No Savior But God (Hosea 13:1-8)

When Ephraim spoke, people trembled; he was exalted in Israel. But he became guilty of Baal worship and died. ² Now they sin more and more; they make idols for themselves from their silver, cleverly fashioned images, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of these people, “They offer human sacrifices! They kiss calf-idols!” ³ Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears, like chaff swirling from a threshing floor, like smoke escaping through a window. ⁴ “But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. ⁵ I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. ⁶ When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. ⁷ So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. ⁸ Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them—a wild animal will tear them apart.

This passage begins by showing once again the central problem in Israel (called Ephraim once again): worship of false gods. Hosea shows the futility of worshipping statues created by other humans. People kiss them and even sacrifice other humans to them (although some translations put “lambs” in place of humans). Remember that the covenant is very clear that God cannot be portrayed as an image. It should be obvious that these activities are pointless – indeed, some of them are evil – but humans constantly forget our need for the one true God. Part of the reasons life seems pointless to us is that we ignore God.

Verse four sums up this problem when God says: “no Savior except me.” We can search in this world for excitement and discovery, but it will all seem pointless without God since only he can truly offer salvation. He alone offers us hope and a future full of love and joy. Indeed, no other religion presents a deity like this, who is preoccupied with saving his people and offering them freedom. In verse five, God lists all that he had done for Israel: they owe their lives to him yet they forget him continually. The paradox is that as God spoiled them, making their lives easier, they became proud and thought they did not need him.

We’ve already seen a number of examples of God’s unhappiness with Israel and his threats to destroy it, but the description, in the second part of this passage, of how savage their treatment will be is particularly unsettling. The mother who has loved her children, the husband who has loved his wife becomes a lion, tearing Israel apart. In verse 8, God compares his behavior to that of a bear who has lost her cubs. This is an especially apt and even poignant image for that is God’s position. He has lost his children but they have not been kidnapped and taken from him but chosen to leave him.

Often, in Christianity, we portray God as emotionless, a serene being who is always loving. Hosea’s portrait of God is full of churning emotions which come about because of his love for us. Hosea shows a God who feels both hurt at rejection and horror at the sins humans commit. Why then does the God of the New Testament seem so different? Paula Gooder suggests that: “The difference between the Old and New Testaments is not that God stops feeling emotion (because that would mean his love was somehow lesser) but that in the New Testament, God put in place a means to mend the broken relationship between him and his people.”