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

Proper 12 [17]/Year C 255
The Lord (YHWH) instructs Hosea to “take for yourself a wife of
whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great
whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (1:2). Apparently, given the account
of Israel’s unfaithfulness that constitutes chapter 2, Hosea’s wife, Gomer,
was a “prostitute” involved in the worship of Baal, although the text does
not make this explicit. Hosea’s relationship with Gomer is an acted parable
of the life of God with the people Israel, in which the relationship of
God with the people is described as a relationship between husband and
wife. Hosea’s metaphors for God are many: God is a parent and the people
an ungrateful child (11:10); God is a physician, the people an ailing
patient (14:4); God is a bear whose cubs have been stolen (13:7–8), to
name but a few. Preachers could discuss why it is important to explore
many metaphors for talking about our relationship with God.
Hosea is told to give his children symbolic names. The firstborn, a son,
is named Jezreel, because in the valley of Jezreel, Jehu killed all the worshipers
of Baal (2 Kgs. 9:18–31). In Hosea 1:4, God announces that “I will
punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to
the kingdom of the house of Israel.” The second child is a daughter who
is named “Lo-ruhamah” (v. 6), a name drawn from the root word for compassion
to which a negative prefix has been added to mean “one for whom
I have no compassion.” The third child, a son, is named “Lo-ammi,” a
name drawn from the word for “people” plus the negative prefix to mean
“not or no longer my people.”
The three names constitute a mounting crescendo of threats: the people
will first lose their kingdom, then God’s compassion, and finally their
relationship with God altogether. But this is not the whole story, and
God’s apparent rejection is more a prophetic warning than a decisive
rejection of the people (as was often claimed in the Christian tradition of
the displacement of Israel in favor of the church). Hosea speaks frequently
of God’s tender love for Israel and in so doing uses for “love” a verb (aheb,
11:1) used in the Baal cult to signal God’s warm and heartfelt love. Abraham
Joshua Heschel says: “It is Hosea who flashes a glimpse into the inner
life of God as He ponders His relationship to Israel. In parables and lyrical
outburst the decisive motive behind God’s strategy in history is
declared. The decisive motive is love.” 75
This unconditional love first came to expression in God’s promise to
Abraham and Sarah and their descendants that God would fashion with
them an utterly gracious covenant. Hence our reading ends on the note
of promise: “Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand