Hos 11:1-4 | KingComments | STEP | In compassionate terms, the LORD speaks about Israel. He speaks about how He loved the people as a child and son, liberated them, taught them to walk, cherished them in His arms, cared for them, nurtured them and raised them. How painful is the great ingratitude with which the people have answered all that love of God. That is why God must punish the people and take distance from them. But not forever! God will ultimately take care of His people in love and accept them again. In this chapter there is more talk about Israel’s hope than about his downfall. The theme changes from judgment about Israel into blessing for Israel. In , God introduces Himself to His people in various ways. In He is a loving Father and Israel is a youth and His son. In He is the Teacher Who teaches Ephraim to walk and the Comforter Who takes him in His arms when he has fallen. In He shows Himself a loving Husband who is connected with Israel through bonds of love. He is also his Redeemer Who lifts from him the yoke of slavery under which he suffers. He is not far away from them, but descends to their level to be close to them as a Neighbor to be able to give them food as a Caretaker. Paul also points to God’s care for His people, especially during the wilderness journey: “For a period of about forty years He put up with them [or: took care of them] in the wilderness” ( ). The love of God, that is what His people, then and now, must constantly be reminded of. That love is the secret why He does not completely and definitively stop dealing with His unfaithful people. God’s love finds reason in Himself to keep expressing Himself, even though the way in which that love expresses Himself is not always the same. All God’s actions originate from His own love and not from the objects on which His love focuses. Israel has no added value for God above other nations ( ). Unlike many great nations of the earth who all build and sustain their kingdom through strength and violence, God has built and sustained His people through love. There is no power in the universe greater than the power of God’s love. However, God reminds Israel not only of His love for them, but also of the beginning of His relationship with them: “When Israel [was] a youth.” In Ezekiel 16 we also read about God’s love for Israel in the early days of the people. There the LORD tells how He found Israel as a helpless baby and how He took care of the baby in His love ( ). As we get older, it is good that we remember God’s love in our youth. Our ‘youth’ means the period in our lives that we have heard about the Lord Jesus and we have become aware of His love and care for us. This can be when we were children, young in age; it can also refer to being young in faith, the time after we had come to faith, which can also have happened at a later age. Thinking back to being receptive to God’s love in the early days is of great importance. After all, God’s love has never changed. If we no longer enjoy it, it is not because of Him, but because of ourselves. Certainly, we miss a lot ourselves, but Who misses it even more, is God. He wants so dearly to express His love to His people as His child. Let us not close ourselves off to that, but open ourselves (again?) to it and thus take the admonition to heart: “Keep yourselves in the love of God” ( ). This means that we constantly realize that God’s love goes out to us. We often forget this and go outside the realm of God’s love. Towards each other we may have the desire that Paul has for the believers in Thessalonica: “May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” ( ). Then there is something else. The LORD does not only call Israel “a youth” or “a child”, but He also calls him “My son”. With Israel as a “child” we can think of a certain helplessness. A youth or child asks for care and endears the feelings of the parents. With ‘son’ we think more of adulthood, someone with whom a parent can discuss certain things. A son is someone with whom you can consult and who can think and act independently. He knows his father’s thoughts and can make them his own and thus act in the spirit of his father. He can represent his father. Youth and son are the same person, but with a different approach. It was the same with Israel and so it is with the believer who belongs to the church. God has called Israel as His son from Egypt ( ). He has freed the people from bondage, so that He can share His thoughts with Israel and show through Israel into the world Who He is. Unfortunately, Israel did not respond to this. But there is Another Who has answered that. That is the Son of God, the Lord Jesus. It is not for nothing that this verse from Hosea is quoted when the Lord Jesus is born and has to flee immediately into Egypt because of Herod and then return to Israel ( ). Israel has failed, but God puts His Son in their place. His Son will go through the history of Israel again, but He does so without failure and everything to the glory of God. We have seen such a comparison also with regard to Israel as a vine ( ).

‏ Hosea 11:1-4

Introduction

In compassionate terms, the LORD speaks about Israel. He speaks about how He loved the people as a child and son, liberated them, taught them to walk, cherished them in His arms, cared for them, nurtured them and raised them. How painful is the great ingratitude with which the people have answered all that love of God. That is why God must punish the people and take distance from them. But not forever!

God will ultimately take care of His people in love and accept them again. In this chapter there is more talk about Israel’s hope than about his downfall. The theme changes from judgment about Israel into blessing for Israel.

God’s Love for His People

In Hos 11:1-4, God introduces Himself to His people in various ways. In Hos 11:1 He is a loving Father and Israel is a youth and His son. In Hos 11:3a He is the Teacher Who teaches Ephraim to walk and the Comforter Who takes him in His arms when he has fallen. In Hos 11:4 He shows Himself a loving Husband who is connected with Israel through bonds of love. He is also his Redeemer Who lifts from him the yoke of slavery under which he suffers.

He is not far away from them, but descends to their level to be close to them as a Neighbor to be able to give them food as a Caretaker. Paul also points to God’s care for His people, especially during the wilderness journey: “For a period of about forty years He put up with them [or: took care of them] in the wilderness” (Acts 13:18).

The love of God, that is what His people, then and now, must constantly be reminded of. That love is the secret why He does not completely and definitively stop dealing with His unfaithful people. God’s love finds reason in Himself to keep expressing Himself, even though the way in which that love expresses Himself is not always the same.

All God’s actions originate from His own love and not from the objects on which His love focuses. Israel has no added value for God above other nations (Deu 7:7-8). Unlike many great nations of the earth who all build and sustain their kingdom through strength and violence, God has built and sustained His people through love. There is no power in the universe greater than the power of God’s love.

However, God reminds Israel not only of His love for them, but also of the beginning of His relationship with them: “When Israel [was] a youth.” In Ezekiel 16 we also read about God’s love for Israel in the early days of the people. There the LORD tells how He found Israel as a helpless baby and how He took care of the baby in His love (Eze 16:1-14).

As we get older, it is good that we remember God’s love in our youth. Our ‘youth’ means the period in our lives that we have heard about the Lord Jesus and we have become aware of His love and care for us. This can be when we were children, young in age; it can also refer to being young in faith, the time after we had come to faith, which can also have happened at a later age.

Thinking back to being receptive to God’s love in the early days is of great importance. After all, God’s love has never changed. If we no longer enjoy it, it is not because of Him, but because of ourselves. Certainly, we miss a lot ourselves, but Who misses it even more, is God. He wants so dearly to express His love to His people as His child.

Let us not close ourselves off to that, but open ourselves (again?) to it and thus take the admonition to heart: “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 1:21). This means that we constantly realize that God’s love goes out to us. We often forget this and go outside the realm of God’s love. Towards each other we may have the desire that Paul has for the believers in Thessalonica: “May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2Thes 3:5a).

Then there is something else. The LORD does not only call Israel “a youth” or “a child”, but He also calls him “My son”. With Israel as a “child” we can think of a certain helplessness. A youth or child asks for care and endears the feelings of the parents. With ‘son’ we think more of adulthood, someone with whom a parent can discuss certain things. A son is someone with whom you can consult and who can think and act independently. He knows his father’s thoughts and can make them his own and thus act in the spirit of his father. He can represent his father. Youth and son are the same person, but with a different approach. It was the same with Israel and so it is with the believer who belongs to the church.

God has called Israel as His son from Egypt (Exo 4:22-23). He has freed the people from bondage, so that He can share His thoughts with Israel and show through Israel into the world Who He is. Unfortunately, Israel did not respond to this. But there is Another Who has answered that. That is the Son of God, the Lord Jesus. It is not for nothing that this verse from Hosea is quoted when the Lord Jesus is born and has to flee immediately into Egypt because of Herod and then return to Israel (Mt 2:14-15).

Israel has failed, but God puts His Son in their place. His Son will go through the history of Israel again, but He does so without failure and everything to the glory of God. We have seen such a comparison also with regard to Israel as a vine (Hos 9:1).

God’s Effort and the People’s Reaction

We would think that the people would be very grateful that they have finally been freed from the heavy slave yoke. In the beginning this is also true. In Exodus 15 they praise their Liberator (Exo 15:1). But soon after that it becomes clear how wandering they are. Again and again they wander away from God. In the book of Judges we see them leaving God over and over again. He calls them back again and again, but each time they make it worse than the time before. They sink deeper and deeper into the swamp of their own will and idolatry (Jdg 2:10-19).

“The more they called them”, indicates the efforts God made to call “them”, the people, back to Him through His prophets, “they”. He has done this over and over again. But the people no longer want to face the prophets. They walk away from them. As soon as they see a prophet, they avoid to encounter them. They prefer to continue their idolatry undisturbed.

Teaching to Live as Child of God

God taught Ephraim to walk, He taught him to stand on his own two feet, He raised him to independence. God gives His children teaching, lessons. That teaching does not just consist of giving them directions, showing them the way from beginning to end. Teaching to walk is mainly about our behavior on that road and what we can encounter there: the speed, the dangerous intersections, the places where we can take a break, where we can get food and what kind of food is best. God has given the whole Bible to His people for this purpose.

Especially the book of Deuteronomy is full of statutes and ordinances that the people have to learn. If they listen to it, they will do well and continue to enjoy the blessings of the land God has given them (Deu 4:1). Paul says to Timothy – and over his head to us – how important the Scriptures are as the only means by which we can learn to walk (2Tim 3:14-16). He points out to him the holy Scriptures “which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation” (2Tim 3:15). By “salvation” is meant: the achievement of the end goal.

Timothy is already a child of God, but he must also ‘learn to walk’. The equipping for this lies for every child of God, just like for Timothy, in reading the Bible. And when things go wrong, when we fall, there is the helping hand of God. He lifts us up, comforts us, puts us down again and we are allowed to walk again. In this way we get to know God as the God Who “carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place” (Deu 1:31).

In spite of all the evidence of care and comfort, the people do not acknowledge all of God’s loving concerns. The word “healed” at the end of this verse refers to the injuries a child suffers when it falls while learning to walk. The Israelites will often have literally hurt themselves while going through the wilderness with its many sharp stones and boulders.

Still, the healing Hosea refers to seems to relate not so much to the body, but more to the spirit. How many times have the people doubted the love of God, for example when they have no water or food. And God always gives what they needed. He heals them from their grumbling. He is also in this respect “the LORD … your healer” (Exo 15:26). But they do not acknowledge that He does this, they have no eye for it.

God Leads His People to Himself.

Incessantly and by ever-changing means, God has shown and let His people feel how much He loves them. The “cords of a man” are cords that fit human weakness. They are means that God has given to man as aids and that perfectly match his weakness. They are cords that are adapted to man and are therefore able to help him to stay on God’s way and go that way to His honor.

We can think of the whole priestly service that God has instituted. It is completely focused on the fact that the people can remain in fellowship with God, or can come back when that fellowship has been disturbed by sin. Thus “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as [we are, yet] without sin” (Heb 4:15).

We can also see such cords as “bonds of love”. Everything God does to connect His people with Himself happens out of and with love. God’s love is a searching and leading love. Whoever goes to the Lord Jesus as a sinner, goes to Him because the Father leads him there. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (Jn 6:44a).

He who loves the Lord Jesus also feels his own weakness to follow Him and will ask Him if He wants to draw him: “Draw me after you” (Song 1:4a). If God pulls, it is His love: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jer 31:3).

If God has drawn His people so much in love to Himself and also leads them, it also means deliverance from the yoke of slavery. God acts out of love and proves His love to the object of it. Hereby no yoke fits under which one is burdened (Gal 5:1). To walk at the side of God is to walk lightly, where the burden of sin no longer presses down.

Unfortunately, a Christian, just like the Israelite, can allow sin into his life again. Then the pressing yoke is felt again. Life becomes heavy again. David also experiences this after his sin with Bathsheba, when he has not yet confessed it: “For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me” (Psa 32:4a). Only when he confesses his sin will there be songs of deliverance (Psa 32:5-7).

The words ‘bent down’ mean ‘to lean over’, ‘to go down’. It is: coming closer. God comes down in the Lord Jesus, leans over to man and comes close to him. The Lord Jesus, who is God, has become Man. In Him, God has come so close to man that He becomes His Nearest. In that position He wants to take care of man, His people, and He feeds him.

In the beginning of this verse God is the ‘leading’ God who takes His people to Himself. At the end of the verse God descends to His people and wants to be with them. He wants to share their needs and provide for them. God is the same for us. He comes to us in our need and wants to give us what we need.

In our verse the giving of food still seems to refer to the ‘child Israel’. Food is important for growth. Also, spiritually we can only grow if we take the spiritual food that God gives us. That spiritual food comes from the Bible. A spiritually healthy Christian will have a healthy hunger and thirst for the Word of God (1Pet 2:2).