Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Hosea · About this commentary
He Contended with God
Hosea 12:1-6
1 Ephraim feeds on wind, and chases the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and desolation. They make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt. · WEB
The nation's ancestor is used as both accusation and hope, and the summons that follows asks for the two things the book has asked for throughout.
Verse 1 gives the foreign policy as diet: Ephraim feeds on wind, and chases the east wind — the wind sown in chapter 8 now eaten Hosea 8:7 — while they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried into Egypt. Both empires courted at once, paid in produce.
Then verse 2 turns to Jacob, and the name is doing double duty: the nation, and the man.
What verse 3 recalls is not flattering. In the womb he took his brother by the heel — the grasping that gave him his name — and in his manhood he contended with God. The ancestor is introduced by his two most characteristic acts, and the first is a swindle.
Verse 4 keeps the ambiguity that the Genesis account keeps. He struggled with the angel, and prevailed — and then, immediately, he wept, and made supplication to him. Prevailing and weeping in one line. Whatever winning meant at the Jabbok, it looked like a man begging.
And the location is named: he found him at Bethel, and there he spoke with us. Bethel — which this book has spent four chapters calling Beth Aven, house of iniquity Hosea 4:15 Hosea 10:5. The place where the ancestor met God is the shrine the descendants ruined, and the book puts both facts in one verse.
Verse 5 names him in full: Yahweh, the God of Armies. Yahweh is his name of renown.
And verse 6 is the summons the whole book has been making: turn to your God. Keep kindness and justice, and wait continually for your God. Kindness is chesed — the sixth and final occurrence, and the last time the book asks for it.
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