Abstract
Parental Pathos
…A good parent is as rare as snow in summer. ― Esi Edugyan
The book of Hosea is filled with metaphors of rage and pain. Yahweh, perhaps uncomfortable to modern sensibilities, is portrayed as a hot mess. As Carolyn Sharp observes, in Hosea one encounters the coexistence of extreme violence and tender care. The effect is gut-wrenching, messy, and borderline abusive (Old Testament Prophets for Today).
Is Yahweh a good parent? It seems blasphemous to voice the question. However, when the eighth-century prophet Hosea describes the deity as a parent in parental anguish, the reader is invited to reflect. Not all parents in anguish are good parents. Not all children who flee their parents for others are misguided or rebellious. One can imagine an abusive parent expressing many of the same emotions attributed to Yahweh, especially if one reads Hosea 11:5 (‘they shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me’) as a punitive parental response. Since the prophet expresses divine disappointment over the people Israel, for many a person lacking good parenting, the complex metaphor may itself be triggering. In his book, Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults, Darius Cikanavicius explains that ‘feelings of being rejected, disapproved of, or conditionally loved by one’s primary caregivers is a monumental, long-lasting burden for a child to carry. It produces chronic shame, guilt, and anxiety’. Adult children of such trauma might find it hard to empathize with Yahweh’s pathos and simply find themselves judged, shamed, and further alienated from God. That is, unless Yahweh is a good parent.
If the trigger can be relaxed in one’s apprehension of the text, then one might reflect on the loving, complex, and emotional pathos of the deity who seeks to raise and guide beloved children, but then vulnerably watches them choose other paths and other relationships. Parental love goes unrequited, as all unconditional love must at least risk and, at least periodically, face. ‘When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.’ (Hos 11:1–2.) Baal worship, popular and pervasive in Northern Israel, was the dominant cultural norm of the time. Hosea, and the prophetic reform movements represented by other prophets, advocated a counter-cultural alternative. Participating in regional expressions of the cult of Baal promised agricultural blessing and martial protective promise. In modern phraseology, it was transactional rather than relational; support Baal and there is a good chance he will reward you. Whereas there was no cultural need for Jesus to warn against Baal worship in first-century Palestine, he did warn against greed and assuming the goal of life itself was the transactional accumulation of possessions (Luke 12:15). There was nothing in Baal worship that could be described in terms of love and pathos towards human being that Hosea preached. As far as we know, as far as the Baalists were concerned, you could worship Yahweh too, transactionally, as part of a larger polytheistic matrix. Like a wise investor in the stock market, loyalty could be a liability, while diversity was commonly held to be the strength. Periodically, one might find oneself so richly blessed that new barns were needed to replace the old (Luke 12:17–18) so that blessing, itself, could save a soul from the fluctuations of the gods. In approaching the Hosea text, it is perfectly understandable that Israel would make the culturally normal strategic choice of hedging divine allegiance, playing the polytheistic field, attempting to find as much blessing and control as humanly possible. In other words, Israel as rebellious child makes practical sense even today when far too many of us still neglect the warning of Jesus: ‘“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So, it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God’ (Luke 12:20–21).
If Northern Israel is understandable in its embrace of a culturally dominant transactional norm, and if first-century Palestine is relatable its loss of soul because of the seductive desire for an abundance of possessions, how might we connect with Yahweh in ways that are not retraumatizing but salvific?
In Hosea 11, Yahweh is, indeed, a good parent, but Yahweh is also a vulnerable, perplexed, aching parent. Yahweh expresses failure, alienation, and fear. Like most parents, the early years were not as complex. ‘…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms…I led them with cords of human kindness, with bonds of love…I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down and fed them’ (Hosea 11:3–4). However, there is disconnection, misunderstanding, and alienation, for ‘they did not know that I healed them’ (Hosea 11:3). Hosea has artfully expressed the deep emotions that signal lack of attachment. Despite persistent efforts of love, connection is not present. Yahweh is neither known nor seen. As readers we receive an impressive view of the divine ache, reverberating perhaps with our own relational aches and pain from not being seen. Indeed, thanks to Hosea’s text, we can see Yahweh in ways that Israel cannot. We can see Israel too, perhaps not primarily as rebellious, but as prodigal, quick on the draw to cultural success and willing to leave the relationship with its parenting God behind. As we read, we know what is coming, because seldom does this situation end well, ‘they shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes’ (Hosea 11:5–6). Just desserts? Inevitable consequences? What is a parent to do?
Some parents might wash their hands of it and give up. This, of course, is the deepest fear of the failed child, that they are not worthy of the parent’s emotional pain, but not Yahweh. Hosea lets us into the inner anticipatory turmoil, ‘How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath’ (Hosea 11:8–9).
‘I am God and no mortal.’ Perhaps this is the hermeneutical key that unlocks metaphorical emotional labyrinth. If God were mortal, finite, unable to bear the relational emotional distress of disconnection, then God might opt for justification and resolution. Yahweh might simply cut bait and move on. After all, the pain is so acute and deep. But God is not mortal and so the prospect of long-suffering hope and restoration emerges from the labored text, ‘they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the
It is in the relational struggle, the intimacies and disconnections, the shared joys and bruising misunderstandings, that we find ourselves upon holy ground. Where we are most vulnerable and yearning, deep within and offered without, we may, in fact, meet God in the divine pathos and vulnerability that makes deep connection possible and pain inevitable. Even in the most labored family relationships and places of deepest trauma there is hope, because of God’s long-suffering, that we, too, might anchor ourselves in that good divine parent and find a way to endure holding hope.