All the old sins are remembered against the people, including those that until now did not even seem to be charged as guilt. After all, in the relevant places the Bible speaks about the ancient deeds of the ancestors calmly, as if from a distance. But now the moment has come when even such long-ago, childish deeds must be answered for.

The point is that the people have grown older, and the demand made of them has become stricter. If the people, having matured, had outgrown their former sins, as mature people outgrow childish misbehavior, those sins would have been wiped away and no longer recalled. But now the people have fallen into more serious sins, and this means that the uncleanness must be uprooted from the very beginning, from the first sins that, because of the many years that have passed, seem insignificant. On favorable soil any small seed can produce a large harvest. And the people worked and fertilized the soil vigorously... The people once chosen by God have become like a Canaanite, a pagan deprived of his land for his sins. But now the Lord can turn away from this people as well.

He can, but He does not intend to. Again and again He calls out to sinners with a summons to repentance...

At first, little is clear to us in this verse. But gradually it becomes clear that Sabaoth is not a beautiful but incomprehensible surname, but a word meaning lordship over all the powers in the world. The name Yahweh (Jehovah) is revealed as "I am the One Who Is." It turns out that in every person, even one brought up on the relativity of everything around him, there lives a soul that thirsts for the Absolute, the unshakable and unconditional. And so God is the One who exists unconditionally, who is not limited by the bounds of space and time of this world and the powers acting within it. But are our relationships with Him then possible? Verse 6 speaks about this: with Him are mercy and judgment; with us is trust.

Speaking through the prophet Hosea, God sets His own faithfulness against the people's self-reliance and unfaithfulness on the paths by which He delivers Israel. A person (or an entire people) thinks in vain that he has achieved everything himself. No, it was the Lord who saved him from slavery and led him into the festive booths; it is the Lord who sends teachers and protectors. To see this, one must turn back, turn toward God, and encounter His mercy and judgment—and then a new hope will flare up in the heart.