NOTES for Hos 11:9
How does God's reaction differ from a human reaction? Above all, precisely in the fact that, acting in a concrete situation conditioned by human sinfulness, He never makes spontaneous decisions. Of course, reading about God's fury may sound rather strange to a person of a strictly spiritualist bent.
Indeed, are all human emotions characteristic of God? Yet we should not forget that behind human emotions there often stands a very concrete attitude toward one person or event or another, a concrete and often fully conscious intention. And attitude and intentions, unlike emotions, are characteristic not only of human beings, but also of God, as they are characteristic of every person. Then God's fury becomes entirely understandable: evidently the matter concerns something that would bring a human being to fury if he could see the situation through God's eyes and evaluate it as God evaluates it. But here the differences begin: unlike God, who restrains His fury, it is often very hard for fallen man to restrain it. Why is this so? Is it only because a person cannot control his own emotions? Surely not only that.
The matter evidently also lies in the fallen person's attitude toward the concrete situation and toward the people taking part in it. The reaction of fallen man to a situation is exactly that: a reaction, spontaneous and immediate. A person usually sees only the nearest prospect, the nearest consequences of the situation that has arisen, and evaluates mainly or exclusively them. God looks at the matter differently: He sees not only the whole perspective connected with the situation, from the nearest to the most remote, but also the potentials connected with it, above all, of course, spiritual potentials.
He sees all the possibilities that open up, even the most unlikely ones, for a successful resolution and a way out of the difficult situation that has arisen, and He is ready to use them. And of course, unlike a human being, He does not intend to apply sanctions to the guilty for the sake of sanctions, or to punish for the sake of punishment itself, even if the punishment consists only in letting those who have sinned feel the consequences of the sin they have committed.
If God does anything of the kind, it is only when He knows that this will later allow Him to use one of the possibilities He sees for a way out of the difficult situation into which His people have driven themselves by their sins. As for breaking a covenant once made, that is out of the question: even if only a remnant of the faithful remains of the people, God will preserve faithfulness to the covenant even for the sake of that remnant. Strictly speaking, in Hosea this view and this attitude are called mercy. The mercy on which the people can only hope after all the sins they have committed.