The _second_ stage of the knowledge of God was when the Nation awoke to His leading, and _through a prophet_, Moses, were _brought up out of Egypt_. Here again no miracle is adduced by Hosea, but with full heart he appeals to the grace and the tenderness of the whole story. To him it is a wonderful romance. Passing by all the empires of earth, the Almighty chose for Himself this people that was no people, this tribe that were the slaves of Egypt. And the choice was of love only: _When Israel was young I came to love him, and out of Egypt I called My son._ It was the adoption of a little slave-boy, adoption by the heart; and the fatherly figure continues, _I taught Ephraim to walk, taking him upon Mine arms_. It is just the same charm, seen from another point of view, when Hosea hears God say that He had _found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, like the firstfruits on an early fig-tree I saw your fathers_.
Now these may seem very imperfect figures of the relation of God to this one people, and the ideas they present may be felt to start more difficulties than ever their poetry could soothe to rest: as, for instance, why Israel alone was chosen--why this of all tribes was given such an opportunity to know the Most High. With these questions prophecy does not deal, and for Israel's sake had no need to deal. What alone Hosea is concerned with is the Character discernible in the origin and the liberation of his people. He hears that Character speak for itself; and it speaks of a love and of a joy, to find figures for which it goes to childhood and to spring--to the love a man feels for a child, to the joy a man feels at the sight of the firstfruits of the year. As the human heart feels in those two great dawns, when nothing is yet impossible, but all is full of hope and promise, so humanly, so tenderly, so joyfully had God felt towards His people. Never again say that the gods of Greece were painted more living or more fair! The God of Israel is Love and Springtime to His people. Grace, patience, pure joy of hope and possibility--these are the Divine elements which this spiritual man, Hosea, sees in the early history of his people, and not the miraculous, about which, from end to end of his book, he is utterly silent.
It is ignorance, then, of such a Character, so evident in these facts of their history, with which Hosea charges his people--not ignorance of the facts themselves, not want of devotion to their memory, for they are a people who crowd the sacred scenes of the past, at Bethel, at Gilgal, at Beersheba, but ignorance of the Character which shines through the facts. Hosea also calls it forgetfulness, for the people once had knowledge.[715] The cause of their losing it has been their prosperity in Canaan: _As their pastures were increased they grew satisfied; as they grew satisfied their heart was lifted up, and therefore they forgat Me._[716]
Equally instructive is the method by which Hosea seeks to move Israel from this oblivion and bring them to a true knowledge of God. He insists that their recovery can only be the work of God Himself--the living God working in their lives to-day as He did in the past of the nation. To those past deeds it is useless for this generation to go back, and seek again the memory of which they have disinherited themselves. Let them rather realise that the same God still lives. The knowledge of Him may be recovered by appreciating His deeds in the life of to-day. And these deeds must first of all be violence and terror, if only to rouse them from their sensuous sloth. The last verse we have quoted, about Israel's complacency and pride, is followed by this terrible one: _I shall be_[717] _to them like a lion, like a leopard I shall leap_[718] _upon the way. I will meet them as a bear bereft_ of her cubs, _that I may tear the caul of their heart, that I may devour them there like a lion: the wild beast shall rend them._[719] This means that into Israel's insensibility to Himself God must break with facts, with wounds, with horrors they cannot evade. Till He so acts, their own efforts, _then shall we know if we hunt up to know_,[720] and their assurance, _My God, we do know Thee_,[721] are very vain. Hosea did not speak for nothing. Events were about to happen more momentous than even the Exodus and the Conquest of the Land. By 734 the Assyrians had depopulated Gilead and Galilee; in 725 the capital itself was invested, and by 721 the whole nation carried into captivity. God had made Himself known.