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Commentary on Hosea, Chapter Fourteen
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COMMENTARY ON HOSEA, CHAPTER FOURTEEN Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, because you have grown weak through your iniquities. Take words with you, and return to the Lord your God. Speak to him, so that instead of receiving iniquities, you may receive good things, and we shall repay with the fruit of our lips. Assyria will not save us, we shall not ride on horses; let us no longer say “Our gods” to the works of our hands (vv.1–3). OU COULD once again have considerable admiration here for the prophet’s artistry and the economy of the expression; it is accomplished with appropriate respect , and is full of guidance from on high. He foretells, in fact, the redemption coming through Christ, and the fact that death will in due course give way, and the goad of Hades will be no more. Further, (277) no form of comfort and consolation at all could be imagined of which God is unaware. What more? There was need to advise on what to think and do in reference to their salvation, and, as it were, take pains to bring to sobriety those who were inebriated, not from wine but from worldly pleasure and a willingness to adopt the deceits of the demons. Lest they succumb to indifference toward the promises of kindness and goodness, therefore, and set no store by the one in the habit of showing moderation, he consequently once more gives them a useful reminder of the calamities, saying that Samaria will be done away with because it resisted its God. He then proceeded to add to that what was sufficient to terrify and sadden the listeners: infants would be dashed to the ground, he says, and unborn children and their mothers destroyed before the womb discharged its longed-for burden into the light.1 Having stunned them in advance with these terrors, therefore, he 249 1. Cyril paraphrases 13.16 (which in Heb. and LXX stands as 14.1, as also in the PG edition). 250 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA then chooses the moment to impart to the hearts of those being counseled an instruction summoning them to repentance, announcing clearly the need to change course and return to God. By saying because you have grown weak through your iniquities, he gives them to understand that their weakness will cease altogether along with their iniquities; and if the forms of apostasy are removed , the calamities will also disappear. Now, he smooths out the manner of the return to God, properly saying that sinners will win benevolence and mercy from God, not by the proceeds of their wealth, not by offering gold, not by choosing to honor him with silver vessels, not with offerings of cattle, not by gladdening him with slaughter of sheep, but on condition that they make a gift of words, and choose to appease (278) the Lord of all and praise him; Take words with you he is saying, speak to God, so that instead of receiving iniquity, you receive good things.2 In other words, lest you be punished in equal measure with your iniquities instead of abounding in the supply of good things, promise to offer to him what comes from your lips, thanksgiving hymns and confession, such things being the fruits of your tongue. But shout it out, he says, and make a firm promise that Assyria will not save us, we shall not ride on horses; nor shall we say “Our gods” to the works of our hands, which is a form of apostasy. It was on account of this that they offended, because they served the idols, and, while dishonoring the God who had always saved them, they placed their hope in human assistance. While they called on Assyria when under attack from Egypt, by contrast when Assyria in turn took up arms against Samaria, they bribed the mounted archers from Egypt, or those skilled in mounted attack. Consequently, they heard God’s clear statement , “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, trusting in horses and chariots”; they were mocked, and rightly so, for eagerly taking as their protector “an Egyptian, a human being and not God, mere horseflesh,” as Scripture says. So they promise to cease worshiping idols and continuing to put their hope in human beings. This reform of the guilty is an appeal for clemency 2. This difficult sentence Theodoret chooses to avoid citing textually. Cyril typically wrestles with it. [44.197.251.102...