How shall I give thee over, Ephraim? [how] shall I deliver thee up, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? [how] shall I set thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.
Hosea 11 has just sentenced Israel to exile, and then the sentence breaks off. God turns to the people He is punishing, and His four questions are the sound of a heart that cannot let them go.
In this verse Ephraim and Israel are two names for the same people. Up to this point the chapter has been nothing but threat, and one writer sets out what that threat meant:
Their punishment is threatened to the last extreme: out of the land, slaves of the nations around them, which they assumed could never happen... Still, we have a new burst of sorrow on God's part. He grieved even though He had to strike, and He would not completely destroy the people He had chosen.
Admah and Zeboiim are the least familiar names in the verse. A Bible dictionary explains the first one:
One of the cities in the plains of Jordan destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah... The LORD, speaking of His fierce anger against Ephraim, said, "How can I make you like Admah?"
Israel had sunk to the level of towns God had already wiped out. Even so, the answer to the question is no:
Were they not just as bad as the doomed cities of the plain? Yet He would spare them in sovereign mercy. He is not like a man who comes back to finish the job, or who enters the city to make sure it is done completely.
The closing lines of the verse are not cool regret from a distance. God speaks like a man who cannot bring himself to end a relationship:
In Hosea we hear the heart of God pleading. God comes down to man's level and pleads face to face, like a man, with a people He loves... a people He loved and could not give up. His compassion grows warm and tender. He yearns over that people... He does not stand at a distance, high above them, passing judgment on them. Instead He comes down, through the prophet, to their true condition. He comes down to their unfaithfulness to Him, and He begs them to return.
One writer hears the same voice in the Gospels, when Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He then turns it into a question about how we warn others:
The One who wept over Jerusalem is the same majestic Person who said in Hosea's day, "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? My heart recoils within Me." If judgment must come, it was still painful to the divine heart to be forced to carry it out. Judgment is "His strange work" (Isa. 28:11)... As faithful witnesses for God, it is our duty to warn an evil world of the judgment that is coming. Woe to us if we fail to sound the warning! But how do we do it? Do we do it in a harsh spirit of condemnation, or with trembling lips and hearts full of compassion?
One writer applies these words to believers who have drifted away. What God feels toward them sets the standard for what we should feel:
But first, remember this: the Lord never gives His people up, whatever their state or condition... No! The Lord never forgets His people, however badly they may have sinned. The story of Peter, on the sad night he denied his Lord, announces this truth like a trumpet... If He does not forget those who have drifted away, they will not forget them either. If He yearns over them and pleads with them, they will do the same, as long as His own affections are alive in their hearts.
God's refusal to give Ephraim up is not just a feeling. It ends in a promise for the nation:
But however great the sin of Israel, the heart of their God cannot abandon His people. He will not destroy them. He is God, and not man. In the end He will place the people, trembling now and submissive, back in their own homes.
- Deserved — Ephraim had sunk to the level of Admah and Zeboiim. God had already destroyed those towns alongside Sodom, and Israel had earned the same end.
- Withheld — Judgment falls, but it does not destroy them completely. God does not come back to finish the job as a man would. He spares them in sovereign mercy.
- Grieved — He is not detached from the discipline He sends. He grieves even as He strikes, and judgment is His strange work.
- Pleading — He does not pass sentence from a distance. He comes down to their real condition and begs them to return.
- Restored — His refusal to give them up ends where the chapter ends. He puts a trembling, submissive people back in their own homes.
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God, and not man, -- the Holy One in the midst of thee and I will not come in anger.
God has just spoken of the judgment Israel had earned, and then, mid-sentence, He holds the blow back. The reason is not that Israel deserved better, but that the One judging is not a man — so what does His holiness do when He stands among a guilty people?
The verse before names Admah and Zeboim, two towns wiped out with Sodom. Commentators do not soften the comparison. They call the sparing sovereign mercy, not a lighter verdict.
Were they not really as bad as the doomed cities of the plain? Yet He would spare in sovereign mercy. He is not like a man who comes back to finish the work, or who enters the city to do it thoroughly. For He is God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of Ephraim.
(Kelly follows an older rendering, "I will not enter into the city," where the ESV reads "I will not come in wrath.")
Man, having struck once, comes back to finish. God does not. Writers trace the difference to God's own nature. His heart for this people outlasts their sin.
However great the sin of Israel, the heart of their God cannot forsake His people. He will not destroy them; He is God, and not man. In the end He will place the people, trembling now and submissive, back in their homes.
People wonder how God can change His mind at all. One writer separates what God never changes from a threatened judgment He may not carry out.
God is not a man, so He does not change His mind about His eternal and unchangeable purposes and His unconditional promises; He never takes those back. But in His grace He may repent of a threatened judgment — that is, not carry it out. He did this with Nineveh. We must remember that the Spirit of God stoops to speak in our human way, because we are weak.
We might expect holiness to be the reason God withdraws. Here it goes with His staying "in your midst." One writer sees this as God's settled way of working: He comes near as the Holy One to bless.
The blessing cannot fail; for God reveals Himself as the redeemer, and comes into the midst of His people, as the Holy One, to bless them. So we read again, as in Isaiah 12:6: "Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." (Compare Ezekiel 39:7; Hosea 11:9; and Isaiah 29:22–24.)
One writer treats "the Holy One" as more than a description of God. He links the phrase in Hosea to the way the New Testament speaks of Jesus.
In Hosea 11:9 we read of "the Holy One in your midst." In 1 John 2:20 we read that we "have been anointed by the Holy One." Mary was told, "the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). In 1 John 5:20 we read of "him who is true," and "This is the true God." In His Person the Lord Jesus Christ is holiness and truth embodied. More than that, He has the moral glory of being The Holy One and The True One. These words are really divine titles of Christ and not just divine attributes. No created being can claim this essential moral glory.
If the Holy One stays, the ground around Him cannot stay as it was. One writer applies the phrase to Josiah, a king who spent years clearing idols and filth out of the land.
In Hosea 11:9, God spoke of Himself as "the Holy One in your midst." ... In Josiah's day the land was full of detestable things. There were the idols themselves, and also the filthy practices that always go with idolatry. It apparently took eight years of energetic action to clear all this away. Josiah glossed over no evil he could prevent. But he could not look into the hearts of the people. There, sadly, the evils were in many cases still loved.
This sparing is not just a delay. One writer links it to the promises God makes later in the book.
This same God gave them a king in His anger and took him away in His wrath (Hosea 13:11). Now He says, "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death" (Hosea 13:14). And again, "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily, and cast forth his roots like Lebanon."
- Guilty — Israel had earned what fell on Admah and Zeboim; the sparing never pretends otherwise.
- Not man — a man returns to finish what he started; God does not, because His purpose never changes.
- Holy One — the title marks what no creature can claim, and the New Testament writers attach it to Christ.
- In your midst — His holiness does not keep Him away. He comes near to bless, and His nearness leaves no room for evil.
- Result — the withheld anger opens into healing, free love, and a people placed back in their homes.