No way Hosea!
May. 18th, 2005 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaI was looking through some files in my computer and found this essay on Gomer and Hosea that I wrote a couple of years ago. Thought I'd post it here to see if it got any comments.
There are some Sundays when I thank God fervently that I am “churched” - that I have a church home and a congregation with whom I feel a strong link - that I am not engaged, as every traveler is from time to time, in the tortuous and distressing search for a church to join. Today was one of those Sundays. I sat listening to the morning sermon, on a text from Hosea, and was thankful that it was not the first sermon I had heard at that church or from that pastor, because if it were, then surely it would have been the last, and I would have missed out on the opportunity to know a caring, spiritual, and thoughtful pastor.
What was it that so distressed me in the sermon that I wanted to turn away from the church and the pastor? The text was from Hosea, that darkest and most uncompromising of Old Testament prophets, and the invitation, interpreted and repeated at length, was to view in it God’s steadfast and everlasting love. No way Hosea!
There are three main “characters” in the story of Hosea: God, Hosea, and Gomer. Hosea is a prophet chosen by God to preach to his people Israel about their sinful ways. Gomer is Hosea’s wife. God is the creator, the omnipotent one, the maker and keeper of covenants, the mighty overlord, the thunderer in the skies. The story is basically a simple one that plays out an allegory in which the marriage of Hosea and Gomer represents in human terms the relationship of God and his people Israel. God instructs Homer to take a harlot to wife because God’s people, Israel, have prostituted themselves to the worship of other gods and are like a harlot in their infidelity to their covenant with God. So Hosea goes out and buys himself a whore (for money and measures of grain) and brings her home to be his wife. Naturally, their relationship is doomed, their children are destined to misery, and both Hosea and Gomer fill out the days of their existence in despair.
Although there are indeed three characters, there are really only two roles: God/Hosea (the wronged husband, the active force, the doer of deeds, the forgiver of sins) and Gomer/Israel (the passive people, the adulterous wife, she in need of forgiveness, she who must repent). My pastor, with the cultural blindness inherent in even the best of us, identified with the male power figure, God/Hosea. He wanted us to see God’s steadfast and everlasting love in the way God is angry with his people, but forgives them; in the way Hosea is cuckolded but takes back his erring wife. But we aren’t Hosea in this story, folks, we’re Gomer. We are not the punishers but the sinners seeking forgiveness. Ours is not the choice of meeting out the fruits of anger and wrath or peace and forgiveness. That’s not our role here. That’s not our place in the story, and the story lacks meaning until we put ourselves not in Hosea’s place, but in Gomer’s.
In a larger sense, this story distresses me because I see in it the root cause of so many women friends who either turn away from, or will not turn to, the Christian church. I’ve been where they are. I’ve felt their anger and disenfranchisement. I thank God for the decision He helped me to make, but I rage at my powerlessness to help others with the same decision. And hearing a sermon on God’s enduring love as shown in Hosea illustrates the reasoning that I see in women who turn away from the Church.
Let’s look at Gomer. She’s a “harlot”, a whore, a woman who sells her body to strangers in return for sustenance. But we have a few more clues than that. Is she a woman alone in the world struggling to survive? No. She is still associated with her father, Diblaim. If she is still part of a male-headed family, then why is she a whore? Most likely because that is the course, for whatever reason, that her father chose for her. Rather than being supported by her father, she supports him - by the sale of her body. And he sells her to Hosea for “fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley.” Does she have a choice about being a harlot? No. Does she have a choice about marrying Hosea? No. Does she have a choice in the children she bears him or the sad fates that await them based on their naming? No. She is a merely a passive, reactive being who lives the life set out for her by others. And yet she is given to us as a symbol for the people of Israel and Judah - a people who are represented as actively turning away from God. Duh! Maybe we’re missing a point here, wouldn’t you say?
Let’s look at the steadfast and enduring love of God as shown in Hosea. God is angry with his people Israel. But is he going to destroy them? Maybe. He lovingly, sensually, turns that possibility over and over on his tongue. He tastes it and finds the taste pleasant, but finally he decides “I am God, and not man, The Holy One in your midst; And I will not come with terror.“ Okay, so God, the Almighty One, is not going to rend his people apart, destroy them and desert them. But how does he communicate that to Hosea? He tells Hosea to take a harlot for a wife because God’s people have acted as harlots in their infidelity to His covenant. Well, that’s kind of a blow for Hosea, but, in a way, it’s also a compliment. Hosea gets to share God’s pain and to mirror God-like actions in his relationship with Gomer. So although God is deciding not to punish His people Israel as they deserve, he certainly has no qualms about wrecking Hosea’s life. And then there’s Gomer. Is she better off after Hosea “rescues” her from her life as a prostitute and marries her? Not really. Is she forgiven, given respect, love, a life, a family who loves her? Nope. Does she get an opportunity to change and grow and become a “good” woman? No, she’s the sinful harlot to start and the sinful harlot to finish.
Hosea is Old Testament, not New Testament. There’s no forgiving and redeeming Christ here to buy freedom from sin for Hosea and Gomer. However, the images of Hosea are very consistent with the images of women in much of the New Testament. The Pauline idea of man as the “head” of woman as Christ is the Head of the Church is very evident here. Hosea is to Gomer as God is to Israel. Gomer is passive and reactive, accepting the position given her, even as Mary, in Luke’s Gospel, is passive and reactive, accepting the role God designs for her. And can we really see Mary’s “I am the slavegirl of the Lord.” as very different from Gomer’s position? Gomer is a whore because that’s the position God gave her in life. Mary accepts the same fate, eyes lowered, head covered, when Gabriel tells her (not asks her, mind you, but tells her) that she is to bear a child outside of marriage. One woman’s life is held up as an example of all that is wrong with mankind. The other’s becomes an ideal of womanhood to generations of Christian women. But neither -does- anything to earn her role. Both women passively receive the role that God has chosen for them. Not by deeds but by Grace is Mary saved. Not by deeds but by indifference is Gomer damned.
With images like that held up as models, is it any wonder that more and more women choose not to be Christians?
There are some Sundays when I thank God fervently that I am “churched” - that I have a church home and a congregation with whom I feel a strong link - that I am not engaged, as every traveler is from time to time, in the tortuous and distressing search for a church to join. Today was one of those Sundays. I sat listening to the morning sermon, on a text from Hosea, and was thankful that it was not the first sermon I had heard at that church or from that pastor, because if it were, then surely it would have been the last, and I would have missed out on the opportunity to know a caring, spiritual, and thoughtful pastor.
What was it that so distressed me in the sermon that I wanted to turn away from the church and the pastor? The text was from Hosea, that darkest and most uncompromising of Old Testament prophets, and the invitation, interpreted and repeated at length, was to view in it God’s steadfast and everlasting love. No way Hosea!
There are three main “characters” in the story of Hosea: God, Hosea, and Gomer. Hosea is a prophet chosen by God to preach to his people Israel about their sinful ways. Gomer is Hosea’s wife. God is the creator, the omnipotent one, the maker and keeper of covenants, the mighty overlord, the thunderer in the skies. The story is basically a simple one that plays out an allegory in which the marriage of Hosea and Gomer represents in human terms the relationship of God and his people Israel. God instructs Homer to take a harlot to wife because God’s people, Israel, have prostituted themselves to the worship of other gods and are like a harlot in their infidelity to their covenant with God. So Hosea goes out and buys himself a whore (for money and measures of grain) and brings her home to be his wife. Naturally, their relationship is doomed, their children are destined to misery, and both Hosea and Gomer fill out the days of their existence in despair.
Although there are indeed three characters, there are really only two roles: God/Hosea (the wronged husband, the active force, the doer of deeds, the forgiver of sins) and Gomer/Israel (the passive people, the adulterous wife, she in need of forgiveness, she who must repent). My pastor, with the cultural blindness inherent in even the best of us, identified with the male power figure, God/Hosea. He wanted us to see God’s steadfast and everlasting love in the way God is angry with his people, but forgives them; in the way Hosea is cuckolded but takes back his erring wife. But we aren’t Hosea in this story, folks, we’re Gomer. We are not the punishers but the sinners seeking forgiveness. Ours is not the choice of meeting out the fruits of anger and wrath or peace and forgiveness. That’s not our role here. That’s not our place in the story, and the story lacks meaning until we put ourselves not in Hosea’s place, but in Gomer’s.
In a larger sense, this story distresses me because I see in it the root cause of so many women friends who either turn away from, or will not turn to, the Christian church. I’ve been where they are. I’ve felt their anger and disenfranchisement. I thank God for the decision He helped me to make, but I rage at my powerlessness to help others with the same decision. And hearing a sermon on God’s enduring love as shown in Hosea illustrates the reasoning that I see in women who turn away from the Church.
Let’s look at Gomer. She’s a “harlot”, a whore, a woman who sells her body to strangers in return for sustenance. But we have a few more clues than that. Is she a woman alone in the world struggling to survive? No. She is still associated with her father, Diblaim. If she is still part of a male-headed family, then why is she a whore? Most likely because that is the course, for whatever reason, that her father chose for her. Rather than being supported by her father, she supports him - by the sale of her body. And he sells her to Hosea for “fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley.” Does she have a choice about being a harlot? No. Does she have a choice about marrying Hosea? No. Does she have a choice in the children she bears him or the sad fates that await them based on their naming? No. She is a merely a passive, reactive being who lives the life set out for her by others. And yet she is given to us as a symbol for the people of Israel and Judah - a people who are represented as actively turning away from God. Duh! Maybe we’re missing a point here, wouldn’t you say?
Let’s look at the steadfast and enduring love of God as shown in Hosea. God is angry with his people Israel. But is he going to destroy them? Maybe. He lovingly, sensually, turns that possibility over and over on his tongue. He tastes it and finds the taste pleasant, but finally he decides “I am God, and not man, The Holy One in your midst; And I will not come with terror.“ Okay, so God, the Almighty One, is not going to rend his people apart, destroy them and desert them. But how does he communicate that to Hosea? He tells Hosea to take a harlot for a wife because God’s people have acted as harlots in their infidelity to His covenant. Well, that’s kind of a blow for Hosea, but, in a way, it’s also a compliment. Hosea gets to share God’s pain and to mirror God-like actions in his relationship with Gomer. So although God is deciding not to punish His people Israel as they deserve, he certainly has no qualms about wrecking Hosea’s life. And then there’s Gomer. Is she better off after Hosea “rescues” her from her life as a prostitute and marries her? Not really. Is she forgiven, given respect, love, a life, a family who loves her? Nope. Does she get an opportunity to change and grow and become a “good” woman? No, she’s the sinful harlot to start and the sinful harlot to finish.
Hosea is Old Testament, not New Testament. There’s no forgiving and redeeming Christ here to buy freedom from sin for Hosea and Gomer. However, the images of Hosea are very consistent with the images of women in much of the New Testament. The Pauline idea of man as the “head” of woman as Christ is the Head of the Church is very evident here. Hosea is to Gomer as God is to Israel. Gomer is passive and reactive, accepting the position given her, even as Mary, in Luke’s Gospel, is passive and reactive, accepting the role God designs for her. And can we really see Mary’s “I am the slavegirl of the Lord.” as very different from Gomer’s position? Gomer is a whore because that’s the position God gave her in life. Mary accepts the same fate, eyes lowered, head covered, when Gabriel tells her (not asks her, mind you, but tells her) that she is to bear a child outside of marriage. One woman’s life is held up as an example of all that is wrong with mankind. The other’s becomes an ideal of womanhood to generations of Christian women. But neither -does- anything to earn her role. Both women passively receive the role that God has chosen for them. Not by deeds but by Grace is Mary saved. Not by deeds but by indifference is Gomer damned.
With images like that held up as models, is it any wonder that more and more women choose not to be Christians?
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-18 02:34 pm (UTC)The passive/reactive nature of the roles for women in much of Christian scripture and how that is played out in Christian worship is something I have a great deal of trouble with. I struggled with it when growing up and being raised a Christian, and at one point, when I had freedom of action, I simply couldn't accept this as a model of the person my religion expected me to be. Admittedly, I had other major philosophical differences with Christianity, but this was one of the big ones.
So, I left.
And, I haven't been able to reconcile these differences.
Amen..
Date: 2005-05-18 06:15 pm (UTC)Indeed. And it is equally sad that for many women who are Christians, who believe in God's love and want to serve Him, that models like this are what so many churches pressure them to follow. Not all churches, thank God. But many.
And so when the conflict comes up, between this kind of doctrine and one's own personal integrity, sense of purpose, identity, whatever -- there's no where to adjust the dial, to find some kind of balance in it all. There's no sense that what might be right and comfortable for one woman might not be equally right, comfortable or even necessary for another. It's hard to separate feeling resentment or anger against a point of doctrine, perhaps even just the opinion of one pastor -- and resentment at God.
I feel very sorry for Gomer, under the circumstances. I just have this image of Hosea introducing her to the neighbors, "Oh, this is my wife the harlot. God told me to marry her..." so that her shame (and the object lesson) would never be forgotten or forgiven. (And if I remember correctly, wasn't one of the points of this little exercise was that Gomer was expected to be unfaithful, so that Hosea would never be sure her children were his? Thus fulfilling the "model" relationship God had in mind? I don't think I like Hosea very much, either....)
Thanks for posting this. Good thoughts...
no subject
Date: 2005-05-23 10:13 am (UTC)