NOTES for Hos 5:15

How painful it is for the prophet to see that the darkness of paganism has entered even his own people! Israel is the hope of the world; in Abraham's seed all the families of the earth will be blessed. God gave His people the Law, but they rejected it: they are unfaithful to the Lord and deceive one another. When the keepers of the Law do not live by the Law, who can help them? The consequences of this falling away are terrible: desolation, famine, war. Only by repenting and seeking God can they once again regain His presence.

Today's reading is wholly devoted to rebuking God's people and warning of the judgment awaiting them (v. 1). It would seem that there is nothing here to distinguish God's judgment from human judgment: the people are guilty, the evidence of their guilt is plain, and the day comes when God, as the supreme Judge, will pronounce His sentence. And yet in this divine judgment there is something completely incomprehensible and unthinkable from the point of view of human ideas about justice.

It turns out that God's judgment cannot take place until the people acknowledge their guilt. The Lord leaves them and withdraws in order to wait for this acknowledgment (v. 15). It is expected that it will be accompanied by turning to God, with a request both for judgment and for help. From a human point of view, such an approach looks rather strange: earthly courts exist above all to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. Here, however, it turns out that God sees His task as Judge only in determining the measure of punishment for those who themselves acknowledge their guilt, and also in helping the guilty person so that he can be freed from the sin that led to the crime.

As for determining guilt, no court as such is needed here. The disasters that befall the people bear eloquent witness to it (vv. 9-12), and it is precisely in them that the prophet sees God's punishment. However, these troubles do not have the proper effect on the consciousness of those being punished: the people do not perceive them as punishment from God and, trying to escape them, turn to everyone except the One who could truly help (vv. 13-14).

The result is a paradox: one can be delivered from God's punishment only by turning to God and asking Him for judgment! At first glance this turn of events seems completely incomprehensible. But if judgment is nothing other than the moment of meeting God face to face, as was already revealed to Amos, much here falls into place. For then it becomes obvious that the true punishment is not God's action but, on the contrary, His inaction, which leaves a person alone with his sins and their consequences.

Of course, God's nonintervention in events can also be called punishment in a certain sense, but only in a certain sense: God does not intervene in the situation, and therefore nothing that happens to a person in that case can be considered a consequence of His will. Theologians call this "permission": a state in which God neither wants nor does evil, but also does not prevent it from happening, leaving the person free to act. And then the person can only reap the fruits of the evil he has sown. Only God, by intervening in the situation again, can deliver a person from this fate.

Wrath is poured out on all who have fallen into sin, but especially on those placed at the head of the people: kings and priests. Everyone will be called to account for his deeds, but the leaders of the people, called to preserve the Higher Truth, will be called to account especially, because more has been given to them. The description of the consequences of sins and lawlessness is severe.

But precisely here, after all the warnings, we again hear words of hope, a prophecy of the Lord's mercy and a promise of the coming Resurrection. The fact that the prophecy speaks of resurrection on the third day makes it possible for us to see in these words one of the first prophecies of the coming Resurrection of Christ, although here it is speaking about people, about the raising of the people from sin and darkness. But there is no contradiction here, because the Son of God became incarnate precisely in order to share our earthly path with us and give us hope of being raised together with Him.

And it is precisely here that what are perhaps the central words of the book of Hosea sound: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. These words, long familiar and well memorized, still continue to surprise us today if we look at them with fresh eyes. How can this be? Are all our efforts, our labors, everything we have sacrificed, really all in vain?

Yes, all our efforts can turn out to be empty and futile if we sacrificed with a hard heart, remaining merciless toward those around us, and all the more if we turn our relationship with the Lord into a transaction.