Lately in my quiet time I've been reviewing and meditating on old verses that I have memorized down through the years. This is kind of like opening a jewelry box and once again studying the beautiful treasures I have in it. I don't review them often enough but fortunately, most of them are still there. Today I was stopped dead in my reviewing tracks as the truth of two of the verses overwhelmed me once again. The first one is a short passage from Hosea, chapter 11, verses 3 and 4 (God speaking): Yet it is I who taught Ephraim (I substituted my name here) to walk, I took them in My arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, and I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws, and I bent down and fed them."
Recently I was in a group where someone said that the God of the Old Testament was so cruel that this person didn't really even want to read the OT. I'm not sure we're reading the same OT because the God I see here is one of incredible -to me unfathomable- tenderness, patience and love. I am staggered by the picture of God we have here. Having just been through the weeks of seeing our grandson learn to walk I know with what tenderness one watches over the stumbling steps of the child. Here I see God watching over me and taking me in HIS arms, taking care lest I stumble and fall. Then He says He leads me/us with cords of man, perhaps a picture we don't understand so well. In Psalm 32:9 we see the unwilling, unmaneageable horse and mule being led with ropes but being led with cords of man is much different from that. It means being led like a loving parent would help a child over rough terrain, especially one uncertain on it's feet. The image of lifting a joke from the jaws is also a strange one to our ears. Keil and Delitzsch explain it thus: As merciful masters lift up the yoke upon the cheeks of their oxen, i.e. push it so far back that the animals can eat their food in comfort, so the Lord made the yoke of the law both soft and light. God then says that He "bends down and feeds us" or as K&D so beautifully translate the Hebrew, "and gently towards him did I give food."
My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude that I can know and follow a God who cares for me so gently, lovingly, patiently. May our hearts be moved to reciprocate His love and give Him our willing obedience.
The second verse I was awed at today will have to wait for another posting. Too much of a good thing to put both in one!
