The main point: The chapter from Hosea shows God describing his love, the way his people reject his love, the consequences of that rejection, and the promise of restoration from a God whose mercy is everlasting. Matthew quotes this passage in the story of Jesus’ birth to reference this love, sin and forgiveness, and to show how deeply connected Jesus is to the story of Israel.
The book of the prophet Hosea is a story of God’s faithful love for his people, and his people’s unfaithful response to that love. This relationship is dramatized in the life of Hosea as God instructs his prophet to marry a woman who becomes unfaithful to him. But even in that infidelity, Hosea still pursues his wife and tries to woo her back. So does God woo back his unfaithful bride, Israel. But this does not minimize the offence nor the consequences of the infidelity. It shows instead the impossible miracle of God’s mercy and unsurpassed love, that though his people would be sent into exile because of their sin, yet those who return to him will be redeemed.
Hosea 11 is a chapter that contains this entire cycle of God’s love, Israel’s sin, exile and punishment, and promised forgiveness and return. Instead of the bride imagery, though, Israel is described here as a child, a son, whom the Lord has loved and raised. The first verse describes what God has done for his child because of love, bringing his people out of Egypt in the Exodus, delivering Israel from slavery into the Promised Land. This is the iconic moment of God’s salvation for Israel, the event that Israel brings to mind whenever it wants to describe what God is like: God is the One who delivers, the One who saves, the One who set us free.
In the later verses of this chapter we see more descriptions of God acting as a Father: he taught Ephraim (one of the tribes, another representative name for God’s people) to walk, took them up in his arms, healed them, led them with kindness and love, eased their pain and fed them. But God’s children did not repay his kindness with love. Instead, the more they were called, the more they went away, worshipping other gods, sacrificing to idols, not even recognizing the God who healed them. The firstborn child of God, the son he called out of Egypt, turned his back on his Father and refused to return.
There are consequences to this rebellion. God’s protection is removed from his people, and they are not even allowed to return to the relative safety of Egypt. Assyria, instead, will conquer them and rule over them. They will be killed in war, and their cities will be destroyed. They will be sent into exile, away from the Promised Land. And worst of all, when they cry out to God for help, he will not hear them or help them. At the end of verse 7, it seems that because the children of God have abandoned him, they too will be abandoned.
These are the consequences of rebellion, of sin. Outside the loving protection of God, we are doomed. God’s merciful Father-love has been poured out for all people, his deliverance is available, his daily presence and assistance is promised. But we most often reject this love and worship ourselves or the things around us that make us most comfortable. This rejection, rebellion, pride, and sin all bring about the burning anger of God.
If the message of Hosea ended in verse 7, Israel would have been in a hopeless situation, as would we if the message of Scripture ended with our sin. But it does not end there. Verses 8-11 shift the mood entirely. In these verses God wonders aloud, and in seemingly great emotional distress, how he could ever let his children go. He cannot do it, he cannot let them go, his heart recoils within him and his compassion grows towards them. This is not fluffy stuff either. God’s anger still burns towards them, their sin and deceit still infuriates him, and there is still talk of terrible judgment in chapters 12 and 13 of Hosea. But in chapter 11, the Lord chooses not to act on his anger, so he does not destroy them. He continues to have patience, to show mercy, to call his children again, this time with the roar of a lion. And his children, chastened, will come home from exile.
Hosea does not actually seem to be prophesying anything in 11:1 when he talks about God bringing his son out of Egypt. He is merely relating historical facts that proved God’s love for his child, Israel when he brought them out of Egypt and took them to the Promised Land. This he is able to do again, to bring them out of exile and bondage when they return to him. But this verse does not seem to be pointing towards Jesus in any obvious way.
Why then does Matthew announce that a prophecy had been fulfilled by Jesus and family fleeing to Egypt, and then returning later once Herod was dead? It is perhaps not the verse so much that is in question, as the fact that Jesus was living out the life and story of Israel. Moses was saved from the slaughter of male children at the hands of the Pharaoh. Jesus was saved from the slaughter of male children at the hands of Herod. God called his people out of Egypt into the Promised Land. God called his Son, Jesus, out of Egypt and back into the land of Promise. But Jesus did not live out one significant aspect of Israel’s story. Hosea 11 describes how God’s child, Israel, rejected its Father. Jesus did not reject his Father, did not enter rebellion, did not sin. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus relives the story of Israel, but he does so from the position of a faithful Son, one who does not incur the burning anger of his Father. The quoting of Hosea 11:1 highlights this to the reader.
The gift of Jesus, God’s perfect child, is the gift of God’s great mercy towards his people. Jesus is the enactment of God’s offer of forgiveness to the world, the liberation from freedom to sin, the return from exile. Jesus is the continuing proof that God loves his children and has done everything necessary and possible for their salvation, because Jesus’ perfection, his righteousness, is our hope. To reject this mercy, this patience, this forgiveness, this salvation puts us in danger of being exposed to the anger of God.
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