Hosea 11-13

Intro: climbing a mountain at the bottom looking up. That is how I have felt the last month. The beauty from the top is stunning and the work to get their makes it all the more worth it.

Review: Series of toggles from God (Divine) to Hosea (Prophetic) complaint.

Egypt & Jacob - keep in mid that these two are not vastly spaced out; Jacob was buried in Egypt and in the history of Israel these events are consecutive chapters.

God as a Father:

Chapter 11 reveals God’s judgment paralleling the account of the Exodus and wilderness | 1. Divine Complaint

Ephraim as a child - trained up by the Lord and wanderings away in adolescence (1-8)

There is both a consolation and an admonition to parents in this theme

1) if your child was raised and strayed away their is comfort in the reality that God’s children did the same thing. There is hope in the possibility of their return. There is solidarity in the reality of sin in humanity.

2) if you are raising children; teach them to love and fear the Lord - this world makes it difficult to be faithful and easy to stray.

Just as Israel longed for Egypt in the Exodus and worshipped false idols - so Israel again has returned to the sins of Egypt and longed for other gods.

Ultimately in Hosea the Exodus is undone, but Israel will now be in slavery to Assyria instead of Egypt. (11:5)They will lose the blessing of the land, of a place, of safety and security, of a people, and of freedom.

We suffer from the same plight as Israel - we are continually pulled back into the mires of this world and we must look to the grace of the Lord to provide fulfillment, strength and resilience, and safety from our own wanderings.

Jesus is the one who was truly called from the wilderness and yet remained faithful until the end.

Jesus is the fulfillment of Hos. 11:1 (quoted in Matt. 2:15) in that he rightly fulfilled them moments of the wilderness wanderings. This passage is a plea to see scripture in its broader meaning. (see notes on 11:1)

Many interpreters observe that the idea that Jesus fulfilled Hos 11:1 corresponds to the typology that one finds throughout Matthew, in which Jesus recapitulates the story of Israel. Jesus was forty days in the wilderness, just as Israel was there for forty years. Jesus gave his law on a mountain, just as God gave the Torah at Sinai. Jesus miraculously fed his followers in the wilderness, just as Moses gave the people manna. As such it hardly is surprising that Matthew could see a parallel between Jesus’ departure from Egypt and the striking line of Hosea, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” The benefit of this approach to Matthew, aside from the fact that it fits not only with this passage but with the whole of his gospel, is that it does not require us to suppose Matthew was unaware of or sought to obscure the Old Testament context of Hos 11:1. To the contrary, for Matthew to have asserted that Jesus, in his return from Egypt, recapitulated the exodus experience, of necessity requires that Matthew understood the context and original meaning of Hos 11:1 to be Israel’s exodus.

Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel, vol. 19A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 221.

To turn from the Lord is to accept death (11:5-7)

Admah and Zeboiim (Bela) reference (11:9) - sister cities to Sodom and Gomorrah. Which we assume were annihilated with Sodom and Gomorrah as God’s destructive wrath fell upon them.

In 11:8-9 we see the turmoil of God as a loving father wrestling with the outcome of sin on his children. The solution is that he will not come in rage.

This I believe is a reference to the suffering servant; Jesus the God-Man who came in peace, not in war, to redeem his wayward bride and assimilate a people to follow him when he comes as the conquering king - the roaring lion of vs. 9.

The children of God should follow him and should respond to his call.

The result of the kindness of God as a father is that he will return his people to the land (1:11)

Again we are reminded that Jesus bore the wrath of God for us; when you read through passages like this you catch more of a real glimpse of what Jesus the Messiah has accomplished and the grace that we are recipients of.

Though Chapter 11 ends with Judah as the faithful older brother; ch. 12 reminds us that his destruction is not far off.

Chapter 12 reveals God’s judgment paralleling the account of Jacob and highlighting the waywardness of the chosen people. | 2. Prophetic Complaint (vv. 1-8)

Reminds us of chapter 6 in which Hosea pictured the Israelites as like Jacob in all his struggles and none of his sanctification. They were more like Jacob than Israel.

12:1 They played with fire (feed on the wind) and depended on the safety and security that came from political alliances and trade than on the Lord and his covenantal provisions.

12:4 For Hosea the lesson is that Jacob the supplanter, the one who struggled for everything, was transformed into Israel the suppliant, the recipient of grace.

Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel, vol. 19A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 238.

3. Divine complaint 12:9-11

God will undo the exodus (12:9)

God speaks through the prophets (12:10)

Sod speaks in a prophetic riddle 12:11 - referring to Gilgal and the bloody nature of Ephraim's sin.

4. Prophetic Complaint (12:12-13:3)

Similarities between Aram & Egypt

Hosea, Joel Excursus: The Use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15

Several details tie Jacob’s experience in Haran to that of Israel in Egypt. First, both Haran and Egypt are foreign lands that served as places of refuge, the first for Jacob the fugitive and the second for himself and his family in a time of famine. Second, Jacob worked like a slave to obtain Rachel’s hand, but he was deceived by his host and ended up working fourteen years instead of the agreed upon seven. Similarly, the Israelites’ confidence that Egypt was a place of safety for them was shattered when a pharaoh who did not know Joseph turned against them and enslaved them.201 Third, the alert reader knows that Laban wanted to keep Jacob from acquiring any wealth for himself but that he was thwarted when God caused the variegated sheep to multiply and so increased Jacob’s share of the flock. God thus created a situation in which Laban was eager to have Jacob leave (Gen 31:1–14). In this Yahweh delivered Jacob from the machinations of Laban just as he would later deliver Israel from Egyptians, who were also more than ready to be rid of them after Yahweh afflicted Egypt with the plagues. In both cases, moreover, the Israelites departed with the wealth of their hosts. Fourth, Hosea creates another parallel with a wordplay: Jacob “tended” (šāmar) sheep to get a wife (v. 12), and in the exodus Yahweh “tended” (šāmar) Israel through his prophet (v. 13).

Hosea identifies with Moses and speaks to his people that by rejecting him; they are rejecting the Lord. This speaks to the continuity of the Word of God and its authority.

12:14 - 13:1 reveal Ephraim’s sure demise.

Speak to the conundrum of judgment and mercy. Why does god say judgment is coming and them say i will show you mercy? Is God bipolar?

The answer is that judgment did come in the form of national upheaval and the sword. But God’s mercy also came in the form of common grace, but more specifically in the advent of Jesus.

13:2-3

More and more sin

Deeper into idolatry

Worship of self in self-made idols and craftsmanship

These things are also vanity, fleeting, and vaprous (Ecc.)

5. Divine Complaint and Decision

13:4-6; 14 Salvation text

No other God but me - 1st and 2nd commandments; he is the only God and Savior.

God has known his people and desires to know his people

God brings riches and blessing in large helpings with his grace; but our own tendency is to become complacent in our blessing.

vs. 14 speaks of the payment of the atonement

purchased from the power of the grave

a plague to death

destruction to the grave

13:7-13; 15-16 Judgment text

Lion / Bear / Leopard

Israel has destroyed their self (9)

Provocation directed at their king - full circle on the king motif; the human king failed.

Vs. 12 - the sin is hid, or separated from lovers; even this judgment is the kindness of God to remove his people from the source of their idolatry in order to procure faithfulness from their worship.

Picture of a breached pregnancy - Ephraim is pictured as an adulterous mother who bears the child named foolishness. Yet, in delivery this child ends up killing the mother.

Hosea ends with utter destruction and violence that does come to pass in the historical records.

Main Thoughts:

We must worship the Lord alone - in him alone is salvation. Their is not other god or god save him.

We must seek the Lord for the strength to remain faithful. The infidelities of the wilderness generation are the type for all of humanity - apart from grace we stray into self-love and self-worship. The arm of man is weak and prone to defeat. We cannot control any situation and must trust the Lord to work for his glory and our good.

God in his sovereignty is both loving and just. His justice falls in Israels history paving the way for his salvation through the Messiah. Both of these ideas will reach their fruiting in the day of his return.

English Standard Version Chapter 12

“So you, by the help of your God, return,

hold fast to love and justice,

and wait continually for your God.”