A Prayer for the Ages of History
Hosea 14:3
Lord, let your values be our wealth
our will to share with the least our strength
our embrace of all humanity be like our God’s
Let mercy fill the earth
- Phillip Michael Garner -
The Lord taught his disciples to pray with a model prayer. The prayer affirms the oneness of humanity under the love of God our Father. The prayer teaches us that God’s reality is apart from the daily experience of humanity and we are to invite God into the world through living as God’s children, living consistent with the nature of God, whose name (for us) represents the revelation of God in scripture and in Christ. We learn that God’s will is not done in the earth, so we must seek to live in the will of God by providing bread for others as it is provided for us, to forgive indebtedness, as God forgives us. Finally, the prayer affirms that God’s reality will overcome the present and endure forever.
Hosea also provides a prayer for a lost, beaten, exiled Israel; a prayer rich in meaning and able to bring God into the world with new life and hope.
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
2 Take with you words
and return to the Lord;
say to him,
“Take away all iniquity;
accept that which is good
and we will render
the fruit of our lips.
3 Assyria shall not save us,
we will not ride upon horses;
and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’
to the work of our hands.
In thee the orphan finds mercy.”
(Hosea 14:1-3)
The prophet Hosea was an empathic man of insight, a man fully immersed into the reality of being human, his life was marked by a marriage of questionable judgment. Marrying Gomer, a woman victimized by a system of sexual exploitation seems to be an unwise act, and that God commanded this of Hosea (including to love Gomer) seems to be a morally questionable command. It is in the flesh that God reveals God’s self, wrapped in a little bit of skin is how God speaks.
Love and pain, clarity and confusion, grip the soul of Hosea and his tumultuous life is the gift that connects him to the God of all creation, and with all humanity. Hosea’s insight is divinely moved to grasp the world from the perspective of God. At the conclusion of Hosea’s magnum opus of poetic dissonance that shakes static theological assertions about God with human culpability - the prophet offers hope and a prayer for the ages.
This portion of the prayer is the fruit of the lips that demonstrate the understanding of Israel’s sin. The lines from Hosea’s prayer are in italics.
Assyria shall not save us - it is not the wealth of the world’s empires that God’s people should pursue. This is the idolatry of materialism. So, rather than trust God, Israel as a smaller nation seeks to collude with the sins of empire. Economic exploitation is always the goal of empire’s pursuit. In the end, the empire will conquer, and destroy, leaving its subjects betrayed like lesser souls, unworthy of the people of empire.
We will not ride upon horses – The pursuit of military preparedness requires constant fear of others and consumes the resources of a people. Pride in weaponry is an idolatrous illness. In our age, horses and chariots have been replaced with tanks. Devising ways to slaughter masses of humanity is the ensuing result of this idolatry. Militarism is dependent upon ethnocentric nationalism because the military cult is always religious in nature. The soldier’s death is considered a sacrifice, greatness and memory are attached to the death of a soldier as though their death was of a religious nature. The religion of ethnocentric nationalism is mere tribalism expressed through a larger framework of governing power and technology.
We will say no more ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands – The ‘Our god’ that Hosea is protesting is the deification of human ingenuity; this is indicative of the reduction of God to the machinations of humanity. Israel was not to make God a tribal or national deity. Israel had reduced the existence of Yhwh to the mythical, like the gods of other nations. God will tell Israel who God is and who Israel is to be; history is their lesson and the prophets their teachers.
In thee the orphan finds mercy – There is hope for Israel because Yhwh is merciful and not dead like the idols of materialism, militarism, and ethnocentric nationalism. Israel, as a people, feel the absence of God in Hosea, in their history, like an orphaned child. This line of the prayer returns the attention of the heart to the neediest in society, in the world. It is this final line that affirms the values of Yhwh. The people of God are to value the least and live in the mercy of God as they participate in life.
In the time of Hosea, it is clear that the oppression of the masses was accomplished by the few who held the wealth of the nation. These enormously rich persons enjoyed the finest homes and furniture, consumed wine from bowls, and had multiple homes to live in to provide their comfort and match the seasonal changes.
Throughout the ages humanity’s powerful have promoted idolatry in the form of economic power, military strength, and the myth of nationalism. These perennial idols can also be named, nationalism, militarism, and materialism.
These idols are also identified by the Deuteronomist as part of the instruction in the decalogue. These three verses are concerned with the condition of the heart, the mind, (same word in Hebrew ‘Lev’).
Deut. 7:17 “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’
This verse is at the heart of Israel’s failure; the problem is fear over faith. It was God’s intention that the people in the land be driven out slowly through plagues of locusts. However, Israel wanted to be like other nations and trust in the might of a military rather than trust that God would keep them safe in a world of violence.
Deut. 8:17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’
The verse voices the idolatry of (greed) materialism, of the idea of wealth as ‘deserved’. Exorbitant wealth for a few is always at the expense of the many.
Deut. 9:4 “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land’; whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.
This is the nationalism of a people thinking they are superior to all others; it is concerned with pride. The verse explicitly denies Israel is righteous, and implicitly makes their remaining in the land dependent upon obedience to the Torah (instruction).
