How does God bring about genuine transformation?
Hos 2:2-13
I recently listened to an interview about our hurried lives and our relationship to time. The interviewee’s advice in the first instance was to look at what motivates us to be busy, why we feel that we constantly need to do something, what unspoken assumptions we hold about being busy and therefore productive and valuable. Considering how to be efficient with time can also be useful, but I found myself in agreement with the assumption that real change springs from our inner attitudes. Until those are transformed, outward strategies can only tinker at the edges of the problem. This question of convictions is at the heart of Israel’s unfaithfulness. They believe that their livelihood (food and clothing) come from serving other gods rather than from the Lord (Hos 2:5, 8). They give themselves to what they hope will offer them the best returns in life, but they are mistaken. How can their false perspectives be changed?
Broken relationship, dismal prospects
The brokenness of the connection between the Lord and His people is illustrated by a broken marriage (Hos 2:2).[1] This is not divorce in a legal sense because then the parties go their separate way with no future connection. Rather, there is still the hope that the relationship may be mended hence the contending of the ‘children’ (v.2) and the prospect of punishment. The children here are likely meant as individuals in Israel and the ‘wife’ is the people as a whole, perhaps represented by the leadership in Samaria.[2] Thus, the prophet addresses those who listen, who are themselves stained with unfaithfulness (‘children of harlotry’, Hos 2:4),[3] to turn around and demand a change of attitude in the community as a whole, lest disaster will overtake them. Prisoners of war were stripped naked for maximum humiliation (common procedure in ancient warfare), and desert-like conditions in the land indicate a scorched earth policy or at least the abandonment of agricultural work at times of war (Hos 2:3).
God’s way to bring about genuine transformation
Before this bleak result will come, however, God will seek ways to change His people’s perspective. One of these is to block Israel’s way to ‘lovers’ (Hos 2:6-7), a reference either to the gods they worshipped or to the political alliances they sought to ensure peace. Often, the two were intertwined because it was believed that behind a powerful ally stood a powerful god, so that political alliances could lead to the worship of the ally’s god(s). Israel’s last chaotic years manoeuvring between different alliances to avoid being conquered shows how much they have lost their way. It is this desperate situation which, it is hoped, would lead to their return to the Lord as they recognised that they had it better with Him (v.7). Secondly, God was going to bring a time of need, so that the good life that Israel hoped for by worshipping other gods may be revealed as a lie (Hos 2:9, 12). This is what happened to a more limited degree during the years of drought and famine in Elijah’s day (1 Kings 17:1), so that Israel might know the true source of life. No doubt, the tumultuous last years of the northern kingdom led to a decline in prosperity reaching its conclusion in the devastation of the land and in captivity.
Transformation that lasts
Much as this passage is depressing to read, we should appreciate that despite the language of punishment, this is meant as discipline. Its aim is not to destroy but to bring God’s people to their senses, to bring about genuine transformation. When convictions are deeply ingrained, sometimes only drastic measures can wake us up to the truth. Hosea challenges us to ask where we think our help, our happiness, our sense of fulfilment come from. Often, what we give priority in terms of our time, energy and engagement will reveal how we see this question. This is a decision that, like marriage, is made once, but it is also one that we affirm daily in commitment and love to each other. Neither do we need to wait until a crisis forces us to open our eyes; we can turn to God in the here and now. May we keep going back to the Lord and seeking Him.
[1] Commentators frequently speculate about Hosea’s marriage and whether this language indicates the prophet’s divorce from his unfaithful wife. Quite apart from our ignorance of divorce procedures in Israel at the time, the focus is not on the prophet’s private life, but on Israel’s relationship to God. It seems to me that the language is rhetorical and now applied to Israel, so that the original image of Hosea and his unfaithful wife recedes into the background. It is hard to imagine an actual divorce case where the wife’s children contend with her (v.2). In any case, urging the woman to stop her adulteries or else she will be punished (v.2) is incompatible with the idea of divorce. If the procedure is about divorce, then the husband will have nothing to do with her afterwards (Deut 24:1-4), whereas punishment can only happen within the marriage (this would be the death penalty in a legal context; Lev 20:10). Additionally, the punishment described in Hosea is not execution, but the kind of devastation that will be Israel’s fate in war (Hos 2:3). Thus, it is best to see the dynamics of marriage and unfaithfulness as a rhetorical device here, which does not necessarily conform in all respects to the legal scenario in an actual case of marriage and adultery.
[2] This same imagery of mother and children are used of Judah in Isaiah 49:14-21. There, the mother is ‘Zion’, the city of Jerusalem, which also stands for the nation as a whole. The children are the individuals who live there. However, the imagery should not be pressed too far to correspond to reality in every detail.
[3] Once again, commentators sometimes raise the issue here that Gomer’s children were from different fathers, but this is unanswerable and too speculative to prove either way. Children of a promiscuous woman would be tainted by their mother’s reputation. In the analogy with Israel, ‘children of harlotry’ (literally ‘sons of…’, Hos 2:4) is used to indicate that they themselves are involved in unfaithfulness. The expression ‘son(s) of…’ indicates in Hebrew that someone belongs to a particular grouping, not necessarily descent. Thus, when Amos says that he is not ‘the son of a prophet’ (Amos 7:14), he is not saying anything about his father’s profession but indicates that he is not a ‘professional’ prophet belonging to the guild of prophets like court prophets might be.
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