Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 60:3 (Sep 2017)
Article: Avenging Husband And Redeeming Lover? Opposing Portraits Of God In Hosea
Author: Brian P. Gault

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JETS 60:3 (September 2017) p. 489

Avenging Husband And Redeeming Lover?
Opposing Portraits Of God In Hosea

Brian Gault*

* Brian P. Gault is associate professor of OT and Hebrew at Columbia Biblical Seminary, 7435 Monticello Rd., Columbia, SC 29203. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: The book of Hosea depicts YHWH both as an Avenging Husband, unleashing judgment on his wayward wife, and a Redeeming Lover, wooing his beloved back into faithful relationship with him. While many have wrestled to reconcile Hosea’s opposing portraits of divine justice and mercy, this struggle has often resulted in disregarding the tension or denigrating YHWH's character. Rather than demeaning God or his prophet, this essay will reexamine the literary images and rhetorical devices with which Hosea paints these pictures, seeking to explain how YHWH can function in seemingly contradictory roles. More than conflicting traits, Hosea’s juxtaposition of divine portraits raises tension within the reader in order to highlight God’s redemptive goal. Through the nation’s contrite penitence and YHWH’s commitment to his covenant promises, Israel’s Avenging Husband will become her Redeeming Lover!

Key words: Hosea, theology of God, justice, mercy, repentance, covenant

In his recent popular work Good Book, David Plotz, a self-described agnostic Jew, came to this conclusion after reading through the Hebrew Bible for the first time: “I began the Bible as a hopeful, but indifferent, agnostic. … I leave the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I’m brokenhearted about God. … I can only conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible, if He existed, was awful, cruel and capricious. He gives us moments of beauty—such sublime beauty and grace—but taken as a whole, He is no God I want to obey and no God I can love.”1 This struggle with God’s paradoxical portraits is nothing new. From Marcion to Martin Luther, Augustine to Anselm, many have wrestled to reconcile divine justice and mercy.2 In the meditations of his Proslogion, Anselm prayed, “Though it is hard to understand how your compassion is not inconsistent with your justice, yet we must believe that it does not oppose justice at all, because it flows from goodness. … Help me, just and compassionate God, whose light I seek, help me to understand what I say.”3

This tension between God’s just judgment and his merciful restoration is expressly highlighted in the structure and message of Hosea. YHWH had chosen to

JETS 60:3 (September 2017) p. 49...

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