God has begun to do something here that will not come to a stop until Golgotha

Hans Urs von Balthasar in volume six of The Glory of the Lord beautifully describes the Old Covenant, God’s relationship with his chosen people. A section of the volume is devoted to the messages of the prophets. One of the more moving is Balthasar’s exposition on Hosea. In a time when our sexual natures are being perverted and diminished to a merely functional instinct, Balthasar shows us how God uses Hosea to point to the divine in human sexuality and to the the divine compassion of our God.

In Hosea we are confronted with Israel’s infidelities.

1 Hear the word of the LORD, Israelites, for the LORD has a dispute with the inhabitants of the land: There is no fidelity, no loyalty, no knowledge of God in the land. 2 Swearing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. 3 Therefore the land dries up, and everything that dwells in it languishes: The beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and even the fish of the sea perish. (Ch 4)

11 … Aged wine and new wine take away understanding. 12 My people consult their piece of wood, and their wand makes pronouncements for them, for the spirit of prostitution has led them astray; they prostitute themselves, forsaking their God. 13 On the mountaintops they offer sacrifice and on the hills they burn incense, beneath oak and poplar and terebinth, because of their pleasant shade. Therefore your daughters prostitute themselves, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery. (Ch 4)

God’s wrath is fired up:

4 I, the LORD, am your God, since the land of Egypt; Gods apart from me you do not know; there is no savior but me. 5 I fed you in the wilderness, in the parched land. 6 When I fed them, they were satisfied; when satisfied, they became proud, therefore they forgot me. 7 So, I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard by the road I will keep watch. 8 I will attack them like a bear robbed of its young, and tear their hearts from their breasts; I will devour them on the spot like a lion, as a wild animal would rip them open. 9 I destroy you, Israel! who is there to help you? (Ch 13)

Balthasar, GL Vol VI, p 239

“When the people ‘departs’ from Yahweh to ‘go whoring’ this ends in the drastic situation in which sexuality becomes central, a situation that shows the depth of the abandoned and desecrated covenant in a completely new light. And although the first sin of this kind is to be dated back in the scene in Baal-Peor on the edge of the wilderness, it is only here that the unheard-of consequences are seen, when God takes hold of the sexual dimension of his prophet Hosea in order to portray himself therein in his supra-sexual relationship to Israel. God embraces the sphere of male and female gift of self in the flesh, in order to make use of it as an instrument of revelation on the basis of the total obedience of the prophet, the exact opposite of what the people had done …. “

Hosea Ch 2

2 When the LORD began to speak with Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: Go, get for yourself a woman of prostitution and children of prostitution, for the land prostitutes itself, turning away from the LORD. 3 So he went and took Gomer, daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore him a son. 4 Then the LORD said to him: Give him the name “Jezreel, [God sows] for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezreel and bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel; 5 on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.

6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. The LORD said to him: Give her the name “Not-Pitied (Lo-ruhamah), for I will no longer feel pity for the house of Israel: rather, I will utterly abhor them. 7 Yet for the house of Judah I will feel pity; I will save them by the LORD, their God; but I will not save them by bow or sword, by warfare, by horses or horsemen.

8 After she weaned Not-Pitied, she conceived and bore a son. 9 Then the LORD said: Give him the name “Not-My-People,” for you are not my people, and I am not “I am” for you.

Hosea Ch 3

1 Again the LORD said to me: Go, love a woman who is loved by her spouse but commits adultery; Just as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes. 2 So I acquired her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 Then I said to her: “You will wait for me for many days; you will not prostitute yourself  or belong to any man; I in turn will wait for you (not come to you).”

.. it is thus that God wishes to have his relationship to the people embodied. In both cases, Hosea’s sexual conduct is determined by obedience to God and by renunciation: both in the exercise of his marital rights, which humbles him, and in the non-exercise of the marital relationship. His love and the form which it takes in each case are prescribed for him and his obedience makes it possible for a bridge to be built where this had seemed impossible: the Canaanite emphasis on sexuality is integrated into an entire scheme which utterly supersedes it, and thus God’s relationship to the people is disclosed – for the first time in the history of Israel – as love, burning and tender love, because this love appears in the deepest humiliation. Through this, with disconcerting suddenness, we are given a proleptic view of the final act of the drama: that which is divine in God, his glory, becomes understandable as love, so that everything that God will undertake vis-à-vis his people – including the most terrible measures – is necessarily set under the sign of love.  GL Vol VI, p. 240-241

       

Thanks to the mediating obedience of the prophet in the most intimate sphere of human life, there occurs in Hosea a disclosure of the heart of God which is new and unheard-of when compared with all that has gone before. In pure obedience, Hosea overcomes ab intra the world of the mythical deities which has fallen prey to sexuality, and is able, precisely through this to bring to light the love of God which is supra-sexual. ‘God suffers under Israel’s false love affairs’; he cannot bear them, and we see him as it were wavering between mercy on the guilty wife and the necessity of punishing her ruthlessly. “What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?’ (6:4) It is love that wins the day: ‘How can I give you up, O Ephraim! … My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender, I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst’ (11:8-9) Although the word is not used , it is the kabod of Yahweh that reveals itself in a new, incomprehensible depth as the love that lies beyond wrath and has to do with God’s being God, with his absoluteness. But this unattainably transcendent element is at the same time profaned by human beings in the world and humiliated by them, since its love carries it to the point of defencelessness. The adulteress is purchased …so that she can sit still beside the Lord once more. And he ‘allures her seductively’ (2:16) so that he may speak to her heart. Hosea is commanded to ‘love’ this woman: this is the word that expresses the love between a man and a woman (‘hb), with the difference that in him it is selflessly helpful while in her it is lascivious and full of desire. Hosea’s message meets with no greater acceptance than that of the major literary prophets: ‘The prophet is a fool! The man of the spirit is mad!’ (9:7); he is expelled from the land. Even in this fate, he declares something of the ‘foolish’ God’s love (1 Cor 1) as he runs after a faithless harlot. God has begun to do something here that will not come to a stop until Golgotha. GL Vol VI, p.244