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Hosea

Hoseachapter 11

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Speaks with:Hosea 13×2Amos 5×2Matthew 2×1Exodus 4×1Hosea 2×1Jeremiah 18×1

Summary

Chapter summary

The tenderest chapter in the prophets. 'When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt' (11:1): the line Matthew applies to the Christ-child's return from Egypt (Matthew 2:15). God remembers teaching Ephraim to walk, taking him up in his arms, drawing him with cords of a man and bands of love, lifting the yoke to feed him: 'but they knew not that I healed them.' Judgment is announced, and then divine anguish breaks in: 'How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? … my heart is turned within me' (11:8). He will not execute the fierceness of his anger, 'for I am God, and not man.'

Context

Prophecy · Hosea — Hosea overview

  • A. 1–4 Out of Egypt I called my son and taught him to walk
  • B. 5–7 They refuse to return, so the sword falls on their cities
  • C. 8–12 How can I give you up, Ephraim? My heart turns within me

The outline

  1. A.Out of Egypt I called my son and taught him to walkvv. 1 to 4

    Read vv. 1 to 4 →

  2. B.They refuse to return, so the sword falls on their citiesvv. 5 to 7

    Read vv. 5 to 7 →

  3. C.How can I give you up, Ephraim? My heart turns within mevv. 8 to 12

    Read vv. 8 to 12 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

Out of Egypt have I called my son

Type

Hosea remembers the exodus as a father's word: when Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. Matthew reads the verse forward. The child Jesus is carried into Egypt and called out again, then passes through the wilderness, reliving Israel's story and standing where Israel fell.

This is Matthew's own way of reading Scripture, stated in his own fulfilment formula. Jesus does not merely quote Israel's story; he walks it, and where the first son murmured in the wilderness, the true Son obeys.

  1. Hosea 11:1 you are here

    Israel the son called out of Egypt

    When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

  2. Matthew 2:14-15

    The child carried into Egypt and called out

    Matthew states the fulfilment himself: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet.

  3. Matthew 4:1-4

    Forty days answering forty years

    In the wilderness Jesus answers the tempter with the words Moses gave Israel in its own wilderness years.

The world behind this chapter

Hosea 11
When
The final years before Samaria's fall · c. 730–722 BC
Where
A father remembering a small son learning to walk
Who first heard it
Israelites who had heard nothing but indictment for ten chapters

The history

The picture changes from marriage to parenthood, and every detail is domestic. Teaching a toddler to walk by holding his arms, picking him up when he stumbles, bending down to feed him — these were the ordinary acts of a father in an Israelite household, and they are being used of God and the nation coming out of Egypt.

The cords of a man and bands of love play against the harness of an animal. A working ox was led by a rope through the nose and controlled by the yoke on its neck; the yoke could be lifted off the jaws to let it eat. God says he led Israel with human ties, not livestock tack, and eased the yoke so the animal could feed.

Admah and Zeboiim were two of the cities of the plain destroyed alongside Sodom and Gomorrah. Naming the two lesser-known ones rather than the famous pair is deliberate — these are the cities nobody thinks about, and the point is that God cannot bring himself to do to Israel what was done to them.

The lion's roar at the end is a homing signal rather than a threat. In this picture the children come trembling from the west, from Egypt and Assyria, and are settled in their houses — the exiles walking back along the same roads they were marched out on.

What it meant to them

This is the chapter where the argument breaks open. God asks how he can give Israel up, and answers his own question by saying that his heart recoils within him and his compassion grows warm — and then gives the reason: I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst.

For hearers who understood judgment as a machine that ran once it was started, that was the most important sentence in the book. A human judge in that position would have finished it. God says his holiness is precisely why he will not.

Sources cited

  • Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: The Minor Prophets
  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Hosea 11. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 1 · A picture of Christ

Out of Egypt I called My Son

Matthew 2:15→

where he stayed until the death of Herod. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”

MannaFest topical index

This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Gill, Exposition of the Old and New Testaments; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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