How Shall I Give You Up?

In the first chapters of Hosea, Israel is a wife, but in the eleventh chapter the picture changes and Israel is a child. It is the same love, now seen through the eyes of a father who remembers raising a son from his earliest years. Here, as He considers all their rebellion, God speaks the most tender words of the whole book.

A Father Remembers

Hosea 11:1-4 For Israel was a youth, and I loved him; and out of Egypt I called my son. They called to them; so they went from before them; to the Baals they sacrificed, and to the carved images they burned incense. And I, I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them upon his arms; but they did not know that I healed them. With cords of a man (adam אָדָם aw-dawm') I drew them, with bands of love; and I was to them like those who lift the yoke from upon their jaws; and I extended to him and fed him.

The love came first, while Israel was still young and still in Egypt. Matthew would later quote the second half of this verse, “Out of Egypt I called My Son,” when he told how the child Yeshua was taken down to Egypt and stayed there until the death of Herod.

Then the sad turn comes: the more they were called, the further they went, and they sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.

And yet the father goes on remembering. “I, I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them upon his arms.” Anyone who has watched a small child learn to walk knows the scene: the hands held out, the child picked up when he falls. “But they did not know that I healed them.” The son never knew who had been holding him up.

“With cords of a man (adam) I drew them, with bands of love.” The word for “love” here is ahavah, and the verb “drew” is mashakh, the same verb the LORD used through Jeremiah when He said, “with an everlasting love I have loved you; therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” He drew them with cords fit for a human being, with ties of love. He was to them like those who lift the yoke from their jaws, and He reached down to feed them.

The Judgment Deserved

Hosea does not hide what Israel deserved after all that.

Hosea 11:5-7 He shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria—he shall be his king, because they refused to return. And the sword shall whirl in his cities, and shall consume his bars, and devour, because of their counsels. And my people are bent on backsliding from me; and though they call them upward, together none exalts himself.

Assyria, not Egypt, would be their king “because they refused to return”; the sword would whirl in their cities, and the people were “bent on backsliding” from Him. This was not an empty warning. In the days of Hoshea, the last king of Israel, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into exile, as 2 Kings 17 records. The judgment came, and it was real.

“How Shall I Give You Up?”

Right after the words of judgment, the LORD speaks about His own heart.

Hosea 11:8-9 How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I hand you over, Israel? How shall I make you like Admah? How shall I set you like Zeboim? My heart is turned within me; together my compassions are kindled. I will not execute the burning of my anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not a man (ish אִישׁ eesh), the Holy One in your midst; and I will not come into the city.

Four times He asks Himself how He could do it: give Ephraim up, hand Israel over, make them like Admah, set them like Zeboim.

Admah and Zeboim were two of the cities destroyed together with Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses named them when he warned Israel what a land under the curse would look like:

Deuteronomy 29:22 brimstone and salt, a burning, is all its land; it is not sown, and it does not sprout, and no herb grows up in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His anger and in His wrath —

(YLV Deuteronomy 29:22, Masoretic verse order) Admah and Zeboiim were overthrown completely, in His anger and in His wrath, and nothing grew there again. That is what full judgment looks like, and that is the fate the LORD refuses to give Ephraim.

“My heart is turned within me.” The word is libbi (לִבִּי), “my heart.” The heart of the Husband and Father is turned over inside Him. “Together my compassions are kindled.” The word for compassions is nichumai (נִחוּמָי), from the root of comfort and of a heart that relents. They are “kindled,” like a fire catching. The same God whose anger is called burning feels His compassions catch fire against it.

“I will not execute the burning of my anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim.” And He gives the reason: “for I am God, and not a man (ish), the Holy One in your midst.”

Think of what people would advise someone whose husband or wife had been unfaithful again and again, without shame. Nearly everyone would say the same thing: cut the unfaithful one off, change the locks, protect yourself and walk away. A man wronged as the LORD had been wronged would have every reason to hand over the one who betrayed him. God does not, and the reason is not that the sin was small. The reason is who He is. He is God, and not a man. He is the Holy One, and He is in their midst.

Coming Home Trembling

The chapter does not end in exile but with a return.

Hosea 11:10-11 After the LORD they shall walk; like a lion he shall roar; for he shall roar, and sons shall come trembling from the sea. They shall come trembling like a bird from Egypt, and like a dove from the land of Assyria; and I will settle them in their houses, declares the LORD.

“After the LORD they shall walk.” The same people who went away from Him “after” other gods will walk after Him again. They will come trembling, like birds from Egypt and doves from Assyria, and He will settle them in their houses. The judgment of Assyria was real, but it was not like Admah. It was not the end.

Loved Freely

The last chapter of Hosea gathers all of this into an invitation and a promise.

Hosea 14:2 Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God; for you have stumbled in your iniquity.

Hosea 14:5 I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for my anger has turned away from him.

(YLV Hosea 14:2, 14:5, Masoretic verse order) The call is to return, and the sin is named, not overlooked. Then God answers: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely.” The verb heal is rapha רָפָא raw-faw', the same verb as in chapter 11, where the son “did not know that I healed them.” The healing he never noticed as a child is now promised openly, and it reaches the very thing that was wrong with him: his turning away.

“Freely” is nedavah (נְדָבָה). In the Torah, nedavah is the freewill offering, the gift a person brings not because a commandment requires that particular gift but because his heart moves him to give. When the tabernacle was built, every man and woman “whose heart made them willing” brought “a freewill offering to the LORD.” That is the word Hosea uses for God’s love here. He loves them as a freewill offering is given: because He wants to give.

So the book that began with a wife of harlotries comes, in its last chapter, to “I will love them freely.” Between the two stand the wilderness and the speaking to the heart, the child taught to walk and drawn with bands of love, and the Father whose heart turned over within Him as He cried, “How shall I give you up?”

Yet this love freely given does not mean that Israel may love other gods alongside Him. It is the love of the only God, and in the same closing chapters Hosea sets down one of the strongest sentences in Scripture about who alone can save.