The Fatherly Love of God

“Our Father …” As Jesus taught us, so we have prayed. Jesus, of course, had, and has, a special relationship with God the Father, but he invited his followers, as his friends, into that relationship. As they would have recognized, steeped as they were in the Hebrew Scriptures, this was in tune with the way God spoke of his chosen nation as his children. Today’s passage is one example, a beautiful, touching and complex exploration of that relationship. It begins with the defining memory of God’s liberating action in Exodus–a verse, incidentally, echoed in Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story (Matt. 2:14,15). As we remember from the Exodus story, the gratitude didn’t last (Exod. 16:1-3). The same is true of Hosea’s listeners. Why the constant disobedience and idolatry? Sometimes sin can take on the features of an addiction; at other times it can just seem too normal to notice. Who were the Baalim (or Baals), and why were they so seductive? At one level, they can easily be confused with God himself. The actual word means “Lord” or “Master” in a number of Semitic languages; and so it might imply a generic idea of God, stripped of the personal, as well as the fertility gods of the neighboring tribes.

There is another related point, brought into focus by Wednesday’s commentary. It is noted that “Yahweh claims that he is not ‘a man,’ ‘ish.’ Commentators have either assumed or stated that the text really means that Yahweh is not human, ‘adam.’ Gomer’s perspective has made us take seriously the text’s actual words at this point and link it to Yahweh’s wanting to be Israel’s ‘man,’ her ‘ish,’ rather than her master.” So, our relationship with God–figured as our father or husband, creator and sustainer–is so much more than the impoverishing worship of a pagan fertility figure, who, ancients mistakenly believed, might be appeased enough to send the rain or help us conceive.

What aspect of God’s fatherhood makes most sense to you at the moment?