I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
Hosea 11:3 belongs with God's love for Israel from childhood and His calling of His son out of Egypt. Ephraim there is Israel, cared for by God like a parent teaching a small child to go, taking them by the arms and holding, supporting and sustaining them as they learned to walk. That parental care is fatherly toward a small child, holding and upholding them, and it is also mother-like in patient guiding and sustaining as a mother teaches a young child to walk.
The same care includes drawing them with cords of a man and bands of love, freeing them, lifting the yoke from their jaws, and laying food before them and feeding them. In this way God healed and restored them and was Himself the source of their help. Despite these advantages they did not know and failed to recognize that their healing and care came from Him.
They answered this care by not keeping His covenant and refusing to walk in His law, by going away from those who called them to sacrifice to Baalim and burn incense to graven images, by remaining bent on backsliding from Him and refusing to honor and exalt Him who is on high, so that the sword would come upon their cities to consume them because of their own plans. The verse is connected with God's continued instruction of Israel through His prophets, who repeatedly called them and taught them what was for their welfare, even in dark periods of its history. Alongside their backsliding it reveals God's heart turned within Him with kindled pity so that He struggles over giving them up. What was written then about His love and grief and about promised blessing on condition of repentance holds for the present day as well. The verse also shows that God can guide His people through their mistakes, using what He permits to teach them what He wants them to understand, and He does not cast them off for making mistakes.
Hosea 11:3 belongs with God's love for Israel from childhood and His calling of His son out of Egypt. Ephraim there is Israel, cared for by God like a parent teaching a small child to go, taking them by the arms and holding, supporting and sustaining them as they learned to walk. That parental care is fatherly toward a small child, holding and upholding them, and it is also mother-like in patient guiding and sustaining as a mother teaches a young child to walk.
The same care includes drawing them with cords of a man and bands of love, freeing them, lifting the yoke from their jaws, and laying food before them and feeding them. In this way God healed and restored them and was Himself the source of their help. Despite these advantages they did not know and failed to recognize that their healing and care came from Him.
They answered this care by not keeping His covenant and refusing to walk in His law, by going away from those who called them to sacrifice to Baalim and burn incense to graven images, by remaining bent on backsliding from Him and refusing to honor and exalt Him who is on high, so that the sword would come upon their cities to consume them because of their own plans. The verse is connected with God's continued instruction of Israel through His prophets, who repeatedly called them and taught them what was for their welfare, even in dark periods of its history. Alongside their backsliding it reveals God's heart turned within Him with kindled pity so that He struggles over giving them up. What was written then about His love and grief and about promised blessing on condition of repentance holds for the present day as well. The verse also shows that God can guide His people through their mistakes, using what He permits to teach them what He wants them to understand, and He does not cast them off for making mistakes.