Drops of Redemption: Haftarat Bemidbar – Hosea 2:1-22

Is Israel a whore?

This week’s Haftarah certainly says so. It comes from the prophet Hosea, and relates a famous story: God commands Hosea to marry a woman named Gomer, a woman with a reputation for promiscuity. The analogy is clear: Israel is the adulterous wife, God the betrayed loving husband. Gomer bears three children (and we don’t know whether they are Hosea’s): a son named Jezreel, a daughter named Lo-Ruchama, and a son named Lo-Ami. If those names seem unconventional to you, they should: “Jezreel,” says God, symbolizes a massacre at that spot; “Lo-Ruchama” means “not loved”; and “Lo-Ami” means “not my people.” God is not in a good mood.

That is where the story turns around, and our Haftarah begins.

Hosea’s prophecy promises that Israel shall be “like sands in the sea”, her brothers called Ami (my people) and sisters called Ruchama (loved). But suddenly, God unleashes a brutal vision of divine chastisement:

I will strip her naked

And leave her as on the day she was born

And I will make her like a wilderness,

Render her like desert land,

And let her die of thirst….

I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,

Which she thinks are a fee

She received from her lovers;

I will turn them into brushwood,

And the beasts of the field shall devour them.

Have no fear, though. God abruptly changes course. Right afterward, 

I will speak coaxingly to her

And lead her through the wilderness

And speak to her heart.

I will give her vineyards from there,

And the Valley of Anchor as a plowland of hope.

There shall she respond as in the days of her youth,

When she came up from the land of Egypt.

Commentators have assured us that all of this is part of a pattern: 1) God promises the ultimate redemption; 2) God takes out divine vengeance on adulterous Israel; and 3) all is restored and renewed. One could, of course, read it that way, but reading it in a more erratic mode reveals the Haftarah in its full power.

After all, Israel’s behavior does not actually change to allow God to bring her back. The reconciliation in verses 16 and 17 is quite quick, and hardly derives from Israel’s better action. God promises that “I will betroth you forever….in steadfast love and mercy…in faithfulness…and you shall know the Eternal.” But what is to say that Israel will not stray again? And given how abruptly God changes the divine attitude, what is to say that something else will not set God off the next time? This is a not a Truly Sensitive Deity: after all, God just recently commanded Hosea to marry someone known as an adulteress: that’s no way to treat Your devoted prophet.

So instead of looking at the various portions of Haftarat Bemidbar as a progression through time, it makes more sense to treat them as ongoing and recurring phases in any deep and loving relationship, be it spiritual or romantic or platonic. The rabbis never wearied of reminding us that אין מקדם ומחר בתורה: there is no early and late in Torah.  Time works differently here. This is the essence of the strange often disjointed character of Haftarah: unlike the Five Books of Moses, it does not move in a stable, narrative progression. And that reveals a profound truth. Fairy tales and movies – and even Chumash — end when they “all lived happily ever after.” Life and Haftarah do not.

In the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ brilliant novel Love in the Time of Cholera, at the end of many chapters Dr. Juvenal Urbino rejoices that he and his wife have finally come to a stable, loving place in their marriage – only to have some new crisis erupt in the next section. And then love returns, and new problems arise, and so on. By the end of the book Urbino’s ghost bids a cheerful farewell to his wife as she goes off with her new (old) boyfriend. That is living “happily ever after,” but only in a very oblique way.

Jewish history since Hosea has demonstrated that Marquez’ work more aptly describes the love affair between God and Israel than the orderly progression envisioned by traditional commentators. Times of intense spiritual lovemaking alternate haphazardly with times of brutal infidelity and cruelty. It proceeds not in a set pattern but rather in seeming randomness. That is love.

So too with our personal experiences. Our lives do not progress in the manner prescribed by dramatic theory. Modern science suggests as much. Whether they are the “peak experiences” theorized by Abraham Maslow, or the “flow” envisioned by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, happiness comes from an energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. But there is an obvious downside to this theory: no one can stay in the zone all the time. We all cherish our I-Thou moments, but we live in the world of the I-It — and sometimes worse.

And thus, our search for contentment, to “betroth ourselves forever” and “know the Eternal” must seek not the proverbial “happy ending,” but rather an ongoing tension: we seek the shore, and live in the waves. We do this not only as our personal selves, but as members of Israel, rocking, pitching, reeling with, and embracing our Divine lover.