Long of Nostrils

The love of the Husband in Hosea, who would not give up His unfaithful bride, does more than forgive: it waits. Judgment that is deserved is held back, sometimes for years and sometimes for generations, so that more may turn before it falls. To see where this waiting comes from, we go back to the mountain where the LORD told Moses who He is.

The Name Proclaimed

After Israel made the golden calf and Moses had pleaded for the people, he made one more request.

Exodus 33:18-19 And he said: "Show me, I pray, your glory." And he said: "I will make all my goodness pass before your face, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy."

The next morning the LORD did what He had promised.

Exodus 34:5-7 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed in the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before his face, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, God, merciful and gracious, long of nostrils, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth, keeping lovingkindness for thousands, bearing iniquity and transgression and sin, and clearing he will not clear, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon sons and upon sons of sons, upon the third and upon the fourth generations."

This is the LORD describing Himself, in His own words, at the moment His people had just broken the covenant. Every phrase is chosen, and together they hold two things that many readers would rather pull apart.

“Merciful and gracious” come first. Then “long of nostrils,” in Hebrew erekh appayim (אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם). Think of what happens when a person grows angry: the breathing quickens, the face flushes, and the nostrils flare. Hebrew pictures anger in the nose, so to say that God is erekh appayim is to say that He takes a very long time to flare His nostrils. His anger is slow to rise. Most English Bibles put it as “slow to anger,” which is the meaning; the Hebrew gives the picture.

Next comes “abundant in lovingkindness and truth, keeping lovingkindness for thousands.” Lovingkindness is chesed חֶסֶד kheh'-sed, the steady covenant love that we met in Jeremiah’s “kindness of your youth.” It is abundant, and it is kept for thousands. He bears “iniquity and transgression and sin,” every kind of wrongdoing named together.

And then, in the same breath, without a pause: “and clearing he will not clear.” The Hebrew is naqqeh lo yenaqqeh, the verb doubled for strength. He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. He visits iniquity to the third and fourth generations. A righteous judge cannot simply clear the guilty. If a man could walk free only because the judge felt kindly toward him, everyone would call that judge corrupt, and the LORD is not that kind of judge.

Both halves are the LORD’s own name. His patience is real, and His justice is real. Neither one cancels the other. The patience is not a sign that He has stopped caring about sin; it is the patience of a God who will judge, and who therefore waits before He does.

Moses held on to both halves. When Israel later refused to enter the land and the LORD spoke of striking them, Moses prayed this name back to Him, with erekh appayim given here in its plain meaning, “slow to anger”:

Numbers 14:18 'the LORD is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.'

He pleaded the patience and the chesed, and in the same sentence he confessed “he will by no means clear.” He did not ask God to stop being just. He asked Him to be what He had said He was.

Four Hundred Years for the Amorite

God’s waiting appears long before Sinai. When the LORD made His covenant with Abram, He told him that his seed would be sojourners and would be afflicted “four hundred years.” Then He gave a reason why the land would not be given at once.

Genesis 15:16 And in the fourth generation they shall return here; for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete."

“For the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” The word is shalem, full, complete. The Amorites, who lived in the land promised to Abram, were guilty already, but the LORD would not judge them before their iniquity was full. He waited, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and through the long years of Israel in Egypt, and only then did He bring His people in.

Here the waiting love of God reaches even a people outside the covenant. Their judgment was certain, but it was not hurried.

Waiting in the Days of Noah

The world before the flood was filled with corruption and violence, and Peter describes what God was doing while the ark was being prepared.

1 Peter 3:20 who formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few — that is, eight psychai(souls) — were brought safely through water.

“God’s patience waited.” The Greek word for patience is makrothymia μακροθυμία mak-roth-oo-mee'-ah, from makros, long, and thymos, the strong feeling that rises in anger. It is the Greek way of saying what the Hebrew calls long of nostrils. And the verb says the patience “waited,” waited for something to come, through the whole time the ark was being prepared. Then the flood came, and eight souls were brought safely through the water. The waiting was long, but it had an end.

Jonah Knew

No one in Scripture understood this patience better, or liked it less, than Jonah. Book 4 of this series followed the sign of Jonah; here we need only his prayer after Nineveh repented and God spared the city.

Jonah 4:2 And he prayed to the LORD, and said: "Ah, O LORD, was not this my word while I was yet upon my ground (adamah אֲדָמָה ad-aw-maw')? Therefore I went beforehand to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in mercy, and relenting concerning the evil.

Jonah prays the name of Exodus 34 back to God almost word for word, “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in mercy,” and he adds “relenting concerning the evil,” the very thing the LORD had done for Israel after the golden calf (Exodus 32:14). He knew the name the LORD had proclaimed to Moses, and that knowledge was exactly why he ran. He did not want the patience of God to reach Nineveh, the great city of the empire that would one day carry Israel away.

The very thing Jonah feared is what happened when he finally preached in Nineveh. He had said that God was “relenting concerning the evil,” and that is exactly what God did:

Jonah 3:10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented concerning the evil which he had spoken to do to them, and he did not do it.

And the book of Jonah ends not with Jonah’s answer but with God’s question.

Jonah 4:11 And I, shall I not have pity upon Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons (adam אָדָם aw-dawm') who do not know between their right hand and their left, and many beasts?"

“Shall I not have pity?” The verb is chus (חוּס), to have pity, to spare with feeling. God’s last word in the book is a question about mercy for an enemy city, for its people who “do not know between their right hand and their left,” and even for its many beasts. The book gives no answer from Jonah, and so the question comes to every reader.

The Patience and the Justice Together

Put side by side, these passages show one God. He is long of nostrils, and He will not clear the guilty. He waits four hundred years for the Amorite, and then the Amorite is judged. He waits while the ark is built, and then the flood comes. He spares Nineveh when it turns, and He asks the one who resents it, “Shall I not have pity?”

The waiting is not weakness and it is not forgetfulness. It is love holding back a judgment that is fully deserved, for as long as there is still someone who may turn.

The prophets go further than this. They tell us not only that God waits but what He wants while He waits, and He swears to it by His own life.