{"id":75937,"date":"2020-06-12T16:10:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T13:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=75937"},"modified":"2020-06-12T16:10:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T13:10:44","slug":"faithless-wife-then-wayward-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/faithless-wife-then-wayward-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Faithless Wife, Then Wayward Son"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"75937","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":67893,"related_cahpter":"501","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Hosea mixes his metaphors to make his point(s)\r\n\r\n","content":"

Hosea came to warn Israel of the nation\u2019s impending doom shortly before its conquest by the Assyrians. He served the role for Israel that Jeremiah would later serve for Judah. Like Jeremiah, Hosea is portrayed as a doomsayer and like Jeremiah, the underlying message is one of hope amid the foreboding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As we see in many of the other books, the role of the prophet is more than just an intermediary between the people and God. The prophet is to establish himself in the service of God as a human allegory for the nation as a whole. In the first section this is uniquely inverted: In one of the most morally perplexing stories in the Tanakh, Hosea is ordered to personify God Himself by marrying a harlot, Gomer, who subsequently (if predictably) betrays him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Endless words have been written over 2,000 years arguing about whether the episode actually happened or whether it was allegorical. But as always, the message is the message, and here the message is completely plain: Israel has betrayed her marital partner God and been promiscuous with all sorts of other foreign gods-cum-lovers. Just like the metaphor of marriage to God elucidated in the Torah helped the initial audience understand the human-God relationship in terms they could relate to, the extension of that metaphor to betrayal and subsequent separation concretized what is otherwise highly abstract for an audience for whom abstractions were peripheral.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the metaphor of God and Israel as being bound in marriage extends throughout the Tanakh, it is here that it achieves its most explicit exposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second section of the book is Hosea\u2019s oracles to the nation. It indirectly comments on the first part, the marriage allegory, and calls for the people to know God. The text is telling us that the experience of God needs to be intimate and exclusive; knowing God is meant to be understood as parallel to the \u201cknowing in the biblical sense\u201d that a man and wife are supposed to have but that Hosea himself did not.<\/span><\/p>\n

After reminding us that Israel was birthed in sin, with the crooked Jacob deceiving his blind father before experiencing a personal redemption and being renamed Israel, the final commentary (chapter 11 and on) switches to a second metaphor – Israel as God\u2019s son. Interweaving with a metaphor of marriage is a parallel track that sees Israel born at the splitting of the Sea of Reeds and coming of age at the end of the desert travels when entering the Promised Land.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hosea\u2019s final oracle reminds us that even though Israel has failed it in its marriage vows, that is not the only way that it can relate to God. Israel is also like his son – his firstborn son. While a promiscuous wife must surely expect divorce, a wayward son can expect stern chastisement and perhaps banishment for a while, but the father is always predisposed to forgive a reformed son.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":75938,"id":75938,"title":"hos1-hosea - granger","filename":"hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/faithless-wife-then-wayward-son\/hos1-hosea-granger\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"hos1-hosea-granger","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":75937,"date":"2020-06-12 13:10:30","modified":"2020-06-12 13:10:41","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":400,"height":393,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger-150x150.jpg","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger-300x295.jpg","medium-width":300,"medium-height":295,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","medium_large-width":400,"medium_large-height":393,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","large-width":400,"large-height":393,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","1536x1536-width":400,"1536x1536-height":393,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","2048x2048-width":400,"2048x2048-height":393,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","post_full_size-width":400,"post_full_size-height":393,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/hos1-hosea-granger.jpg","home_baner-width":400,"home_baner-height":393}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"Faithless Wife, Then Wayward Son","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"Hosea mixes his metaphors to make his point(s)","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":{"ID":75938,"id":75938,"title":"hos1-hosea - 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