You Shall Know the LORD

The prophet Hosea spoke in the last years of the northern kingdom of Israel, when the people had turned to the Baals. The LORD told him, “Go, take to yourself a wife (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw') of harlotries” (Hosea 1:2), so that his own marriage would become a living picture of what the land had done in turning away from the LORD. We will read Hosea’s story more fully later in this book. Here we stop at one promise in his second chapter, because it carries the word yada from marriage to God. (YLV Hosea 2:21-22, Masoretic verse order)

The Betrothal

In Hosea 2, God speaks to unfaithful Israel as a wounded husband speaks to a wife who has left him. He names what she has done. Then the tone changes, and He begins to call her back. “Therefore, behold, I am alluring her, and I will lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:16). He promises that she will call Him “my husband (ish אִישׁ eesh),” and no more “my Baal (Baali)” (Hosea 2:18). Then He makes the promise of the betrothal.

Hosea 2:21-22 And I will betroth you to me forever; and I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in judgment (mishpat מִשׁפָּט mish-pawt'), and in mercy and in compassion. And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the LORD.

The verb is aras (אָרַשׂ), “to betroth.” In Israel a betrothal was the binding first stage of marriage, a pledge as firm as the marriage itself. God says it three times: “I will betroth you to me forever; and I will betroth you to me in righteousness ... And I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.” The repetition is the point. A husband whose wife has gone after other lovers does not simply take her back. He binds himself to her again, three times over, and this time forever.

The Gifts of the Betrothal

The betrothal is made in five things, each given in English in the YLV, and behind each English word stands a Hebrew word that Scripture uses again and again for the character of God Himself.

These are the gifts of the betrothal, and they come from the Husband. The betrothal is made “in” them: God binds Himself to His people in righteousness, in justice, in covenant loyalty, in compassion and in faithfulness. Chesed is there among them, the covenant loyalty that earlier chapters joined to the keeping of His commandments.

The End of the Betrothal

The promise ends with the words “and you shall know the LORD,” and the verb is yada, the word of Genesis 4:1, “Adam knew Eve his wife.” The very word Scripture uses for the closest union of a husband and wife, the union from which life comes, is the word God uses for what He wants with His people. The betrothal does not end in a ceremony. Its goal, the goal of the righteousness and the chesed and the faithfulness, is that His people will know Him.

The word fits the whole book of Hosea, which is about a people who did not know their God.

Hosea 4:1 Hear the word of the LORD, sons of Israel, for the LORD has a dispute with the inhabitants of the land, for there is no truth and no mercy and no knowledge of God in the land.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest to me; and you have forgotten the Torah of your God — I also will forget your children.

Truth, mercy and the knowledge of God were all missing from the land, and the people were perishing for that lack. In the second of these verses Hosea joins the lack of knowledge to something specific: “you have forgotten the Torah of your God.” What God wants instead He says plainly.

Hosea 6:6 For mercy I desired, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

God desires “the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” The people kept bringing offerings, and they did not know the God to whom they brought them. The promise of chapter 2 answers exactly that lack: “you shall know the LORD.”

The New Covenant Uses the Same Word

More than a century after Hosea, the prophet Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant, and he too ended with the word know.

Jeremiah 31:31-32 Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will cut a new covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth') with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant (berit) that I cut with their fathers in the day I took hold of their hand to bring them out from the land of Egypt—which My covenant (berit) they broke, though I was a master over them, declares the LORD.

God says that Israel broke His covenant “though I was a master over them.” The Hebrew verb behind “master” is baal, the word used of being a husband. Jeremiah speaks of the covenant at Sinai in the language of marriage, and the people broke it. The new covenant is the Husband’s answer.

Jeremiah 31:33 For this is the covenant (berit) that I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put My Torah within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

“I will put My Torah within them, and on their heart I will write it.” The new covenant is not a covenant without Torah. It is the same Torah, “My Torah,” written in a new place: within them, on the heart. And the covenant words follow at once: “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Jeremiah 31:34 And they shall no longer teach, each man (ish) his neighbor and each man (ish) his brother, saying, Know the LORD; for all of them shall know Me, from their least to their greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

In “all of them shall know Me” the word is yada again. In the new covenant, knowing the LORD will not belong only to the teachers. All of His people, from the least to the greatest, will know Him; no one will need to tell his brother, “Know the LORD.”

And the verse gives the ground on which this knowing rests: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” The sentence turns on the word “for.” The people will know the LORD because He forgives. The bride of Hosea had gone after other lovers; Israel in Jeremiah had broken the covenant. In both prophets, the knowing that God promises does not come because the people have earned it back. It comes because the Husband forgives and binds Himself to them again, and then writes His Torah where it cannot be forgotten.

So Hosea’s promise and Jeremiah’s promise end in the same place. In Hosea, the Husband betroths His people and says, “you shall know the LORD.” In Jeremiah, He writes His Torah on their hearts and says, “all of them shall know Me.” Knowing God and having His Torah within are not two different gifts in these passages. They come together.

The Line So Far

The word that began with a husband and a wife in the first family has become, in Hosea and in Jeremiah alike, the goal of God’s covenant with His people.

In the Greek of the New Testament the same double meaning belongs to the verb ginosko γινώσκω ghin-oce'-ko, and it stands at the moment when a young woman in Nazareth, told that she would bear a son, answered that she had no knowledge of a man.