What kind of love do we need today, from our deepest sources of life, inside this time of rupture?
The traumas of war and violence brings out the worst and best response in us. It brings out a deep need for meaning and for care, almost as if we were each children in need or deep parental care.
For visionaries and seers, times of loss present a vast array of poetic and prophetic responses.
Hosea, witnessing the collapse of the Kingdom of Israel in real time, 2,800 years ago, previously depicted God as an abusive husband to the nation of Israel that he imagined as an adulterous wife.
But as the situation grows dire, mid growing despair, he returns to a familiar biblical trope - the sometimes rocky relationship between parents and children. Yes, the kids can be a menace, but what happens when the parent is to blame? Intergenerational trauma takes a front seat here, all the way to the top. He is trying to both blame the people for their losses - but also give them a horizon of hope.
At the start of what will be his final chapters of rebuke and protest he pauses here to console, offering the images of the divine as loving parent even to the children guilty of so much betrayal over the ages.
In these verses one can almost imagine God as a parent looking through old photos of their wayward child, as a still smiling baby:
כִּ֛י נַ֥עַר יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וָאֹהֲבֵ֑הוּ וּמִמִּצְרַ֖יִם קָרָ֥אתִי לִבְנִֽי׃ וְאָנֹכִ֤י תִרְגַּ֙לְתִּי֙ לְאֶפְרַ֔יִם קָחָ֖ם עַל־זְרוֹעֹתָ֑יו וְלֹ֥א יָדְע֖וּ כִּ֥י רְפָאתִֽים׃ בְּחַבְלֵ֨י אָדָ֤ם אֶמְשְׁכֵם֙ בַּעֲבֹת֣וֹת אַהֲבָ֔ה וָאֶהְיֶ֥ה לָהֶ֛ם כִּמְרִ֥ימֵי עֹ֖ל עַ֣ל לְחֵיהֶ֑ם וְאַ֥ט אֵלָ֖יו אוֹכִֽיל׃
“I fell in love with Israel
When he was still a child;
And I have called them My child
Ever since Egypt.
I have pampered Ephraim,
Taking them in My arms;
But they did not know that it was
My healing care.
I drew them with human ties,
With cords of love;
But I seemed to them as one
Who imposed a yoke on their jaws,
Though I was offering them food.”
Hosea 11:1-4
Oy! The guilt, familiar to so many of us, as children and parents, Jewish or not, is dripping from these verses like blood, sweat and tears, wrapped with an intact umbilical cord. Why is Hosea turning to these images at this time of his people’s growing anguish? YHWH’s recollection of Israel as a baby on the divine lap brings to mind the multiple relics of Isis, the ancient Goddess of Egypt, with Horus, her son, in her lap. In many ways this would become the iconic representation of Earth Mother holding humanity, and even Mary with Jesus in her arms.
Perhaps, as many have suggested, marriage metaphors can point at possible termination of the relationship but parental ties - and maternal love - for better or for worse, and mostly but not always - include lifelong bonds.
Hosea names the people as guilty - names their God as guilty too, but also as an overall loving presence, a parent that even if able to punish - will return to love.
Many Jewish thinkers over time have assumed that the parent Hosea is talking about here is YHWH as father. But the gender is, actually, ambiguous here, and it’s worth noting that perhaps the power of these images is precisely a nod to the ancient traditions, often violently repressed of the Divine as the Great Mother.
How do we read these verses through this lens?
Rev. Wilda Gafney helps unpack this chapter through the Womanist approach:
“All of our language and imagery falls short when we speak of God, for human language is woefully inadequate for the task. Even our most familiar and beloved God-language can become an idol – that which is not God but which we treat as though it were. For some, masculine god-language is an idol; it is a limited, finite, incomplete articulation of who God is in and beyond the scriptures treated and worshipped as though it were God. God is not our language about God, even our most cherished and traditional language, father language, Trinitarian language, falls short of who God is. We need multiple images of God, more than one set of words, like Hosea. In most of Hosea God is Israel’s husband but in chapter 11 she is Israel’s mother...
God says: I, I taught Ephraim how to walk – using a double subject in Hebrew for emphasis. Imagine God holding out her fingers for her toddling child to grasp as he teeters and totters.
God says: I lifted them up in my arms. Imagine God holding her child in her arms, not just one, but all of them at the same time. No matter how many, no matter how wriggly, there is room in God’s lap for all of her children.
Hosea preached of the tender mothering love of God as he preached about a second Exodus, a do-over. Anybody else want to turn back the hands of time and start over? Israel was going to get one, but it wouldn’t be like they thought. God wasn’t going to wave a magic wand and erase all of their problems and the consequences of their decisions, choices, actions and inactions. But God would accompany them on their journey, through and beyond their sorrows, no matter where they led or how long it took.”
For the sages, grappling with ongoing theological questions, Hosea’s words in this chapter also echoed as a lifelong parenting device - though they didn’t focus on the gender. In a Midrash (Sifrei, Deut. 305) that reflects on the moment in which Moses hands over the reigns to Joshua, they sages imagined this conversation:
"This nation I am passing to you is still young, they are still children. Therefore be not too demanding in all that they do, for even their Master is not too demanding in all that they do. And so it is written, 'For Israel is a youth and I love him.' (Hos. 11:1)"
Parents and children, then and now, keep a complex web of connections that sometimes get tangled in trauma and blame, distance and shame. Yet somehow, Hosea reminds us, there is a bond, a lasting memory, maternal or paternal instinct of protection and love that can survive the worst chasm and overcome despair and distance. Were his words helpful to his terrified neighbors on the brink of collapse?
Can they help us and our loved ones cope better with the difficult days right now and ahead?
Gafney’s faith encourages her to remind us that Hosea’s words matter, and the repair is possible in our ruined relationships, hope can live on and
“that Sometimes we go back to go forward. And wherever we go, our Mothering God goes with us. That’s Iron Age theology that still works in the digital age.”
May the unconditional love mothering instinct within all help each of us deal more kindly with each other and the days ahead, to cope, to hope, and offer healing.
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