_REPENTANCE_
HOSEA _passim_.
If we keep in mind what Hosea meant by knowledge--a new impression
of facts implying a change both of temper and of conduct--we shall
feel how natural it is to pass at once from his doctrine of knowledge
to his doctrine of repentance. Hosea may be accurately styled the
first preacher of repentance yet so thoroughly did he deal with this
subject of eternal interest to the human heart, that between him and
ourselves almost no teacher has increased the insight with which it
has been examined, or the passion with which it ought to be enforced.
One thing we must hold clear from the outset. To us repentance is
intelligible only in the individual. There is no motion of the heart
which more clearly derives its validity from its personal character.
Repentance is the conscience, the feeling, the resolution of a man
by himself and for himself--"_I_ will arise and go to my Father."
Yet it is not to the individual that Hosea directs his passionate
appeals. For him and his age the religious unit was not the Israelite
but Israel. God had called and covenanted with the nation as a
whole; He had revealed Himself through their historical fortunes and
institutions. His grace was shown in their succour and guidance as
a people; His last judgment was threatened in their destruction as a
state. So similarly, when by Hosea God calls to repentance, it is the
whole nation whom He addresses.
At the same time we must remember those qualifications which we
adduced with regard to Hosea's doctrine of the nation's knowledge of
God.[723] They affect also his doctrine of the national repentance.
Hosea's experience of Israel had been preceded by his experience
of an Israelite. For years the prophet had carried on his anxious
heart a single human character--lived with her, travailed for her,
pardoned and redeemed her. As we felt that this long cure of a soul
must have helped Hosea to his very spiritual sense of the knowledge
of God, so now we may justly assume that the same cannot have been
without effect upon his very personal teaching about repentance. But
with his experience of Gomer, there conspired also his intense love
for Israel. A warm patriotism necessarily personifies its object. To
the passionate lover of his people, their figure rises up one and
individual--his mother, his lover, his wife. Now no man ever loved
his people more intimately or more tenderly than Hosea loved Israel.
The people were not only dear to him, because he was their son,
but dear and vivid also for their loneliness and their distinction
among the peoples of the earth, and for their long experience as the
intimate of the God of grace and lovingkindness. God had chosen this
Israel as His Bride; and the remembrance of the unique endowment
and lonely destiny stimulated Hosea's imagination in the work of
personifying and individualising his people. He treats Israel with
the tenderness and particularity with which the Shepherd, leaving
the ninety and nine in the wilderness, seeks till He find it the one
lost lamb. His analysis of his fickle generation's efforts to repent,
of their motives in turning to God, and of their failures, is as
inward and definite as if it were a single heart he were dissecting.
Centuries have passed; the individual has displaced the nation;
the experience of the human heart has been infinitely increased,
and prophecy and all preaching has grown more and more personal.
Yet it has scarcely ever been found either necessary to add to the
terms which Hosea used for repentance, or possible to go deeper in
analysing the processes which these denote.
* * * * *
Hosea's most simple definition of repentance is that _of returning unto
God_. For _turning_ and _re-turning_ the Hebrew language has only one
verb--shûbh. In the Book of Hosea there are instances in which it is
employed in the former sense;[724] but, even apart from its use for
repentance, the verb usually means to return. Thus the wandering wife
in the second chapter says, _I will return to my former husband_;[725]
and in the threat of judgment it is said, _Ephraim will return to
Egypt_.[726] Similar is the sense in the phrases _His deeds will I turn
back upon him_[727] and _I will not turn back to destroy Ephraim_.[728]
The usual meaning of the verb is therefore, not merely to turn or
change, but to turn right round, to turn back and home.[729] This is
obviously the force of its employment to express repentance. For this
purpose Hosea very seldom uses it alone.[730] He generally adds either
the name by which God had always been known, Jehovah,[731] or the
designation of Him, as _their own God_.[732]
We must emphasise this point if we would appreciate the thoroughness
of our prophet's doctrine, and its harmony with the preaching of the
New Testament. To Hosea repentance is no mere change in the direction
of one's life. It is a turning back upon one's self, a retracing of
one's footsteps, a confession and acknowledgment of what one has
abandoned. It is a coming back and a coming home to God, exactly as
Jesus Himself has described in the Parable of the Prodigal. As Hosea
again and again affirms, the Return to God, like the New Testament
Metanoia, is the effect of new knowledge; but the new knowledge is
not of new facts--it is of facts which have been present for a long
time and which ought to have been appreciated before.
Of these facts Hosea describes three kinds: the nation's misery, the
unspeakable grace of their God, and their great guilt in turning from
Him. Again it is as in the case of the prodigal: his hunger, his
father, and his cry, "I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight."
We have already felt the pathos of those passages in which Hosea
describes the misery and the decay of Israel, the unprofitableness
and shame of all their restless traffic with other gods and alien
empires. The state is rotten;[733] anarchy prevails.[734] The
national vitality is lessened: _Ephraim hath grey hairs_.[735] Power
of birth and begetting have gone; the universal unchastity causes the
population to diminish: _their glory flieth away like a bird_.[736]
The presents to Egypt,[737] the tribute to Assyria, drain the wealth
of the people: _strangers devour his strength_.[738] The prodigal
Israel has his far-off country where he spends his substance among
strangers. It is in this connection that we must take the repeated
verse: _the pride of Israel testifieth to his face_.[739] We have
seen[740] the impossibility of the usual exegesis of these words,
that by _the Pride of Israel_ Hosea means Jehovah; the word "pride"
is probably to be taken in the sense in which Amos employs it of the
exuberance and arrogance of Israel's civilisation. If we are right,
then Hosea describes a very subtle symptom of the moral awakening
whether of the individual or of a community. The conscience of many
a man, of many a kingdom, has been reached only through their pride.
Pride is the last nerve which comfort and habit leave quick; and
when summons to a man's better nature fail, it is still possible in
most cases to touch his pride with the presentation of the facts
of his decadence. This is probably what Hosea means. Israel's
prestige suffers. The civilisation of which they are proud has its
open wounds. Their politicians are the sport of Egypt;[741] their
wealth, the very gold of their Temple, is lifted by Assyria.[742]
The nerve of pride was also touched in the prodigal: "How many hired
servants of my father have enough and to spare, while I perish
with hunger." Yet, unlike him, this prodigal son of God will not
therefore return.[743] Though there are grey hairs upon him, though
strangers devour his strength, _he knoweth it not_; of him it cannot
be said that "he has come to himself." And that is why the prophet
threatens the further discipline of actual exile from the land and
its fruits,[744] of bitter bread[745] and poverty[746] on an unclean
soil. Israel must also eat husks and feed with swine before he arises
and _returns to his God_.
But misery alone never led either man or nation to repentance: the
sorrow of this world worketh only death. Repentance is the return to
God; and it is the awakening to the truth about God, to the facts of
His nature and His grace, which alone makes repentance possible. No
man's doctrine of repentance is intelligible without his doctrine
of God; and it is because Hosea's doctrine of God is so rich, so
fair and so tender, that his doctrine of repentance is so full and
gracious. Here we see the difference between him and Amos. Amos
had also used the phrase with frequency; again and again he had
appealed to the people to seek God and to return to God.[747] But
from Amos it went forth only as a pursuing voice, a voice crying
in the wilderness. Hosea lets loose behind it a heart, plies the
people with gracious thoughts of God, and brings about them, not the
voices only, but the atmosphere, of love. _I will be as the dew unto
Israel_, promises the Most High; but He is before His promise. The
chapters of Hosea are drenched with the dew of God's mercy, of which
no drop falls on those of Amos, but there God is rather the roar
as of a lion, the flash as of lightning. Both prophets bid Israel
turn to God; but Amos means by that, to justice, truth and purity,
while Hosea describes a husband, a father, long-suffering and full
of mercy. "I bid you come back," cries Amos. But Hosea pleads, "If
only you were aware of what God is, you would come back." "Come back
to God and live," cries Amos; but Hosea, "Come back to God, for He
is Love." Amos calls, "Come back at once, for there is but little
time left till God must visit you in judgment"; but Hosea, "Come
back at once, for God has loved you so long and so kindly." Amos
cries, "Turn, for in front of you is destruction"; but Hosea, "Turn,
for behind you is God." And that is why all Hosea's preaching of
repentance is so evangelical. "I will arise and go _to my Father_."
But the _third_ element of the new knowledge which means repentance is
the conscience of guilt. _My Father, I have sinned._ On this point it
might be averred that the teaching of Hosea is less spiritual than that
of later prophets in Israel, and that here at last he comes short of
the evangelical inwardness of the New Testament. There is truth in the
charge; and here perhaps we feel most the defects of his standpoint,
as one who appeals, not to the individual, but to the nation as a
whole. Hosea's treatment of the sense of guilt cannot be so spiritual
as that, say, of the fifty-first Psalm. But, at least, he is not
satisfied to exhaust it by the very thorough exposure which he gives
us of the social sins of his day, and of their terrible results. He,
too, understands what is meant by a conscience of sin. He has called
Israel's iniquity harlotry, unfaithfulness to God; and in a passage
of equal insight and beauty of expression he points out that in the
service of the Ba'alim Jehovah's people can never feel anything but a
harlot's shame and bitter memories of the better past.
_Rejoice not, O Israel, to the pitch of rapture like the heathen:
for thou hast played the harlot from thine own God; 'tis hire
thou hast loved on all threshing-floors. Floor and vat shall not
acknowledge them; the new wine shall play them false._[748] Mere
children of nature may abandon themselves to the riotous joy of
harvest and vintage festivals, for they have never known other gods
than are suitably worshipped by these orgies. But Israel has a
past--the memory of a holier God, the conscience of having deserted
Him for material gifts. With such a conscience she can never enjoy
the latter; as Hosea puts it, they will not _acknowledge_ or _take
to_[749] her. Here there is an instinct of the profound truth, that
even in the fulness of life conscience is punishment; by itself the
sense of guilt is judgment.
But Hosea does not attack the service of strange gods only because
it is unfaithfulness to Jehovah, but also because, as the worship of
images, it is a senseless stupidity utterly inconsistent with that
spiritual discernment of which repentance so largely consists. And
with the worship of heathen idols Hosea equally condemns the worship
of Jehovah under the form of images.
Hosea was the first in Israel to lead the attack upon the idols.
Elijah had assaulted the worship of a foreign god, but neither he nor
Elisha nor Amos condemned the worship of Israel's own God under the
form of a calf. Indeed Amos, except in one doubtful passage,[750]
never at all attacks idols or false gods. The reason is very obvious.
Amos and Elijah were concerned only with the proclamation of God as
justice and purity: and to the moral aspects of religion the question
of idolatry is not relevant; the two things do not come directly into
collision. But Hosea had deeper and more wide views of God, with which
idolatry came into conflict at a hundred points. We know what Hosea's
_knowledge of God_ was--how spiritual, how extensive--and we can
appreciate how incongruous idolatry must have appeared against it. We
are prepared to find him treating the images, whether of the Ba'alim
or of Jehovah, with that fine scorn which a passionate monotheism,
justly conscious of its intellectual superiority, has ever passed upon
the idolatry even of civilisations in other respects higher than its
own. To Hosea the idol is an _'eseb, a made thing_.[751] It is made
of the very silver and gold with which Jehovah Himself had endowed
the people.[752] It is made only _to be cut off_[753] by the first
invader! Chiefly, however, does Hosea's scorn fall upon the image under
which Jehovah Himself was worshipped. _Thy Calf, O Samaria!_[754] he
contemptuously calls it. _From Israel is it also_, as much as the
Ba'alim. _A workman made it, and no god is it: chips shall the Calf of
Samaria become!_ In another place he mimics the _anxiety of Samaria
for their Calf; his people mourn for him, and his priestlings writhe
for his glory_, why?--_because it is going into exile_:[755] the gold
that covers him shall be stripped for the tribute to Assyria. And
once more: _They continue to sin; they make them a smelting of their
silver, idols after their own modelling, smith's work all of it. To
these things they speak! Sacrificing men_ actually _kiss calves!_[756]
All this is in the same vein of satire which we find grown to such
brilliance in the great Prophet of the Exile.[757] Hosea was the first
in whom it sparkled; and it was due to his conception of _the knowledge
of God_. Its relevancy to his doctrine of repentance is this, that so
spiritual an apprehension of God as repentance implies, so complete a
_metanoia_ or _change of mind_, is intellectually incompatible with
idolatry. You cannot speak of repentance to men who _kiss calves_ and
worship blocks of wood. Hence he says: _Ephraim is wedded to idols:
leave him alone_.[758]
There was more than idolatry, however, in the way of Israel's
repentance. The whole of the national worship was an obstacle. Its
formalism and its easy and mechanical methods of _turning to God_
disguised the need of that moral discipline and change of heart,
without which no repentance can be genuine. Amos had contrasted the
ritualism of the time with the duty of civic justice and the service
of the poor:[759] Hosea opposes to it leal love and the knowledge of
God. _I will have leal love and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of
God rather than burnt-offerings._[760] It is characteristic of Hosea
to class sacrifices with idols. Both are senseless and inarticulate,
incapable of expressing or of answering the deep feelings of the
heart. True repentance, on the contrary, is rational, articulate,
definite. _Take with you words_, says Hosea, _and_ so _return to
Jehovah_.[761]
To us who, after twenty-five more centuries of talk, know painfully
how words may be abused, it is strange to find them enforced as
the tokens of sincerity. But let us consider against what the
prophet enforces them. Against the _kissing of calves_ and such
mummery--worship of images that neither hear nor speak. Let us
remember the inarticulateness of ritualism, how it stifles rather
than utters the feelings of the heart. Let us imagine the dead
routine of the legal sacrifices, their original symbolism worn
bare, bringing forward to the young hearts of new generations no
interpretation of their ancient and distorted details, reducing those
who perform them to irrational machines like themselves. Then let
us remember how our own Reformers had to grapple with the same hard
mechanism in the worship of their time, and how they bade the heart
of every worshipper _speak_--speak for itself to God with rational
and sincere words. So in place of the frozen ritualism of the Church
there broke forth from all lands of the Reformation, as though it
were birds in springtime, a great burst of hymns and prayers, with
the clear notes of the Gospel in the common tongue. So intolerable
was the memory of what had been, that it was even enacted that
henceforth no sacrament should be dispensed but the Word should be
given to the people along with it. If we keep all these things in
mind, we shall know what Hosea means when he says to Israel in their
penitence, _Take with you words_.
No one, however, was more conscious of the danger of words. Upon
the lips of the people Hosea has placed a confession of repentance,
which, so far as the words go, could not be more musical or
pathetic.[762] In every Christian language it has been paraphrased to
an exquisite confessional hymn. But Hosea describes it as rejected.
Its words are too easy; its thoughts of God and of His power to save
are too facile. Repentance, it is true, starts from faith in the
mercy of God, for without this there were only despair. Nevertheless
in all true penitence there is despair. Genuine sorrow for sin
includes a feeling of the irreparableness of the past, and the true
penitent as he casts himself upon God does not dare to feel that he
ever can be the same again. _I am no more worthy to be called Thy
son: make me as one of Thy hired servants._ Such necessary thoughts
as these Israel does not mingle with her prayer. _Come and let us
return to Jehovah, for He hath torn_ only _that He may heal, and
smitten_ only _that He may bind up. He will revive us again in a
couple of days, on the third day raise us up, that we may live before
Him. Then shall we know if we hunt up to know the Lord. As soon
as we seek Him we shall find Him: and He shall come upon us like
winter-rain, and like the spring-rain pouring on the land._ This
is too facile, too shallow. No wonder that God despairs of such a
people. _What am I to make of thee, Ephraim?_[763]
Another familiar passage, the Parable of the Heifer, describes the
same ambition to reach spiritual results without spiritual processes.
_Ephraim is a broken-in heifer--one that loveth to tread_ out the
corn. _But I will pass upon her goodly neck. I will give Ephraim a
yoke, Judah must plough. Jacob must harrow for himself._[764] Cattle,
being unmuzzled by law[765] at threshing time, loved this best of
all their year's work. Yet to reach it they must first go through
the harder and unrewarded trials of ploughing and harrowing. Like a
heifer, then, which loved harvest only, Israel would spring at the
rewards of penitence, the peaceable fruits of righteousness, without
going through the discipline and chastisement which alone yield them.
Repentance is no mere turning or even re-turning. It is a deep and
an ethical process--the breaking up of fallow ground, the labour and
long expectation of the sower, the seeking and waiting for Jehovah
till Himself send the rain. _Sow to yourselves in righteousness;
reap in proportion to love_ (the love you have sown), _break up your
fallow ground: for it is time to seek Jehovah, until He come and rain
righteousness upon us_.[766]
A repentance so thorough as this cannot but result in the most clear
and steadfast manner of life. Truly it is a returning not by oneself,
but _a returning by God_, and it leads to the _keeping of leal love
and justice, and waiting upon God continually_.[767]
FOOTNOTES:
[723] See above, p. 320.
[724] vii. 16, _They turn, but not upwards_; xiv. 5, _Mine anger is
turned away_.
[725] ii. 9.
[726] viii. 13; ix. 3; xi. 5.
[727] iv. 9: cf. xii. 3, 15.
[728] xi. 9: cf. ii. 11.
[729] This may be further seen in the very common phrase שבות שוב
עמי, _to turn again_ the captivity of My people (see Hosea vi. 11);
or in the use of שוב in xiv. 8, where it has the force, auxiliary
to the other verb in the clause, of repeating or coming back to do
a thing. But the text here needs emendation: cf. above, p. 315. Cf.
Amos' use of the Hiphil form to _draw back_, _withdraw_, i. 3, 6, 9,
11, 13; ii. 1, 4, 6.
[730] Cf. xi. 5, _they refused to return_.
[731] vi. 1, _Come and let us return to Jehovah_; vii. 10, _They did
not return to Jehovah_; xiv. 2, 3, _Return, O Israel, to Jehovah_.
[732] iii. 5, _They shall return and seek Jehovah their God_; v. 4,
_Their deeds do not allow them to return to their God_.
[733] v. 12, etc.
[734] iv. 2 ff.; vi. 7 ff., etc.
[735] vii. 7.
[736] ix. 11 ff.
[737] xii. 2.
[738] vii. 7.
[739] v. 5; vii. 10.
[740] See above, p. 261.
[741] vii. 16.
[742] x. 5.
[743] vii. 10.
[744] ii. 16, etc.; ix. 2 ff., etc.
[745] ix. 4.
[746] xii. 10.
[747] iv. 6, 8, 9, 10, 11.
[748] ix. 1. See above, p. 279.
[749] See above, p. 279, _n._ 4.
[750] v. 26.
[751] עֵצֶב from עָצַב, which in Job x. 8 is parallel to עשה.
[752] ii. 8.
[753] viii. 4.
[754] viii. 5.
[755] x. 5.
[756] xiii. 2.
[757] Isa. xli. ff.
[758] iv. 17.
[759] Amos v.
[760] vi. 6.
[761] xiv. 2. Perhaps the curious expression at the close of
the verse, _so will we render the calves of our lips_, or (as a
variant reading gives) _fruit of our lips_, has the same intention.
Articulate confession (or vows), these are the sacrifices, _the
calves_, which are acceptable to God.
[762] vi. 1-4.
[763] For the reasons for this interpretation see above, pp. 263 ff.
[764] x. 11.
[765] See above, p. 288.
[766] x. 12.
[767] xii. 7.