Journeys Home to God: Hosea

from oca.org

Researching the Bible for a new writing project, I was intrigued by Gale Yee’s commentary on the book of The New Interpreter’s Bible (Vol. VII, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996). Our Sunday school class in Ohio had studied Hosea for a time, became downhearted by the many prophetic warnings, and switched to something more cheerful: Lenten scriptures! But I enjoy reading about how the seemingly random and difficult texts of the Prophets fit together, in ways that you're likely to miss unless you have a good commentary in hand. In this case I also enjoyed learning that there are “journeys home” motifs in Hosea.

1. The book has three sections chapters 1-3, 4-11, and 12-14. Chapters 1-3 concern Hosea’s relationship with his adulterous wife, Gomer, and their three children. But the people of Israel worship false Gods, which is “adultery” to God. God wants to reconcile with his “wife,” as Hosea does so with Gomer (ch. 3) (p. 198). As Gomer loves many men, the Israelites love the Canaanite fertility gods, the baals (p. 200).

2. Chapters 4-11 change the metaphor of God and Israel to parent and child; here, the child is rebellious. As with an adulterous wife, a rebellious child could be punished (p. with death but God does not want that, as summarized in the well known chapter 11 (p. 198). In 12-14, the two metaphors are interwoven, again with a good ending as land is restored to beauty and bounty (p. 198).

3. Within each section are important structures, as illustrated by the way chapters 3, 11, and 14 conclude the sections. The sections tell part of a story: of Hosea and Gomer, of God the husband and Israel the wife, of God the parent and Israel the child. Each section also has a “journey motif”: of the wife/son making a journey back to the huband/parent, and of the people journeying from exile back to the land (p. 198). For instance, as the earlier israelites journeyed from Egyptian exile to the land, so will the “son” (the people of Hosea’s time) journey back to and enjoy the good land, if they repent (11:10-11) (p. 235).

4. With these journey’s of repentance to faith and of exile to home, there are also journeys from barrenness to bounty, with the fertility of the wife (a theme elsewhere in scripture) symbolizing the fertility of the land (p. 198). “Hope” passages (5:15-6:3, 10:12, 11:10-11) are included in order to help motivate readers, too, to repent (p. 234). In chapters 4-11, the journey from barrenness to fertility begins at 6:1-3 (p. 250). Needless to say, Hosea believes that fertility does not come from the baals who are gods of the rain, but from the true God who is creator and lord of all creation (p. 200).

5. Interestingly, too, the worship of baals was an intrinsic part of worship of the Lord, as reflected in Hosea (3:4, 4:11-19, 10:1-2, 5, 8, 9:1-3, 13:2, 14:8). The baal worship was itself a “journey” of barrenness and death toward newness of life, and although the exact nature of this combination of Israelite and Canaanite worship is now difficult to reconstruct, the Israelites would not have thought such practices inappropriate. Hosea, of course, strongly condemned Baal worship as adulterous and rebellious (pp. 202-203).

6. Also interesting is the relationship of the 8th century Hosea and 6th century deuteronomistic history. The condemnation of idolatry is a strong theme of both, and Yee discusses the possible influence of Hosea upon the later history as well as redaction and editing of the Hosea material (pp. 204-206).

7. Memory is a component of the journey. Hosea connects the people of his time back to the earlier Israelites who journeyed from Egypt to the land (9:10, 11:1, 11:3-4). Of course, the faithfulness and provision of the Lord is the key thing to remember and reclaim (p. 279).

8. Unfortunately, the people of Hosea’s time were, indeed, cast into exile when they were defeated by the Assyrians. As Yee writes, "the Hosean text challenges us to reckon seriously with the religious and political choices before us… Hosea warns us that we, too, can ‘return to Egypt,’ if we turn a blind eye to racial/ethnic tensions and hostilities in our midst” (p. 279).

Themes of marriage and parent/child continue in the New Testament. God's Son Jesus Christ is, of course, one of God's people the Jews. Seeking a non-supersessionist way to think about this, I would say that rabbinic Judaism continued to strive to be faithful to God's Torah as Christians look to Christ who redeems the church as the in-grafted branch. Paul uses the marriage imagery to speak of the relationship of Christ and the church as analogous to God toward Israel and to the husband-wife relationship.

Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican

The other day I picked up (from a shelf of free, used books) an old copy of Exploring the Parables (United Church Press, 1963), by Eugene S. Wehrli. He was a professor at and former president of Eden Theological Seminary, where I teach some semesters. Then I got down from my own shelves a book I’ve had since college, The Parables of Jesus by Joachim Jeremias (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972).

In the chapter “Relations of the Kingdom,” Wehrli writes this about the pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:9-14). “The Pahrisee does not see his life in relation to God and in dependence upon him, but rather compares himself with other men. This precludes a true relationship with God” (p. 87).

Of course, this is Jesus’ story about one of his own people, but we distance ourselves from the point by thinking this is a problem with this particular religious group, rather than a serious temptation for any religious person!  “See, I don’t sin like he or she does.  I’m a wonderful churchgoer in all this ways.” Jesus identifies a way of thinking that’s common among many of us.

I was thinking, though: what about those of us who compare ourselves to others----unfavorably. What about the times we become blue because our achievements, our “breaks” in life, seem less impressive than someone we know. I play those kind of “tapes” in my head an awful lot, and then I feel down on myself. But why? It strikes me that this kind of comparison is also a way we don’t see our lives “in relation to God and in dependence upon him,” as Wehrli puts it.

Wehrli also writes that the Pharisee’s “very goodness becomes his downfall” (p. 88). We’re accustomed to thinking of downfalls that result from moral lapses and critical errors. But in the Kingdom preached by Jesus, the recognition that one is, indeed, far from God is actually an indication of closeness to God! But the goodness, uprightness, and clean record of the very religious person becomes, paradoxically, a chasm of separation----because if you’re good and know it, you have no need of God.


Jeremias finds a prayer in the Talmud that sounds much like the Pharisee’s prayer, thus letting us conclude that Jesus’ story is drawn from real life (pp. 142-143). But there, the prayer is a thanksgiving to God for helping the pray-er be guided to a righteous life, unlike the unrighteous ways of others. Still, even in that thanksgiving is the temptation to compare oneself favorably to people who think are undeserving. Jeremias also notes that the Publican’s despair may be partly due to the difficulty he faced in truly repenting: he must not only give up his way of life but also restore fraudulent gains. But how will he now support his family, and how will he ever know exactly whom he defrauded? (p. 143). (Publicans were Rome-employed public contractors who also collected taxes.) But a person at the end of his or her rope is exactly the person whom God favors!

One clue to the favor of God in this story is the fact that the Publican evokes Psalm 51: God does not despise the broken heart of a sinner. In fact, “He is the God of the despairing, and for the broken heart his mercy is boundless. This is what God is like, and this is he is now acting through [Jesus].” (p. 144).