Like Morning Dew

This reflection is part of the ongoing Forest Hills Haftorah Series. The rest of the content can be found here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Haftorah-Series .

above: Hosea, painted in the 10th century!!! Kept in the Vatican Library

The 8th-century prophet Hosea might be one of the greatest poets whose works would be included in the TaNaKh. The imagery, and the metaphors he would weave together in order to draw his audience in completely was astounding and amazing.

I'll give you one example to start out.

At the end of the 5th chapter, YHWH expresses huge disappointment at the lack of Israel's loyalty. And so, in disgust, YHWH decides to withdraw from the world, thinking that when the Israelites realize what they had lost, they would change their ways in the hope of getting it back.

Here is how this plays out:

Look at what's going on with the water imagery here.

Israel uses it first, eagerly looking forward to pursuing after, and then knowing YHWH once again, anticipating YHWH's appearance to be akin to the blessing of rain, which quenches and refreshes.

If you read the Hebrew, you should notice that the terms that Hosea uses should be quite evocative; For it is reminiscent of another passage in Deuteronomy 11:

Sound familiar? The terms to keep your eyes open for are yoreh, which here in Deuteronomy refers to the early rains, as well as malkosh, the late rains. Having these rains, the right rains at the right times, was a matter of huge importance for Israel. It was never anything short of the difference between life and death.

In Deuteronomy, Moses, speaking on behalf of YHWH, promises the Israelites that obedience will result in YHWH bringing forth blessings, and that these blessings will be in the form of the early and late rains.

It therefore makes sense that in Hosea's time, when the Israelites are trying to rebuild an estranged relationship, they look forward to YHWH's appearance amongst them yet again, which will be as pleasant as the late rains which are yoreh [lit. showering, but also same word for "early rains" from Deuteronomy].

Beautiful image, right?

But Hosea expects his audience to be adept at Hebrew, and so there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Take a look at this next passage from one of the prayer-poems, but you'll have to glance at the Hebrew to really get the point:

The term used here for teach is built from the same root word used for shower above; י-ר-ה. Interesting!

Here's another place where it's used:

So this is pretty neat. Yet again, another word built from the same root! (י-ר-ה). The same root is used to build (1) the early rains, (2) to instruct, (3) to shoot.

I love this idea that if you are teaching, or instructing someone, you are guiding them, helping to aim them along the straight-and-narrow path towards a worthwhile target, or goal, just as you would aim and then let fire an arrow.

What do you think the connection, if there is any, between these two and the falling of the early rains?

Let's now direct our attention back to Hosea, because with this background, we can appreciate even more what Hosea is doing here with his word-play.

The Israelites are pursuing after YHWH and look forward to his blessings, the blessings that will shower down, using the term י-ר-ה.

But they also said they were pursuing YHWH to know him!

So, while they are looking forward to his blessings showering down like rain, or for blessings that are physical and agricultural in nature, they are also looking for blessings that are intellectual. They want YHWH's instruction and guidance.

This emphasis on knowledge, or wisdom in pursuit of YHWH is consistent with Hosea elsewhere.

In fact, take a look at the capstone, the very end, to the his collected oracles:

Okay, now we have to backtrack just a bit.

The purpose of the last few verses was to understand a bit of Hosea's intention below the surface in the Israelites' proclamation to pursue YHWH to know him, and to experience his blessings showering down like late rain upon them.

It's a beautiful and poetic idea!

But then we then get YHWH's response, and things do not look wonderful.

Let's look again at what YHWH says:

YHWH takes the rain-imagery of blessings used by Israel and plays with it in his response.

Israel's faithfulness, YHWH point out, is like the morning clouds and the dew.

For just a moment, we think that YHWH is being complementary. Just as Israel looks to YHWH's presence as a blessing, so too, YHWH looks to Israel's faithfulness as a blessing.

But then we get the punchline: So early gone.

In what sense is Israel's faithfulness like the morning dew? Not in any way positive or admirable; Only in that, as quick as it is to make an appearance, it will just as quickly fade away to nothingness.

In other words, when YHWH decides to withdraw from the world and Israel responds immediately by declaring her love for YHWH and desire for closeness - YHWH is not falling for it. He has seen this act before.

However, this period of separation will most certainly not be permanent. While there are moments when their relationship is fraught, Hosea reminds us, a number of times, that in the long run, YHWH and Israel's destiny is to be together, in love and in harmony.

As a counterpoint to what was shared above, here is one such passage:

For me, a number of Hosea's passages never get old; I can just read them over and over and over again.

(Awhile back, we spoke a little more at length on the above, in our discussion called Holy Matrimony. Here is the link: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/238780?lang=bi )

Like many of our prophets of yore, the collected oracles of Hosea continuously sway from one of these two extremes to the other - A love and a closeness that seems to have an intensity that can withstand any hardship one moment, and then frustration and heartbreak the next. And Hosea's poetic toolbox, from which he will pull out such a wide gamut of images to portray this drama, is huge.

In his 12th chapter, which will be chanted in many prayer-spaces this sabbath, we know right from the start that this is one of those moment where things are not looking good:

Uh oh. Another lawsuit.

Unfortunately for our ancestors, YHWH had to bring many of these against Israel and Judah over the years. (We spoke the covenant lawsuits at length previously; see our limmud aptly titled The Lawsuit, found here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/251665?lang=bi ).

What happens next though, is in my opinion, one of the most interesting passages in all of Hosea's oracles, and maybe even throughout the literary prophets generally.

We get a retelling of some of the defining moments in our dear forefather Jacob's life.

But the way in which Hosea reflects on Jacob's life, as well as the differences in

details, are worth paying special attention to.

But it is so brief, so if you blink, you miss it!

Here is the passage in full:

below: Check out this really neat rendition from the Byzantine era!

If you're familiar with the stories of Jacob as they are told in the book of Genesis, how interesting is this?

First of all, note the Hebrew term for deceived. As we saw above, Hosea is playing word-games.

Here is the entry in the Gesenius Lexicon:

Note how in the second entry, Gesenius quotes our very verse as support that one of the definitions of ahkav is take hold of the heel. And in fact, Gesenius has much to rely on, for clearly Hosea is recollecting the following:

Makes sense. The name Ya'akov, or Jacob, comes from the fact that Jacob emerged from the womb holding onto the heel (ahkeiv) of his brother.

But then later on in the story of the lives of these two brothers, Esau would further play around with Jacob's name after learning Jacob had swindled him out of the blessing his father had intended to give to Esau:

This is yet one more reason to try to work on reading these works in the Hebrew if possible. They are abounding with puns; When Hosea reflects back on the moment of birth of Jacob and Esau, he clearly has all of the above on mind, which the Hebrew allows for.

On one hand, Hosea is speaking about the moment of birth, when Jacob is literally grabbing ahold of the heel of Esau; But on the other time, he is portraying YHWH as being furious with the deception of Jacob's descendants, the Israelite people, as they continue living up to the precedence set by the trickster Jacob, all that time ago.

below: If the picture didn't include the names, is there anyway to identify who is who?

Hosea would then go on to speak of another defining moment in Jacob's life, the Divine Wrestling-match.

Let's see this moment in Genesis, one of the most mysterious and evocative of all of our ancient texts:

There is no way we would be able to do this utterly perplexing passage justice this time around, so it is most definitely worth taking note of and coming back to. In this case, I'm mostly interested in one question.

With whom did Jacob wrestle? Read it again carefully, keeping this question in mind. What do you think?

Well, first we are told explicitly that it is a man. But this will soon be undermined. When this "man" gives Jacob a blessing, he says "You have striven with elohim and with men, and have prevailed!" Well, we know when Jacob has striven with men. He has striven with Esau, he has striven with Laban; But when did he ever strive with elohim?

Then finally, Jacob names the place Peni-el, which literally means my-face-is-el. And why does he name it this? For I have seen elohim face-to-face!

And so, it seems like Jacob is now thinking of this mysterious being as elohim.

So what is elohim then?

Perhaps Genesis 1 comes to mind:

So elohim is clearly the term where, in English, many people would say "God," right?

Well, in the above case, yes.

But how about this one?

If this psalm seems quite unintelligible, well, that's because it kind of is.

x is standing in the midst of x, saying, 'I thought you were x!' Huh???

But here's something so fascinating. This prayer-poem comes from a large section in the book of Psalms called the Elohist Psalter. This refers to a section where, for some strange reason, YHWH's proper name - YHWH - which is so abundant basically everywhere else, just kind of disappears.

And so the theory goes like this: Psalms 42-83 was included in the book of Psalms as a package, which came from a place where, for whatever the reason, the custom was to replace writing the name of YHWH with the term elohim.

But the way this prayer-poem is probably supposed to be heard or read, and maybe was originally written, would be like this:

And so now, what comes out is that YHWH is distinct from this other group called elohim. And then at the end of the prayer-poem, it is YHWH who says to this group, I had thought that you were elohim, but now I see that you are mere mortals!

So elohim does not only refer to YHWH-Almighty; It can even refer to immortal beings who are appointed to act as judges of the earth. Or, perhaps we might call them, gods, though with a lower-case g so as to distinguish them from the idea of One All-Powerful Creator-God. (I.e., distinct from YHWH.)

So now back to Jacob... With whom was he wrestling? Well, it seems from Jacob's last statement, I saw elohim face-to-face and lived! - that it is a divine being. YHWH? Another "god?" Not so sure.

But then why did the narrator introduce this "being" to us by saying that "a man" wrestled with Jacob?

Maybe we were seeing him from Jacob's eyes. I.e., when the struggle began, this was a human adversary of flesh-and-blood, for all Jacob knew; And it was only by way of the struggle that Jacob would come to realize that there was something more going on.

Let's now turn back to how Hosea describes this moment:

What Hosea seems to be doing here is eliminating at least some of the ambiguity. While "elohim" could refer to YHWH-himself, that is most definitely not whom Jacob is wrestling with. It is a malakh, which could be a messenger, or divine being much lower on the totem-pole than YHWH.

For some reason, it is important to Hosea to make this point as he walks us through some of Jacob's life. Why do you think that might be?

We get one more line from Hosea about the life of Jacob. And what's interesting is that it will serve to complicate, completely, what we just finished discussing with regard to the midnight wrestling-match!

Here it is with the previous verse we just finished discussing:

Bethel was a place of huge importance for Jacob. He encountered YHWH there multiple times; Offering sacrifices, receiving blessings, and experiencing communion.

Let's just look at the first example:

So how does this frustrate everything?

Well, remember our question above - With whom was Jacob wrestling!

We just finished saying that Hosea takes pains to make it clear that it was not with THE elohim, i.e., YHWH-of-Legions himself; But it was the other kind, elohim with a lower-case "e", a divine messenger or something.

But whoever it was, it was someone that Hosea says Jacob communed with at Beith-El.

But wait a second, according to the book of Genesis, Jacob communed with YHWH at Beith-El! So isn't Hosea's logic self-defeating? How can he say that it was not YHWH with whom he wrestled, but whoever it was, was who he met at Beith-El, and we know it was YHWH at Beith-El!

These are all worthwhile questions.

Personally, I think the way we would have to answer such difficulties is to conclude that the stories that Hosea inherited about our forefather Jacob are at least slightly different than the version that would end up being preserved in the book of Genesis as we have them.

So perhaps Hosea learned of Jacob wrestling with a divine being, or an elohim at some point, triumphing over it completely and reducing it to tears, and then encountering it again at Beith-El. And this divine-being was not YHWH himself, but perhaps a messenger of his, or some other being unrelated entirely.

While in Genesis, it is most definitely YHWH whom Jacob encounters at Beith-El, though not necessarily YHWH who fought him at night - and whoever it was that did fight, might have been bested, but not to the point that it was brought to tears.

Of course, another very likely possibility is that Hosea is speaking poetically and loosely, and it would be a mistake to conclude any of the above.

Whatever the explanation, instances like this in the TaNaKh are fascinating; When two different authors are reflecting on the same event, but from different perspectives, or remembering different details. Comparing the two and thinking about which seems more likely to be the original, and how/why it was changed over time, or why it is presented differently is always a fun thought-experiment.

For another example, check out the book Judges chapters 4 and 5. In chapter 4, we read in prose about a major Israelite-Canaanite war, between Barak of Ephraim and Sisera of the Canaanites on Mount Tebor. Then in chapter 5, we get Deborah's utterly epic poem about the events, one of the greatest pieces of literature in the whole TaNaKh. (That's saying a lot!)

Another example is the Revelation at Sinai/Horeb, told in Exodus 19-20, and then recalled by Moses in Deuteronomy 5. There are some fascinating choices Moses makes in how he remembers what had occurred.

And there are many more examples where these came from!

For the end, I want to switch gears and look at something that Hosea says in his last chapter:

What a wonderful hope with which to bring his oracles to an end!

Note how here, Hosea is basically undoing all the negativity we saw in chapter 12 above. For what was one of the major reasons behind YHWH's lawsuit? Well, we saw that YHWH was upset that Israel's faithfulness was never deeply rooted; It faded away like morning dew.

But this is what YHWH says just before mentioning the lawsuit to begin with:

According to Hosea, YHWH is furious that Israel is making a covenant with Assyria! What this means is that Israel would submit herself to Assyrian control, becoming a vassal state, showing fealty by such actions as paying tribute.

But there is only one reason a nation would do such a thing; Fear. Be it fear of Assyria, or fear of other nations that maybe Assyria would then help Israel against.

But here's what would other Hosea about this; If Israel is putting their faith in the might of Assyria, then in whom is she not putting her faith?

If you read enough of the Histories included in the TaNaKh, you'll see that this is an ongoing refrain.

During Hosea's own lifetime, there came a moment when Northern-Israel was in conflict with Southern-Judah. Israel became united with King Rezin of Aram, and they both mustered their troops to march southward to war.

And how did King Ahaz of Judah respond?

Actions such as this, in the prophets' eyes, was a disgrace.

And so in Hosea 12, when Israel would approach YHWH so soon after seeking Assyrian help, and now piously professing loyalty to YHWH, he didn't buy it.

But in chapter 14, YHWH does buy it. Why?

Well, look back at what Israel says in appealing to YHWH to become a part of her life once again:

Not only is Israel turning to YHWH, but she is explicitly abandoning any and all faith she once placed in Assyria. She is acting repentant.

This, YHWH needed to hear. For the loyalty that YHWH is deserving of is such a one that could not be shared.

Remember Elijah's exhortation on Mount Carmel: (We saw this at length in our A Divine Showdown. Here's the link: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/249357?lang=bi .)

Any figure or thing that Israel would turn to for salvation, for deliverance - if it was anything other than YHWH - would be akin to idolatry in the prophets' eyes. And as we see in Elijah, to try to do so as well as placing hope in YHWH was not much better.

And so only in chapter 14, when Israel says "Good riddance!" to Assyria, could YHWH respond favorably and come back "From his place."

And how does YHWH express that he will indeed look favorably upon Israel once again?

After chapter 12, the first thought in our minds upon hearing YHWH being to Israel as dew should be; Uh-oh. For we know what Hosea means by this; Dew lasts but a moment, in the early morning, then quickly fades away to nothing. Will YHWH do the same?

No! Just as Israel hoped in chapter 12, this is now dew in the favorable sense once again! The kind that will enable Israel to blossom like the lily, striking roots as deep and as mighty and as impenetrable as the Great Lebanons!

My personal take-away from this is that, well, YHWH is utterly repulsed by any traces of idolatry, or disunity of loyalty. We might profess complete devotion one moment, but if we are doing so while also keeping other gods on the side, then we are not making enough room for YHWH, making it impossible for him to receive our invitation for him to be in our lives.

He wants, and deserves, our full heart.

Which, really, they should have known as early as Moses!:

This is most definitely a tall order. How can we seek out YHWH with our complete hearts???

I think the answer to this might be very different from one person to the next, and I'm still trying to figure it out myself. But I do believe that by virtue of Moses encouraging us to do this, that it therefore follows that it is possible and reasonable. And by doing so, we will find YHWH! No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

For the Israelites, it meant letting go of the faith they had gotten used to placing in Assyria. For each of us, it would be something different. But whatever it is, most of us probably have something, or somethings, which is putting up a fight for the devotion that we owe to YHWH alone.

Here's a question I'll be asking myself in light of this reflection, and perhaps you will want to think about it along with me:

What, in my life, is taking up too much space, such that YHWH feels I have not cared enough to make room for him? And what step can I take to start rectifying this? What can I do to invite YHWH in completely, giving him the opportunity to rain his showers of blessings that the Israelites hoped for, as well as to provide that morning dew, which he so clearly wants to do, if only I let him?