Hosea - 1-18-2011

General Comment on Hosea

     One scholar raises the concern that in Hosea is an inherent imagery that has implications for battered women.
     Hosea, himself in a marriage with an unfaithful woman, also portrays God in a similar relationship with Israel. Israel will be punished and finally brought back into harmonious relationship with God. The attempt to create this begins with seclusion, then punishment, physical and psychological, and finally a tender calling to return to loving relationship. The scholar notes that these are also practiced by abusive husbands (seclusion, abuse, and then intervals of kindness and generosity). “The problem arises when the metaphorical character of the biblical image is forgotten and a husband’s physical abuse of his wife becomes as justified as is God’s retribution against Israel.” (Women’s Bible Commentary, p. 195)
     Hosea used many other symbols and metaphors. For example, God is also pictured as a loving parent and Israel as a rebellious son. While he doesn’t call God a mother, neither does Hosea specify God as a father, and many of the images of caring for a young child are predominantly the arena of motherhood.
     No human metaphor is perfect. The marriage metaphor works contrary to its purpose if we allow it to create injustice. The powerful image remains of an erring people, a broken relationship, and God’s unwillingness to abandon them.


     As we continue in the book of Hosea, we recognize that themes are returned to again and again. Israel’s sin is in breaking the covenant. They have promised to be faithful to God, excluding all other deities, and they have failed to do this. Even so, they cry to God for help in hard times, yet continue doing things on their own. They worship other Gods. What can be expected accept disaster?


     Sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind is probably a proverb of the time. Its preservation in Hosea retains it as one today, although we might more common say, “what goes around comes around,’ or “we reap what we sow.”