NOTES for Hos 7:1-16

Today's reading continues the prophet's denunciation of God's people, but now a new aspect appears in it, directly connected with the theme of judgment. It concerns God's attempts to heal the people spiritually, mentioned in Hosea's preaching (v. 1). It is no surprise that the healing exposed all the people's sins, and so the reaction to it was expected: the people recoil from God, preferring to remain as they are and forgetting God in the hope that in some incomprehensible way everything will work out and He will close His eyes to their sins. But God clearly remembers everything and has no intention of forgetting anything (v. 2).

It would seem that the very thought that God might forget the sins of those He considers His people, or that He could remain indifferent to human sinfulness at all, should seem at least strange to a believer. But in this case the issue is not reflection on the situation; on the contrary, it is completely irrational behavior.

The situation in the Northern (Israelite) Kingdom, where the prophet preached, was highly contradictory in religious terms. On the one hand, the authorities encouraged actual paganism under the guise of double faith (this was the official religious policy of almost all the kings who ever ruled in the North); on the other hand, they wanted to show themselves greater Yahwists than the authorities of neighboring Judah (the Southern Kingdom), where officially no reforms were carried out and Yahwism formally remained in the original form in which it had existed in the still united Israel under David and Solomon. But they did this poorly, for Jeroboam, the founder of the Northern Kingdom, had already broken completely not only with Jerusalem but also with the traditional Levitical priesthood, founding an alternative religious center in Bethel and establishing a new priesthood that had nothing in common with either the Torah or tradition. "Political expediency" prevailed over both, and the prophets who opposed this were persecuted.

At the same time, the authorities could no longer simply abandon the religious policy they were pursuing: every king who ruled the country understood that if he took such a step, he would have to part with the throne. His subjects, in turn, realized that they would have to live in some different way, and many of those who had acquired their wealth not merely by sinful means but by openly criminal ones (vv. 3-5) would most likely lose everything. No one, it appears, was ready for such a development, yet neither the rulers nor their subjects could justify their unwillingness to change, for everyone understood that both the Torah and tradition testified against them. All that remained was to cling to any possibility, even a phantom one, if it seemed to allow them to solve their problems without changing anything in substance (vv. 8-12).

Such a position can only lead to a dead end - both spiritual and political (vv. 13-16). This is what the prophet warns his fellow countrymen about, but neither he nor God Himself can change the choice of those who prefer to cling to their own ways while pushing away God's saving hand.

Falsehood and wrongdoing come out into the open when an infected organism is being healed. So if we have been able to see the evil that had become habitual for us and therefore invisible, that may already mean the beginning of healing. After all, the Lord shows us our abomination precisely so that, shuddering, we will agree to receive cleansing from Him. But we can become attached to sins that have become habitual for us to such a degree that we do not want to part with them. In that case, turning away from God, we move farther and farther away from Him.

Those whom the prophet denounces here have moved so far away from the Lord that in practice they have mixed with pagan nations. This means that those who were called to serve the Lord, having fallen away from Him, became just like pagans. It is entirely natural that in a difficult moment they turn for help not to the Lord, but to pagan rulers. But hope in them is vain.

Departure from the Lord begins, it would seem, with something small: falsehood. How many can say of themselves that they have never lied, even about little things? We have even grown used to treating everyday lying as a small, insignificant sin. But a small sin easily opens the door to a large one, and then, after the lie, even if not immediately, come theft and robbery...

If the Lord has called us to follow Him, then once we have responded, we must no longer turn away. Yes, we can turn away; we are free. But that will strengthen the position of evil a little more, and why would we want that?

God's complaints on His people sound in the mouth of the prophet sometimes a little bit paradoxically. God seemed to complain on those that He Himself created as people, and as nation. But to whom does He complain? To His faithful, who can’t at all really help Him: because they are not able of making the unfaithful faithful against their own will? But couldn’t God Himself do it, if He wanted to? But He avoids the constraint.

Before us is the paradox of the human freedom: God created a stone, which He cannot lift. More exactly, maybe, He does not want to do that against the will of the one who does not wish to follow Him. Of course, to oblige the intractable to be docile by power would have been easy for God. By the way, and to oblige would have been not necessary: it would have been enough to just take away from them what He continues to give them, in spite of apostasy.

Only that would be for the apostates the equivalent of death, and under the threat of death, they would have of course been docile: because, without God's support, man becomes spiritually weak and incapable of any resistance. But He does not need mutes, shy slaves, who will follow Him only by fear of death. He needs those who will follow Him freely, by love, and not by fear. That is why He has to act only from the inside, through His faithful witnesses, who can summon and persuade, but not oblige. But the problem is not only in the complaints: such words of God can be a support for those who are intrigued about the nonintervention of God in the events.

If suddenly it seems to them that God abandoned them, that His plans have changed, or that He just forgot about His faithful, these very Words of God can become a reminder that God hasn’t forgotten anybody and has not changed His plans. He just acts much more slowly, than many of His witnesses would have probably wanted. But He delays not in order to check the solidity of His servants, but to save as much as possible people. Desirably all that can be saved.