On the Last Day of the Year...

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been on my whirlwind tour of the west, having spent not quite four days in New Mexico and then moved on to California. Below is the sermon I preached at my home church this past Sunday; enjoy.

Grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them a light has shined.” Listen to the words of Isaiah’s prophecy. “You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.” The nation of which Isaiah speaks has the joy of abundant harvests and military victories—no sign of famine or defeat. Indeed, all their foes and oppressors have been defeated by God. But even more than military victory, this people enjoys an end to all war—“For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.”

For the kingdom of Judah, to whom Isaiah is speaking, this is the most wonderful vision of peace and prosperity they could imagine. Isaiah does not even say this will happen, in some distant future; he speaks in the past tense. The people already has seen a great light. For Isaiah, their hope is already present. And what is the reason for this hope? “A child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests on his shoulders.” Though the word is not used here, this is usually referred to as a Messianic prophecy, from the Hebrew mesiach, meaning “anointed”. Just as David was anointed by Samuel, the mesiach is the king, set apart by being anointed. This child,with authority resting on his shoulders, is a king and the hope of the kingdom.

But what happens in the years after this prophecy? The Northern Kingdom, Israel, is conquered by Assyria. Then Judah, the Southern Kingdom, is conquered by the next great empire—Babylon. Jerusalem is captured, and the very Temple of God is destroyed. The people are taken into exile in Babylon. A generation later, Babylon falls to Persia, and though the exiles are allowed to return home, they are still subjects of a foreign empire. They are certainly not permitted to have a mesiach, for anointing a king would be tantamount to rebellion. So it continues: after Persia comes Greece and after Greece, Rome.

With Rome, we find ourselves at the reconstructed Temple with an old man who hopes for the consolation of Israel—Simeon. Like the other Jews under Roman rule, Simeon remembers the prophecies of Isaiah and still trusts in God’s promises. Indeed, Simeon has received a promise of his own—the Holy Spirit of God has made known to him that he would see the promised mesiach with his own living eyes. Can we even imagine what this meant to Simeon? The words of Isaiah, spoken as though they had already come to pass, have been waiting in the hearts and minds of the Jews for more than seven hundred years. Now Simeon is going to see them fulfilled in his own short remaining span of life.

With the history of that prophecy behind him, Simeon looks forward in the hope given to him by the Holy Spirit, and guided by that Spirit, he goes to the Temple on the same day that Mary and Joseph arrive to present Jesus. Now, imagine you were those new parents—you go to a public place with your baby son, and some old man, a complete stranger, grabs him out of your arms and begins shouting: “Now I can die!” No wonder Mary and Joseph are “amazed” at Simeon’s words! But Simeon is looking forward, seeing in a tiny child the hope of a people—the hope of the whole world. Though his own life is nearly over, Simeon praises God for fulfilling the promise in this child.

Simeon looks forward, and this forward perspective, from the older generation to the infant child, is paralleled in Luke by the promise made to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. God tells Zechariah that his son will “turn the hearts of parents to their children.” The parents now look to the children, the old to the young. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth receive a child in their old age; Simeon has waited his whole life; likewise, Anna, the prophet also in the Temple this day, is either eighty-four, or she has been a widow eighty-four years—making her over a hundred. All of them look to the child Jesus for hope, even though they will be long gone by the time he reaches adulthood.

In Simeon’s words over Jesus, we hear another kind of looking forward—Simeon looks forward to the kind of Messiah this will be. Simeon praises God, saying that salvation has been “prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” Jesus will be more than the king promised to Judah; he will bring salvation to all peoples, Jew and Gentile alike. Though Simeon hopes for the consolation of his people, he looks beyond them and sees the hope of the Gentiles—even the Romans, who oppress him—as well. But Simeon also recognizes that Jesus’ salvation will be a source of conflict; he warns Mary of the discord and strife that will come from Jesus’ life. Jesus will be a “sign that will be opposed.” It is with Simeon that we see the first signs of how divisive Jesus will be, even among his own people; but that is the kind of Messiah that God has provided. Our Christmas story is always connected to the Good Friday story. Even though Simeon’s foresight reveals a Messiah perhaps very different from the king promised in Isaiah, Simeon knows that God’s promises have been fulfilled, and that he may indeed be dismissed in peace.

And what of us, today, another two thousand years further away from Isaiah? Are we not like Simeon, having waited and hoped for the promises to be fulfilled? Do we not look at the world around us, and wish for the world described in Isaiah? Does it seem sometimes that those promises will never come to pass? Perhaps the real question is—do we, like Simeon, maintain our trust in God’s faithfulness and stay steadfast in our hope?

Simeon recognized in a poor family, in an infant baby, the mesiach God had promised to his people. He saw that Jesus would not be just the king of Judah, but would fulfill those promises in a new and unexpected way. Simeon did not live to see Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and miraculous resurrection; but he did not need to. He had seen enough in the baby to satisfy all his hope and longing. The promises were fulfilled, though they had not come to fruition; the Messiah had come, though he was yet just an infant. We, too, are in this place of already-but-not-yet. The famines have not yet ended; the boots of the tramping warriors have not yet been burned; the kingdom of God still seems far away. But like Simeon, we have seen enough. The Messiah has come to us; he has lived and died and lived again; and we have died and risen with him. When we gather at this table, we both hope for and experience the meal of that kingdom over which our Messiah rules. So let us, with Simeon, with Anna, with Mary and Joseph, rejoice now in the fulfillment of our hope, even as we wait for its completion.

Christmas Eve

Well, it's Christmas Eve. I was supposed to be back in New Mexico by now, but thanks to some miserable ice, I'm still in Gettysburg. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't upset about being stranded away from my family on Christmas Eve... but at the end of the day, Christmas is still Christmas even without the family and the traditions.

So Merry Christmas to you. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, then have a blessed Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, or just happy winter.

*sigh of relief*

Well, the semester is over now. I took my four finals, turned in one last paper, and—miraculously—didn't die in the process. I did let you all down on the blog posts, and for that I apologize. Time to get back to our regularly scheduled program.

One interesting thing that came up in Church's Worship this semester is the practice of private confession. Now, most Lutherans are familiar with corporate confession, which is usually said at the start of every Sunday worship service. Corporate confession is held in contrast to private confession, which tends to be associated with Roman Catholics and those tiny confession booths. I think many Lutherans (myself included) think of private confession as one of those things we threw out during the Reformation. While the practice of requiring private confession before someone could receive the Eucharist would certainly be problematic for Lutherans, private confession itself is actually a valuable form of pastoral care. You may be surprised to discover that there is an order for private confession in both the ELW (the new red hymnal) and the old LBW.

I think the advantage of private confession over public confession is simply how personal it is. When you say the words of confession in a group, Sunday after Sunday, it can begin to feel like you're going through the motions. I can practically recite the order for confession from memory; and if you've got it memorized, you can use that time to see who else has arrived at church that Sunday (not that I'd ever do something like that...). In any case, corporate confession, while it certainly has many advantages, runs the risk of not actually being a confession of sins. If a person chooses to make private confession of sins, however, there is no chance of their mind wandering to other things. And for a person who is deeply troubled about something, they may need to use their own words to describe exactly what it is they need to be forgiven. To then hear a word of forgiveness touches that person much more deeply than when the pastor speaks it to the whole congregation.

I'm not by any means saying that corporate confession is a bad thing; simply that it runs the same risk of all liturgy—the words can lose their meaning. Private confession can act as a counter-balance to corporate confession. I'm just pointing out the advantages of private confession because it seems to be so little known in the Lutheran church. And now you know.

Finals Week

Have I mentioned it's the end of the semester? Perhaps that I'm swamped, with one final down and three still to go, and that I was up very late last night (or, truth be told, early this morning) finishing my last paper of the semester? Does that sound familiar to anyone? Well, I didn't get around to updating the blog yesterday, and while I dearly wish I had a real post to put up today to make up for it, I don't. So instead, I commend to you the wise words of 1 Kings 19, which we translated for our Hebrew final (this is my translation, and therefore a bit rough around the edges):

9 [Elijah] came there, to the cave, and he stayed the night there. And behold! the word of the LORD said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 And he said, “I am surely zealous for the LORD, God of Hosts, because the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant; they have destroyed your altar; they have slain your prophets with a sword. I remain, I alone, and they seek to take my life.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand at the mountain before the LORD,” and behold! the LORD is passing by, and a great and strong wind is tearing away mountains and breaking rocks before the LORD. The LORD is not in the wind; and after the wind, an earthquake, and the LORD is not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake, a fire, and the LORD is not in the fire; and after the fire, a roar of sheer silence. 13 As Elijah heard, he wrapped his face with his mantle and went out; and he stood at the opening of the cave. And behold! a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 14 And he said, “I am surely zealous for the LORD, God of Hosts, because the sons of Israel have forsaken your covenant; they have destroyed your altar; they have slain your prophets with a sword. I remain, I alone, and they seek to take my life.” 15 And the LORD said to him, “Go, return to your journey in the wilderness of Damascus. You will come in, and anoint Hazael as king over Aram. . . 18 I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed down to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

More on the Old Testament

It's the season of Advent in the church year right now, and we all know what that means: lots of readings from Isaiah. The prophecies of Isaiah, perhaps more than any other part of the Old Testament, have been read by Christians as being about Jesus Christ. The most famous examples are related to Christ's death (the "suffering servant") and to his birth ("The virgin is pregnant and bearing a son, and she will call him Immanuel"). This raises some complicated questions for me about how to read the Hebrew Scriptures. There are a few clear facts: the writer of Isaiah, and the Israelites to whom he wrote, did not believe that this prophecy was about some baby to be born more than five hundred years later. The language of the prophecy is very immediate. It is supposed that Isaiah was referring to Hezekiah, who would later be king. The other clear fact is that early Christians did read Isaiah's prophecies in light of the events of Jesus' life and death. Their interpretation is clear in the Gospels, especially in Luke and Matthew.

The issue is further complicated by questions of translation. The Hebrew word in Isaiah 7 literally means "young woman," not "virgin". In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, the word is "virgin," which was obviously picked up by the early Christians as sounding like the miraculous birth of Jesus. So how should modern Christians read this text? I am inclined to try to be true to the original meaning of the text, being sensitive to its historical context; but at the same time, this passage bears a powerful meaning for Christians. Saying that it is a prophecy about Jesus seems unfair and disrespectful of the Jewish tradition from which it comes; but saying that it is not about Jesus might offend Christians who love this passage. How can we be honest to both traditions?

My Old Testament professor gave a powerful answer to this question. She talks about reading the Scriptures in the context of faith claims. To read a passage in the Bible a certain way is to make a certain faith claim about it. This perspective applies to any Biblical passage, but consider it in this particular case: to say that this prophecy is about God's action in the political situation of ancient Israel is to make one faith claim, and to say that it is about the birth of Jesus Christ is to make another. It's not so much a question of right or wrong; but in the interest of respect, it's important to recognize that one is making a faith claim. When we read Isaiah in church during Advent, we should realize that this book has been read in different ways by different people and at different times; our reading is one of several, and we cannot claim absolute validity for our perspective. Nevertheless, our reading has a long tradition behind it and it contributes to our understanding of the stories of Jesus that have been passed down to us. In this way, we can read the Old Testament with respect to the people for which it was originally written, without being forced to completely agree with their interpretation.

Wisdom and Protest Literature

My introductory class on the Old Testament is almost finished. One of the final topics we covered was wisdom and protest literature, two genres in the Ketuvim, or Writings, of the Hebrew Bible. Wisdom literature is most clearly exemplified in the book of Proverbs, and protest literature in Ecclesiastes, Job, and Ruth.

Wisdom literature is, unsurprisingly, focused on wisdom. It was presented to us as the third way in the Hebrew Scriptures of understanding humanity's relation to God. The first was that of the priest, where God is reached through ritual and purity and the tabernacle or temple was the focus. The second was that of the prophet, where God is found in God's word, which thus becomes the focus of piety. The third is that of the sage, or seeker of wisdom; the premise being that God can be found all around us, in the everyday experiences of our life. Seeking wisdom in the world, then, is seeking God. There is confidence that God can indeed be found this way. Now, no one of these three ways is superior to another, but all three can be clearly seen in the Scriptures, and there seems to be a chronological development (at least, it is clear that the sage comes last).

The outlook we find in Proverbs and other wisdom writings is a very optimistic one. In the world, one can find folly and wisdom; and if one is careful to distinguish between the two, one can choose to follow wisdom. Following wisdom leads to life, while following folly leads to death (see the powerful image of Wisdom and Folly personified in the first section of Proverbs). Wisdom can inform proper action in all aspects of life, especially in the family. Underlying this focus on wisdom is a belief that those who make good choices, who live good lives, get good results; and those who make poor decisions face the consequences. In short, everyone gets what he or she deserves; the order of things is just. There is a right course to follow, and wisdom allows one to discern that course.

Protest literature takes a variety of forms, but all writings in this genre are speaking out against the accepted order of things, rejecting the orthodox opinion. The story of Ruth, for example, is defying the belief that all foreigners (Ruth is constantly identified as "the Moabite") are impure and wicked. Some protest literature speaks against wisdom literature; Ecclesiastes and Job are both in this vein. Ecclesiastes rejects the idea that wisdom can be found in the everyday events; rather, all is "vanity" (the Hebrew word appears nearly 40 times in the book of Ecclesiastes), and the wise are a sham. Though the events in life are cyclical ("To everything there is a season"), it is difficult to discern the right time (when is it time for war, and when time for peace?). The claim that wisdom teaches the right course of action is denied. The idea of justice–namely, that each gets his just desserts—is also rejected, because good and bad alike die. Ecclesiastes points out the simple fact of life that sometimes, the bad are rewarded and the good punished; this recognition leads to a fatalist attitude. In the end, all that one can do is eat, drink, and be merry, although there is a nuance here—Ecclesiastes is not simply a call to hedonism; the author believes that God approves of life: "There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

Job is also a protest against wisdom literature. We can see this from the very outset of the story: Job is a pious man, almost absurdly pious, but yet he loses everything (except his life, which he wishes could also be taken away). However, there is a textual point which affects the reading of Job: as is clear from looking at the text, there is a prose envelope (beginning and ending) surrounding about 40 chapters of poetry. The prose story probably stood alone at one point, telling of the pious man who is tested, passes the test because he refuses to curse God, and has everything restored to him. The poetry added into the middle of this story completely changes its meaning; although Job never does curse God, he curses just about everything else, and he is not rewarded at the end, but rebuked by God himself. The outcry of the character Job is the outcry of human experience against the optimism of the wisdom literature: I am suffering, and I did nothing wrong! Job's friends act as the voice of orthodoxy here, arguing that Job must have done something to deserve this punishment. Job can find no answers in these arguments, because he knows his own innocence. It is only in the face of God's awesome power that Job finds any kind of closure. For Job, there is no wisdom or justice; there is only the experience of God: "I had heard you by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you."

Monday, Monday

So it's the second-to-last Monday of the semester, and I'll be honest with you: I don't feel like writing a blog post. I've got two quizzes, a paper, and four finals still to go, and I am burnt out. Still, it seems unfair to you, my devoted audience (read: my family and college friends), to skip out entirely.

So here are two "fun" (I use the term loosely) facts from my Hebrew studies. First, the word "Armageddon" comes from the Hebrew "Har Megiddo," meaning "Mountain of Megiddo". Second, and in keeping with the season of Christmas, the word "Ebenezer" comes from the Hebrew phrase "even haezer." (In Hebrew, "v" and "b" are the same letter.) "Even" means rock or stone, and "ezer" means hope. The phrase thus translates as "the rock of hope," or more loosely, "the foundation of hope".

And now you know...

Liturgy: What's the point of all this, again?

As promised, a run-down of my class this week on Eucharistic liturgy. But first, a word of explanation: I like liturgy. I really do. But it worries me—especially when seminarians and their professors put so much time and thought into liturgy that it leaves the people in the pews behind completely. The thing that bothers me is when pastors, professors and seminarians get so caught up in their ideas of how liturgy should be practiced, how it should be understood, that we forget about how it actually is practiced and understood. Take an example from my class this week; we discussed how it's very important not to give the impression that some magic is happening during the Eucharistic prayer. In other words, when the pastor speaks the Words of Institution ("In the night in which he was betrayed...") or invokes the Holy Spirit, he or she is not, by those words, causing a mystical change in the bread and wine. God's promises, through the action of the Holy Spirit, are what makes the bread and wine become something extraordinary at Communion. I agree with this idea... but then, why are we so careful about the words we speak? If the words of the pastor are not the essential thing, why are we all so uptight about making mistakes? I think the answer to this question is fairly simple: we get stage fright. We don't want to mess up, don't want to be seen making mistakes. It's very personal and natural. But—and here is the heart of the problem—it doesn't matter what the pastor believes; if he or she is uptight about saying the right words, the people in the pews are naturally going to be led to believe that the words themselves are the important thing.

I'm not saying by any means that the people who sit in the pews on Sunday morning are not as intelligent as the clergy. But the clergy get so lost in their ideals and theology and theory, that they forget the experience of the people who haven't gone to seminary. So we talk at length about how the Eucharist should be, but not about how it looks from the other side. That's why I'd like to talk about Eucharistic liturgy in this post, because I think if we're doing something for a certain reason, we should just tell people what the reason is, instead of hoping they'll pick up on the signals we're sending.

Okay, now that my rather lengthy introduction is out of the way, I'll actually talk about Eucharistic liturgy. The liturgy that's being taught in Lutheran seminaries and practiced (to a greater or lesser extent) in Lutheran churches is based on the movement of liturgical renewal. In short, liturgical renewal is an attempt to return to the roots of Christian practice, and as such relies on the documents of the early Christian church. In even the earliest accounts of Communion meals (going all the way back to the New Testament), there is a discernible "four-fold shape". This four-fold shape is described by the terms Bring, Bless, Break, and Share. Current liturgy attempts to reflect this shape. The first part, Bring, refers to the offering; this offering is not primarily gifts of money (though it may often appear that way in many churches), but it is the bringing forward of wine and bread by the community, for the community. In the understanding of Communion as truly a meal, the offering is the same as people bringing food together to share with one another.

The second part of the four-fold shape is the most predominant: the blessing of the bread and wine. This is, in its most basic sense, saying grace over the food just as you would say grace at the dinner table. Thanks and praise are given to God for giving us the food that we eat. In addition, the Last Supper is remembered in the Words of Institution, and the Holy Spirit is invoked. The third and fourth parts, Breaking and Sharing, are more utilitarian; the bread has to be broken before it can be eaten, and the sharing is the act of distributing the food to the people.

The important idea in this view of the Eucharist is that it is a meal. Just as Jesus ate with his disciples at his Last Supper, just as the crowds ate when Jesus fed them, and especially just as Jesus met his disciples over meals after the resurrection, Christians today come together to share a meal on Sunday mornings. To be certain, it is an extraordinary meal, because Jesus is present with us in it. The point is, it's not a bizarre ritual; it's based in our real experience. The liturgy surrounding the Eucharist may seem unnecessarily ritualistic, but it's there to preserve the important aspects and shape of Communion.

The Ol' Alma Mater

I had an interesting class this week on Eucharistic liturgy that I'd like to talk about, but I think I'll put that off until Friday in the interest of time (and the paper I need to finish tonight). So instead, I'll regale you all with the unofficial anthem of St. John's College: "The Battle Hymn of the Republic of Letters".

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the eidos of the Good,
Which is not the same as pleasure, I have clearly understood,
And I wouldn't take the tyrant's power, even if I could—
I'm marching from the cave!
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
Marching, marching towards the sunlight,
I'm marching from the cave!

The fool conceives of God but thinks the faithful are deceived,
But a greatest being whose reality is not belived,
Is a being through which something greater still can be conceived,
Which contradicts itself!
Ontological rebuttal,
Ontological rebuttal,
Faithlessness will ever scuttle,
For it contradicts itself!

The state of nature's character we know from good report
To be very solitary, nasty, brutish, poor and short,
So we'll give the sovreign all our rights and all the guns and forts,
And then we'll all survive.
Ratify the Social Contract, (3x)
And then we'll all survive.

Deterministic limits on my freedoms are erased
By the transcendental ideality of time and space,
So my atoms are determined but my will a different case,
It's pure autonomy!
Hail the Transcendental Ego, (3x)
It's pure autonomy!

I've been through all the steps in my phenomenology,
Whether Master, Slave, or in between, it's all the same to me,
I'm unhappy and I know it so I'm absolutely free,
I'm fully synthesized!
I've undergone the dialectic, (3x)
I'm fully synthesized!

As you can guess, it's sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", so you can sing along yourselves! The Republic of Letters is a reference to Plato, as is the first verse. The second verse is Anselm's ontological proof of the existence of God. The third is a conflation of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. The fourth is based on Kant, and the fifth on Hegel (with maybe a little Nietzsche, too). It's hysterically funny to Johnnies, and completely lame to everyone else. Although, we did sing the Anselm verse in Early Church and Its Creeds today, so at least that professor is amused by it.

Stay tuned for Friday's post on the liturgy of the Eucharist!

Hosea and the Story of Jacob

In lieu of writing of real post today, I'm going to post the paper I just wrote for my Old Testament class. The assignment was to write a paper on the inner-Biblical use of a text. I chose to write on the prophet Hosea and his use of the story of Jacob from Genesis. Here's the paper:

The prophet Hosea uses numerous images to illustrate his message to the people of Israel. Some of these images are acted out by Hosea himself (as in the wife he takes and the names of his children); others are purely metaphorical. Hosea also makes references to Israel’s history and its stories, reinterpreting the characters and events in terms of what he sees in his own time. One example of this use of story from Israel’s past is found in chapter 12 of Hosea. In this chapter, Hosea makes reference to the story of Jacob, repeating details now found in chapters 25 through 32 of Genesis. As in many parts of the Old Testament, in Hosea Jacob is seen as a symbol for the whole people who claim him as one of their patriarchs. The name Jacob is given in Genesis 32, Israel, is also the name of the people who descend from him. However, Hosea does not view this patriarch in a positive light, and he indicts the people of Israel by indicting the man himself. This re-visioning of the story of Jacob in the context of God’s punishment of the unfaithful Israelites is a striking example of Hosea’s use of the Scriptural tradition he had inherited.

The references to Jacob are in verses 3-5 and 13 of chapter 12. Hosea begins with the claim that “The LORD once indicted Judah, and punished Jacob for his conduct, requited him for his deeds” (12:3). He goes on to mention several details from the Jacob story—his conflict with Esau in the womb (v. 4), the struggle with the divine being and the encounter at Bethel (v. 5), and the flight to Aram and Jacob’s labor for Laban (v. 13). These details from Jacob’s life are all interpreted by Hosea in the context of God’s punishment, which is markedly different from how they are usually understood in their own right. The story of Jacob in Genesis, while the story of a trickster who gets the best of everyone around him, is also the story of one of the great patriarchs of the Israelites. The fact that it is this patriarch who lends his name to God’s people is also significant—in some sense, Jacob is Israel more than any of the other patriarchs. His experience of struggling with God is symbolic of Israel’s own struggle with God. In the events of his life, Jacob receives the blessings of his father and God, and it is Jacob who first experiences the reality of the many nations promised to Abraham in his twelve sons. These stories do not include divine punishment for Jacob’s action, nor indeed a claim that such punishment is necessary.

Hosea takes these details from Jacob’s life and spends the remainder of chapter 12 reinterpreting them as stories of the people of Israel. In verses 4 and 5, Hosea recalls Jacob’s struggle with men and with the divine and his encounter with God at Bethel: “In the womb he tried to supplant his brother; grown to manhood, he strove with a divine being, he strove with an angel and prevailed—the other had to weep and implore him. At Bethel [Jacob] would meet him, there to commune with him” (12:4-5). For Hosea, this communion with the divine is wrong: “Yet the LORD, the God of Hosts, must be invoked as ‘LORD.’ You must return to your God! Practice goodness and justice, and constantly trust in your God” (12:6-7). Although Jacob met God at Bethel and set up a stone there to mark the place, Hosea sees his actions as culpable. In spite of God’s promises, Jacob does not trust him, and certainly does not practice goodness and justice in his dealings with Esau and Laban. Instead, Jacob tricks both his brother and his ailing father in order to secure his place as heir. He then tricks Laban in spite of the assurance from God at Bethel that “I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:15). Hosea calls for honoring God and acting justly, which in his eyes Jacob did not do.

Likewise, the people of Israel have followed in the footsteps of their patriarch. Hosea says of them, “A trader who uses false balances, who loves to overreach, Ephraim thinks, ‘Ah, I have become rich; I have gotten power!’ . . . As for Gilead, it is worthless; and to no purpose have they been sacrificing oxen in Gilgal: the altars of these are also like stone heaps upon a plowed field” (Hosea 12:8-9,12). Like Jacob, the people of Israel use trickery and deceit to gain power and wealth, and they set up stone altars that are worthless in the absence of just behavior. They also fail to trust God; through Hosea, God says, “I the LORD have been your God ever since the land of Egypt. I will let you dwell in your tents again as in the days of old, when I spoke to the prophets; for I granted many visions, and spoke parables through the prophets” (12:10-11). Although God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and gave them everything they would need, and made the divine presence known to them, they still do not trust. Instead of relying on God to provide for their needs, they grasp for more and cheat those around them; instead of listening to the words of the prophets, they set up altars of sacrifice. Though God promises to them that they will be cared for as they were in the desert (“I will let you dwell in your tents again”), the people of Israel—like Jacob—do not trust God’s promise, and instead seek to make their own fortunes.

The final detail from Jacob’s life that Hosea refers to in this chapter is found in verse 13: “Then Jacob had to flee to the land of Aram; there Israel served for a wife, for a wife he had to guard [sheep]” (12:13). In Hosea’s eyes, this seems to be the punishment Jacob faces for his actions; having tricked his father and brother, Esau comes after Jacob in a murderous rage. Jacob must flee the country, and goes to his relative Laban. There he does not receive a warm welcome or easily find a wife, as his father Isaac did when he was young; instead, Jacob works fourteen years under Laban to get Rachel, finding himself on the receiving end of some trickery for once. Hosea sees these events as a punishment for Jacob’s actions (although Jacob does not seem to learn his lesson, since he tricks Laban in return). Nevertheless, God punishes Jacob for his greed and trickery.

If exile and bound service were Jacob’s punishment for his sins, then it is easy to see how Hosea continues the analogy for the people of Israel. They, too, will face exile from their homeland and service to foreigners. Hosea sees the people of Israel setting themselves up for the same fate as their namesake: “But when the LORD brought Israel up from Egypt, it was through a prophet; through a prophet they were guarded. Ephraim gave bitter offense, and his Lord cast his crimes upon him and requited him for his mockery” (12:14-15). Again, the Israelites do not trust the prophets or the God who rescued them from slavery and cared for them in the desert. If they continue to behave in this way, persisting in injustice and selfishness, God will punish them, as well.

Hosea’s message is primarily one of rebuke and warning for the people of Israel. They have rejected their God and just behavior. They cheat one another in order to gain wealth and power, and they do not trust in God or the prophets who speak God’s word. Hosea delivers his message to the people of Israel through symbolic action, metaphors, and appeals to Israel’s stories. In chapter 12, Hosea uses the story of Jacob to explain the wrongs that Israel has done and to give them a hint of the punishment that is to come if they do not change their actions. He interprets the events of Jacob’s life and draws parallels to the state of Israel and Judah in his own time. By making use of the earlier tradition of the patriarchs, Hosea brings a new message to the people of Israel.