NOTES for Hos 13:16; Hos 14:1-9

In all the times, was character to certain persons, and to a whole nation to hope on strong protectors. In particular, for the Jews in the VIII c. before J.C. such protector was "Assur", the Assyrian empire, which, with all the complexities and the problems of relations, was all the same for the country and a defender, and a protector. But, as with any kind of protection, it was necessary to pay for everything. If we take, in particular Jews, then for their formal alliance, and practically vassal relations with the Assyria, they paid with a part of their sovereignty.

Such is the law of the fallen world, in which each looks above all for his own profit and is going to help nobody free of charge. But here is, to God, in His Kingdom, the laws are different. And it is not a matter here that God is absolutely altruist. For the life of the Kingdom, apparently, do not apply at all our notions of altruism and egoism, which, generally, turn out upon verification to be two sides of one coin. The fact is that the kingdom lives another life.

In our world the vital resources are limited and finite. If we want to share something, we have to abandon what we share, and it stops belonging to us. And for us, sooner or later stands absolutely the question of the compensation of the lost. Everything is different in the Kingdom. The resources of the Kingdom are infinite, and there are here no problems of lack or compensation. Furthermore: they increase every time, when we are ready to share with the neighbor what we have.

In our world, the resources disappear as we use them, and the more the people use a particular resource, the less it remains. In the Kingdom, resources as we use them increase, and more the people use in common the same resource, it becomes more. That is why every person and every people choosing God as protector and having established with Him deep and full relationships, contributes to the life of the Kingdom, enriching it. To the joy and benefit of oneself. And to the delight of the King.

The prophet calls the people of God to turn to the Lord with a prayer for forgiveness and healing. And God's forgiveness is boundless. It is not only, "well, all right, I will not punish you anymore"; it is truly healing. The people to whom this forgiveness is granted blossoms like a lily. The Lord gives peace and joy for which we did not even dare to hope. His light illumines everything - and heals. And therefore Ephraim, having turned back, will understand how empty his heart was when he tried to serve idols. What the Lord gives cannot even be compared with anything human.

It is generally thought that Isaiah of Jerusalem founded the Yahwistic messianic tradition. It was he who first began to speak of the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom. Yet sometimes, when reading the prophetic books, one cannot help thinking that the image, if not of the Messiah Himself, then of the messianic Kingdom, of a world transformed by the breath of God, was occasionally revealed or partly revealed even to those who lived before Isaiah. Hosea sees the world in this way as well. It is beautiful not merely in its ordinary earthly beauty, although the mountains and valleys of Israel are indeed breathtakingly beautiful, but also in a transformed beauty, the beauty with which the world begins to shine when it is washed not only by rain but also by that breath of God without which there is not and cannot be a Kingdom.

It is also significant that Hosea speaks of this transformed Israel in connection with the time when the Assyrians will disappear. He happened to witness the end of the Northern Kingdom, which he had foreseen, and he certainly understood what the Assyrian invasion threatened for Judah. Hosea also understood that flourishing would not come before the people had passed through the trial of faith that this invasion would become. Like his younger contemporary Isaiah, he understood perfectly well that the people’s spiritual state at the time left them practically no chance of a miracle or of any intervention by God in what was taking place.

Yet unlike the Kingdom of Israel, Judah was not destroyed by the Assyrians, although it was devastated. Jerusalem, besieged by the Assyrian army, was saved only by a miracle, and this occurred after Hosea’s death. So was the prophet mistaken? Hardly. If a prophet were merely a predictor of the future, one could speak of an error. But that is not so: a prophet does not predict the future. He merely states the current spiritual condition of the people that he encounters and assesses that condition not in his own name, but on behalf of God, who reveals to him what He thinks of what is happening.

The future can always be changed. When the Assyrian army stood at the gates of Jerusalem, the whole city prayed, fasted, and repented of its sins. God answered such repentance with a miracle, and the Assyrians went away empty-handed. Yet everything could have happened differently if the inhabitants had behaved differently in the face of the mortal danger that then hung over the city.

An important spiritual principle is at work here: God’s plan will be fulfilled in any event, but the forms and ways in which it is fulfilled are determined by God with account taken of the choices people make, and therefore they can change as events unfold. Nevertheless, the new and transformed world that Hosea saw will certainly come. The only question is how much time it will take and how much effort it will require.

For God, where human beings are concerned, relationship has always come first—and a relationship that exists here and now. This is, in fact, the very basis of God’s ability to forgive the sin of an individual or an entire people. Of course, if the point were not the relationship but what accompanies it, everything would be different. If, for example, what mattered to God were the consequences of people’s sins or their good deeds, forgiveness would be much more complicated.

God would then first have to calculate the balance of good and evil in the life of an individual or an entire people—it is not hard to guess what that balance would be in the vast majority of cases—and then require the guilty person or persons to deal with the consequences of what they had done, on their own or with help. It is not hard to guess that, in that case, hardly anyone could earn forgiveness. But the point is that God needs nothing of the kind. He can deal with the consequences of human sins Himself. Though it is not so simple: it took the coming of the Messiah to free us from the consequences of what we have done in the world since the Fall.

Still, in the end, the issue is not the consequences, but the very existence of a relationship with God—or its absence. Simply because relationship is spirituality. Spirit is not nature. It determines itself through will, intentions, choices made, decisions taken, and therefore through relationships—at least where other spirits are concerned, whether God or the spiritual beings He has created. The consequences of choices made on the spiritual level, however, often belong to the natural order, at least where human beings are concerned.

For we are beings both spiritual and natural, at once spirits and animals. Thus, in our case, a spiritual choice may have not only spiritual but also natural consequences. In nature, it may set in motion a whole chain of causes and effects that is sometimes far from easy to interrupt. Often, when we speak of relationships—with God or with one another—we mean not the relationships themselves, but their consequences.

Not spirit, but nature. Yet what matters to God is precisely the spiritual dimension of our relationships with one another and with Him. Nature obeys Him, and He is fully able to deal with it. We human beings, however, like all created spiritual beings, are free. We can obey, or we can refuse. That is why our ‘yes’ or ‘no’ matters to God, and why our answer determines our relationship with God and our spiritual life. What matters most is renouncing self-will. The rest can be put right.

The final chapter of Hosea seems to gather together all the themes of the prophecy: rebuke, the inevitability of retribution, the call to repentance, God's salvation, inner transformation in people, and the flourishing of the whole land. Once again Hosea emphasizes that everything depends on God's favor and His love. The time of flourishing will come when the people answer that love, when true prayer resounds in human hearts.