BIG IDEA:
THE PATH TO RESTORATION INVOLVES REPENTANCE AND RENEWAL
INTRODUCTION:
Derek Kidner: There are at least two ways of taking this. One is that God is first portraying in 5:15 – 6:3 the deep conversion that He is working for and will at last evoke – that total change of heart which will irradiate the closing chapter of the book. Then in verses 4ff. He turns to the sad spectacle of Israel as she is at present, incapable of any such response. On this view (or on the view that verses 1-3 are Hosea’s own plea to Israel – see below) no fault can be found with the sentiments of these verses. In themselves they are a perfect expression of humility, faith and serious intent. The trouble is that Israel is at present in no state to speak or even think along such lines. Religion, for her, is not knowing God, still less ‘pressing on to know him’. It is merely placating Him with sacrifice, as verse 6 implies.
A more common view is that the fine words of verses 1-3 are Israel’s own, but facile and presumptuous, as if to say with Catherine the Great, ‘Le bon Dieu pardonnera; c’est son métier’ – The good Lord will pardon; that’s his trade’ – making light of both the desperate state of the nation (‘after two days he will revive us’) and the high demands of pressing on to know the Lord. Against this one might point out that this speech is introduced in 5:15 as something spoken out of deep distress, and that the second word for ‘seek’ in that verse is especially urgent (‘seek earnestly’: cf. NEB, NIV). Yet a similar passage in the Psalms reveals how false such earnestness can be:
When he slew them, they sought for him;
they repented and sought God earnestly (sic). . . .
But they flattered him with their mouths;
they lied to him with their tongues.
Their heart was not steadfast toward him
(Ps. 78:34, 36-37).
Either view, then, is possible, and either way it emerges that Israel has no conception of the faithful love that God is looking for. But to me it is the former view that carries conviction, if only because the divine protest in verse 6 makes no contact – except by way of agreement! – with anything in verses 1-3. It also allows us to read these verses as the eloquent and rich example of a serious approach to God which they appear to be. They are restored to us as words not only for study but for actual use.
J. Andrew Dearman: The question is whether 6:1–3 is the speech of the people that the Lord longs to hear while waiting in his place (5:15), and is thus composed by Hosea to represent true repentance (if only Israel would embrace it!); or whether 6:1–3 is something that Israel is proposing but in an inadequate way.
Duane Garrett: Hosea here identifies himself with the people and calls on them to join him in returning to Yahweh. The placement of 6:1–3, a call to repent, immediately after Yahweh’s declaration that he would retire to his place and await a positive response from the people cannot be accidental. Nevertheless, scholars often treat this text as a secondary addition, or at least as a spurious repentance on the part of Israel. Some argue that this text is a citation of a liturgy given by the wayward religious leadership, which Hosea or a redactor has inserted in order to illustrate their artificial piety and their arrogant presumption that Yahweh would save them. So interpreted 6:1–3 is ironic; it is not a true call to repentance. The justification for such a reading is that Yahweh’s response in 6:4 indicates exasperation with the transitory piety of Israel and Judah. In that response, however, Yahweh specifically chides the people for hollow cultic ceremony and for a want of true repentance (6:6). Verses 1–3, however, are entirely in keeping with what God desires: the verses recognize that God has punished the people (v. 1) and express a desire for them to attain to the knowledge of God. One could only read 6:1–3 as false piety if it expressed the things 6:4ff. condemns, specifically, a desire to appease God through ritual. In fact, the desiderata of 6:1–3 and 6:4–6 are exactly the same. Therefore 6:4 should not be read as a rejection of 6:1–3 but as despair over whether the people would ever heed the call of 6:1–3.
Terence Fretheim: The language is exquisite, the religious practice thoughtful, the theology apt, the repentance explicit, the recognition of appropriate divine judgment evident, and the quest for knowledge of the Lord in tune with Hosea’s most basic concerns. Moreover, creation is related to God and not Baal, there are no signs of apostate worship, and their hope in God is voiced clearly. Indeed, the people do what 3:5 anticipates they will do.
James Mays: These three verses make up a distinct unit. It has long since been recognized that the piece is liturgical in form and is to be identified as a song of penitence. Such songs were used in times of national crisis when the people were assembled for fasting, lament, petition, and sacrifice to avert the wrath of God. The song is composed of two elements: a twofold summons to return to Yahweh and to acknowledge his lordship (vv. 1a α, 3a α), followed by assertions of confidence that Yahweh will save.
Jeremy Thomas: Now watch because Hos 6:1-3 is this principle applied to the nation Israel. The chapter division at this point is unfortunate because this connects directly with verse 15. Verse 15 said that when they sunk to their all time low and they were at the end of their rope they would acknowledge their guilt, they would seek His presence and it would be an earnest search. Verses 1-3 is the nation doing those three things. When did the nation do this? Answer: they haven’t done it yet. So verses 1-3 describe a future response of the nation Israel to their God.
Alternate View:
H. D. Beeby: I propose to take the six verses as continuous and, therefore, to accept that the first three express a superficial repentance. . . What we must note is proximity of the passage to the traditional text in vv. 4–6 and the total absence of any historical reference which might incline us to divide the verses into two distinct halves. In fact the evidence is rather against such a division, as there seems to be a correspondence in verse form yet in contrast to their contents. . . the six verses describe Israel’s “return” as a sham, or at least as an inadequate confession; that is why the return is followed by God’s exposure of its hollow triviality and then his giving of his own definition of what is demanded of his people.
Trent Butler: God promised his blessings to a people who returned to him with their whole heart (Deut. 30:9–10). Such repentance meant turning to God and away from all idols and false worship (1 Sam. 7:3). Repentance was a matter of the heart, not of traditional mourning rituals (Joel 2:13). But such repentance seldom happened in Israel’s history (2 Kgs. 23:25). Hosea pictured a people who went through the proper community worship ritual and said the right words but had the wrong emphasis. . .
Israel makes the pursuit too easy. God’s appearance to a people pursuing him is as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise or like the rains that come in the rainy seasons of the year to water the crops. God is gracious. God is forgiving. God wants an intimate relationship in which his people truly know him, but God cannot be reduced to a law of nature that always repeats itself no matter what the people do. Repentance and knowledge of God depend on a much deeper understanding and expectation of God.
I. (:1-2) REPENTANCE — RETURN TO THE LORD WHO HEALS AND GIVES NEW LIFE
A. (:1a) Exhortation – Return to the Lord in Repentance
“Come, let us return to the LORD.”
Duane Garrett: Every time the word “return” is used with Israel as the subject and Yahweh as the one to whom return is made, it indicates a true repentance and not a pseudoreturn. In fact, returning to Yahweh is a major theme of the book. The structure of this short song develops a basic theme of the Bible, that repentance necessarily precedes reception of divine favor.
Derek Kidner: [The word “return”] embraces both repentance and conversion, crowned with reconciliation. The word is as strong as it is simple.
B. (:1b-2) Motivation – The Lord Heals and Resurrects
- (:1b) The Lord Heals
a. Healing Viewed from the Lion Motif
“For He has torn us, but He will heal us;”
b. Healing Viewed from the Disease Motif
“He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.”
Allen Guenther: Their hope for recovery rests in the Lord. They appeal to no one else. Inasmuch as he has punished, in his time he will also restore their fortunes and bind up their wounds. God can be trusted to respond to heartfelt sorrow over sin. God’s people have become aware that he is the only Deliverer.
Alternate View:
David Allen Hubbard: Song of Feeble Penitence
Yet none of this is enough. The crucial requirement of ‘admitting their guilt’ (v. 15) has been omitted. They have faced their woundedness (v. 2; cf. 5:12–13) but not their waywardness. Healing is sought, even resurrection, but no specific sin is mentioned. This absence of repentance and failure to confess sins by name contrast sharply with Hosea’s closing song of penitence (14:1–3). And God’s complaint (vv. 4–5) seems to indicate his dismissal of the song as inadequate, whereas Israel’s final song is followed by Yahweh’s promise of love and healing and then by his own love song (14:4–7).
- (:2) The Lord Resurrects
“He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day That we may live before Him.”
Duane Garrett: It is clear that in its original context this passage describes the restoration of Israel, the people of God; and for many interpreters this is proof enough that the resurrection of Christ is not in view here. Such interpretation, however, understands messianic prophecy too narrowly as simple, direct predictions by the prophets of what the Messiah would do. In fact, the prophets almost never prophesied in that manner. Instead, they couched prophecy in typological patterns in which the works of God proceed along identifiable themes. Furthermore, Christ in his life and ministry embodied Israel or recapitulated the sojourn of Israel. Thus, for example, Christ’s forty days in the wilderness paralleled Israel’s forty years of wandering, and his giving of his Torah on a mountain (Matt 5–7) paralleled the Sinai experience.
Another great event in Israel’s history was its restoration after captivity, an event that was almost a bringing of the nation back from the dead. Ezekiel develops this concept in his dry bones vision (Ezek 37:1–14). From this we can conclude that Christ’s resurrection, in addition to its profound soteriological aspects, was a typological embodiment of the “resurrection” of Israel in its restoration. We should add that this is not artificially reading New Testament history into the Old Testament (as in allegorization) because it follows the established pattern of the parallel between the history of Israel and the life of Christ. Furthermore, as so often happens in texts of this kind, the details of the passage work themselves out in different ways. The “two days” are for Israel metaphorical for a relatively short captivity but have a literal fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ. Similarly, the raising to life is literal in the case of Christ, but in the case of Israel it is a metaphor for restoration.
Derek Kidner: Nothing short of resurrection is fit to describe such need and such salvation; and while the mention of the third day would sound to Hosea’s hearers as the mere equivalent of ‘very soon’, the prophet may have spoken more significantly than he knew; for it is only in Christ’s resurrection that His people are effectively raised up, as both Paul and Peter teach us. And when Paul finds, apparently, not only the resurrection but even ‘the third day’ to be ‘in accordance, with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:4), it is at least possible – though one should put it no higher – that this passage as well as ‘the sign of Jonah’ was in his mind.
Robin Routledge: Links with the New Testament are primarily typological, presenting correspondences between the narratives of God’s people in the Old Testament and Christ, the ideal Israel (Garrett 1997: 159). Such correspondences are generally noted in retrospect. The Old Testament sets out patterns of divine activity which are recognized and reapplied by later writers, and that appears to be the significance of ‘according to the Scriptures’. However, in their original context, they are not predictive.
Alternate View:
M. Daniel Carroll R.: Another interpretive issue in this pericope is whether v.2 might be a prediction of or a typological allusion to the resurrection wrought by Jesus the Messiah. Might this be the reference behind the assertion in 1 Corinthians 15:4 that Christ arose on the third day “according to the Scriptures” (Lk 24:7)?
Three observations are apropos. To begin with, the concept of coming to life as a picture of national renewal appears elsewhere in the OT—importantly within this very book (13:14), but most famously in the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1–14 (cf. Dt 30:17–20; Am 5:1–6). The hope of individual resurrection was not unknown, though existing perhaps in rudimentary form (esp. Da 12:2), but this verse is speaking corporately and not of particular pious individuals (cf. P. S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol: Death and the Afterlife in the Old Testament [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002], 221–27). The expectation is for Israel to be made whole again after the attack of the divine lion.
Second, from the available evidence it seems that 6:2 did not become a proof text for resurrection until Tertullian (ca. 155–230 AD; cf. Wolff, 118).
Third, in the context the numerical sequence itself—“two/three”—is revealing. It is a way of expressing a short period of time. The n/n+1 combination (here n = 2) indicates a vague period of time (GKC §134s), while the numbers “two” and “three” themselves signify a short span (e.g., Isa 7:21; 17:6; 2Ki 20:5, 8). In other words, this sinful people presume that a favorable verdict from God will come in quick order—another sign that they appreciate neither the seriousness of their transgressions nor the uselessness of their religious activities. This blind audacity is confirmed in v.3. Israel takes for granted that its darkness will turn into light and that divine blessings will come as refreshing rains. Quite a bold denial of the drought foretold in 2:3!
[taking the position that v.1-3 are an inadequate, shallow confession]
II. (:3) RENEWAL — PURSUE THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD BECAUSE WE CAN COUNT ON HIS BLESSING
A. Exhortation – Pursue the Deepening Knowledge of the Lord
“So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.”
B. Motivation – Two Images of Certain Renewal and Blessing
Gary Smith: Hosea motivates any doubters with the promise of the reliability of God (6:3). His appearance is not only 100 percent sure—like the positive experience of sunlight (a contrast to darkness) and rain (a contrast to drought). These comparisons are probably chosen because everyone knows that the sun and rain can be counted on and because these physical elements bring new life to dying plants. This hope also contrasts God’s withdrawal from the nation (5:6, 15) with his gracious coming (6:3).
- Imagery of the Dawn Bringing Light after Darkness with Regularity and Certainty
“His going forth is as certain as the dawn;”
Duane Garrett: The surface meaning is moderately clear; we can count on Yahweh to come (and save us) just as surely as we can count on the rising of the sun. Through the metaphor, however, Yahweh’s advent is portrayed as a time of joy, like the dawn after a dark night. This language is not accidental. Rather, it is a reversal of the punishment in the second oracle, the devouring of the land by the new moon (5:7). As described there, the operating metaphor is the darkness that consumes the land during the new moon; dawn is an obvious reversal of the image.
- Imagery of the Refreshing Spring Rain
“And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth.”
Duane Garrett: The final reversal is the coming of rain. We have already suggested that the unusual phrase “the wind shall bind her in her wings,” in 4:19, might refer to drought, but in any case 4:3 has already described drought and 2:9 (Hb. 2:11) describes the effects of drought. Thus the return to Yahweh reverses all the afflictions that had come upon the people. The terrors of the lion, disease, darkness, and drought disappear in healing, bandaging, dawn, and seasonal rains.
Jeremy Thomas: Finally, once the nation is restored to true fellowship then she’ll be blessed, then she’ll have her land, then she’ll have her agricultural abundance, then she’ll have economic prosperity, then she’ll have Shekinah’s presence in the Millennial Temple, then she’ll have her Messiah sitting on the throne of David, all the blessings promised to her will be hers.