- Hosea 11:9 KJV
Surely the next entry in the Divine record will be the sentence of righteous retribution, "Ephraim is joined to his idols — let him alone!" No! it is a burst of fond parental love; such as, at times, is dimly pictured on earth, when we see a mother with breaking heart and eyes dim with weeping, locking in her embrace the prodigal boy who has wounded her, embittered her existence, and scorned her tears.
Listen to the tender apostrophe, "Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go?" (give you over, that is, to the vengeance of the enemy.) He remembers "the cry" of Sodom and Gomorrah of a former age, and "their sin, which was very grievous." The iniquity of Israel can be compared in turpitude only to that of these inhabitants of the plain, on whom "the Lord rained fire and brimstone from out of heaven." Admah and Zeboiim were two adjoining cities in the Valley of Sodom, which were involved in this terrible overthrow. "How," says He, "How can I destroy you like Admah or demolish you like Zeboiim?" And then, when He sums up with the declaration, "I will not completely destroy Israel." He gives as the reason, "for I am God and not a mere mortal!"
Yes, truly, Your thoughts, O God, are not as man's thoughts; Your ways are not as man's ways; had they been so, long before now how many of us would have been "given up," and had executed against us the guilty cumberer's doom — the God we have so often grieved and provoked by our obstinacy and rebellion, swearing in His wrath that "we should never enter into His rest." But, for all this, His anger is turned away from us; His hand of mercy is outstretched still! Well may we say, with the stricken monarch of Israel, "Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord — for His mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man."
Backslider, return! Though you may have tried the patience of your God by years of provocation — yet He still "keeps silence;" He waits to be gracious; He is not willing that any should perish. Let His goodness and patience, His tenderness and long-suffering, lead you to repentance.
Trembling penitent, bowed down under a sense of your base ingratitude, your prolonged alienation, fearful lest a guilty past may have cut you off from the hope of pardoning mercy — return! You are saying, perhaps, in the bitter reproach of self-abandonment and despair, "I am given up! I am delivered over to the tyranny of my spiritual enemies — the Lord has cast me off forever! He can be favorable no more!" No! hear His wondrous, precious thoughts — the musings of that Infinite Heart which you have wounded, "How shall I give you up? Man would crush his enemy — but I am God, and not man. I will not destroy, I will save you!" "Behold," He says in another place, "You have spoken and done as many evil things as you could; yet, return unto Me!" "My wayward children," says the Lord, "come back to Me, and I will heal your wayward hearts!"
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