Post by alon on Oct 5, 2016 16:28:52 GMT -8
Hoseah 14:2-10 and Micah 7:18-20- Haftara for Par’shah Vayelech
This haftarah is read each Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat just before Yom Kippur.
Note that the verse divisions in the TNK do not always line up with our English translations; and in fact this older version of the JPS translation does not correspond exactly with their own later translation.
Hoseah 14:2 (JPS) Take with you words, and return unto the LORD; say unto Him: 'Forgive all iniquity, and accept that which is good; so will we render for bullocks the offering of our lips.
Contemporary JPS translation says “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, For you have fallen because of your sin.”
This reading is both a powerful call to repentance as well as a message of hope.
Hoseah 14:3 (JPS) Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we call any more the work of our hands our gods; for in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy.'
“For in Thee the fatherless findeth mercy” recalls “Lo’ruhama” of Hoseah chapter 1, and and Elohim’s relenting nature when we repent in chapter 2:
Hosea 1:6-7 (ESV) She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, [Hebrew Lo-ruhama, which means she has not received mercy] for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.”
Hosea 2:16 (ESV) “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’
According to the Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality, and Gender “there are two Hebrew words in addition to ish that are sometimes translated into English as husband: baal and adon.”
As a whole Hosea 14:3 is a rejection of past sinful behavior by the nation of Yisro’el.
Hoseah 14:4 (JPS) I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for Mine anger is turned away from him.
The forgiving nature of Elohim here expresses itself in two “I will’s”: "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely.”
When we as individuals or as a nation return to Elohim, He will forgivingly respond to take us back:
Deuteronomy 30:1-3 (ESV) “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.
God does not change, and He patiently waits to take us back, even though like Yisro'el we often refuse His help and destroy ourselves.
Hoseah 14:5-6 (JPS) I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his fragrance as Lebanon.
The the lily and the olive tree will flourish in the Olam Ha’ba. The olive tree symbolically represents Yisro'el in her spiritual blessing:
Romans 11:23-24 (ESV) And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
The Lily seems to represent how Yeshua sees His bride, Yisro’el:
Song of Solomon 2:1-2 (ESV) I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. As a lily among brambles, so is my love among the young women.
Like us, with all her sins the bride may seem to be just another bulb growing amongst the thistles. However Yeshua sees His bride in her purity as a beautiful white Lily flowering amongst the weeds and thorns.
Hoseah 14:7 (JPS) They that dwell under his shadow shall again make corn to grow, and shall blossom as the vine; the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon.
Contrast this with:
Hosea 9:1-2 (ESV) Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the [harlot], forsaking your God. You have loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors. Threshing floor and wine vat shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them.
Hoseah 14:8 (JPS) Ephraim shall say: 'What have I to do any more with idols?' As for Me, I respond and look on him; I am like a leafy cypress-tree; from Me is thy fruit found.
We are assured here that when we repent, our sins will be forgiven and our spirits healed. There is no anger here, as we might expect; only love. We will once again bear fruit through the power of the Ruach.
Hoseah 14:9 (JPS) Whoso is wise, let him understand these things, whoso is prudent, let him know them. For the ways of the LORD are right, and the just do walk in them; but transgressors do stumble therein.
We should not just hear the Word, but study it and do what is said. In this way we become wise as we come to understand these things. But those who do not study and who refuse to heed the Word and obey what is written will stumble on them.
The way Christianity teaches this it is just sinners who stumble on the Word- sinners being those who do not believe. But as I read it now, I see here a clear picture of the “church.” They hear the words, and many even study them. However they refuse to obey even the few things they take from 
to be true. In this way they stumble on the Word. How can “sinners” who do not have the Word stumble on it? And even those who do have access but refuse the Word can’t stumble on what they’ve discarded. But those who have it and refuse to believe and do all it says stumble on it continuously.
I don’t pretend to know at what point salvation is lost, but this to me is very disturbing when I think of all my friends and family and even acquaintances in the church who fall into the above category.
Micah 7:18-20 (JPS) Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth the iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will again have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob, mercy to Abraham, as Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old.
This gives us a great degree of hope, as we see here that Elohim delights in mercy. He is faithful. When we come to Him and confess our sins, He will pardon us.
Psalm 103:12 (ESV) as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
Jeremiah 31:34 (ESV) And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Acts 3:19 (ESV) Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,
This passage is reminiscent of the voice of the remnant of Yisro’el in the end-times, as portrayed by the prophet who most identified with her:
Daniel 9:3-5,19 (ESV) Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. … O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”
Like Daniel, those who kept faith, trusting in the Lord’s faithfulness to restore the nation in time; those people had a thirst that could only be quenched one way:
John 7:37-38 (ESV) On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
Daniel and those of Yisro’el who were faithful looked forward to a Messiah from and to their nation. We today look back in faith to Yeshua as that Messiah. But we must look back with the same difficult trust of those in exhile in Daniel’s day. I say difficult, because to me at least, trust doesn’t come easy. And then it must have been very difficult to trust as they were taken into captivity and removed from their land by a pagan nation.
Another thing that is often difficult for me to trust the Almighty with is forgiveness. How can He forgive some of the things I’ve done? I can’t forgive myself; how can a righteous God forgive me? Yet when a stone is thrown into the ocean and sinks to the bottom, it cannot be recovered. And when sin is forgiven, like that stone which is lost to us and should be forgotten, our Elohim never recalls it either. Looking back on my life this past year, I am truly astonished at how much time I’ve spent trying to dive the ocean’s depths to recapture my sins for which I’ve already repented and been forgiven. Not that I want them or consciously try to regain them. But the enemy knows just where to thrust the knife, and in frustration and anger the self-recriminations come flooding back. Something I intend to prayerfully work on in the coming year; and quite honestly, probably in the next year as well. It’s a process, and I’m not nearly as bad as I was the year before, baruch Hashem. But I am by nature as stiff necked as any Jew, and it will take time. … Probably a lot of time. Howevwer as I read this haftara, I am filled with a sensation of peace and hope.
Dan C
Refrences: JPS Study TNK, W Wiersbe, MF Unger, my father, Rav S and others.
Edit: copying the Micah verse and commentary to their own thread in the appropriate section.
