God and His People (Hosea 6:4-11)

⁴ “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. ⁵ Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth—then my judgments go forth like the sun. ⁶ For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. ⁷ As at Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to me there. ⁸ Gilead is a city of evildoers, stained with footprints of blood. ⁹ As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes. ¹⁰ I have seen a horrible thing in Israel: There Ephraim is given to prostitution, Israel is defiled. ¹¹ “Also for you, Judah, a harvest is appointed.

In this passage, we return to the familiar theme in Hosea of God lamenting the sins of Israel. As Paula Gooder has noted: “God’s cry in verse 4 is the cry of any exasperated parent with a truculent child.” Parents want their child to understand that they have behaved badly, but the child just will not listen. The parents feel frustrated and irritated. In the same way, God is shown here as frustrated that Israel will not listen. He has sent his prophets to warn them, to threaten them, to attack them for their sins, but nothing happens. God now feels that the only option left is to cut off his beloved children and leave them completely to their own devices.

We should never forget that the remedy God found for our misbehavior was to sacrifice his own son. We should all meditate on what great love he has for us but also on what suffering he must have felt. Verse six sums up what God wants from us: love for others and knowledge of God. Note that he does not care about how he is worshiped. It’s very easy to focus on the form of liturgy or the right vestments and insist that there is only one possible way to do things. Indeed, it’s much easier than living the life that God demands of us. The prophets are always very clear on this subject: God does not care about ritual, about external things, but about our interior life. We must seek to know him and follow his will, and his will is not concerned with what hymns we sing or what words we use at Mass but about how we treat others. Of course, a beautiful religious service should not be denigrated and can be very moving. But it must come from the heart and not be something external or superficial. It must come from our love for him.

In verse four, God compares our love for him to the dew: it is real enough while it lasts, but it doesn’t last very long. God, on the other hand, is eternally faithful. Compare this to Jesus’ parable of the sower and the example of the seed that falls on rock or thorns. It sprouts up but then dies because it has no roots or because the weeds strangle it. All too often we mean well but get distracted. God is like the sun that reveals what is hidden but also gives light and warmth.

This rest of this reading concerns Israel’s crimes. Once again, they come down to violating the covenant in two main ways: worshiping other gods and social injustice. Humanity’s misbehavior goes all the way back to the start, to Adam (7). Verse 8 suggests that powerful people have been oppressing the weak to the point of physical intimidation and death, which was clearly against the covenant. In verse nine, there is another criticism of the priests, who should set an example, but instead are criminals themselves, lying in ambush for the people. From top to bottom, the land is corrupt and full of arrogant people who care nothing about what God demands of them. Israel can no longer avoid suffering the consequences of its wrongs, and so God can only mourn for what they will soon suffer.