Love Unfailing and True
Chapter 2 moves all the time on two planes, the personal (Hosea and Gomer) and the national (Yahweh and Israel), and though there is something to be said for sorting them out there is also something to be said for allowing them to flow together while concentrating on the underlying issues common to both. The beginning is personal, Hosea using his children to plead on his behalf with their mother, but by the time we get to vv 9ff the picture has changed to Israel. Two issues, however, are common to both situations and are the marks of true love.
First, an acceptance of reality. Vv 1-13 leave us in no doubt that Hosea (Yahweh) is affronted (if not outraged) and offended (if not heart-broken) by what Gomer (Israel) has done. Nor is there any attempt to conceal their anger and desire for punishment if not revenge. Love begins, though does not end, with an acceptance of the reality of the situation in all its horror.
Second, a determination to redeem the situation. Something which has gone so dreadfully wrong must be put right. People who have grown apart must be brought back together. A situation which has gone adrift must look back to where it started. Only whereas we tend to assume this requires a ‘nevertheless’ (‘these people may have gone far astray, nevertheless it is my job to try to bring them back and forgive them’), Hosea, following what he knows of Yahweh, sees it as a ‘therefore’ (v 14). We are to be forgiven not ‘in spite of ourselves’ but ‘because of ourselves’. And we are to forgive others not because it is our duty but because their very failure moves us to love.
Failure to forgive is failure to love and the injured party must make the initiative, not because they are blameless but because it is their hurt which makes them most sensitive to the need. To love is to enter into relationship — in Yahweh’s case a covenantal relationship and in Hosea’s a covenantal marriage — and in that relationship we have to wrestle with that love in order to be true to ourselves. We therefore forgive, not ‘in spite of ourselves’ but ‘because of ourselves‘ — not because it is our duty but because it is in fact their very failure and indifference which moves us to go on loving them.