Deeper Commentary
Hos 12:1 Ephraim feeds on wind, and chases the east wind- As noted on Hos. 8:7, Israel like Gomer gave their hearts to that which was light and vapid rather than to the heavy things of God. And for that, they reaped the whirlwind. The wind from the east may refer to Assyria (as in Hos. 13:15), whose help they sought. But they were chasing or seeking help from a destructive wind that would itself turn and destroy them. "Chases" translates the same word used in Hos. 2:7 of how Israel / Gomer "follow after her lovers" but find no support from them.
He daily lies more and more and multiplies his desolation- See on Hos. 2:12 Vines... fig trees. There is an upward and downward spiral in spirituality. Just as Gomer was sexually addicted, so Israel were in the grip of deceit, and they were unfaithful and dishonest in every department of life. Jacob the reformed deceiver is therefore quoted later in this chapter as their role model. Their lies involved deceiving Assyria.
They make a covenant with
Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt- See on
Hos 12:2 Yahweh also has a controversy with Judah- Hosea was mainly speaking about the ten tribe Kingdom of Israel. Elsewhere in Hosea, God praises Judah's faithfulness, imputing righteousness to them, despite the fact wicked king Ahaz was then in power (Hos. 11:12). This is typical of how God changes His feelings just as Hosea oscillated between tender love and anger with Gomer. He says He will love Israel no more (Hos. 9:15), and then that He will love them freely (Hos. 14:4); that the city will not be entered into (Hos. 11:9 AV), yet also the city would be taken, according to multiple prophecies. They would return to Egypt (Hos. 8:13; 9:3); but He would not let them return to Egypt (Hos. 11:5). This is God at His most vulnerable. The "controversy" is based upon the 'charge' Hosea had against Gomer (Hos. 2:2 s.w.) for her adultery; it is legal language.
Hosea clearly knew that both Israel and Judah would fall together in condemnation for the same sins (Hos. 5:5; 6:4,10,11; 12:1,2); and yet Hosea appeals to Judah to not sin as Israel had so that they would avoid that same condemnation (Hos. 4:15; 11:12). And in similar vein, knowing the destruction that would come on all except Noah, God waited in the hope that more would be saved. He as it were hoped against His own foreknowledge that more would saved (1 Pet. 3:20).
And will punish
Jacob according to his ways; according to his deeds He will repay him-
Because Israel believed a lie, they lied and were generally dishonest (see
on :1). The repentant deceiver Jacob is therefore held up as their
pattern. Here and in Hos. 11:12, God charges Israel with continuing the family characteristic of Jacob by being deceitful and untruthful. Abraham and Jacob especially were characterized by great dishonesty.
The excursus about Jacob is perfectly in context
with Hosea’s struggles with Gomer, and therefore God’s anguish with Jacob
/ Israel. Hosea saw the necessity of disciplining Gomer; she was as fickle
with Hosea as Jacob had been with God. But Jacob was brought through all
that to repentance and a desperate clinging on to God’s covenant grace;
and this was always Hosea’s hope for Gomer, that she would follow the
spiritual path of Jacob, fickle as he was for much of his life. Just as
God became vulnerable to Jacob because He loved Jacob so much, and allowed
Jacob to win because He let him… so Hosea’s love for Gomer left him
vulnerable to her and eager for every and any sign of repentance.
But Hos. 4:14 uses the same word in declaring that “I
will not punish…”. And so often the point is made that God did not punish
Israel according to their sins (Ps. 103:10). Here we see another example
of how God in His passion, like Hosea in his, does not actually do the
things He states He will do. Adam not dying in the day of his sin would be
the first of many examples. It is this openness of God to change which is
now exemplified in this chapter by the remarkable incident of Jacob
prevailing against God and likewise not being punished ‘according to his
ways’.
Hos. 12:3 In the womb he took his brother by the heel- Gen. 25:26 says that Jacob did this after the birth, and not within the womb. A baby in the womb enveloped in water cannot do this; this was counted to Jacob by God's gracious imagination, just as Hosea fantasized about and imagined the repentance and faithfulness of the faithless Gomer. Or perhaps the idea is that genetically, Jacob was set up as a deceiver and grasper. Just as Gomer was wired as a light hearted, empty headed person who went for what looked attractive to her eyes and senses. Just as Israel were. And exactly as we naturally are. But the idea is that although that's how Jacob was, by nature and by nurture, he changed. This chapter concludes with a lament that Israel remained as Jacob and even as Canaan, "a merchant".
Likewise Jacob didn't 'win' his wrestling match with the Angel, but here he is spoken of as if he did indeed 'prevail' over God. The power in view was that of God's grace. The very weak 'power' of a baby in the womb is paralleled with the 'power' by which he struggled and prevailed with the Angel (:4). That power was very weak and practically non-existent- it was a function of God's desperate love and sensitivity to him. This was reflected in Hosea's love for Gomer. For true love means weakness and sensitivity to the beloved, and the imputing of rightness. For this reason, Jacob is here counted as having won the wrestling match when he lost it, and as having done in the womb what he could not have done in his own strength.
And in his maturity-
We can read this as meaning that he was a grasper
in the womb and early infanthood, and in his manhood, in his maturity, he
was the same. Until he was changed by that night of wrestling. Or the point may be that Jacob’s spiritual maturity
was in resigning all human strength and clinging on to the blessing of
grace. But the Hebrew word really means “strength” and recurs in 12:8,
where Ephraim “found myself wealth” in his own strength.
Hos.
12:4 Indeed, he struggled with the Angel- The AV is better, “had power over”.
The same
word is used in
Hos. 8:4 of how Israel “made princes” but not by God. Jacob is
being read negatively here. And yet the idea of having power over God was
only because God let him win, as a father playing a game with his son.
God’s love is such that as with any true love, it makes the lover
vulnerable, and gives power to the beloved. 'Israel' is the most common title God uses for His people; and it can mean 'one who struggles with God and prevails'. This, therefore, will be the characteristic of all His people. Note the humility of God, the Almighty, in desiring to articulate our relationship with Him in terms of us struggling with Him and winning. Hos. 12:4 seems to emphasize this, by saying that Jacob in his prayer and pleading had power over the Angel.
His strength was in his humility; by his strength he had power over God, but it was by his weeping and pleading that he did. This, then, was the true strength 'over' God.
And prevailed- I explained on :3 that God and Esau's intentions towards Jacob were changed by his prayer and repentance; and the Israel of Hosea's day could have done the same, and averted the destruction which was heading for them just as Esau and his men were on their way to destroy Jacob. The idea that God's purpose is signed and sealed unchangeably and the Angels are just putting it into practice militates against our faith in prayer. Jacob "had power over the Angel, and prevailed"- not physically, because the Angel eventually had power over him that way; but spiritually, through his wrestling in prayer, he succeeded. "He wept, and made supplication unto Him... even the Lord God of Hosts (Angels)". Because the Angels do change their mind and God's purpose is in many ways open-ended, we should be greatly encouraged in our prayers. God, like Hosea with Gomer, is open to dialogue and change. The intended judgment and result of sin will not come if we truly repent.
Jacob "prevailed" in that he received the blessing which he didn't deserve, by grace. But this was only after he had been touched in the groin by the Angel. It has been observed: "Three biblical scholars, S. Gervitz, L. Eslinger, and S. H. Smith, also argue that Jacob’s injury occurs to his genitals.The kap yareh, they point out, refers either to the “hand of the thigh”—the penis, or to the “hollow, pouch-like” scrotum. Citing J. Skinner, L. Eslinger suggests that when Genesis says that Jacob’s hip was put out (Gen. 32:25), what it means is that “Jacob had a hernia at the place of the scrotum’s attachment to the body in the course of the struggle.” This interpretation of Jacob’s injury as sexual has far-reaching implications...". He was as it were unmanned, and limped the rest of his life in awareness of that fact. Possibly we could argue that his wasted years with Laban were a result of his sexual list for Rachel, and now this was revealed to him- by one gentle touch of the Angel. This has huge relevance in the Hosea context. Gomer was sexually addicted, and Israel likewise had the spirit of postitution within them, for other gods. The whole story of Jacob's wrestling is introduced to show both Gomer and Israel that they could wrestle there way to a resolution of this. It was after this touch that Jacob clung to the Angel, not in combat, but for dear life, for blessing, for grace, for salvation, clinging now to the Angel's body until they end up live two lovers rather than opponents. And that is the path of all who are truly Israel.
The whole incident begs so many questions, but this is so that we might analyze it, brood upon it, and come to this conclusion. That God's grace won. We ask the question: "So who won?". And it is hard to answer because the text is intentionally ambiguous. If Jacob merely fought a man and won, it is insignificant. If he wrestled God and won, that is blasphemous. Yet Hos. 12:4 says that Jacob "prevailed" over God. If God won, then we suspect that God must always win and any wrestling with Him was futile and the whole thing was unfairly loaded from the start. The wonder of it is quite enough anyway: "as a man he contended with God". But Jacob didn't see himself as having won. He called the place “Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved”; he had as it were escaped with his life (Gen. 32:31). And yet the Angel disabled Jacob's manhood because "he saw that he could not prevail". Just as Hosea saw with Gomer, and God with Israel at Hosea's time. We are invited to navigate a course of interpretation in between these poles, and this "magnificent defeat" seems the intended conclusion. Jacob was unmanned and 'lost' but thereby attained grace and he "prevailed" against God's intended destruction of him at the hand of Esau. The name given him in commemoration, "Israel", is intentionally enigmatic- it can mean 'Prevailer over God', or 'God prevailed over'. Similarly "He found him at Bethel" is unclear as to who found whom. Because in a sense Yahweh found Jacob, but Jacob found Yahweh. Likewise there is an ambiguity both in Gen. 32 and in Hosea 12:5 as to who "won": "He struggled with the angel; he overcame him". Who overcame whom is left intentionally ambiguous. And this intimacy was possible for Israel, and for Gomer with Hosea. Jacob who by nature was Jacob, a deceiver and struggler with God, was changed to Israel. The nature of Gomer and Israel could be changed, just as Yahweh and Hosea so desperately wished. But they walked away from it. It is for the new Israel to accept the challenge. For "there He keeps on speaking to us".
He wept, and made supplication to him- This is clearly behind
the language of Heb. 5:7 about the Lord's desperate prayer in Gethsemane.
The Hebrew means ‘to bow or stoop towards’. Yet
the same word is used in the account of that night of wrestling to record
how God was gracious unto / bowed down to Jacob (Gen. 33:11). We encounter
here a wonderful mutuality between God and Jacob. Jacob bows down to God,
throwing himself upon His grace as Esau approaches
him to destroy him;
and God as it were bows down to Jacob. This is why Jacob marvels in Gen.
33:11, in reflecting upon that night, that God had bowed down to him. It
also explains why the pronouns in these verses in Hosea are ambiguous-
it’s not altogether clear who is making supplication to whom. This is what
happens in genuine reconciliation; each side stoops to the other. God’s
love is such that it makes Him vulnerable enough to stoop before Israel
His beloved. We recall how elsewhere He feels apparently guilty for having
as it were forsaken His bride Israel, leaving her as a woman forsaken in
her youth (Is. 54:6). He takes blame which He need not have taken at all;
but this is what love leads to. And God deeply loves…
God dealt "graciously" (the same word here translated "supplication") with Jacob (Gen. 33:11). At that time, God
"recompensed" to Jacob according to his sins, and Jacob responded by "turning" (same word translated "recompensed" ) to his God (Hos. 12:2,8). By the end of his life, this spirit of mutuality between him and God had become perfected. And so with us; we too can live our lives thinking that if we do this, that and the other, God will do this and that for us. The idea of a two-way relationship with Him, of His Spirit, with all that implies, dwelling in us, until our will is His will; all this takes time to develop.
He found him at Bethel- God had encouraged Jacob to return from Laban
because He was the God of Bethel, i.e. what He had revealed there of His
seeking, saving grace, He was going to continue (Gen. 31:13). This is why
Jacob later builds an altar in Bethel to the God who had answered his
prayers in the “day of my distress”- a reference to Jacob’s prayers on the
night he wrestled with the Angel as Esau approached him (Gen. 35:3). So we
could fairly interpret “He found him at Bethel” as meaning that God had
also found Jacob at Bethel, just as He ‘found’ Him in that night of
wrestling. The same Hebrew word translated ‘found’ is used about how Jacob
‘found’ grace before both Esau and God that night (Gen. 32:5). God found
Jacob and Jacob found God; another example of mutuality and purposefully
ambiguous pronouns. God is in search of man, and yet man is in search of
God. When we meet, there is an indescribable mystery of communication,
portrayed graphically for all time in Jacob and the Angel hugging each
other as the wrestling match dissolves into an intense clinging on to each
other, bowing to each other and blessing each other, the essence of
Emmanuel, God with us.
And there He spoke with us- At Bethel, after the night of wrestling, God renewed the covenant with Jacob. Likewise Hosea was asking Gomer to renew their marriage vows, to enter a new covenant, just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel urge Israel to do with God. Bethel was where Israel were now worshipping idols; Hosea's point is that in that very place, a spiritually weak Jacob had been found by God and repented. The Angel twice 'found' Jacob in Bethel (Gen. 28:11-19; 35:1). "He spoke with us" in that Hosea's audience could likewise have wrestled with God in prayer and repentance, and avoided the approaching destruction.
Hos 12:5 Even Yahweh, the God of Armies; Yahweh is His name of renown!- As explained above, the approach of Esau with 400 men to destroy Jacob was also the approach of an army of Angels, Yahweh of armies, to do likewise. But this was averted by Jacob's desperate prayer and repentance, his clinging on to God. This explains why the title "God of Armies" is used here. The allusion is to the memorial Name of Yahweh; His final personality and Name was expressed through His grace to Jacob despite the struggle within Him and between Him and Jacob, the struggle discussed on Hos. 11:8.
Hos 12:6 Therefore you also turn to your God-
Hosea's audience
could likewise have wrestled with God in prayer and repentance, and
avoided the approaching destruction. Biblical history is a living word.
The historical incidents, such as Jacob's wrestling with the Angel and
obtaining grace, speak directly to us and urge us to act likewise; it is
as if we were involved in those historical incidents.
Thus
David invites us to come and see the works God did at the Red Sea,
commenting: “There did we rejoice in him” (Ps. 66:5,6). He praises
God for saving him in the language of Israel’s Red Sea deliverance,
speaking of it as “the day of my trouble” (Ps. 86:7,8 = Ex. 15:11).
He saw how their circumstances and his were in principle the same; he
personalized the Scripture he had read. When Israel kept the Passover,
they were to say that this was the deliverance God had wrought “for me”
(Ex. 13:8). “You also turn to your God” as Jacob did in the
struggles of his life.
Keep grace and justice, and wait continually for your God- These were the two things which Hosea dreamt of as being the basis of his remarriage to Gomer (Hos. 2:19 "I will betroth you to Me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion"). They were seen by him as the basis of marriage. And so Israel are urged to repent as Jacob did, and like him, focus upon a life of grace and justice in covenant relationship with their God.
Hos 12:7 A merchant has dishonest scales in his hand. He loves to
defraud-
The wonderful potential for intimacy with God, achieving what Jacob
achieved despite being wired in a very unspiritual way, was turned down.
Israel loved dishonesty and self justification rather than repentance.
As noted on :1, the worship of lies, the idols, led Israel to be dishonest
in other aspects of life. They deceived the Assyrians as well as their
God, and were also dishonest in their business dealings. And they 'loved'
this fraudulent life, just as the web of lies spun by Gomer became a
lifestyle she loved. The same word for "defraud" is used in Hos. 5:11 of
how Ephraim was defrauded; like Jacob before his conversion, the deceiver
was deceived, "deceiving and being deceived... worse and worse" (2 Tim.
3:13), just as "he daily lies more and more" (:1). Gomer and Israel were
caught up in treating others as they were treated; they didn't allow grace
and repentance to break the cycle which was leading them in an ever
downward spiral.
"Merchant" is literally 'a Canaanite'. They were like the Canaanites rather than as God's people; hence they are described in Ez. 16:3 as being Canaanites: "Thus says the Lord Yahweh to Jerusalem: Your birthplace is in the land of the Canaanite; the Amorite was your father, and your mother was a Hittite".
Hos 12:8 Ephraim said, Surely I have become rich, I have found myself
wealth- Alluded to in Rev. 3:17 about the new Israel.
The very same
words were said by those who later sold Judah into captivity (Zech. 11:5).
Gomer and Israel considered good harvests to be a result of their
faithfulness to the Baal cult. See on Hos. 9:1. They considered their
wealth a sign that they were blessed by both Yahweh and the Baals. But
this was wrong on both counts. And it serves to disprove the prosperity
Gospel; material wealth is not necessarily a sign of blessing.
In all my wealth they won’t find in me any iniquity that is sin- Israel were not without any religious conscience. But they had carefully analyzed their ways of acquiring wealth and concluded that they had not committed any sin. Yet God's comment was that their wealth arose from unjust balances and loving to defraud (:7). But they had carefully worked out a justification for everything which they said left them without sin and guilt. This was casuistic legalism at its worst. Human nature has the propensity to justify anything, and we must bear this in mind in our self-examination. In particular, they considered that "iniquity" and "sin" weren't the same. Thus we could translate: "All my gains do not amount to an offense which is real guilt". It's like excusing our materialisms by saying that yes, they are sins, but... I need not be guilty about them. In Israel's case, they considered their wealth from good harvests to have been the blessing of the Baalim. Their iniquities were indeed to be a source of guilt.
Hos 12:9 But I am Yahweh your God from the land of Egypt. I will yet
again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the solemn feast-
Having condemned Israel for their deceit and materialism in previous verses,
we expect the Divine comment to be of judgment. Instead it is of grace,
looking ahead to the day when God will enable them to keep the feast of
tents, rejoicing in His grace. In wrath He remembers mercy; always, even
in the heat of His despair with Israel, there is the hope that they will
repent, and He focuses upon His own dream of their restoration. This is
how much God wants human restoration, and His strongest will and blessing
is therefore behind our every effort to preach it. The feast of
tabernacles or tents kept by the exiles in Neh. 8:17 was a pathetically
small attempt by them to fulfil this; the reality was that most preferred
to remain in exile.
Hosea spoke in God’s Name. He would’ve known how that Name was a
memorial of the characteristics of God, His pity, mercy, forgiveness etc.
as outlined in Ex. 33:19. And yet Hosea uses those very words in saying
that now, God will not have mercy, pity or forgiveness toward Israel (Hos.
1:6). But Hosea spoke in the Name of Yahweh; and predicted that the Yahweh
who had been their elohim from the land of Egypt, would still be their God
(Hos. 12:9). In this we see Hosea’s personal involvement in the tension of
God; for he spoke in God’s Name, with all that Name implied. And we too
carry that Name, having been baptized into it. And we speak in that Name
to this world, bearing within us the same conflict between the reality of
future judgment, and the earnest grace of God to save this world.
Hos.
12:12 Jacob- The names “Jacob” and “Israel” are often used together to show how God saw the Jacob as Israel, without forgetting he was still Jacob.
Fled
into the country of Aram-
Just as Jacob had to go into exile to bring about his turning to God, so
Israel would have to go into exile towards Aram / Syria, just as Jacob had
done.
And Israel served to get a wife, and for a wife he tended flocks and herds- It was God and Hosea who paid so much to get a wife. By their experience in exile, Israel would learn how much sacrifice God had gone to in order to claim them as His own wife. At least, that was the intention; Israel as a whole didn’t respond, and we may assume that Gomer likewise didn’t. Speaking in the context of Israel's punishment for idolatry (remember, in God's eyes Israel = Jacob), we are told, apparently out of context, that Jacob served for a wife (singular), and for a wife he kept sheep. Yet this is in the context of :2, which says that God would punish Israel for their idolatry, according to their ways. The terrible 14 years of keeping the sheep which their forefather Jacob went through therefore represented their punishment for idolatry. As Jacob served for Rachel, so Israel served idols and would have to serve those idolatrous nations as an appropriate punishment. Keeping sheep in Gentile lands is the basis of the prodigal parable; the young man who left home, tricked his father, sidled past his hostile elder brother with what he was sure was his inheritance by rights, squandered it, kept sheep, and came back a new man. Clearly the Lord had His mind on Jacob, although that parable is full of reference to prophetic descriptions of the nation of Israel, too. Hos. 12:4-6,12,13 seem to say that Jacob's humiliation at the hands of Laban is a type of the future suffering of Jacob, before their final homecoming.
This idea of servitude because of a woman was so relevant to Hosea. Jacob served 14 years to marry a woman he was madly in love with, although from the get go, through going along with Laban's trickery, she did not much love him. She wanted to die rather than be his childless wife, she blamed God and Jacob wrongly, was addicted to teraphim, lied to her father, gave her children names reflected her seething bitterness, and died in narcissism, wanting to call her last child "Son of my sorrow". But for all this, Jacob devoted his life to her and loved her during her life and reflected that love after her death, in his feelings towards her sons Joseph and Benjamin. Hosea loved Gomer likewise, as God loved Israel.
Hos 12:13 By a prophet Yahweh brought Israel up out of Egypt-
This is added surely as encouragement to Hosea. Hosea is being likened to
a prophet like Moses- which of course is a Messianic title (Dt. 18:15;
Acts 3:22). His saving passion towards Gomer was to be understood by him
as representative of Messiah’s passion for Israel’s salvation.
“By a prophet (Moses) the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet (Joshua?) was he preserved [s.w. “keep”]” (Hos. 12:13). Joshua and Moses were working and walking in harmony with an Angel in their work. For an Angel ‘brought Israel out of Egypt’ , and it was an Angel who ‘kept’ Israel (Ex. 23:20). This shows how prophets and Angels were in tandem with each other. In the work of bringing out and ‘keeping’ a people for God’s Name, we too can have this sense of working in tandem with a guardian Angel every step of the way.
And by a prophet he was preserved- Literally, "kept", as a shepherd keeps his sheep. It is the same word used in :12 for how Jacob kept sheep. Again we see the mutuality between God and Jacob / Israel; they were to keep His sheep, and He would keep them. But the contrast between Jacob and Moses presents Jacob in a poor light. He spent his years keeping sheep for the sake of his infatuation with Rachel. Moses kept the sheep of Israel to guide them to God's Kingdom. This connects with the earlier reference to Jacob's wrestling, where his manhood was disabled, perhaps in reference to his infatuation with a woman, Rachel.
Clearly we are intended to see Moses' mediation as typical of the Lord's. His freewill mediation was the basis of Israel's salvation: "By a prophet (Moses: Dt. 18:18), the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved". This last clause may be a hint that Moses prayed for the gift of life-preserving manna, and thus sustained Israel, all unbeknown to them. Likewise the intensity of his prayers and the supremacy of his willingness to sacrifice himself for them was tragically unknown to them at the time. But the preservation in view may specifically refer to a single incident and not general preservation in the desert; the reference may well be to Moses' prayer for Israel to be forgiven of their idolatry and spiritual adultery against God, when God wished to destroy them and make of Moses a new Israel. This would be very relevant in the Hosea context. See on Hos. 14:4.
It should be noted that Moses as a type of Christ was not the High Priest. He mediated for and thereby "preserved" Israel on a voluntary basis; not because he was under any duty to offer up their prayers or "preserve" them. Indeed, they didn't make any prayers for him to offer up. He pleaded with God for them on his own initiative, rather than being asked by them to do so. And this is the basis of Christ's mediation for us; he pleads for us even when we know not what to pray for, even when we don't realize the need to beseech the Father. Moses' mediation, not so much Aaron's offerings, are the prototype which the New Testament uses to explain the Lord's present work. In the Apocryphal Assumption of Moses (1:14), Moses is made to say of God: "He designed and devised me and he prepared me before the foundation of the world, that I should be the mediator". These words are alluded to in a number of NT passages.
The emphasis upon "by a prophet..." was surely to show that through heeding the words of Hosea the prophet, Israel again could likewise be preserved from destruction. He was prepared to try to act as Moses for them.
12:14 Ephraim has bitterly provoked anger- Just as Hosea was provoked to anger by Gomer; God "hated" Israel for their rejection of Him (see on Hos. 9:15). We noted on Hos. 11:8 the very deep provocations of feelings within God's heart.
Therefore his blood will be left on him, and his Lord will repay his contempt- As noted on :13, Hosea is as the watchman prophet who is telling Israel what is coming upon them. Their blood is therefore no longer on his head but on theirs, according to the principle of Ez. 33:6-8.
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