Ever Faithful

Sorry for the silence on this end.  Between some illness and some computer problems, this has gotten away from me.  I'm going to try to be more regular going forward.  (Though I will mention casually that it would be helpful to me to justify the time I spend working on this if I knew there were people actually reading it!  :)  )

We continue at Hosea 2:8.  As we do, I'll note along with Jed's comment that, since we are reading (very) slowly, looking at individual verses and even words in detail, we're missing important parts of the message that we might get if we read the whole of Hosea, or at least read in the context of more of Hosea, rather than just two verses.

It's surprising to me that I need to say this--or better, to remind myself of this.  In my work, teaching, preaching, etc., my constant refrain is that we must read scripture in its context.  I get very frustrated and annoyed when people from anywhere in the spectrum of Christianity take single verses and remove them from their context in order to try and substantiate some theological idea.  It doesn't work.  It just doesn't.  Whenever we do that, we get it wrong.  Always.  The other verses that surround any one verse shape its meaning.  The stories that surround a single parable shape its meaning.  We must consider the context of scripture.  Period.

My hope is that we do this even in this Bible study, every time we complete a larger passage, a section, a book.  For example, we came to the end of the account of the birth of Hosea and Gomer's children, and then we look at the whole of chapter 1 and saw what the thrust of the whole passage was together.  But to be honest, I'm not sure that's sufficient.  You can't make sense of Hosea 2:3 without first understanding chapter 1.  Perhaps we need to find a way to better take stock of the whole of Hosea's message (and indeed that of all the Minor Prophets) as we go.  Ideas would be welcome!

8. Therefore look:  I will fence [her] way in with thorns
    And I will wall up her wall
    And she will not find her paths.
9. And she will pursue her lovers,
    And she will not overtake them.
    And she will seek them, and will not find.
And she will say, "I will go and return to my first husband,
    For it was better for me then than now."
10. And she did not know that I myself gave her
    Grain, and new wine, and fresh oil;
    I gave much silver to her, and gold
        (Which they made of Baal)
     
Prophetic oracles in ancient Israel often follow a certain pattern.  The prophet begins by declaring what has gone wrong, what kind of infidelity toward God that Israel has embodied, what the kings or people of Judah have done to break God's law.  Then, with the word "therefore," the prophet turns and begins describing the punishment that will be enacted upon the object of the oracle, often giving the chance of repentance to his hearers, that they might avoid this punishment.

Is this really a pattern?  It seems kind of a thin structure on which to build a real theological argument.  And yet, we have this formula again and again in Micah, Amos, Isaiah--and over fifty times in both Ezekiel and Jeremiah!  Yes, this is a clear pattern for prophetic speech, and these types of form patterns are most useful when they ar broken.

In verse seven, we are given details of Israel's unfaithfulness.  We should expect, with the word "therefore" in verse eight, that we are going to hear the punishment that will be enacted.  "Therefore I will divorce her," might be appropriate here.  Or more of the "strip her naked and throw her into the streets" from verse five.  Instead, we have something slightly different.

The metaphorical mother in this passage is chasing after her lovers.  The jilted lover's response?  To plant thorns which will grow into fences, and build walls made out of stone.  This might sound like a kind of imprisonment at first glance, but that is not what is happening here at all.  As she runs after her lovers, she will come across obstacles that will get in her way.  She won't be able to find the path to get to them anymore.  In verse nine, she will chase after them, but won't catch up to them.  She will look for them everywhere, but not be able to find them.

In short, instead of rejecting the estranged wife, the husband here finds ways to prevent her from getting to her lovers.  She loses their trail long enough that she finally decides to go back to her husband.

I've often wondered over the the number of marriages that are dissolved over infidelity.  When a person seeks comfort or love, pleasure or purpose outside of their marriage, doesn't that mean the marriage needs work?  Why are so many people unwilling to put that work into it?  Why do they just turn away and give up?  Wouldn't your love for the other person, no matter how hurt by the infidelity, send you running to a marriage counselor, instead of to divorce papers?  I mean, there are good reasons to file for divorce.  But is this really one of them?

And I've always decided that the only reason I don't quite understand is that I've never been in that situation myself.  I have to admit, the sum total of real romantic relationships I've been in can be counted without resorting to Calculus.  I'm still pretty idealistic about that sort of thing.  And if I'm really honest, I've had plenty of friendships that got messy.  Why would I expect different from romance?

Real human beings hurt each other.  We are sometimes unfaithful, in the most complex of relationships, and in the simplest.  We fail, we falter, and even when we're trying our best--which, let's face it, we aren't always trying our best--we still make mistakes.  Those mistakes cause great hurt, and sometimes we are, in our humanity, too limited to repair that hurt.

It is no wonder, then, that we would expect punishment here after the "therefore."  It is a surprise that instead, God responds to infidelity by drawing his beloved back to him.  God is always faithful, even when we are not.

And she comes back for what reason?  Simply, "It was better with him than it is now."  Not exactly the rousing celebration of love and discipleship we tend to think of as Christians.  Yes, it really is okay if the only reason we turn back to God is, "Well, I guess that's the best I can do."

Verse ten holds a further surprise.  We read back in verse seven that she was chasing after her lovers because of the bread and oil and drink that they provided.  Here in verse ten, God proclaims that all along, it's really been him.  "She did not know," God says.  It doesn't even say, "But now she knows."  God has lovingly continued to provide for his beloved all along, even when she was chasing after idols.  And the gifts God gives are even better than those she expected:  Not just bread, but grain; not just drink, but new wine; not just oil, but fresh oil, the first pressing.  And silver and gold on top of all that.

We have one last little phrase in verse ten.  In reference to the gold, some later scribe has penciled in, "Which they made of Baal."  This raises an interesting point that scholarship is arguing about these days--and that ties nicely into the place we began our discussion today.  This little phrase is clearly an addition.  Aside from the fact that it just doesn't fit, logically, into the prophecy at this point, it also doesn't fit grammatically.  The verb is plural:  "THEY made."  But there is no they in this passage.  If Hosea himself were writing this, he'd have said "SHE made."  If there are some passages where the text-critical problem is questionable, this isn't one of them.  There's no doubt:  This phrase was added later into the finished chapter.

So what do we do with it?  For a long time, scholars would simply have said "it doesn't belong here" and ignored it.  Well, they'd have actually said something more like, "appears to be foreign to the context...probably a gloss...should be regarded as the mechanical appropriation of a marginal notation rather than as an example of Hosea's literary style."  That's right out of Hans Walter Wolff's commentary on the passage (page 37).  Throw it away if it doesn't fit.  It doesn't have any bearing on the prophet's message, since it doesn't even belong to him.

Other interpreters would be quick to insist that this is "Holy Writ" and the "Word of God."  We can't ignore it.  It is God's own word itself.  It must of course be central to the passage, just like every other word and phrase throughout the passage.  Critical tools like this are anathema.  They shake the very foundations of our--  Okay, so obviously, I'm hamming it up a bit.  But you get my meaning.

Today's scholars are beginning to find a middle way.  They pay attention to concerns raised by our critical methods.  Yet they use those concerns as inputs into the interpretation of the whole passage.  We cannot reject a phrase simply because it doesn't fit.  We cannot insist on its equity to what surrounds it, because obviously, it doesn't fit.  Instead, we see clearly that it's been added later.  And then we wonder why it might have been added.  What does the "original" passage mean without it?  How does that meaning change with the addition?  Can we understand scripture to mean both things?

Phew, a long one today.  Some questions for thought:

1) How do we balance the desire to dig into the scriptures and analyze them at a microscopic level, with the desire to understand them in their context, and the big-picture message they give us at the macroscopic level?

2) How might God get in the way of those things that you chase after?  How might God be calling you back to him?

3) How has God been faithful to you all along, whether you've been faithful or not?

4) You may have noticed that while I talked about the text-critical issue at the end of verse 10, I never did talk about the passage's meaning.  So, how does the meaning change with or without that last phrase?  What do you think the final meaning of it is?