Parental love as metaphor for divine-human love

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2003 by Patterson, Richard D

Thus Hosea (11:1-11) uses it to emphasize God's compassion for his people despite a long catalog of charges against them (8:1-10:15). Here God is presented as a loving father grieving over his son's waywardness.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me (Hos 1:1-2a).

In quasi-allegorical fashion Hosea moves from Israel's birth to its childhood.29 As a father teaches his toddler to walk, so God instructed Israel and cared for them.

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them (Hos 11:3).

As his son grew and matured, God led him as a caring father. He recalls his goodness to Israel. No longer were they an enslaved people but tied only to the chords of God's kindness and love.30

Nevertheless, son Israel strayed from God, repaying his loving care and kindness with increasingly idolatrous behavior (Hos 11:2). So entrenched was Israel's apostate behavior that only renewed enslavement by a foreign power could heal its sin (Hos 11:5-7). In a poignant apostrophe God cries out to his son:

How can I give you up, Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, Israel?

How can I treat you like Admah?

How can I make you like Zeboiim?

My heart is changed within me; All my compassion is aroused (Hos 11:8).

Rather than continued judgment, when Israel has learned the lessons of captivity, God will return his son to the land once again. Here Hosea builds upon a theme he had introduced previously (e.g. Hos 1:10-11 [2:1-2]). In a vivid shift of imagery to the animal world and from corporate Israel to individual Israelites, God's children are likened to a lion's cubs following their roaring father and to a flock of birds returning to their homeland.

"They will follow the LORD; he will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west. They will come trembling like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria. I will settle them in their homes," declares the LORD (Hos 11:10-11).

As there had been a first exodus out of Egypt, so a second would follow.31 What had taken place so long ago in the original exodus will happen again.32

Much as in the prodigal son of Jesus' parable (Luke 15:11-32), paternal love stands ever ready to forgive and restore the genuinely repentant to full fellowship. Hosea thus uses the metaphor freely both of God's relation to corporate Israel and individual Israelites. Sometimes both may be intended. This interchange between Israel and Israelites as God's child/children occurs in several other texts. In what has been termed the Song of Moses, the great lawgiver reminds an oft-wayward Israel that God was their father and the Creator whom they had forgotten.

Is this the way you repay the LORD,

O foolish and unwise people?

Is he not your Father, your Creator,

who made you and formed you? (Deut 32:6).

Jeremiah likewise condemns his disobedient fellow countrymen as "senseless children" (Jer 4:22).33 Yet Israel's loving father (Jer 31:3) will one day bring back his repentant children. "They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back" (Jer 31:9). Though disobedient, Israel remains God's dear son: