Hosea 14:9

EPILOGUE OR POSTSCRIPT

TEXT: Hosea 14:9

9

Who is wise, that he may understand these things? prudent, that he may know them? for the ways of Jehovah are right, and the just shall walk in them; but transgressors shall fall therein.

QUERIES

a.

Why did Hosea add this Epilogue or Postscript?

b.

What does it mean?

PARAPHRASE

Whoever is intelligent will understand what I have written. Whoever acts wisely will be convinced that what I say is true. That is, the ways of Jehovah are the only correct, true and right ways. Furthermore, those who are righteous and just will walk in these ways. The wicked, however, will stumble and fall in them just because they are right and true.

SUMMARY

God's ways are straight and true, and we walk, or fall, according to our relationship with those ways.

COMMENT

Hosea 14:9 WHO IS WISE, THAT HE MAY UNDERSTAND THESE THINGS?. The RSV puts this verse in the form of a declaration and we prefer it that way. Moses declared long before Hosea that keeping and doing the commandments of the Lord was wisdom and understanding (cf. Deuteronomy 4:3-9). Compare also Psalms 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; Proverbs 9:10; Proverbs 30:3-5. Hosea's challenge is that whoever was wise and prudent in Israel in his day would comprehend that what he was preaching was right! Prudent means acting according to intelligence; squaring conduct with conviction.

We may summarize the teachings of Hosea and make them applicable for today: (1) Sin separates from God, and blinds us, so that we lose the vision of Him; (2) Idolatry follows inevitably a loss of the vision of Him. (3) Hosea then reveals the heart and the holiness of GodHis love is freely given and eternal, but it is never divorced from moral requirement on the part of man.
We, today, are living in fuller light than Hosea had. We see God as Hosea never saw Him, We see Him in Jesus Christ. There seeing Him, we know, as never before, that He can make no terms with sin; but we know that he stops at no sacrifice in order that He may heal our backsliding.
If we are guilty of idolatry, what will cure us? The vision of God the Supreme Lover, as He is seen in Jesus Christ.

Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?

Is not thine a captured heart?

Chief among ten thousand own Him,

Joyful choose the better part.

Idols once they won thee, charmed thee,

Lovely things of time and sense;

Gilded thus does sin disarm thee,

Honeyed lest thou turn thee thence.

What has stript the seeming beauty

From the idols of the earth?

Not a sense of right or duty,

But the sight of peerless worth.

Not the crushing of those idols,

With its bitter void and smart;

But the beaming of His beauty,

The unveiling of His heart.

Who extinguishes their taper

Till they hail the rising sun?

Who discards the garb of winter

Till the summer has begun?

-'Tis that look that melted Peter,

-'Tis that face that Stephen saw,

-'Tis that heart that wept with Mary,

Can alone from idols draw.

Draw and win and fill completely,

Till the cup o-'erflows the brim;

What have we to do with idols

Who have companied with Him?

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

by Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beatand a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet

All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

Trellised with intertwinning charities;

(For, though I knew His love Who followed,

Yet was I ere adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,

The gust of His approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;

Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o-' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be suddento Eve: Be soon;

With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deciet.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;

Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

The long savannahs of the blue;

Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot -thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o-' their feet

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat

Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.

I sought no more that after which I strayed

In face of man or maid;

But still within the little children's eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature'Sshare
With me (said I) your delicate fellowship;

Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,

Wantoning

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,

Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,

Underneath her azured dais,

Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.

So it was done:

I in their delicate fellowship was one
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumed of the wild sea-snortings;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;

With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;

But not by that, was eased by my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,

These things and I; in sound I speak

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

Let her, if she would own me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o-' her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless

My thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

And past those noised Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet

Lo! naught contents thee, who content'St not Me.
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

And smitten me to my knee;

I am defenseless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihood of my young powers,

I stood the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o-' the mounded years
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Yea, faileth now each dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

Ah! must
Designer Infinite!

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering showed i-' the dust;
And now my heart is as a briken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down over

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.

But not ever him who summoneth
I first have seen, unwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught (He said).
And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited

Ol all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'St seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!

Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

As, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.