Daily Prophets
Day 28
“They have transgressed My covenant and been faithless to my teachings. Israel cries out to Me, ‘My God, we are attached to You. Israel rejects what is good; an enemy shall pursue him. The many teachings I wrote for him have been treated as something alien.”(Hosea 8:1,2,3,12)
These verses from Chapter 8 are the explanation for Israel’s downfall. It has the language of love and love spurned. It is the language of delusion and denial. It is the language of sadness and longing. It is the language of Adonai. Hosea, like all prophets, are speaking the language of Adonai, which is always love, sadness, longing, joy, teaching, truth, justice, and calling.
The first verse sets the stage again for us. Hosea is speaking to the people and the powerful calling them out for their evil ways. Ringing in our ears should be this cry of Hosea and God. It is as if they are saying to us; don’t you see what you are doing? You have let go of and broken the Covenant we made, you don’t take the teachings and use them well for your sake. What is wrong with you? This call, while to some it will sound harsh and stern, I hear as loving and deeply saddening. Hosea, in God’s Name, is asking Israel to wake up and see what has become of him, yet no response.
The second verse shows Israel’s delusion. They believe that they can do what they want, break the Covenant, bastardize the Torah of Adonai and say that they love and are attached to God! How ridiculous and delusional! Yet, their denial is not the same as lying. Their denial is much like the denial we find throughout the Bible, people talk themselves into believing their own stories and can’t see anything else. Israel believes the lies it is telling itself and herein is the problem.
Verse 3, explains the result of Israel’s delusion. Israel rejects what is good and, depending on the version you want to read, an enemy pursues him or Israel pursues delusion. Hosea is railing against denial, lying, deceit and unfaithfulness in this verse in a rather subtle way for him. He is doing what he can to get Israel to see itself in truth and to hear the longing and sadness of God for how Israel has left God. The final ignominy for God is that the Teachings God has written for Israel, they treat as something foreign rather than Core beliefs and tenets. Hosea and God are calling and Israel is deaf.
Seeing our political landscape, I can’t help but wonder if our elected officials shouldn’t read a passage from the Prophets each day prior to their beginning their sessions. When partisan politics is more important than “the covenant” of the Constitution, when partisan politics is more important than “the teachings of our history”, when partisan politics is more important so that they “reject the good, treat the teachings as something alien” we are in trouble. Our politicians have to honor the dignity of each person and, when one of their own doesn’t, they have to act. It is time for them to read this and make sure that they (both parties) don’t wrap themselves in their ‘holier than thou’ cloths, and only point their fingers to another.
Here again, Hosea is speaking the language of Recovery. I am reminded of the 3rd step and the 3rd step prayer; ‘relieve me of the bondage of self’. After all, only because of the ‘bondage of self’ can we flaunt the teachings, the will, the covenant of God. Only because of our own puffed-up ego can we reject what is good. Only because of our unwillingness to ‘turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God’ can we continue to be deaf to the call of God and others.
Recovery is based in service, service to another and through service to another, service to God. In recovery, we accept the teachings of God, we accept the teachings of others so we can better serve God and another(s). It is imperative to embrace the teachings, keep our covenant with our peers, our families, our community, our God for us to be able to keep ‘growing along spiritual lines’. We deflate ourselves in Recovery, not completely, just enough to get right-sized in relation to God. We are constantly on guard for delusions and denials that will cause us to relive the ‘bad old days’ of our particular history and the days Hosea is speaking of.
I relate to these verses because of the years of living like Israel did. The years of spurning the loving call of God, family, etc. The years of delusion, denial, bastardization of the teachings and the breaking of the Covenant make me ill as I think about them in this moment. I am also saddened by the ways I have deluded myself even in my recovery. I am also grateful for the many ways Harriet and I have kept our covenant with each other, God and so many other people. I see the times when I was “faithless to My teachings” as few and far between AND they have happened and each time, there was pain and hurt. I am sorry for those times. I rejected teachings at times for a ‘higher purpose’ I thought and each time, I was brought down and others suffered as well. Again, I am remorseful for those incidents. Most of all, I am filled with joy and love for all the times I did not act like Israel and stayed true to The Covenant, to Adonai and to my soul. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark