[228 words]
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1).
It was in Egypt that the Israelites groaned in their slavery. It was to Egypt that many of the rescued Israelites wanted to return while tired of wandering in the desert. It was to Egypt that God told them they were never to return or seek help from, and yet, by verse 5, God reveals the awful truth: “Will they not return to Egypt and will not Assyria rule over them because they refuse to repent?” This would be the same as the prodigal son, after having experienced the love, forgiveness, and acceptance of his father, to return to the side of the pig pen in the distant land and long to fill his belly with their pods. Ridiculous? No more so than we, who were dead in our sins, to be rescued from our groaning under the bondage to sin and then want to return to Egypt. We, who have become God’s treasured possession, would throw it all away because we “refuse to repent”? Perhaps we truly don’t understand from what we were rescued? Or appreciate what we have come to in our rescue?
Do you return to the lure of Egypt’s leeks and pots of meat or hold out for the land He’s promised to bring you?
Doug Kashorek
Plattsburg Church of Christ
Plattsburg, NY