerful trinity, but in the puny and despised captive of one of them-in a people that was not a state, that had not a country, that was without a history, and, if appearances be true, was as yet devoid of even the rudiments of civilization-a child people and a slave.
That was the Romance, and Hosea gives us the Grace which made it. “When Israel was a child then I loved him.” The verb is a distinct impulse: “I began, I learned, to love him.” Gods eyes, that passed unheeding the adult princes of the world, fell upon this little slave boy, and He loved him and gave him a career: “from Egypt I called” him “to be My son.”
Now, historically, it was the persuasion of this which made Israel. All their distinctiveness and character, their progress from a level with other nomadic tribes to the rank of the greatest religious teachers of humanity, started from the memory of these two facts-that God loved them, and that God called them. This was an unfailing conscience-the obligation that they were not their own, the irresistible motive to repentance even in their utmost backsliding, the unquenchable hope of a destiny in their direst days of defeat and scattering.
Some, of course, may cavil at the narrow, national scale on which such a belief was held, but let them: remember that it was held in trust for all mankind. To snarl that Israel felt this sonship to God only for themselves, is to forget that it is they who have persuaded humanity that this is the only kind of sonship worth claiming. Almost every other nation of antiquity imagined a filial relation to the deity, but it was either through some fabulous physical descent, and then often confined only to kings and heroes, or by some mystical mingling of the Divine with the human, which was just as gross and sensuous. Israel alone defined the connection as a historical and a moral one. “The sons of God are begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Sonship to God is something not physical, but moral and historical, into which men are carried by a supreme awakening to the Divine love and authority. Israel, it is true, felt this only in a general way for the nation as a whole; but their conception of it embraced just those moral contents which form the glory of Christs doctrine of the Divine sonship of the individual. The belief that God is our Father does not come to us with our carnal birth-except in possibility: the persuasion of it is not conferred by our baptism except in so far as that is Christs own seal to the fact that God Almighty loves us and has marked us for His own. To us sonship is a becoming, not a being-the awakening of our adult minds “into the surprise of a Fathers undeserved mercy, into the constraint of His authority and the assurance of the destiny He has laid up for us. It is conferred by love, and confirmed by duty. Neither has power brought it, nor wisdom, nor wealth, but it has come solely with the wonder of the knowledge that God loves us, and has always loved us, as well as in the sense, immediately following, of a true vocation to serve Him.” Sonship which is less than this is no sonship at all. But so much as this is possible to every man through Jesus Christ. His constant message is that the Father loves every one of us, and that if we know that love, we are Gods sons indeed. To them who feel it, adoption into the number and privileges of the sons of God comes with the amazement and the romance which glorified Gods choice of the child-slave Israel. “Behold,” they cry, “what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” {1Jn 3:1-24}
“But we cannot be loved by God and left where we are. Beyond the grace there lie the long discipline and destiny. We are called from servitude to freedom, from the world of God-each of us to run a course, and do a work, which can be done by no one else. That Israel did not perceive this was Gods sore sorrow with them. “The more I called to them the farther they went from Me. They to the Baalim kept sacrificing, and to images offering incense.” But God persevered with grace, and the story is at first continued in the figure of Fatherhood with which it commenced; then it changes to the metaphor of a humane mans goodness to his beasts. “Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, holding them on Mine arms; but they knew not that I healed them”-presumably when they fell and hurt themselves. “With the cords of a man I would draw them, with bands of love; and I was to them as those who lift up the yoke on their jaws, and gently would I give them to eat.” It is the picture of a team of bullocks, in charge of a kind driver. Israel are no longer the wanton young cattle of the previous chapter, which need the yoke firmly fastened on their neck, {Hos 10:11} but a team of toiling oxen mounting some steep road. There is no use now for the rough ropes, by which frisky animals are kept to their work; but the driver, coming to his beasts heads, by the gentle touch of his hand at their mouths and by words of sympathy draws them after him. “I drew them with cords of a man, and with bands of love.” Yet there is the yoke, and it would seem that certain forms of this, when beasts were working upwards, as we should say “against the collar,” pressed and rubbed upon them, so that the humane driver, when he came to their heads, eased the yoke with his hands. “I was as they that take the yoke off their jaws”; and then, when they got to the top of the hill, he would rest and feed them. That is the picture, and however uncertain we may feel as to some of its details it is obviously a passage-Ewald says “the earliest of all passages-in which “humane means precisely the same as love.” It ought to be taken along with that other passage in the great Prophecy of the Exile, where God is described as He that led them through “the deep, as a horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble: as a beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord gave him rest.” {Isa 63:13-14}
Thus then the figure of the fatherliness of God changes into that of His gentleness or humanity. Do not let us think that there is here either any descent of the poetry or want of connection between the two figures. The change is true, not only to Israels, but to our own experience. Men are all either the eager children of happy, irresponsible days, or the bounden, plodding draught-cattle of lifes serious burdens and charges. Hoseas double figure reflects human life in its whole range. Which of us has not known this fatherliness of the Most High, exercised upon us, as upon Israel, throughout our years of carelessness and disregard? It was God Himself who taught and trained us then; –
“When through the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
Thine arm unseen conveyed me safe,
And led me up to man.”
Those speedy recoveries from the blunders of early willfulness, those redemptions from the sins of youth-happy were we if we knew that it was “He who healed us.” But there comes a time when men pass from leading-strings to harness when we feel faith less and duty more-when our work touches us more closely than our God. Death must be a strange transformer of the spirit, yet surely not more strange than life, which out of the eager buoyant child makes in time the slow automaton of duty. It is such a stage which the fourth of these verses suits, when we look up, not so much for the fatherliness as for the gentleness and humanity of our God. A man has a mystic power of a very wonderful kind upon the animals over whom he is placed. On any of these wintry roads of ours we may see it, when a kind carter gets down at a hill, and, throwing the reins on his beasts back, will come to its head and touch it with his bare hands, and speak to it as if it were his fellow; till the deep eyes fill with light, and out of these things, so much weaker than itself, a touch, a glance, a word, there will come to it new strength to pull the stranded wagon onward. The man is as a god to the beast, coming down to help it, and it almost makes the beast human that he does so. Not otherwise does Hosea feel the help which God gives His own on the weary hills of life. We need not discipline, for our work is discipline enough, and the cares we carry of themselves keep us straight and steady. But we need sympathy and gentleness-this very humanity which the prophet attributes to our God. God comes and takes us by the head; through the mystic power which is above us, but which makes us like itself, we are lifted to our task. Let no one judge this incredible. The incredible would be that our God should prove any less to us than the merciful man to his beast. But we are saved from argument by experience. When we remember how, as life has become steep and our strength exhausted, there has visited us a thought which has sharpened to a word, a word which has warmed to a touch, and we have drawn ourselves together and leapt up new men, can we feel that God was any less in these things, than in the voice of conscience or the message of forgiveness, or the restraints of His discipline? Nay, though the reins be no longer felt, God is at our head, that we should not stumble nor stand still. Upon this gracious passage there follows one of those swift revulsions of feeling, which we have learned almost to expect in Hosea. His insight again overtakes his love. The people will not respond to the goodness of their God; it is impossible to work upon minds so fickle and insincere. Discipline is what they need. “He shall return to the land of Egypt, or Asshur shall be his king” (it is still an alternative), “for they have refused to return” to Tis but one more instance of the age-long apostasy of the people. “My people have a bias to turn from Me; and though they” (the prophets) “call them upwards, none of them can lift them.”
Yet God is God, and though prophecy fail He will attempt His love once more. There follows the greatest passage in Hosea-deepest if not highest of his book-the breaking forth of that exhaustless mercy of the Most High which no sin of man can bar back nor wear out.
“How am I to give thee up, O Ephraim?
How am I to let thee go, O Israel?
How am I to give thee up?
Am I to make an Admah of thee a Seboim?
My heart is turned upon Me,
My compassions begin to boil:
I will not perform the fierceness of Mine anger,
I will not turn to destroy Ephraim;
For God am I and not man,
The Holy One in the midst of thee, yet I come not to consume!”
Such a love has been the secret of Hoseas persistence through so many years with so faithless a people, and now, when he has failed, it takes voice to itself and in its irresistible fullness makes this last appeal. Once more before the end let Israel hear God in the utterness of His Love!
The verses are a climax, and obviously to be succeeded by a pause. On the brink of his doom, will Israel turn to such a God, at such a call? The next verse, though dependent for its promise on this same exhaustless Love, is from an entirely different circumstance, and cannot have been put by Hosea here.