James Nisbet Commentary - Hosea 14:8 - 14:8

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James Nisbet Commentary - Hosea 14:8 - 14:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

EPHRAIM FORSAKING IDOLS

‘Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? I have beard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From Me is thy fruit found.’

Hos_14:8

These are the last words of Hosea’s prophecy. They sum up his whole hopes for his people. They are somewhat difficult of understanding, from the perplexity in which the frequent occurrence of the word ‘I’ involves us. But it is quite clear, I think, that we have in them two speakers: ‘Ephraim’—that is, the personification of the kingdom of Israel—‘shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?’ And then there follows the answer to that word, from another speaker, and that other speaker is God.

Here are two voices—first, the penitent voice of the returning wanderer, then the welcoming answer of the Father. ‘What have I to do any more with idols?’ The nation which is here represented as thus speaking, as the last point and object of the whole prophecy, is described in a former part of this remarkable book as being ‘joined to his idols.’ And now that strait band and bond that link him to his idols is snapped, and he is set free.

I. We get here, first of all, a wonderful expression of the perfect simplicity of a true return to God.—‘What have I to do any more with idols?’ That is all! No paroxysms of grief, no agonies of repentance, no prescription of so much sorrow, so much grief, for so much sin; no long, tedious process; but, like the finger put upon the key here, the sound yonder.

Heard far away, the nation has only to whisper the resolve, to break away from the evil, and immediately there, in the heavens, the voice is heard.

And then there follows: ‘And the Lord hath made to pass from me the iniquity of my soul.’ Two words—for it is only two words in the original—two words; we pass out of the evil when a man turns to God. ‘What have I to do any more with idols?’

II. Then look at the answer, the echo of this confession which comes from heaven; it is the welcoming voice of the Father, ‘I hear him, and observe him.’ (1) Notice how, instantaneously, that Divine ear, strong enough, according to the old story about the ears of the gods, to hear the grass grow, fine enough to hear the first faint shootings of the new life in a man’s heart, catches the sound that is inaudible to all besides, and as soon as the words come from the pale, penitent lips of Ephraim, the answer comes from God—‘I hear him; and if I hear him, that is all that is necessary. I hear him, and observe him.’

There, of course, observation is used in a good sense. The insecure, uncertain footsteps of the returning child are watched and kept by the gracious Father: ‘I hear him, and I turn My eye upon him.’ The good eye and the good hand of the Lord upon the returning prodigal for good.

And then we come to a very beautiful, although a very singular metaphor: ‘I am like a green cypress tree.’ The singularity of this metaphor has led many people to suppose that it cannot be intended to apply to the Divine nature. But I think there can be no question but that it does, and that it yields a worthy and a very beautiful signification. The cypress tree, for one thing, is an evergreen, unchanged amidst the changing seasons, unaffected by all the change. An everlasting metaphor, ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ Our melancholy associations were altogether foreign to the mind and imagination of the prophet. To him this tree, with its wealth of continual shadow, was an emblem of unchanging blessing and protection.

So my text says, ‘I am like a green cypress,’ strong, immutable; a shadow, a protection to all those that come beneath my branches, shielding them from the hot sunshine; keeping them dry in all the tempests and rain of the winter time; spreading a green bough above them in the summer; putting my broad sheaf of leaves between them and the blistering heat, and so preserving them from outward and from inward dangers. ‘The Lord is thy shade at thy right hand.’

So I think that if you will take these two points—unchangeableness and protection, condescension—you understand the force of this lovely emblem. (2) And then there follows a last truth: ‘From Me is thy fruit found.’ The hard cones of the cypress are not worth calling fruit; there is no fruit on it that anybody can eat; but it has so embodied in itself the virtues of all, and having the shadow of the cypress has the fruit, like that of the grape and the pomegranate.

But all that is not enough. The fruit that we bear in ourselves is not fruit that any man can take pleasure in. The fruit that shall sustain and help us must be the fruit that we gather from the rich branches of that ‘tree that bare all manner of fruits, and bare them every month,’ and whose very leaves were ‘for the healing of the nations.’ Not enough that we should have the productive energy within ourselves; we must feed upon the rich harvest that is provided for us in God.

So it all comes to this, the humblest voice of conscious un-worthiness and lowly resolve to forsake evil, though it be whispered only in the very depths of our heart, finds its way into the the ears of the merciful Father, and brings down the immediate answer, the benediction of His shadowing love and perpetual presence, and the fullness of fruit, which He alone can bestow.

Illustration

‘There is some mistake often made as to what are “idols.” Remember that “idols” are, generally, rather objects of fear than of affection. Almost all heathen deities are worshipped in dread—to avert the evil which they might otherwise do. This is the first intention. Nevertheless, there is a fascination in “an idol,” by which, though feared, it becomes almost a subject of love. So that the thing which we fear, and while we fear, has a fascination over us which is hurtful. An “idol” is anything too lovable. A person who exercised a bad power over you, and whom you feared, and almost you disliked—but to whom you were still strangely attracted, and by whom you were badly bound and enthralled—that would be “an idol.” ’