Surprised by Grace (3): Hosea’s Complaint

Hosea and his wife and three children, De propheet Hosea (titel op object), RP-P-2015-17-83-1(R) (from Wikimedia Commons)

I was infuriated.
I was fuming.

How could he ask me to marry an adulterous woman!?
How could he ask me to bear children with her, an act of adultery?!

Okay okay; I’ll do it. I had no choice.

But that’s not the whole story.
Because at the end, he really threw me off.
You know what he did?

First, he disowned the children.
Punished them with all adversities imaginable.
Then, he did a 180 degree.
He pronounced that he would love them after all? (Hos 1:10)
What kind of game was he playing?
Would there still be right or wrong?

My adulteress wife deserved all the scorns. Guilty as charged. She had all the benefits of a proper upbringing and yet, inexplicably, chose to offer her bodies to foreigners, even subsidising them.
I threw up when the thought came to me, even while having sex with her.
But I had my orders.
Perverted orders.

What kind of person would accept such a woman?
Even God wouldn’t.
But he would.
He would even shower on her such promises (Hos 2:23) which would years later be held up as surety for extending it to those utterly undeserving outsiders (Rom 9:25-26), though that would be a different baffling story altogether.

Then he asked me to take a second adulterous woman who was much worse, completely senseless.

One. Two.
They couldn’t keep faith. It evaporated easily like morning dew (Hos 6:4)
Why still waited for them three days (6:2)?
Why maintained faithful dealing with them?
Couldn’t he just take their oxen and lambs and care less about their faithfulness?
He was so stubborn.
Lovely.
Full of grace.
But stubborn.
Even dumb.

Punished them all you wanted.
Dispersed them to faraway places.
They still committed adultery.
Hardened and pathological ungrateful and faithless people they were.
Beyond redemption.

I wouldn’t have minded being asked to involve by marrying the adulterous women and bearing children, had he orchestrated a disciplinary drama that drove fear in future faithless people.
At least I could be forever remembered for my role played in a justly forensic display of judgement.
I would have been much less agitated.
Bad deeds must be punished.
That was the rule I grew up with.
The whole world would have no qualms about it.

But that wasn’t what he planned.
Again and again he said he would get rid of the pathogen, and heal such hardened criminals (14:4).
And he would welcome them back on their first tears.

What’s with him?

Signed: Hosea