Death's Defeat
Readings: Hosea 9-10; John 11:54-12:19
There are times where the Old Testament speaks to our need for the Gospel. Usually for me, this is highlighted when we see a particularly violent passage in the Old Testament or one that draws particular attention to the brokenness of the world. Today’s readings from the Daily Office are an example of this. There is a lot of darkness in the words of Hosea.
You may know the story of Hosea and how the prophet’s life is analogous to the unfaithfulness of God’s people: Hosea’s wife is unfaithful to him, just as the people of Israel have been unfaithful to God through their idolatry and reliance on foreign powers for their safety. Hosea prophesies to the northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes that split from the original 12 after the death of Solomon, and his message is that destruction will come. And indeed, he is the last prophet to prophesy in the north before the conquest of Israel by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC.
In Hosea 10, the prophet compares Israel to a growing vine. That vine has produced the bad fruit of idolatry. The harvest, the coming defeat at the hands of the Assyrian Empire, is close at hand. To illustrate just how badly things are going, Hosea makes some clever use of place names to drive his point home.
The first name Hosea uses is Beth-aven. In verse 5, Hosea says,
“The inhabitants of Samaria tremble
for the calf of Beth-aven.
Its people mourn for it, and so do its idolatrous priests—
those who rejoiced over it and over its glory—
for it has departed from them.”
And later in verse 8, shortening the name to just Aven:
“The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel,
shall be destroyed.”
Hosea seems to be making a play on words here. Bethel was once a place where Abraham had made sacrifices to God that was now corrupted by the worship of idols, specifically Baal. Thus, Bethel, the House of God, beth being the Hebrew word for house or and el being the Hebrew word for God, had become Beth-aven, the house of wickedness, aven being the Hebrew word for trouble, sorrow, or wickedness. And this draws a fine point onto the cause for Israel’s troubles: they have abandoned right worship of God.
Wrong worship of God has led the people into other injustice as well. Another place that Hosea names in this chapter is Gibeah. Verse 9 says:
From the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, O Israel;
there they have continued.
Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gibeah?
Gibeah was the site of the horrific story in Judges 19, which we will not discuss the details of here, but is full of evil and injustice. There is rape, murder, and mistreatment of outsiders, all of which lead to war between the tribes of Israel. Trailing Israel’s sins all the way back to before the days of Samuel, Hosea is pointing the finger not only at Israel’s idolatry, but its practice and tolerance of injustice. “You have plowed iniquity; you have reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies.” (Hosea 10:13)
And the consequences for unfaithfulness came. Assyria overwhelmed and conquered the 10 northern tribes of Israel in 722. But this was not the end of the history of occupied suffering for God’s people. Here follows a much abridged and simplified version of the history of Israel’s colonization: Assyria, and the other two tribes of the southern kingdom of Judah, would fall to Babylon, Babylon would fall to Persia, Persia to Alexander the Great, whose kingdom would be split amongst his generals, eventually leaving a people called the Seleucids in control of Israel. The persecutions of the Seleucids, especially a particular leader named Antichus Epiphanes IV, would cause the people of Israel to revolt and gain independence for awhile under the Maccabean rulers. But this brief period of freedom would give way to Roman control with the arrival of the Roman Emperor Pompey in Jerusalem in 63 BC. And thus we have the history of Israel’s occupation, from the time of Hosea, all the way through to the time of Jesus, each empire bringing with it a new wave of death and oppression.
And so what does this string of conquerors have to do with Jesus the Messiah? Well, the Messiah was thought to be the one that would break God’s people out of this cycle of terror. He was to ride a white horse into Jerusalem and save the day, outing the oppressors once and for all, and making Israel free again.
John writes of Jesus:
The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,
“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey's colt!” (John 12:12-15)
Jesus comes as the Messiah, but not necessarily the Messiah that was expected. He comes meek and lowly, not to spark a political revolution, but to turn the entire cosmos upside down. And here is the direct line we can draw from the words of Hosea to the coming of Jesus: into a long line of death-dealers, Jesus comes to defeat death itself.
There’s an important little sentence that Johns adds to his description of Jesus’ triumphal entry. Verse 18, referring to the crowd that shouted “Hosanna!” while Jesus entered Jerusalem, says this: “The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.” The sign this verse refers to is the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Word had spread that the rabbi from Galilee had raised Lazarus from the dead. The people had had enough of those who dealt in death. They were ready for someone who could reverse the power of death. And he had come.
Returning to Hosea, the prophet mentions another place in his song of woe over the people of Israel: Ephraim. Ephraim is a word often used in the Old Testament to refer broadly to the ten northern tribes, as it is used in Hosea 10. It is also used this way in chapter 9. Hosea’s words paint a bleak picture. This is what the end of chapter 9 says about Ephraim:
“Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up;
they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will put their beloved children to death.
My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him;
they shall be wanderers among the nations.”
Who can step into this place of death? The one who has defeated death. It is interesting to read where Jesus goes immediately after raising Lazarus from the dead in John’s gospel: “Jesus therefore no longer walked openly among the Jews, but went from there to the region near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and there he stayed with the disciples.” (John 11:54). Even those who are shrouded in death are not out of reach of the one who comes into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, bringing with him death’s defeat.
Notes:
All Scripture taken from the ESV
For Names Bethel and Bethaven, see Sala, M. (2016). "Bethel North of Jerusalem." In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
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