BeMidbar: Human Rights and The Triumph of God’s Hope

By Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom on May 30, 2008 - כ"ה אייר תשס"ח

The Triumph of God’s Hope Over Hosea’s Experience – On Reading the Haftarah in Context

This week’s haftarah, Hosea 2:1-22, beginning with

“The number of the people of Israel shall be like the sands of the sea, not to be measured or counted”

gives resonance (but also soft rebuke) to the census of the Israelites described in the Torah reading (B’midbar, Numbers 1-4:20). While there’s surely much consolation in that vision of Israel’s multiplication, I find my attention riveted by the personal family saga in the Haftarah, which the rabbis basically censored by entering the story only at the beginning of chapter 2, thereby shielding us from its full severity.

As Gunther Plaut puts it (The Haftarah Commentary, p. 333):

“The succession of events in his [Hosea's] personal life was without doubt devastating for the Prophet and his children. Did God need to ruin the life of a family in order for Hosea to be able to preach about an adultrous Israel? Did this paradigm require Gomer and Hosea to experience the consequences of unfaithfulness in their own lives?”

Plaut’s answer:

“It seems much more likely that Hosea, having suffered the breakup of his marriage, began to see it as a metaphor of God’s relationship to Israel. He now believed it to have been prearranged by Providence, and so interpreted it in chapter 1. It is also possible that the divine promise of Israel’s restoration to God’s favor may have encouraged him to take back his own wife.”

Troubling as the story is until now – Plaut is particularly distressed by “the metaphor of God as the trusting husband and master and Israel as the whoring wife [which] represents a reversal of human experience and tends to reinforce a cultural stereotype” — the prophecy climaxes with the familiar renewal of vows that we recite whenever we put on tefillin:

And I will espouse you forever

I will espouse you with righteousness and justice

And with goodness and mercy

And I will espouse you with faithfulness

Then you shall be devoted to the Lord

(Hosea 2:21-22)

But a further glance at the story in context reveals that the wife drops out of the metaphor: in verse 25, God takes Lo-Ruhamah back in favor, and says to Lo-Ammi, “You are my people.” Chapter 3 finds Hosea commanded yet again to love a woman “who consorts with others”; here, too, is consolation offered at the end (Hosea 3:5):

“Afterward, the Israelites will turn back and will seek the Lord their God and David their king – and they will thrill over the Lord and over his bounty in the days to come.”

I suppose it’s my duty to somehow lift this dark cloud of Hosea’s experience, and it’s not all that hard: I surmise that what fuels the hope that permeates the vision is the power of love. It is this indelible memory – vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it (Song of Songs 8:7) – that has us, with God as our model, favoring one part of the past over another, and choosing hope.

And finally, two comments about the writing of this message: a) if Father MacKenzie could post his message online, would he have felt that he was “writing the words to a sermon that no-one will hear”? Would “no-one come(s) near”? It takes almost no effort to share your response (jeremymilgrom@yahoo.com), and it could bring us that much closer to fulfilling the hopes that inspired the creation of this organization and keep it going. b) As I find it difficult to repeat a d’var torah, instead of translating it (usually from Hebrew to English) for the other edition of this newsletter, I actually write it again in the other language from scratch; another voice surfaces, another tone, and usually a somewhat different thrust. If you have access to the Hebrew, I invite you to read that version as well.

Rabbis for Human Rights recommends that you read these articles in Bemidmar

BeMidbar: Human Rights and The Triumph of God's Hope - May 30th, 2008
Dvar Torah – Bamidbar - July 8th, 2007
Bemidbar: Reaching out to the ones we would normally turn away - May 26th, 2006
BeMidbar: Be counted as a valued individual - June 2nd, 2005

Categories: Bemidmar
Tags: Bo, Emor, human rights, Omer, order, palestinians, rest, righteousness, settlers