Bring words

Where we are

This is the last chapter of Hosea, and the book has earned its ending the hard way: the unfaithful wife, the divorce suit, the calf of Samaria, the vine emptying itself into altars, the child who did not know who was feeding him. Chapter 14 is the return, and the prophet writes the words of it himself, as though dictating a letter for somebody who cannot compose one.

What happens

"Return, Israel, to Yahweh your Theos; you have collapsed through your guilt. Take with you words, and return to Yahweh; say to him, 'Forgive all iniquity, and receive what is good, that we may render as offerings the bullocks of our lips. Assyria will not save us, nor shall we have horses to mount; we shall say no more, "Our god," to the work of our hands; for in you the orphan finds compassion.'" Then the answer: "I will heal their defection, I will love them freely, for my wrath is turned away from them. I will be like the dew for Israel: he shall blossom like the lily; he shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar... Ephraim! What more has he to do with idols? I have humbled him, but I will prosper him. I am like a verdant cypress tree — because of me you bear fruit!" And the closing line, unlike anything else in the prophets: "Let him who is wise understand these things; let him who is prudent know them. Straight are the paths of Yahweh, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them."

What to notice

The opening imperative is a preposition away from every other call to repentance. Shuvah Yisrael ad Yahweh Eloheikha — return all the way to Yahweh. Hebrew ad means as far as, up to; the weaker el, toward, appears two verses later. The first word of the chapter insists on the distance being closed rather than reduced.

Then the instruction that gives the day its subject: qechu immakhem devarim — take words with you. Not animals, not silver, not a grain offering. A nation that has just been told you have collapsed through your guilt has nothing portable left, and the prophet tells it to bring the one thing a bankrupt still owns. And then he supplies the script, because a people this far gone cannot be assumed to know what to say.

The offered payment is a striking phrase: unshallmah farim sefateinu — we will pay the bulls of our lips. The Hebrew is jarring on purpose; the Greek translators found it so odd that they read peri, fruit, for parim, bulls, which is where Hebrews 13:15's fruit of lips comes from. Both readings are worth keeping. The Hebrew says: this speech is the herd we cannot deliver. The Greek says: it is what our lips grow.

The renunciation names three securities in order. Ashshur lo yoshi'enu — Assyria will not save us: foreign policy. Al-sus lo nirkav — we will not ride on horses: military capacity. Ve-lo nomar od eloheinu le-maaseh yadeinu — we will not say our god to the work of our hands: religion. Diplomacy, defence, devotion — the whole portfolio, liquidated in one sentence — and what replaces it is a claim about status rather than strategy: asher bekha yerucham yatom, in you the orphan finds compassion. They come back not as a client state but as a child with no family left.

The answer opens with a word used adverbially and it is the most generous grammar in the book. Ohavem nedavah — I will love them as a freewill offering. Nedavah is the technical term for the voluntary sacrifice, the one nobody owes and nobody can require. Theos describes his own love with the vocabulary of the offering that is under no obligation to exist.

And then he takes the weather away from Baal. Ehyeh ka-tal le-Yisrael — I will be like dew to Israel. In that climate there is no rain between May and October; what keeps a plant alive through the dry months is the heavy night dew off the sea. Baal was the storm god, spectacular and seasonal. Yahweh claims the moisture that arrives silently, every night, in the months when nothing else does.

The botany that follows is deliberately inconsistent. A lily blooms fast and lasts days; a cedar of Lebanon puts down roots over centuries; an olive is the slowest and longest-lived tree in the region; a vine needs annual pruning. The blessing refuses to settle on one growth rate, which is a good description of what restoration actually looks like.

Then the single strangest image in the prophets: ani ke-verosh ra'anan — I am like a luxuriant cypress. This is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where Yahweh compares himself to a tree, and he picks an evergreen — precisely the class of tree the fertility shrines used. He does not denounce the sacred grove; he occupies it. And the clause that follows makes the image odd on purpose: mimmenni peryekha nimtsa, from me your fruit is found. A cypress bears no useful fruit. This tree produces somebody else's.

The book then ends with a colophon no other prophetic book has. Mi chakham ve-yaven elleh — whoever is wise, let him understand these things. It is the voice of the wisdom writers, not the prophets, and it hands the reader the last move: the same paths are straight, and the just walk on them, and sinners trip over them. Nothing changes about the road. What changes is who is walking.