000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

138 Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany/Year B
“You have burdened me with your sins . . . wearied me with your iniquities”
(v. 24). Nonetheless, God “blots out” and “will not remember your
sins” (v. 25). The people that God leads out of exile is a sinful people. Here
is one of the theological axioms of Scripture: God works through human sin
and error. As God promised deliverance to those who did not merit it long
ago, so God can work even with the likes of us in leading us to deliverance
from our own self-induced snares and idiocies. This is good news indeed.
Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany/Year B
Hosea 2:14–20
For our introduction to Hosea, please see Proper 12/Year C. Today’s reading
is the conclusion to chapter 2, which began in verses 1–13 with the
Lord’s heartbroken request to the Lord’s children, phrased as Hosea’s
heartbroken request to his children to “plead with your mother, plead—
for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband—that she put away her
whoring from her face . . . or I will strip her naked and expose her as in
the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and turn her into a
parched land, and kill her with thirst” (vv. 2–3).
Presupposed by verses 1–13 is something like a legal procedure in
which pleadings are entered and witnesses invited to decide between the
plaintiff, the Lord, and the accused, the people. The accusation is that
Israel has forgotten the Lord and run after her lovers: “I will go after my
lovers; they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil
and my drink” (v. 5). Israel has run after Baal (vv. 8, 13) whom Israel mistakenly
thinks has provided her with the rich produce of the land. She has
forgotten Deuteronomy 26:8–10: “The LORD [YHWH] brought us out
of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying
display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this
place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I
bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given
me.” Instead, Israel now worships Baal to secure the blessings of the land.
Three times in chapter 2 we find a “therefore.” “Therefore I will hedge
up her way with thorns; and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot
find her paths” (v. 6). “Therefore I will take back my grain in its time,
and my wine in its season; and I will take away my wool and my flax, which
were to cover her nakedness” (v. 9).
Our passage begins with the third: “Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. From there