‘“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from me, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. I myself taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him. “But since my people refuse to return to me, they will return to Egypt and will be forced to serve Assyria. War will swirl through their cities; their enemies will crash through their gates. They will destroy them, trapping them in their own evil plans. For my people are determined to desert me. They call me the Most High, but they don’t truly honor me. “Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go? How can I destroy you like Admah or demolish you like Zeboiim? My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows. No, I will not unleash my fierce anger. I will not completely destroy Israel, for I am God and not a mere mortal. I am the Holy One living among you, and I will not come to destroy. For someday the people will follow me. I, the Lord , will roar like a lion. And when I roar, my people will return trembling from the west. Like a flock of birds, they will come from Egypt. Trembling like doves, they will return from Assyria. And I will bring them home again,” says the Lord .
Charges against Israel and Judah
Israel surrounds me with lies and deceit, but Judah still obeys God and is faithful to the Holy One.’ Hosea 11:1-12(NLT)
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.
from The Prophetic Wisdom Of Hosea