“And I will betroth you to Me forever; and I will betroth you to Me in righteousness, in justice, in kindness and with compassion. And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness and you shall know God.”
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי לְעוֹלָם, וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בְּצֶֽדֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּט וּבְחֶֽסֶד וּבְרַחֲמִים: וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בֶּאֱמוּנָה, וְיָדַֽעַתְּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה:
These words appear at the end of this week’s Haftarah as spoken by the prophet Hosea. Hosea is one of the Bible’s great, fiery prophets. His moral message is, while unambiguous, constructed on the metaphor of marital infidelity.
As Hosea opens, Israel, God’s wife, has betrayed her husband, God, by “whoring after other gods” and bringing shame, sin and mortal self-destruction upon itself. The language, while dramatic, poetic, and emblazoned with broad strokes of anger and violence, is consequently problematic. It’s a terrible, Divine tantrum. Israel the wife has children from the infidelities. God rants that their names will carry their parent’s transgression: Jezreel, who will defeat Jehu; Lo Ruhamah, one without compassion; and Lo Ami, NOT my people.
Damn.
And then within an instant, at the beginning of the second chapter, God takes Israel back. The anger abates, love returns, and God, as it were, remarries Israel: “And I will betroth you to Me forever; and I will betroth you to Me in righteousness, in justice, in kindness and with compassion. And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness and you shall know God.”
(For those of you who wear Tefilin, you know that this is the line of scripture one recites when spelling one of God’s names — Shadai — with the hand strap. Fulfilling this commandment is a daily betrothal. A wedding every sunrise? Interesting concept.
And so it goes throughout Hosea’s fourteen chapters. A furious God whose lathering, abusive language mourns Israel’s sinful ways, followed almost immediately by language of love, hope and reconciliation.
It’s a dramatic book. It is also emotionally exhausting. Can’t we all just get along?
In rabbinical school I wrote a few papers about this theological dynamic in the prophetic literature, seeing in it, if you will, what I later learned in psychotherapy is understood to be the “traumatic echo” of a past rupture. It’s not that “history repeats itself” alone; rather, traumas and ruptures echo down through a life, through generations, and often obligate generations which knew nothing of earlier breaches with the task of healing wounds not inherently their own.
Later, while serving as a young rabbi at NYU, I learned there was a whole emerging field — now diverse, significant and robust — of Trauma Studies. Whether on a global battlefield scale of destruction or the quiet abuses suffered in the home, humankind’s limitless capacity to inflict pain and suffering upon other human beings clearly necessitates, with hopefully a redemptive result, fields of study in university departments and psychotherapeutic clinics that can get us to a better place. It is a testimony to human resilience and perhaps an all-too-slow-paced, plodding proof of humankind’s refusal to accept things as they are, that scientists and practitioners may lead us to what? A Promised Land.
Read this way, Hosea is a national poet, a great shrink, a dear friend and a lover willing to forgive.
How might one forgive?
“And I will betroth you to Me forever.” We have wounded each other but I will never abandon you and you will never abandon me.
“And I will betroth you to Me in righteousness, in justice.” We have claims. We seek justice, balance, an equal and fair result. Our own inherent sense of and belief in what is right demands this. Neither will get all they want; but the scales of justice will be in balance.
“In kindness and with compassion.” Isn’t it interesting that kindness and compassion follow the eternality of relationship, righteousness and justice? (It sure is interesting to me.) It truly is a grievous sin to us humans when those who are in conflict with us cannot, will not, acknowledge our grievance, our deficit, our loss. The inherent mean we all seek is Justice.
Looked at in this way, Justice realized finally makes way for Kindness and Compassion — a state in which we all want to live.
This part really gets me: Only then, “I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness and you shall know God.”
Faith follows justice, kindness, compassion and love.
We are stubborn, “stiff-necked.” We want proof of the value of it all. What have you done for me lately, God?
But it’s a relationship! A betrothal. Each must do their part. We can’t wait for the promise of forever: we must make it.
We can’t wait for righteousness and justice, we have to bring it.
We can’t wait for kindness and compassion, we have to bring it, share it, do it, day by day by day.
This is how we believe. This is how we know.