'Israel,' of course, here means the Northern Kingdom, with which Hosea's
prophecies are chiefly occupied. 'Thou hast fallen by thine
iniquity'--that is the lesson taught by all its history, and in a deeper
sense it is the lesson of all experience. Sin brings ruin for nations
and individuals, and the plain teachings of each man's own life exhort
each to 'return unto the Lord.' We have all proved the vanity and misery
of departing from Him; surely, if we are not drawn by His love, we might
be driven by our own unrest, to go back to God.
The Prophet anticipates the clear accents of the New Testament call to
repentance in his expansion of what he meant by returning. He has
nothing to say about sacrifices, nor about self-reliant efforts at moral
improvement. 'Take with you _words_,' not 'the blood of bulls and
goats.' Confession is better than sacrifice. What words are they which
will avail? Hosea teaches the penitent's prayer. It must begin with the
petition for forgiveness, which implies recognition of the petitioner's
sin. The cry, 'Take away all iniquity,' does not specify sins, but
masses the whole black catalogue into one word. However varied the forms
of our transgressions, they are in principle one, and it is best to bind
them all into one ugly heap, and lay it at God's feet. We have to
confess not only sins, but sin, and the taking away of it includes
divine cleansing from its power, as well as divine forgiveness of its
guilt. Hosea bids Israel ask that God would take away all iniquity; John
pointed to 'the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'
But beyond forgiveness and cleansing, the penitent heart will seek that
God would 'accept the good' in it, which springs up by His grace, when
the evil has been washed from it, like flowers that burst from soil off
which the matted under-growth of poisonous jungle has been cleared. Mere
negative absence of 'evil' is not all that we should desire or exhibit;
there must be positive good; and however sinful may have been the past,
we are not too bold when we ask and expect that we may be made able to
produce 'good,' which shall be fragrant as sweet incense to God.
Petitions are followed by vows. On the one hand, the experience of
forgiveness and cleansing will put a new song in our mouths, and instead
of animal sacrifices, we shall render the praise which is better than
'calves' laid on the altar. Perhaps the Septuagint rendering of that
difficult phrase 'the calves of our lips,' which is given in Hebrews
xiii. 15, 'the fruit of our lips,' is preferable. In either case, the
same thought appears--that the penitent's experience of forgiving and
restoring love makes 'the tongue of the dumb sing,' and it will bind
men's hearts more closely to God than anything besides can do, so that
their old inclinations to false reliances and idolatries drop away from
them. The old fable tells us that the storm made the traveller wrap his
cloak closer round him, but the sunshine made him throw it off.
Judgments often make men cling more closely to their sins, but forgiving
mercy makes them 'cast off the works of darkness.' The men who had
experienced that in God, the Israel, which by its sins had brought down
the punishment of His repudiation of being its father (i. 9), had found
mercy, would no longer feel temptation to turn to Assyria for help, nor
to seek protection from Egypt's cavalry, nor to debase their manhood by
calling stocks and stones, the work of their own hands, their gods. What
earthly sweetness will tempt, or what earthly danger will affright, the
heart that is feeling the bliss of union with God? Would Judas's thirty
pieces of silver attract the disciple reclining on Jesus' bosom? We are
most firmly bound to God, not by our resolves, but by our experience of
His all-sufficient mercy. Fill the heart with that wine of the kingdom,
and bitter or poisonous draughts will find no entrance into the cup.