Hosea 11:8, commentary and pictures

God's cry over Ephraim and Israel is His anguished refusal to abandon a corrupt and idolatrous people bent on backsliding, even when they deserve destruction. Admah and Zeboim stand for the utter doom for wickedness that justice demands but love is unwilling to inflict. His heart is turned within Him and His pity is kindled, so compassion restrains fierce anger and He will not execute full wrath, because He is God and not man, holy and present among His people. He had taught and healed them and drawn them with human cords and bands of love as a father, through a thousand years of privilege met with forgetfulness, apostasy and resisted grace. That same lament was Christ's over Jerusalem and over Judas, longing to gather and save those who would not come, and it still spares the fruitless, interceding for further probation, and provides instead of abandoning by giving His Son to die in man's stead so hope remains for all who believe.

God's Reluctant Love

The cry is anguish, not indifference, a Father's deep compassion breaking at the thought of abandoning Ephraim and delivering Israel to destruction even when they are corrupt and idolatrous and bent to backsliding. None will exalt Him though called to the Most High, yet He cannot readily give them up or hand them over to judgment. Admah and Zeboim stand behind the questions as cities remembered for destruction, destroyed for wickedness, the doom Israel deserves but which He is unwilling to inflict.

They had failed to recognize their advantages, though He taught them and healed them and drew them with cords of a man and with bands of love. He dealt with them through forgetfulness and apostasy and rebellion as a loving father deals with a rebellious son, by admonition and warning and correction, by entreaty and remonstrance and rebuke. This continued through a thousand years of privilege and blessing, which they met with resisted grace and abused privileges and slighted opportunities. Even when they turned away and determined their own course, His sorrow remained fatherly and forgiving.

His heart is turned within Him and His repentings are kindled together, His compassion stirred so that pity restrains the fierceness of anger. He will not carry out the full fierceness of anger nor destroy Ephraim, but withholds destruction and grants further opportunity. This is because He is God and not man, holy and present among His people, and He will not come against them in wrath. The same divine pity that spared Israel is extended to the spiritually unfruitful, not abandoning them but continuing to care for them in patient probation.

That love provides rather than abandons, shown in giving His Son for sinners when entreaty and rebuke had failed. In that one gift He poured out all heaven, the best gift of heaven given to a rebellious people. When man could not remedy his depraved condition, Jesus paid the ransom by dying in man's stead, and Jesus and all heaven work for man's salvation. Therefore precious possibilities remain for everyone who believes and trusts.

Christ's Lament and Forbearance

Christ's grief over Jerusalem is the cry of the verse in His own heart, How can I give thee up, spoken with pale and quivering lips in sorrow a hundredfold greater than a mother weeping over her dying child. He longed to save the city and could not bear to devote it to destruction and desolation, even after it had rejected the Son of God and refused His saving love. Though judgment was near because salvation had been rejected, mercies scorned, warnings despised, and His blood about to be shed, His great heart of love still wept in agony and pleaded for her as a tender father for the wayward child of His care. One soul outweighs worlds, and here a whole nation was to be lost, so He hesitated before the sentence that the things belonging to their peace were now hid from their eyes.

He had done what He could and would have gathered Jerusalem's children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, encircling them with His human arm while with His divine arm connecting them with the God of heaven. They would not come to Him that they might have life, having rejected salvation, scorned mercies, despised warnings, resisted grace, abused privileges, rejected opportunities, and refused cooperation after the warnings and entreaties of the prophets and the work of the great Teacher proved in vain. A benumbing power had come over many souls who had knowledge of the truth, so they would not come to God in full sincerity to receive their Saviour and could not understand the great love of God. His heart was wrung because those who should have cooperated with Him refused God and His Son and accepted Satan, and thus determined their own fate.

Judgment was imminent yet repentance and salvation remained possible while mercy lingered, though the day of grace was nearly over and mercy was folding her wings to give place to justice and swift judgment. Destruction was not inevitable while the offer of mercy remained; Jerusalem could still repent and be saved. With prophetic eye He saw the tramp of assailing armies, flames bursting from the beautiful temple, the city laid level with the ground with the plowshare going through its ruins, and the people who were Israelites only in name scattered in every land, flowing to every nation but citizens of none.

The same anguish was directed to Judas, with keen hunger for that one soul, agony of tears, and unwillingness to let him go. Even while Judas planned betrayal, Christ continued to appeal to him through humble service at the foot-washing, which offered his last chance, and the cry was spoken inwardly in His heart as it had been when He wept over the doomed city from Olivet. Judas felt the pull of that love but hardened his heart and refused to be cleansed by repentance, remorse, and confession until the chance passed and was gone.

The same divine pity spares the spiritually fruitless, for He has not cut the sinner down, does not look coldly upon him, turn away with indifference, or leave him to destruction. Though stubborn hearts resist His love, He does not give up the lost but continues to seek and plead with them, drawing by love and grace without force. His heart is turned within Him and His repentings restrain the fierceness of anger from destroying, so the pitying Saviour intercedes to spare the tree yet this year also and grants further probation and added time to dig about it and dress it with unwearied love and increased care and labor until fruit appears.

The warning and love spoken to ancient Israel have also a present-day application, joined to promises of blessing on condition of repentance. The same grief shown in Christ's lament over Jerusalem applies to churches and institutions that reject the light, counsel, warnings, and entreaties God has given. Precious possibilities remain for everyone who believes and trusts in Jesus, for when man could not remedy his depraved condition Jesus paid the ransom by dying in his stead, and Jesus and all heaven are working for the salvation of man. The verse therefore calls the churches to seek the Lord and each person individually to humble himself before God, to commit the keeping of his soul to God as to a faithful Creator, and to look not at his own infirmities but to Jesus for sufficiency and power.