Hosea, a sensitive, passionate prophet, suffered in his marriage with an unfaithful wife. So he perceived God in human terms as being married to His people and suffering from their unfaithfulness to Him in much the way Hosea suffered in his marriage - alternating volcanic feelings of anger, hurt, and forgiveness. Because - as Scripture demonstrates abundantly - God has a heart. God is always and ever waiting for us to come back to Him. God is faithful. We are not.
We are not faithful. I know myself how many times I can spend time in prayer and then within hours give an impatient or angry, uncalled-for response to someone. I do this, go out of control, even though I know that whenever I lash out at someone, and deeply hurt someone, I am not only giving pain to someone I love, but I am being unfaithful to God, Who lives within that person. Jesus taught "Whatsoever you do to ... your brothers and sisters, you do unto me." God asks us, as our part of our covenant with God, to love others as we love ourselves.
God speaks of our tendency to unfaithfulness: "Your piety (or "love") is like a morning cloud, (presaging rain and then dissipating) or like the dew that passes away." How God longs for our love to pour over Him like steady rain - but so often we only give Him promises! We turn our faces away from God whenever we do violence to our relationships through lies, selfishness, arguments, grumbling, lack of charity. Whenever we withhold our charity from others, including the people at our work places. Whenever we play with our current technological idols instead of spending time with Him in prayer.
Hosea, living in the Northern Kingdom, Israel, in his lifetime, experienced God's people, God's chosen spouse, being overwhelmingly unfaithful to God. The people fell into idolatry, worshiping the local fertility deities, especially the pagan god Baal, seeing little if any difference between worshiping Baal and worshiping the one God of Israel. The priests in the Northern kingdom led the way in falling away from God. The ritual prostitution practiced at the Canaanite shrines was introduced even into sanctuaries dedicated to the Lord, reflective of the adultery that had become common among the people. At the same time, there was widespread political corruption and corruption of the legal system, resulting in terrible abuses of the poor.
God mourns over His people's infidelity:
"Hear the Word of the Lord, O people of Israel,
for the Lord has a grievance against the inhabitants of the land:
there is no fidelity, no mercy,
no knowledge of God in the land.
False swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery!
in their lawlessness, bloodshed follows bloodshed."
The result? With its moral and religious center dissolved, its political and social life in chaos, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was ripe for turmoil. Between the death of King Jeroboam and the onslaughts of Assyria, multiple Kings sat on the throne, each overthrown by plotters who murdered him. Inner turmoil in a country leads to its vulnerability to outer enemies. The mighty Assyrian empire went to war with Israel, taking it over and destroying its capital Samaria, and made its King her vassal, or subject. Even the Southern Kingdom of Judah eventually submitted to Assyria.
God's first response, according to Hosea (who saw God in human terms), is fury - because God must always resist and stand against evil. God speaks of the revolving dynasties and eventual brutal war with Assyria as God's necessary punishment to bring His people back to Him.
But more is at work here than our concept of punishment. God also speaks of the relationship between sin/evil and its inevitable heart-breaking consequences.
God speaks of how internal corruption will work the Lord's punishment on both Israel and Judah: "I am like a moth for Ephraim, like maggots for the house of Judah." And later comes that powerful line: "When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind." God allows the people of Israel and Judah - and us - to suffer the consequences of our unmerciful, unfaithful, evil actions.
Isn't this true both of us as individuals and we as the people of a particular country? When we damage a relationship, it takes a long time - if ever - for trust and security to rebuild. Many people don't even give relationships a time to heal. So many marriages break up today that there is a widespread fear of commitment and pre-marriage contracts are common. Society no longer mourns when a famous couple breaks up; instead there is only avid speculation over whom each party will date next.
The religious and moral corruption of individuals has inevitable consequences upon more and more people until the repercussions lead eventually to corruption of the whole society. God mourns
"Woe to them, they have strayed from me!
Ruin to them, for they have sinned against me!
Though I wished to redeem them,
they spoke lies against me.
They have not cried to me from their hearts
when they wailed upon their beds....
With their silver and gold they made
idols for themselves, to their own destruction."
God's wrath needs to be understood in connection with God's holiness, God's overwhelming resistance to any action or attitude that stands in opposition to divine love, mercy, and justice. Cardinal Walter Kasper says (in "Mercy: the Essence of Justice"):
"Because of His holiness, God can offer only resistance to evil. The Bible calls this the wrath of God....But God's wrath does not mean an emotionally surging rage or an angry intervention, but rather God's resistance to sin and injustice. Wrath is, so to speak, the active and dynamic expression of his holy essence....For the Old Testament that is....an expression of hope....and the revelation of universal Divine Justice....Evidence of justice in an unjust world is already a work of mercy for the oppressed and those whose works have been denied."
Yet - God (in human terms) holds back His righteous wrath. God could choose, in His justice, to abandon all sinners. But God does not. God, our Divine Lover, even though we have been unfaithful, and "played the harlot," wishes to take us back in His embrace and redeem us.
In the end, God allows us to suffer the devastating consequences for our sinful actions - which is accountability - and at the same time calls us back and forgives us in Divine mercy:
"In his mercy, God rather holds back his justified wrath; indeed, he holds himself back. He does this in order to provide people the opportunity for conversion. Divine mercy grants sinners a period of grace and desires their conversion. Mercy is ultimately grace for conversion."(Kasper)
Even after the people's infidelities, Hosea says in the Voice of God:
"I will espouse you to me forever:
I will espouse you in right and in justice,
in love and in mercy;
I will espouse you in fidelity,
and you shall know the Lord." (Hosea 2: 21-22.)
The prophet Isaiah, speaking in the Voice of God says:
"For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with great compassion I will gather you.
In overflowing wrath for a moment
I hid my face from you,
but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you....
For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,
says the Lord who has compassion on you." (Isaiah 54: 7-8; 10.)
Should we take the prophets' descriptions of God having surging emotions of anger, a desire for punishment, a desire to abandon us, literally? No. Do the prophets' words mean that God's love is fickle and that God changes His mind about us? That first God feels righteous wrath towards us and then feels compassion for us? No. God is not a human being. God's justice IS God's mercy, and God's mercy "stands above the ironclad logic of guilt and punishment." (Kasper.) God's mercy goes far beyond human beings' understandings of guilt and punishment because God's mercy is united to God's fidelity to us, and is the dependable sign of God's covenant with us, what Hosea would call His marriage covenant with us.
God is reliable. We can trust God and rely on God in every situation. God's Love and Mercy are healing for us. In the middle of the darkness of every sin that we commit, there exists the window of God's mercy, shining in the light of His grace. The grace to turn away from sin, to speak the words that will heal our relationships, to repent of our lying and speak the truth. Even as we suffer the inevitable consequences of our words and actions, God walks beside us and in front of us, leading us on to the promise of new life.
God's faithfulness to us is truly our joy, as the hymn says: "Faithfulness will be your joy." Though human beings desert us, abandon us because of their actions or ours, God will never abandon us. His mercy is beyond our understanding. And if we are faithful to God, God will fill us with His joy. May we pray always to be more faithful as individuals, and as a society, to the God who loves and redeems us.
Never allow shame, guilt, or fear to keep you from God - "Don't let fear keep us apart. Long have I waited for you coming home to me and living deeply our new life.."