Hosea:  Classic Country

How can I give you up, Ephraim?  How can I relinquish you, Israel?

My mind is turning over inside me.  My emotions are all agitated together.

(Hosea 11:8 — The Anchor Bible)

 

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 Suppose the books of the bible were radio stations.  Classical music lovers, those with highly refined and sophisticated artistic taste, would likely stay tuned to the Psalms, offering elegant and moving symphonies.  If the barely structured improvisation of Jazz is more to your liking, I would suggest the book of Judges, where the Hebrew people were gradually developing their structure as a nation, “each going his own way.”  Still drawn to the flashing lights of 1970’s Disco, with its turning globe reflecting colored lights?  Then you will love Ezekiel, whose vision of spinning lights sounds a bit like a disco: “I saw something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the creatures, the fire was bright and lightning issued from the fire, and they darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning.”   If Easy Listening or the love ballads of Soft Rock is what you crave, may I suggest the Song of Solomon, which offers gentle romantic sounds, a delicate dialogue of love.  Finally, speaking of dialogue, if you’re a Talk Radio sort of person, I suggest Job, who seems to anchor a talk show exploring life’s complexities.  Job has many callers.  Three friends weigh in, a man named Elihu is given prominent air time, his wife adds a word or two, and God himself is the final caller. 

 

Ah, but if your taste is Country, you must tune in to Hosea, your twenty-four hour Classic Country Connection.  Country music tells down-to-earth stories about people and their relationships, stories of love and marriage —not only in their best and happiest moments, but also in their most troubled and tumultuous moments.  Marriages in all their snarled glory, from moments of sheer romantic ecstasy to low moments of betrayal and pain.

 

The love story in Hosea features an odd couple indeed, a Prophet and a Prostitute.  Reading Hosea, one feels as if a Jerry Springer alert has been issued, that things are going to get loud and ugly.  To be sure, this is no charming, elegant amour from polite society.  Hosea’s wife is no wealthy, polished lady of fine upbringing.  Oh, she’s a lady all right — a Lady of the Evening!  Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, to borrow a classic line from country from Sammy Kershaw, the Queen of Hosea’s Doublewide Trailer.

 

“Go marry a prostitute,” God tells Hosea.

 

“But God, why would I want to do that?” we might imagine Hosea objecting.

 

“For an object lesson,” we hear God reply.  “What better analogy to demonstrate to Israel that they have been like a prostitute, unfaithful in their vows to me?” 

 

And so it is that Hosea learns to sing with Garth Brooks, “I’ve got friends in low places!”  The indelicate language of God’s speech shows just how low.  “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom, and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (1:2).  “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the LORD loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other Gods” (3:1).

 

So it is that Hosea the prophet weds Gomer, the wanton trollop, and what God has joined together let no one put asunder.  But, as one might expect, it was a troubled relationship from the start.  Gomer continues her promiscuous conduct, leaving Hosea to croon with Kenny Rogers, “Ruby, (I mean Gomer,) don’t take your love to town.”   That’s precisely what Hosea says in 3:3, “I said to Gomer, You must remain as mine.  You shall not play the prostitute.”

 

So then, how did this story, calling to mind the lyrics of Classic Country, make the sacred pages? Because the relationship between Gomer and Hosea represents divine love in microcosm.  Yahweh is the outraged partner of a violated covenant, as Israel “decks herself with rings and jewelry” to take her love to town.

 

Will Yahweh be angered to the point of judgment?  Surely yes, but it is precisely our expectations of divine anger which make the tender tones of compassion all the more startling.  Just when God has stated that he is ready to bring judgment upon his unfaithful people, he agonizes, “How can I give you up?  How can I relinquish you?  My mind is turning over inside me.  My emotions are all agitated together.”  Behold divine love in emotional turmoil.

Amazing.  This love is not cast in lofty theological language such as John 3:16, a declaration of God’s agape love.  This divine love is spoken out of the angst of an intense emotional tossing and turning, the very image of Eros in a Valentine’s environment of love.

 

Stephen Bishop wrote the clever lyrics of a man much in love, but whose relationship with his lover was troubled.  She left him, and he sang in the pain of his loneliness, “I’m so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.”  Now that’s a schizophrenic song.   But make no mistake, Hosea is a schizophrenic book.  Hosea’s structure is a challenge to discover, an enigma. God’s frequent mood shifts in Hosea have been called a “turbulent vacillation” of the divine mind, abrupt shifts which leaves Israel pulling petals from the flower in her hand, wondering in a Valentine’s Day reflection, “He loves me?  He loves me not?” 

How much unfaithfulness would God take before walking out of the covenant relationship?  The symbolic names given their children in chapter one suggest God had given up on Israel.  They are told to name their girl, Lo-Ruhamah.  The meaning, “no more compassion,” couldn’t be clearer.  “For I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them” (1:6). 

Strong words.  It gets worse.  Their son is named, Lo-ammi, “not my people.”  “For you are not my people, and I am not your God.”  Could Yahweh be any more emphatic?  

 

But God changes his mind.   “In the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not my people,’ it shall be said, ‘Children of the Living God.’”  We want to ask, “How can that be?  Just a few seconds ago, you said Lo-ammi.  Not my children.  Now you call them Children of the Living God?” 

 

Welcome to Hosea’s experience of God’s love.  “My mind is turning over inside me.  My emotions are agitated all together.”  In other words, “I’m so miserable without you, its almost like having you here.”  Or in the words of another Country Classic, “I can’t stop loving you.  I’ve made up my mind.”

 

Lest you think the divine mind made settled, prepare for another rapid descent in this roller coaster of love.  “Upon her children I will have no pity, because they are the children of whoredom.  For their mother has played the whore, she who conceived them has acted shamefully” (2:4-5).  God goes on to warn Israel that someday she will tire of her relentless pursuit of lovers, that when she tries to return to God it will be too late.  It is as Hank Williams sang, “Your Cheatin’ Heart will pine someday, and crave the love you threw away.  The time will come when you’ll be blue, Your Cheatin’ Heart will tell on you.”

 

But again, immediately after Yahweh’s declaration of intent to punish Israel, comes another gentle swaying of the divine mind.  “I will now allure her, and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her” (2:14).  God seems determined to win Israel’s affection.  “On that day, says the LORD, you will call me ‘My husband’ . . . I will take you for my wife forever . . . and I will have pity of Lo-Ruhamah and I will say to Lo-ammi, you are my people” (2:16, 19).

 

So goes Hosea.  He loves me.  He loves me not.  God’s determinations to show mercy and love are met with recurrent acts of unfaithfulness, causing, as Elvis pined, frequent trips to Heartbreak Hotel.  Or, as Ray Price sang, “Heartache number 1 was when you . . . left me, I never knew that I could hurt this way.  And heartache number 2, Was when you...come back again.  You came back and never meant to stay.  Now I've got heartaches by the number, troubles by the score.  Every day you love me less.  Each day I love you more.”

 

That’s precisely what Yahweh’s says.  “The more I called them, the more they went from me . . . my people are bent on turning away from me . . . but . . . how can I give you up, Ephraim?  How can I hand you over, Israel?  My mind is turning over inside me, my emotions are agitated altogether.  I will not execute my fierce anger.”  Just when it appears most hopeless, we learn that God’s heart, though broken by Israel’s actions, flows with an unbroken stream of love.  For God, it seems, in the words of Clint Black, “Goodbye is easier said than done.” 

 

In Hosea, God’s heart and intentions are back-and-forth, an emotional bouncing which renders the book somewhat amorphous, possessing an amoeba-like quality, a structural ambiguity bordering on chaos.  That’s precisely the point.  That’s the nature of love.  Shapeless.  Nebulous. Chaotic.

It’s a little hard for me to believe 36 years have passed.  My Sunday afternoons were spent a bit differently in 1971 than today.  It wasn’t unusual to find me at the motocross track.  I wasn’t a racer.  I was and still am terrified of motorcycles.  But my friend was very proud of his lime green Kawasaki dirt bike and was quite accomplished on the local circuit.  I didn’t race, but I had a blast watching Mike risk life and limb on an obstacle course full of sharp twists and turns, jumps and dips.  I think were I to close my eyes I could still hear the sound of those engines revving as the bikes bunched at the starting line waiting for the signal to start the insanity.

 

Speaking of engines revving.  On one of those afternoons in 1971, Mike brought a friend with him, a 16 year old girl who caught my eye.  I can still remember asking Mike, “The girl.  What’s her name?”  Before long, this 17 year old young man was quite in love with a beautiful young lady named Sherry Oxner.  Suddenly, I became goal-oriented.  As David Appelbaum writes, “Eros finds us unexpectedly, without warning, and instantly we are all attention.”

 

I was all attention.  The chase was on.  The twists and turns, the jumps and dips of this obstacle course of love, were more real than those of the dirt track where we met.  But I was determined to maneuver through all obstacles.  Persistent I was.  And O, so odd.  During that time I did some very peculiar things.  The structures by which my family and friends had known me were blurred.  Robert Graves wrote, “Love is a universal migraine, blotting out all reason.”  I was in the midst of love’s chaos, and for those first four years of on and off courtship, until we married 32 years ago, there were plenty of twists and turns.  I can be thankful now that she kept giving me, in the words of Vince Gill, One More Last Chance.   

 

Again, David Appelbaum, “How does the heart open to the other?  That’s a riddle which has long obsessed humanity.  In the blink of an eye (perhaps a chance meeting at a motocross race?), Eros’s dart pierces the shield of isolation, and fragmentation is no more.  A new question appears, Who am I who is so easily smitten?  The first lesson of the lover is vulnerability.”

 

Loving another, being so smitten, renders us vulnerable.  Isn’t it amazing that, no less than our own, God’s love for us can be described this way?  If nothing else we learn about God in Hosea, it’s God’s amazing vulnerability.  Amazing love, indeed.

 

Join me now in singing what has long been my favorite hymn, Charles Wesley’s, And Can It Be That I Should Gain?  Listen especially to the chorus, “Amazing love, how can it be, that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

 

Sources:

“Focus,” an essay by David Appelbaum in PARABOLA, (Eros, February 2003.)