"I WILL BE AS THE DEW"
Hos 14:2-10
LIKE the Book of Amos, the Book of Hosea, after
proclaiming the people’s inevitable doom, turns to a blessed
prospect of their restoration to favor with God. It will be
remembered that we decided against the authenticity of such an
epilogue in the Book of Amos; and it may now be asked, how can we
come to any other conclusion with regard to the similar peroration
in the Book of Hosea? For the following reasons.
We decided against the genuineness of the closing verses of Amos
because their sanguine temper is opposed to the temper of the whole
of the rest of the book, and because they neither propose any
ethical conditions for the attainment of the blessed future, nor in
their picture of the latter do they emphasize one single trace of
the justice, or the purity, or the social kindliness, on which Amos
has so exclusively insisted as the ideal relations of Israel to
Jehovah. It seemed impossible to us that Amos could imagine the
perfect restoration of his people in the terms only of re-quickened
nature, and say nothing about righteousness, truth, and mercy
towards the poor. The prospect which now closes his book is
psychologically alien to him, and, being painted in the terms of
later prophecy, may be judged to have been added by some prophet of
the Exile, speaking from the standpoint, and with the legitimate
desires, of his own day. But the case is very different for this
epilogue in Hosea. In the first place, Hosea has not only
continually preached repentance, and been, from his whole
affectionate temper of mind, unable to believe repentance
impossible; but he has actually predicted the restoration of his
people upon certain well-defined and ethical conditions. In chapter
2 he has drawn for us in detail the whole prospect of God’s
successful treatment of his erring spouse. Israel should be weaned
from their sensuousness and its accompanying trust in idols by a
severe discipline, which the prophet describes in terms of their
ancient wanderings in the wilderness. They should be reduced as at
the beginning of their history, to moral converse with their God;
and abjuring the Ba’alim (later chapters imply also their foreign
allies and foolish kings and princes) should return to Jehovah, when
He, having proved that these could not give them the fruits of the
land they sought after, should Himself quicken the whole course of
nature to bless them with the fertility of the soil and the
friendliness even of the wild beasts. Now in the epilogue and its
prospect of Israel’s repentance we find no feature, physical or
moral, which has not already been furnished by these previous
promises of the book. All their ethical conditions are provided;
nothing but what they have conceived of blessing is again conceived.
Israel is to abjure senseless sacrifice and come to Jehovah with
rational and contrite confession. {Cf. Hos 6:6} She is to abjure her
foreign alliances. {Cf. Hos 12:2} She is to trust in the fatherly
love of her God. {Cf. Hos 1:7} He is to heal her, {Cf. Hos 11:4} and
His anger is to turn away. {Cf. Hos 11:8-9} He is to restore nature,
just as described in chapter 2 and the scenery of the restoration is
borrowed from Hosea’s own Galilee. There is, in short, no phrase or
allusion of which we can say that it is alien to the prophet’s style
or environment, while the very keynotes of his book -"return,"
"backsliding," "idols the work of our hands," "such pity as a father
hath," and perhaps even the "answer" or "converse" of Hos 14:9 -are
all struck once more. The epilogue then is absolutely different from
the epilogue to the Book of Amos, nor can the present expositor
conceive of the possibility of a stronger case for the genuineness
of any passage of Scripture. The sole difficulty seems to be the
place in which we find it-a place where its contradiction to the
immediately preceding sentence of doom is brought out into relief.
We need not suppose, however, that it was uttered by Hosea in
immediate proximity to the latter, nor even that it formed his last
word to Israel. But granting only (as the above evidence obliges us
to do) that it is the prophet’s own, this fourteenth chapter may
have been a discourse addressed by him at one of those many points
when, as we know, he had some hope of the people’s return.
Personally, I should think it extremely likely that Hosea’s ministry
closed with that final, hopeless proclamation in chapter 13; no
other conclusion was possible so near the fall of Samaria and the
absolute destruction of the Northern Kingdom. But Hosea had already
in chapter 2 painted the very opposite issue as a possible ideal for
his people; and during some break in those years when their
insincerity was less obtrusive, and the final doom still uncertain,
the prophet’s heart swung to its natural pole in the exhaustless and
steadfast love of God, and he uttered his unmingled gospel. That
either himself or the unknown editor of his prophecies should have
placed it at the very end of his book is not less than what we might
have expected. For if the book were to have validity beyond the
circumstances of its origin, beyond the judgment which was so near
and so inevitable, was it not right to let something else than the
proclamation of this latter be its last word to men? was it not
right to put as the conclusion of the whole matter the ideal
eternity valid for Israel-the gospel which is ever God’s last word
to His people?
At some point or other, then, in the course of his ministry, there
was granted to Hosea an open vision like to the vision which he has
recounted in the second chapter. He called on the people to repent.
For once, and in the power of that Love to which he had already said
all things are possible, it seemed to him as if repentance came. The
tangle and intrigue of his generation fell away; fell away the
reeking sacrifices and the vain show of worship. The people turned
from their idols and puppet-kings, from Assyria and from Egypt, and
with contrite hearts came to God Himself, who, healing and loving,
opened to them wide the gates of the future. It is not strange that
down this spiritual vista the prophet should see the same scenery as
daily filled his bodily vision. Throughout Galilee Lebanon dominates
the landscape. You cannot lift your eyes from any spot of Northern
Israel without resting them upon the vast mountain. From the
unhealthy jungles of the Upper Jordan, the pilgrim lifts his heart
to the cool hill air above, to the ever-green cedars and firs, to
the streams and waterfalls that drop like silver chains off the
great breastplate of snow. From Esdraelon and every plain the
peasants look to Lebanon to store the clouds and scatter the rain;
it is not from heaven but from Hermon that they expect the dew,
their only hope in the long drought of summer across Galilee and in
Northern Ephraim, across Bashan and in Northern Gilead, across
Hauran and on the borders of the desert, the mountain casts its
spell of power, its lavish promise of life. Lebanon is everywhere
the summit of the land, and there are points from which it is as
dominant as heaven.
No wonder then that our northern prophet painted the blessed future
in the poetry of the mountain-its air, its dew, and its trees. Other
seers were to behold, in the same latter days, the mountain of the
Lord above the tops of the mountains; the ordered cite, her
steadfast walls salvation, and her open gates praise; the wealth of
the Gentiles flowing into her, profusion of flocks for sacrifice,
profusion of pilgrims; the great Temple and its solemn services; and
"the glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, fir-tree and pine and
box-tree together, to beautify the place of My Sanctuary." {Isa
60:13} But, with his home in the north, and weary of sacrifice and
ritual, weary of everything artificial, whether it were idols or
puppet-kings, Hosea turns to the "glory of Lebanon" as it lies,
untouched by human tool or art, fresh and full of peace from God’s
own hand. Like that other seer of Galilee, Hosea in his vision of
the future "saw no temple therein." {Rev 21:22} His sacraments are
the open air, the mountain breeze, the dew, the vine, the lilies,
the pines; and what God asks of men are not rites nor sacrifices,
but life and health, fragrance and fruitfulness, beneath the shadow
and the Dew of His Presence.
"Return, O Israel, to Jehovah thy God, for thou" hast stumbled by
thine iniquity. Take with you words and return unto Jehovah. Say
unto Him, Remove iniquity altogether, and take good, so will we
render" the calves of our lips"; confessions, vows, these are the
sacrificial offerings God delights in. Which vows are now
registered:-
"Asshur shall not save us;
We shall not ride upon horses (from Egypt)
And we will say no more, "O our God," to the work of our hands:
For in Thee the fatherless findeth a father’s pity."
Alien help, whether in the protection of Assyria or the cavalry
which Pharaoh sends in return for Israel’s homage; alien gods, whose
idols we have ourselves made, -we abjure them all, for we remember
how Thou didst promise to show a father’s love to the people whom
Thou didst name, for their mother’s sins, Lo-Ruhamah, the Unfathered.
Then God replies:-
"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: For Mine
anger is turned away from them. I will be as the dew unto Israel: He
shall blossom as the lily, And strike his roots deep as Lebanon: His
branches shall spread, And his beauty shall be as the olive-tree,
And his smell as Lebanon- smell of clear mountain air with the scent
of the pines upon it. The figure in the end of Hos 14:6 seems forced
to some critics, who have proposed various emendations, such as
"like the fast-rooted trees of Lebanon," but any one who has seen
how the mountain himself rises from great roots, cast out across the
land like those of some giant oak, will not feel it necessary to
mitigate the metaphor."
The prophet now speaks:-
"They shall return and dwell in His shadow.
They shall live well-watered as a garden,
Till they flourish like the vine,
And be fragrant like the wine of Lebanon."
God speaks:-
"Ephraim, what has he to do any more with idols!
I have spoken for him, and I will look after him.
I am like an evergreen fir;
From Me is thy fruit found."
This version is not without its difficulties; but the alternative
that God is addressed and Ephraim is the speaker-"Ephraim" says,"
What have I to do any more with idols? I answer and look to Him: I
am like a green fir-tree; from me is Thy fruit found"-has even
greater difficulties, although it avoids the unusual comparison of
the Deity with a tree The difficulties of both interpretations may
be overcome by dividing the verse between God and the people:-
"Ephraim! what has he to do any more with idols:
I have spoken far him, and will look after him."
In this case the speaking would be intended in the same sense as the
speaking in chapter 2. to the heavens and earth, that they might
speak to the corn and wine. Then Ephraim replies:-
"I am like an ever-green fir-tree;
From me is Thy fruit found."
But the division appears artificial, and the text does not suggest
that the two I’s belong to different speakers. The first version
therefore is the preferable.
Some one has added a summons to later generations to lay this book
to heart in face of their own problems and sins. May we do so for
ourselves.
"Who is wise, that he understands these things?
Intelligent, that he knows them?
Yea straight are the ways of Jehovah,
And the righteous shall walk therein, but sinners shall stumble upon
them."
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