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

Proper 5 [10]/Year A 49
The Lord commands that a distress signal be sounded: “Blow the horn in
Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven [Bethel]; look
behind you, Benjamin! Ephraim [Israel] shall become a desolation in the day
of punishment. . . . The princes of Judah have become like those who remove
the landmark; on them I will pour out my wrath like water” (5:8–10). War
always brings death and destruction, and the Lord vows, “I will be like a lion
to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I myself will tear
and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue” (v. 14).
We should think about how to deal with passages that depict God as
bringing death and destruction as punishment. Often Christians fall into
the trap of describing YHWH as a God of wrath and judgment unlike the
God of grace and love of the New Testament. This is a Marcionite mistake
and reflects a Gnosticism that seeks to escape the rough edges of history.
God is a covenantal God of compassionate justice, a God who
relationally seeks the cooperation of God’s covenant partners. They and
we always face the question whether we will choose the way of life and
blessing which God gives and calls us to or the way of death and destruction
that is its alternative. After giving the Torah to Israel, God declares:
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so
that you and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:19). If we choose death
and curses, we get death and curses. The desolation wreaked on Israel and
Judah in this passage is not the Lord’s doing; it is the result of human folly
and stupidity.
Consequently, our passage includes a call to repentance: “Come, let
us return to the LORD; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he
has struck down, and he will bind us up” (6:1). The people confess that
they have not known the Lord and the Lord’s ways: “Let us know, let us
press on to know the LORD; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he
will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth”
(v. 3). God’s grace and presence are “as sure as the dawn.” God is not the
problem.
As is typical in Hosea, the Lord responds to this cry of penitence out
of the Lord’s heartbroken distress and travail with God’s people, wondering
“what shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O
Judah?” (v. 4). The people’s love for God, like our love for God, is erratic
and vacillating, “like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away”
(v. 4). The Lord is agonized and drained, like a parent fretting over a child
who makes bad decisions (11:1–4) or a spouse over a wayward loved one.
What the Lord desires of us is “not sacrifice” but “steadfast [loyal] love
... the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (v. 6).