Hosea 12

This short passage shows not only that the nocturnal contest of the patriarch had been, even in Hosea’s time, long received as a fact, but also furnishes us with a key to the inner meaning which throws a new light on the scene itself, and from that point throws its beams far beyond. Hosea teaches us to see in Jacob’s wrestling the turning-point of his life—his conversion. This is not only in harmony with the narrative in Genesis, but the whole sketch of his life as there given is here presupposed. In verse 13 other circumstances are quoted from it. But Hosea further perceives in that night-struggle a fact which ought to be repeated in the life of the nation. That fact was the conquest of the impure original nature in that tearful and prayerful pleading with God, and being found of God in the long, earnest conflict in which God reveals Himself as Jehovah. That is the very idea and history of Israel as distinct from heathen nations. Auberlen.

Not the winning of the birthright, not the purloined blessing, not the visions of Bethel and of Mahanaim, but the wrestle at Jabbok was the critical point in Jacob’s moral history. The wrestle was foreshadowed at Bethel. God’s choice of Jacob for such a high destiny is a mystery. There is some reason for it in the moral possibilities of the man which God knows, but which we cannot detect until we come to Jabbok. It comes out there: a moral fibre which has been overlaid by his cunning and conceit all these years, but which stiffens into moral muscle at the touch of the covenant angel. The very man of all others who, we should think, would break down at just such a moral crisis, whose life has given scarce a hint of the moral quality he develops in that struggle, comes out gloriously, with a tremendous force of will which faces God, and, breast to breast, and girdled with the arm of omnipotence, cries, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me.” He had been brought to a point where stratagem and strength alike failed; where he could only cling to God; where the issue was God’s blessing or nothing. He won His blessing, and the supplanter was baptized anew as God’s prince. Vincent.

Jacob got the victory and the blessing not by wrestling, but by clinging. We will not get victory in prayer until we too cease our struggling, give up our own will and throw our arms about our Father’s neck in clinging faith. It is never the violence of wilfulness that prevails with God. It is the might of clinging faith that gets the blessings and the victories. It is not when we press and urge our own will, but when humility and trust unite in saying, “Not my will, but Thine.” We are strong with God only in the degree that self is conquered and is dead. Not by wrestling, but by clinging, can we get the blessing. J. R. M.

What, then, is this silent, unseen wrestling but the summing up in vivid fashion of Jacob’s whole life hitherto? Had he not, over and over again, been made aware that, with all his craft, he was in the silent grip of an unseen Power, which he could not shake off? Had not God been striving with him, by many sorrows and disappointments, hedging up his way? God had been seeking to educate Jacob all his life, and to beat the cunning and self-confidence out of him. He had tried to win the birthright by deceit. It had been a case of diamond cut diamond in his intercourse with Laban. And now he had been relying largely on his own skill to serve him in his interview with Esau. He could not be allowed to enter the land in such a mood. Not till he had learned to distrust himself and to trust God utterly was he fit to receive the inheritance. That wrestling was the symbol of all his past; and by it God continued His effort to break or bend an obstinate will, and to teach an earthly nature to rise beyond its own tricks, and trust to God rather than to self. So God is ever wrestling with us. The purpose of all His dealings is to lead us away from reliance on our own skill and power, to bend our wills into pliable conformity with His. We have the awful, mysterious power of resisting Him. “Our wills are ours, we know not how,” but instead of learning “to make them Thine,” we struggle against the merciful Power which silently strives with us. The grasp that could crush is mercifully restrained, and so guided that it only lames Jacob. Must not Jacob have thought to himself, when that touch lamed him, “How easily could this antagonist have prevailed if he had put out all his power?” The withering of the shrunken sinew was but as an outward token of the shrivelling up of his natural self-confidence. To deliver us from ourselves and from trust in these is God’s aim with us all. It is gain, not loss, to be thus dealt with.

The second stage of the wrestling begins at that point. “Let me go, for the day breaks.” Jacob, then, still held fast by his antagonist, who, mighty as he was, could not go until Jacob had loosed his clutch. God desires to go, unless we desire to keep Him. Like Christ on the road to Emmaus, when He “made as if He would have gone further,” and would assuredly have done so if the disciples had not said, “Abide with us,” or, when walking on the sea, He would have passed by the boatful of terrified men if they had not called on Him, so this mighty wrestler wills to go, in order that the man who clings to him may strongly desire him to stay. If Jacob had not begun to divine the mystery of his visitant, he would scarcely have wished him to remain, nor have sought a blessing from him. We keep God by desiring Him. That petition, strangely compounded of conscious need and of felt power to hold the Unknown fast, is the kernel of the wrestling in its second stage, in which Jacob prevails. Hosea gives an inspired commentary on it when he tells us that “he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him” (Hos. 12:4), words which can only apply to the second stage of the incident, and which show that much earnest entreaty is condensed into the brief phrase, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Tears and prayers, these are the forces to put forth in that wrestling with God, which is possible for us all, on condition that our life of nature is broken. We overcome when we yield. “When I am weak, then am I strong;” or, as Charles Wesley puts it in his noble hymn on this incident:

“Yield to me now, for I am weak,

God prevails when we prevail, for His highest desire is to tarry with us and bless us; and when we prevail in prayer, it is by strength granted by Him, who gives His Spirit to dwell in and intercede for us. A. M.

5. This verse is a close continuation of the preceding. “There He spake with us, even the Lord God of hosts.” In most English Bibles the name “Lord” is printed in small capitals when it translates the Hebrew word Jehovah. In this verse the Hebrew reads, “Even Jehovah, God of hosts—Jehovah is His memorial.” By this is meant that the name Jehovah is that by which He would be specially known, or, more precisely, is that one of His various names whose significance He would have His people evermore remember, as to be fulfilled all along onward in the lapse of the ages. The true significance of this name is one faithful to his promises. The idea is that this faithfulness results from His immutability, and that His people do not fully know this attribute of God till they have tested and proved it in their experience of His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises. In this sense the name Jehovah stands through all time as His memorial name—its significance to be remembered by His people, and perpetually developed and fulfilled more and more in the lapse of ages. The significance of His other names may be verified and fulfilled at once; His omnipotence is seen in the creation of worlds and in every real miracle; but His name Jehovah is verified only by the aid of time, through the occurrence of events transpiring all along down the world’s history. In this most expressive sense it is His memorial name, and is adduced by Hosea most fitly in this connection to encourage the people to put their trust in Him.

6. Hence the application here made, “Therefore,” since God is forever faithful and true, since He ever has been and ever will be the God of His people Israel, “therefore, turn thou to thy God.” “Keep mercy and judgment,” duties toward man; “and wait on thy God continually,” living in dependence upon Him, and expecting all needful good from Him alone. Morality toward man and piety toward God make up the sum of human duty—loving God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. H. C.

Keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy

God continually. Compare Micah 6 : 8, “to do justly” (literally “judgment”) “and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” “Wait on thy God,” let thy hope rest on thy God (Ps. 27 : 14 ; 37 : 34). This last command is also a statement of privilege ; acting in obedience to Jehovah, it will be Israel’s happiness to be able to rely upon His help. “Continually,” for sooner or later He will deliver thee. B. C.

7. This allusion to the trading usages of Canaan was shaped to take hold of the people of Ephraim, the more so because the latter, while in general holding the Canaanites in contempt, were yet trading, defrauding, and oppressing in the same way. H. C.

God has His eye upon merchants and traders when they are weighing their goods and paying their money, whether they do honestly or deceitfully ; He observes what balances they have in their hand, and how they hold them ; and though those they deal with may not be aware of that sleight of hand with which they make them balances of deceit, God sees it and knows it. Trades by the wit of man are made mysteries, but it is pity that by the sin of man they should ever be made mysteries of iniquity. H.

8. Ephraim quietly implies that in trade some little crookedness and deception are quite admissible (probably he would have said, Who can live by trade otherwise ?). But, on the other hand, there are things so flagrant that all the world will call them sin. He hopes, indeed he is quite sure, they will not find any of this bad sort of sin in his business life. So human nature and the usages and moralities of trade were much the same B.C. 750, when Hosea was writing, as they are to-day ! H. C.

“I am become rich, I have found me out substance.” Prosperity in sin is a great bar to conversion from sin. Those that live at ease in their sinful pleasures, and raise estates by their sinful projects, are tempted to think God favors them, and therefore they have nothing to repent of. It is folly to think that riches are things to be gloried in, and to say with exultation, I am become rich. Riches are not the honors of the soul, are not peculiar to the best men, nor sure to us ; and therefore let not the rich man glory in his riches (James 1 : 9, 10). It is folly to think that growing rich in a sinful way either does make us innocent, or will make us safe, or may make us easy, in that way ; for the prosperity of fools deceives and destroys them. (See Isa. 47 : 10 ; Prov. 1 : 32.) He excuses the fraud, so that none condemned it. They shall find no iniquity in me, that were sin, nothing very bad, nothing but what is very excusable, only some venial sins, sins not worth speaking of, which they think God will make nothing of because they do. It is a fashionable iniquity, it is customary, it is what everybody does, it is pleasant, it is gainful, and this, they think, is no iniquity that is sin, nobody will think the worse of them for it ; but God sees not as man sees, He judges not as man judges. H.

9. Once more the prophet turns abruptly, as is his wont, to promises, yet again to try the power of persuasion and love on the people. “Yet I, the Lord thy God ever since Egypt” (i.e., since the exodus from Egypt), “will yet make thee to dwell in tents,” etc., with reference to the Feast of Tabernacles, the great national thanksgiving. This was always a joyful occasion. Hence this verse must be interpreted as a promise of good, and not a threatening of evil. H. C.

10. Used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets. Commanding the prophet to perform symbolical actions ; as, in the case of Isaiah, going naked ; Jeremiah, binding himself ; Ezekiel, lying on one side ; not mourning for his wife ; Hosea’s marriage ; and many other instances. Bp. Horsley.

12. This brief and abrupt allusion to Jacob was designed to suggest God’s watchful care through His providence over His trustful children. This familiar history is found, Gen. chaps. 29-33. H. C.

13. This shows how unworthy and ungrateful this people were. In rejecting their God, who had brought them out of Egypt, which, in the preface to the commandments, is particularly a reason for the first, why they should have no other gods before Him. In despising and persecuting His prophets, whom they should have loved and valued, and have studied to answer God’s end in sending them, for the sake of that prophet by whom God had brought them out of Egypt, and preserved them in the wilderness. The benefit we have had by the Word of God greatly aggravates our sin and folly, if we put any slight upon the Word of God. H.