Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips. 3 Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses. We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
Here, once again, we see that dramatic swing between despair and hope that is so characteristic of Hosea. After one of the darkest passages in the book, we now come to an extended part that anticipates a brighter future at some distant point. Indeed, this is how the entire book ends after so much despair. God, through his prophet, shows Israel how they can return to him. Certainly, the immediate future still looks very bleak. Hosea’s time as prophet finishes with all he warned about coming true. In 723 BC, the king of Israel, Hoshea, was taken captive. The following Assyrian monarch, Sargon II, completely destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and took its remaining citizens prisoner.
But this is not the end of the story, for a far distant hope remains. The people will one day get their land back and rebuild their relationship with God. The key is to return to God, which is a major theme not only here but also in Deuteronomy. Israel fails repeatedly, and sometimes must bear the consequences of these failures (although God repeatedly postpones them), but God is always ready to accept them back. The term usually translated here as “return” can also be rendered as “repent”. Paula Gooder explains: “Behind this image lies the idea that a breaking of the covenant means turning one’s face away from God. In order to repent and mend the relationship, one’s whole self must be turned to focus on God.”
To make things easier, Hosea, in verses two and three, even tells them what to say. First, they must ask God for forgiveness for all the terrible things they have done. Then they must promise to do better in the future. Finally, they must repent for their past sins. Note how in verse two, the Israelites promise to “offer the fruit of our lips”: this means that their actions will match their words. They have repeatedly failed to live as God wanted but now they will do so. Note that the word “sacrifice” is not mentioned. The Old Covenant contained a whole list of sacrifices to do in atonement for sin, but here God does not ask for one. As so often in the prophets, it is clear that God does not care about religious services but about how we live our lives. Sacrifices have no value if our hearts do not change.
The people must admit they have been wrong, notably when they expected Assyria or some other human creation to save them, for only God can do that. As Douglas Stuart puts it: they must make “a confession of failure and inability, and thus by implication a confession that Yahweh alone has the power to save and benefit his people.” There is no hope in military might or earthly power. Indeed, all of us must recognize how little we are without God. As Christians we believe that the covenant can only work correctly because of Jesus. It is only because of his sacrifice that we can truly be forgiven and the covenant work as God intended.
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