Hosea 12 - Palace Intrigue
by Lance Ponder(95)http://fkiprofessor.xanga.com
From Humility to Pride
Hos 12:1 Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long; they multiply falsehood and violence; they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt. To feed on the wind is rather pathetic. The wind carries nothing of substance, just rumor and temporary pleasure. Ephraim lives in denial, believing only what it wants to believe. YHWH is an "inconvenient truth" that they simply refuse to embrace. The kings of Samaria bargained with Assyria and Egypt trading more than goods and service, they traded their souls for a thriving market based on false religion. King Hoshea and his predecessors paid tributes, which are essentially taxes, to Assyria in particular. This tribute was paid as the extortion price to keep Assyria from invading. Even while they played the game of appeasement with one bully, they recklessly gambled they could cut a better deal through Egypt. Of course we know this did not work out well for Samaria. Regardless of Messianic context, the object lesson to be learned is that no matter what kind of trickery you devise, your crimes will come back upon you. Be faithful to God and deal faithfully with others, avoid rumor and pleasant deception, and you can be assured that God will be faithful to you.
Good For Nothing
Hos 12:2 The Lord has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways; he will repay him according to his deeds. The next several verses together with this one tell a story. Most of Hosea’s prophecies are directed toward the Northern Kingdom, but Judah is importantly mentioned here. Just a few verses earlier Judah was described as walking with God and faithful to the Holy One (Hos 11:12). In that passage Judah could be understood to symbolize Messiah. This passage, however, presents an indictment against Judah. If the context is consistent this seems strange. Notice that the punishment, however, is for what Jacob has done. The personal name Jacob clarifies the common relationship of YHWH with all the tribes, not just those in one or the other kingdom. In a Messianic sense, Christ bears the punishment of death for sin in place of all the people. Understood properly, this verse makes perfect sense continuing the Messianic context. Christ did bear the iniquity of all humanity in the beatings, bullying, and unjust execution he received. In the literal sense, relative to the more immediate future of Israel and Judah, Judah was exiled little more than a century after Israel.
Parables
Hos 12:3-6 In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel, and there God spoke with us—the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord is his memorial name: "So you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God." The man Jacob and a divine being played out this story in Gen 32:23-33. Jacob was considered righteous for his faith. It stands to reason then that if Jacob represents people, he represents faithful people. Just as Jacob literally wrestled with the physical manifestation of the divine, faithful people today struggle with God in many ways. We seek to know Him, we seek blessing, and we hope to finally be saved from the terrible fate we so richly deserve. Just as God spared Jacob from the wrath of Esau, we who are found faithful are spared God’s great final wrath. It is common to weep when we reach the end of our struggle with divinity, when we come to the point of repentance and forgiveness, when at last we know in our hearts we are transformed by grace into new beings. In that moment we know we are saved because we sense in our soul that we have received God’s help and will always be in communion with the Lord. We know love that transcends human understanding. We begin, if only slowly, to realize that God is fully just as well as fully merciful. From that point forward we are fulfilled in our continual service and obedience to God. We wait patiently for His divine plan to be complete. In His good time our resurrection shall be like that of Jesus and our glorified beings shall be forever in the company of pure manifest love. With regard to Hosea’s immediate audience, the story of Jacob also served as a reminder that with the blessing of God comes expectation. The people are expected to rely on God, to love, and to behave justly, always with faith in God and God alone. It is this very expectation Israel has failed to meet and which Judah would later be found guilty of failing to meet. There is a distinct call to repentance found in the instruction to return, but with it comes the promise of God’s help if only they will try. So too we can fully trust the help of God to turn our lives around if we will only return to Him with an earnest heart of repentance.
Wilderness Revisited
Hos 12:7-8 A merchant, in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress. Ephraim has said, "Ah, but I am rich; I have found wealth for myself; in all my labors they cannot find in me iniquity or sin." Religion was big business in ancient Israel. With prosperity and comfort comes the natural desire to keep what you gain and add to it. Greed compounds quickly. Israel is accused here of dealing falsely and oppressing. As the kings and merchants continued to grow their idol trade, false worship grew. By pushing false worship on the people, they oppressed the people with religious and commercial deceptions. From their own perspective, however, the idol traders could not see where they were doing anything wrong. They were "just trying to make a buck." We are easily blinded to our sin when something that seems harmless brings us pleasure. We don’t want to know how this "harmless" thing we embrace is hurting anyone else. We certainly don’t want to know how it hurts our relationship with God. In context with surrounding verses Hosea is still laying out the case against Ephraim for the punishment to come.
Self Deception
Hos 12:9 I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feast. The importance of the exodus from Israel cannot be overstated. Exodus events were profound on many levels. Even though Ephraim promoted idolatry, the cultural memory of Moses and the passage from slavery through the wilderness into their promised land was alive and well. The spring and fall feasts of Israel were as much a part of their culture then as Christmas and Easter are part of American culture today. One of those feasts, the last fall feasts, was called by various names including Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Ingathering. Regardless of the title used, during this time of celebration the people would construct tents from raw natural materials and live in them for a week. This ritual was to serve as a very literal reminder of the temporary period of dwelling in the wilderness. It was also a symbol of temporary nature of this life and the way our physical body is the tent and tabernacle of our soul. In this particular context, the crude tents people constructed for the Feast of Booths indicated the harsh conditions that would be experienced during the exile to Assyria.
God’s Commandment
Hos 12:10 I spoke to the prophets; it was I who multiplied visions, and through the prophets gave parables. In the context of the text this verse, like the one before it, reads as God explaining His identity. He lays out His divine attributes of omnipotent leadership. We also see clearly spelled out a certain hierarchy. God speaks, but notice that He speaks to the prophets. He not only speaks, but also gives them visions. Parables, however, are not for the prophets. Parables are for the people. The prophets are merely the routes through which God speaks to the people. There must be some significance to the idea that God speaks directly to His prophets, but give parables to the people. A parable is a story that draws a parallel to illustrate some important point. Jesus normally spoke to groups of people in parables (Mt 13:34-35). As he neared the end of his ministry, Jesus spoke plainly to his disciples without parables (Jn 16:25-33). He referred to them as friends (Jn 15:15). It seems then that the closer one is to God, the clearer and more personal the communication with Him will be. Before Christ, the Lord spoke through anointed prophets and priests. Since Pentecost the promise to bestow the Holy Spirit on all believers has been fulfilled. Now the Holy Spirit speaks directly to our hearts without need for a priestly intercessor. Certainly there are many gifts of the Spirit and each has this one or that one, including prophecy, but all believers are called to membership in Christ’s royal priesthood (1 Pe 2:9). Under this new covenant the Holy Spirit dwells within and communicates directly with and through the hearts of believers (Ez 36:26-27). Like the prophets of old and the Apostles before us, we too have direct access to the God of the Universe, Maker of the heavens and the earth, and Lord of us all.
Jacob’s Indictment and Jacob’s Punishment
Hos 12:11 If there is iniquity in Gilead, they shall surely come to nothing: in Gilgal they sacrifice bulls; their altars also are like stone heaps on the furrows of the field. The previous two verses reinforced the authority of prophets, including Hosea himself. This verse turns attention back to the problem at hand, namely the idolatrous nation of Israel. Gidead was a region east of the Jordan and the covenant land of the tribe of Gad. It bordered the territory controlled by the Ammonites and was heavily influenced by other nearby pagan neighbors like Moab and Aram. Gilgal, a small town just outside Jericho, was one of Israel’s major cult centers where they sacrificed bulls as part of their Baal worship. Such a place is as worthless people as a pile of rocks in a field. To make a field productive such rocks must be removed. So it will be in the near future (from Hosea’s perspective).
Palace Intrigue
Hos 12:12-14 Jacob fled to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. Ephraim has given bitter provocation; so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds. Hosea again uses well known stories from Genesis to illustrate his point. The point at hand is humility. Jacob feared the wrath of his brother, so he ran off. He ended up with a relative where he stayed and worked as a shepherd to earn the privilege of marriage. Israel literally began humbly with fear and trembling, but with a quest for a marriage of love. Hosea then fast-forwards by a few centuries to the days of Moses. Moses is accepted as the greatest of the prophets. Through Moses the Lord brought the house of Israel up out of oppression to the Promised Land. Along the way Moses intervened for the people and directed all sorts of activity from settling legal matters to waging war. At this point Israel was still very young as a nation. Like a bratty little teenager Israel demanded a king "to be like all its neighbors." Like a cocky older teenager Ephraim’s rebellion provoked the Lord to wrath. Not only has Israel chosen to pretend it is adult enough to truly take care of itself, it behaves like an out of control gang of hoodlums bent on every form of evil. Idolatry, immorality, deception, and even murder were common in the places of power in Ephraim. What Israel has sown it will reap.
Majoring in the Minors
Hosea Chapters:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Article submitted Sunday, April 04, 2010 & read 118 times.
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