No Savior Except Me

The love in Hosea is wide enough to go after an adulteress and buy her back. But that love gives no permission to love others beside Him. It is narrow in one way that cannot be bent: it is exclusive. In the thirteenth chapter of Hosea, the LORD puts the whole of it into a single verse.

Hosea 13:4 And I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; and a God besides me you shall not know, and there is no savior except me.

The verse begins where the Ten Words begin, with the God who brought His people out of Egypt. At Sinai, the first commandment followed directly from that sentence:

Exodus 20:2-3 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of servants. You shall have no other gods before My face.

Hosea gives the same truth in the language of his whole book. “A God besides me you shall not know.” The verb is yada, the word used when Adam knew Eve. In a book about a marriage, “you shall not know” another god means what it would mean of a wife: there is to be no other. In the very next verse the LORD uses the same verb of Himself: “I knew you in the wilderness, in a land of droughts.” He knew her; she is to know no one else.

And there is “no savior except me.” The word for savior is moshia (מוֹשִׁיעַ), from the root yasha ישע yeh'-shah, to save. It is the same root that is in the name Yeshua, and the angel gave the reason for the name: “for He will save His people from their sins.”

One Savior in the Prophets

Isaiah says the same thing in nearly the same words.

Isaiah 43:11 I, even I, am the LORD; and besides me there is no savior.

Isaiah 45:21-22 Declare and bring near; yes, let them take counsel together: Who has made this heard from of old, declared it from then? Was it not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior (yasha); there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved (yasha), all ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.

In Isaiah 45 the LORD is “a righteous God and a Savior (yasha),” and there is “none besides me.” Both words matter: He is righteous, and He saves, and He does not save by ceasing to be righteous. The invitation that follows, “Turn to me and be saved,” is not for Israel alone but for “all ends of the earth.” The one Savior calls the whole world to turn to Him.

The apostles spoke in the same way about the name of Yeshua.

Acts 4:12 And there is Salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved."

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Yeshua,

Peter spoke the first of these sentences before the rulers in Jerusalem, after a man who had been lame from his mother’s womb was healed at the gate of the temple. He told them plainly that the man stood before them healthy in the name of Yeshua the Nazarene, whom they had crucified and whom God had raised from the dead, and then he said that there is salvation in no one else, for “there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved.” Paul wrote the second, setting “one mediator also between God and men” beside the one God. The oneness that Hosea and Isaiah spoke of is not loosened in the New Testament. It is spoken again, with the name of the Savior who came.

The Husband of His People

The prophets also gave that one God and one Savior the title of Husband.

Isaiah 54:5 For your Maker is your husband—the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw') is his name—and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; the God of all the earth he is called.

“Your Maker is your husband.” The word for husband here is bo’alayikh, from ba’al, to be married, the same root as in Hosea’s “my Baal.” And in the same verse the Husband is “your Redeemer,” the goel whom Book 5 followed from beginning to end. The Maker, the Husband and the Redeemer are one.

Isaiah 62:5 For as a young man espouses a virgin, your sons shall espouse you; and as a bridegroom rejoices over a bride, your God shall rejoice over you.

“As a bridegroom rejoices over a bride, your God shall rejoice over you.” The love of the Song, the joy of a wedding, is the picture Isaiah uses for the joy of God over His people.

Even in Hosea 13, a chapter of hard judgment, the Redeemer’s voice breaks through:

Hosea 13:14 From the hand of Sheol I will ransom them; from death I will redeem them. Where are your plagues, O death? Where is your destruction, O Sheol? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

“From death I will redeem them.” The verb is gaal גָּאַל gaw-al', the work of the goel. The Song said that love is “strong as death” and its jealousy “hard as Sheol.” Here the Husband who will not let go says that He will ransom His people from the hand of Sheol and redeem them from death itself. The verse closes with “Compassion is hidden from my eyes,” and for that reason many translations read its first lines as questions of judgment; the YLV reads them as promise, and so does Paul when he takes up its words as the victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:55).

The Bridegroom Came

When Yeshua came, He took the title Bridegroom for Himself.

Matthew 9:15 And Yeshua said to them: "Can the sons of the wedding hall mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.

He was asked why His disciples did not fast, and He answered with a wedding, where no guest mourns while the bridegroom is present. The Bridegroom is Yeshua Himself, and He spoke of a day when He would be taken away from them.

John, sent ahead of Him to immerse in the Jordan, used the same picture of himself and of Yeshua:

John 3:29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the philos φίλος fee'-los(friend) of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice; so this joy of mine has been made full.

John is only the friend of the bridegroom, and his joy is to hear the Bridegroom’s voice.

Paul’s words to the believers in Corinth bring together Hosea, the Song and the first commandment:

2 Corinthians 11:2 For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Messiah I might present you as a pure virgin.

“I betrothed you to one husband.” In Greek, heni andri (ἑνὶ ἀνδρί), to one man, one husband. And Paul calls his own concern for them “a godly jealousy.” The Greek word is zelos, the word the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures used for qin’ah in the Song, “jealousy is hard as Sheol.” The bride has one Husband, as Israel has one God and one Savior, and the love that guards her is a jealous love.

The Wedding Still to Come

The last book of the Bible sees the wedding itself.

Revelation 19:7 Let us rejoice and exult and give the doxa δόξα dox'-ah(glory) to Him, because the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready."

The marriage has come and the wife has made herself ready, and the Bible closes with the bride herself speaking.

Revelation 22:17 And the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) and the bride say, "Come," and let the one who hears say, "Come," and let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life) dorean δωρεάν do-reh-an'(freely).

The bride who was once a wife of harlotries has been bought back, spoken to and betrothed again, and now she joins the Spirit in saying “Come.” The invitation is still open: “let the one who wishes take the water of zoe(life) dorean(freely).”

One God, one Savior, one Mediator, and one Husband: this is the frame in which all the love of Hosea stands. His love goes after the unfaithful bride without limit, but it never offers to share her. She shall know no God besides Him.

That exclusive love raises a hard question. The One who loves like this is also holy, and He is a Judge as well as a Husband; He cannot pretend the betrayal never happened. How can He be perfectly just and perfectly loving at once? And if Israel kept turning away, generation after generation, why did judgment take so long to come? Scripture begins its answer with the words the LORD proclaimed about Himself on the mountain, words that in Hebrew speak of His nostrils.