NOTES for Hos 2:1-23
In the Yahwist tradition, and later in the Jewish tradition, the relationship between God and the people of God was often likened to a family or marital relationship. At first glance, this approach may seem too free, almost overfamiliar: God seems to be brought down to a human, almost everyday level. But on reflection, this is the only way to preserve the covenant-union made at Sinai.
Indeed, the relationship between God and an individual, just like that between God and the people of God, can be complete only if it is informal and unconditional. Of course, marital relations also have room for legal formalities and marriage contracts, which were known in ancient Israel as well. But a marriage contract, as we know, is made chiefly to settle property and other legal formalities in the event of divorce.
When relations between spouses are sound, it occurs to no one to demand that the other observe some contract: everything is resolved through love and mutual consent. The same applies to the covenant between God and His people, which extends to everyone who joins that people. The Decalogue is, of course, a condition of the covenant; consciously violating any of the Ten Commandments means breaking it.
The Decalogue is not merely a moral code; it describes the path that leads to God or, when its commandments are violated, leads away from God. And it becomes relevant, like the Torah as a whole, precisely when a person sins, departs from God, and breaks the relationship with Him, as the apostle Paul says. Through the Torah, in the apostle's words, sin is known. Thus, in the relationship between God and a human being, the law becomes relevant when the relationship is moving toward rupture. When the relationship is sound, the Torah is inwardly organic to the person and is not perceived as something restricting him or her from without.
Hosea speaks of a relationship between God and His people that resembles relations within a strong family and needs no formal regulation. This, incidentally, was the people's only chance of salvation, their only chance that God would accept them. By Hosea's time the covenant-union had already been broken repeatedly, and now all that remained was the hope that God would forgive His people as a loving husband forgives an unfaithful wife and does not divorce her, although he has every right and every reason to do so.
But forgiveness is possible only if the people's relationship with God is renewed and acquires a new spiritual quality. Simply returning to what existed before is as impossible as gluing together the shards of a broken vessel. This hope already contains a foretaste of the Kingdom: when entering the Kingdom, a person does not return to the state that belonged to humanity before the Fall, but gains something new and greater, the fullness of life that surpasses every sin previously committed.