Hosea 11

The chapter opens by reaching back to the beginning, to a memory the LORD keeps like a parent keeps the early years of a child: When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt (v. 1). Everything in the line is tender. Israel is not first named here as a servant, a subject, or even a covenant partner, but as a child - small, helpless, newly come into being. And the founding act of the nation, the exodus that delivered a slave-people out of Pharaoh's hand, is remembered not chiefly as a display of power but as an act of love: then I loved him. The deliverance from Egypt was the moment a father claimed a son. Notice that the love comes first and the calling follows from it - I loved him, and called. Israel did nothing to earn this. She was a child, with a child's emptiness of merit; the love that found her in Egypt was simply given. The whole of what follows - the patient teaching, the wounded heart, the mercy that will not quit - flows out of this first fact: God set His love on a child and called that child His own.³

Against that opening tenderness the next line falls hard: As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images (v. 2). The picture is of a love repeatedly extended and repeatedly refused. The more the prophets called the people back, the further they went - turning toward Baalim, burning incense to images their own hands had made. It is the pattern of a grown child walking away from the parent who raised him, and walking toward exactly what cannot love him in return. There is a quiet anguish in the wording: the calling and the leaving happen in the same breath, as though every summons home only sped the departure. This is what makes the chapter more than a courtroom scene. The God speaking here is not merely a sovereign whose laws were broken; He is a father whose love was met with a back turned. And He says so without hiding the hurt of it.

The memory now grows even more intimate: I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them (vv. 3-4). This is a father teaching a toddler to walk. Taking them by their arms is the image of strong hands holding up wobbling legs, steadying the first steps, catching the fall. The LORD remembers nursing Israel through sickness - I healed them - and the heartbreak is folded right into the memory: but they knew not. The child never realized whose hands were holding him up, never knew who was healing him. Then the metaphors gather: He drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love - not the ropes you put on an animal to drag it, but the human ties of kindness by which a person is gently led. He was like one who lifts the heavy yoke off a beast's jaws so it can eat, and then bends down and laid meat unto them - feeding them by hand. Every image is of a love that stoops, steadies, heals, frees, and feeds. And every image is shadowed by a child who did not know.

The tender memory now meets its hard consequence. The child who would not be led must be disciplined, and the judgment is named without flinching: He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels (vv. 5-6). There is a grim irony in the geography. Israel was once called… out of Egypt; now she will not go back to literal Egypt, but Assyria - another house of bondage - will rule over her instead. The exodus is, in a sense, run backward: a people brought out of slavery returns to a master. And the cause is stated twice over so it cannot be missed: because they refused to return… because of their own counsels. This is not arbitrary cruelty visited from outside. The sword that abides on the cities is the bitter fruit of choices the people themselves made - their own counsels, their own refusals. They would not return to God, so they are handed over to the consequences of the road they insisted on walking. Judgment here wears the face of a sorrowful letting be: God lets the people have the end their choices were always heading toward.

Verse 7 gives the diagnosis under all of it: And my people are bent to backsliding from me: though they called them to the most High, none at all would exalt him. The word bent is exact and merciless. It is not that the people occasionally stumbled; they are bent - warped, leaning, tilted away by a settled inward inclination, the way a board left in the damp bows and will not lie flat again. Backsliding has become not an event but a direction, the default lean of the heart. And the second half of the verse shows how deep the deafness runs: though they called them to the most High, none at all would exalt him. Even when the call went up - even when prophets and circumstances summoned the people back to the Most High - not one would lift Him up, would honour Him, would turn. There is a terrible completeness in none at all. This is the honest picture the chapter refuses to soften: a people so inclined away from God that every summons home falls on ears that will not hear. And it sets up the wonder of what comes next. For the staggering thing is not that God judges a people bent to backsliding; it is that He cannot, in the end, bring Himself to give them up.

Here the chapter turns, and the turning is one of the most astonishing things in all the prophets. Judgment has been pronounced; by every measure of justice the people deserve to be given up. And then, instead of the sentence falling, the speech breaks open from inside: How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? (v. 8). Four times the question comes, and it is not the question of a judge weighing a verdict but the cry of a father who cannot bear to do what justice seems to require. Admah and Zeboim were the cities destroyed alongside Sodom and Gomorrah, swept away without remnant; to make Ephraim as Admah would be to blot her out entirely. And the LORD recoils from it. Mine heart is turned within me - the word pictures something overturned, churned over, capsized from within - my repentings are kindled together. A great warmth of compassion flares up and gathers all at once. This is mercy that does not arise because the people have changed - they are still bent to backsliding - but because of what God is in Himself. The judgment is real and deserved; the love is deeper still, and it is the love that has the final word.³

The reason God gives for sparing His people is the anchor of the whole chapter: I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city (v. 9). Notice where the explanation lands. He does not say, “I will not destroy them because they have repented,” or “because they are not so bad after all.” He says: for I am God, and not man. The mercy is grounded not in anything about Israel but in the very being of God. And the contrast cuts against what we might have expected. We tend to assume that being divine rather than human would make God harsher - more exacting, more remote, quicker to consume. Hosea says the opposite. Precisely because He is God and not man, He will not let His anger run to its full fierceness; His mercy is not fickle and short-fused the way human anger is. A man, wronged as God has been wronged here, would have every excuse to be done. But God is not a man. He is the Holy One in the midst of thee - and His holiness, here, expresses itself not in withdrawal from a sinful people but in a refusal to abandon them. The verse does not invite us to explain the mechanics of the divine heart; it invites us to stand in awe of a mercy that runs deeper than any human love could, and that holds firm exactly where ours would give out.

The chapter ends with a homecoming. They shall walk after the LORD: he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west. They shall tremble as a bird out of Egypt, and as a dove out of the land of Assyria: and I will place them in their houses, saith the LORD (vv. 10-11). The LORD roars like a lion - but mark what the roar does. It is not a roar that scatters the prey; it is a roar that gathers the children home. At the sound of it they come trembling - hurrying back in awe and haste - from the west, from Egypt, from Assyria, from every place the scattering had carried them. The images are gentle: they come as a bird, as a dove, swift and homing, fluttering back to the nest. And the promise is rest: I will place them in their houses. The God who once called my son out of Egypt will call His children home again, out of every exile, and settle them. Then, in verse 12, the prophet's eye lifts back to the present and the picture darkens once more: Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the saints. The contrast is sober - Ephraim surrounds the LORD with falsehood even now, while Judah, for the moment, still holds. It is Hosea's way of keeping the wound open and honest: the mercy is sure, the homecoming is promised, and yet the lying heart is still a lying heart. The grace of verses 8-9 is not a reward for a people who had gotten better; it shines against a people who had not.