The Prophetic Wisdom Of HoseaSample

Beloved Child: Hosea 11:1-12

Hosea highlighted God’s gracious responses to Israel’s sins as he reported God’s comparison of Israel with a beloved child or son in chapter 11:1- 14:8. We see God’s favor toward Israel in his reflections on the past. 

In chapter 11:1, God recalled that, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Although God was about to destroy the northern kingdom through the Assyrians in 722 B.C., he still remembered his fatherly love for Israel. As he put it so tenderly in chapter 11:8: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.”

We also find that God disclosed his patience toward Israel. In chapter 11:2 God complained that through the centuries “the more the Israelites were called, the more they went away.” And he reflected on how long he had shown forbearance toward the northern kingdom. 

The last division of the book of Hosea is arranged in a way that you can’t spot right at first unless you’re looking very carefully, but a number of interpreters have said that this is the best way to understand the arrangement: that they’re various snippets of prophecies that Hosea gave at different times in his ministry, but that they are arranged around these sort of controlling metaphors. And there are a number of those metaphors, but each one of them has this in common: they were things that were highly prized in the ancient world — finding figs out in the wilderness or finding a planted palm, or finding a vineyard that was spreading, those kinds of things, a trained heifer that could plow the fields, a son of a home. Those were highly prized items, and God compares the northern kingdom of Israel to those things. … Especially that last one, the son, where he says, “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I lifted him up.” And as a loving Father God had endeared himself to Israel, and they were dear to him, yet they kept rebelling. The more he gave them, the more he did for them, the more they rebelled against him. But then he says, “But then, how can I give you up, O Israel? How can I give you up, Ephraim? I can’t do it because you’re that precious to me.” So we miss the point of those metaphors unless we understand that, in his wisdom, yes, God disciplines his people, his covenant people, as a matter of fact, his precious covenant people, but he never gives up on his covenant people, that one day, somehow they will come to repentance and they will receive his blessings. – Dr. Richard L. Pratt, Jr.