This anguish Hosea had suffered. As closely as two souls may live on earth, he had lived with Gomer. Yet she had never wakened to his worth. She must have been a woman with a power of love, or such a heart had hardly wooed her. He was a man of deep tenderness and exquisite powers of expression. His tact, his delicacy, his enthusiasm are sensible in every chapter of his book. Gomer must have tasted them all before Israel did. Yet she never knew him. It was her curse that, being married, she was not awake to the meaning of marriage, and, being married to Hosea, she never appreciated the holy tenderness and heroic patience which were deemed by God not unworthy of becoming a parable of His own.
Now I think we do not go far wrong if we conclude that it was partly this long experience of a soul that loved, but had neither conscience nor ideal in her love, which made Hosea lay such frequent and pathetic emphasis upon Israel's ignorance of Jehovah. To have his character ignored, his purposes baffled, his gifts unappreciated, his patience mistaken—this was what drew Hosea into that wonderful sympathy with the heart of God towards Israel which comes out in such passionate words as these: My people perish for lack of knowledge.[664] There is no troth, nor leal love, nor knowledge of God in the land.[665] They have not known the Lord.[666] She did not know that I gave her corn and wine.[667] They knew not that I healed them.[668] For now, because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will reject thee.[669] I will have leal love and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.[670] Repentance consists in change of knowledge. And the climax of the new life which follows is again knowledge: I will betroth thee to Me, and thou shall know the Lord.[671] Israel shall cry, My God, we know Thee.[672]
To understand what Hosea meant by knowledge we must examine the singularly supple word which his language lent him to express it. The Hebrew root "Yadh'a,"[673] almost exclusively rendered in the Old Testament by the English verb to know, is employed of the many processes of knowledge, for which richer languages have separate terms. It is by turns to perceive, be aware of, recognise, understand or conceive, experience and be expert in.[674] But there is besides nearly always a practical effectiveness, and in connection with religious objects a moral consciousness.
The barest meaning is to be aware that something is present or has happened, and perhaps the root meant simply to see.[675] But it was the frequent duty of the prophets to mark the difference between perceiving a thing and laying it to heart. Isaiah speaks of the people seeing, but not so as to know;[676] and Deuteronomy renders the latter sense by adding with the heart, which to the Hebrews was the seat, not of the feeling, but of the practical intellect:[677] And thou knowest with thy heart that as a man chastiseth his son, so the Lord your God chastiseth you.[678] Usually, however, the word know suffices by itself. This practical vigour naturally developed in such directions as intimacy, conviction, experience and wisdom. Job calls his familiars my knowers;[679] of a strong conviction he says, I know that my Redeemer liveth,[680] and referring to wisdom, We are of yesterday and know not;[681] while Ecclesiastes says, Whoso keepeth the commandment shall know—that is, experience, or suffer—no evil.[682] But the verb rises into a practical sense—to the knowledge that leads a man to regard or care for its object. Job uses the verb know when he would say, I do not care for my life;[683] and in the description of the sons of Eli, that they were sons of Belial, and did not know God, it means that they did not have any regard for Him.[684] Finally, there is a moral use of the word in which it approaches the meaning of conscience: Their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked.[685] They were aware of this before, but they felt it now with a new sense. Also it is the mark of the awakened and the fullgrown to know, or to feel, the difference between good and evil.[686]
Here, then, we have a word for knowing, the utterance of which almost invariably starts a moral echo, whose very sound, as it were, is haunted by sympathy and by duty. It is knowledge, not as an effort of, so much as an effect upon, the mind. It is not to know so as to see the fact of, but to know so as to feel the force of; knowledge, not as acquisition and mastery, but as impression, passion. To quote Paul's distinction, it is not so much the apprehending as the being apprehended. It leads to a vivid result—either warm appreciation or change of mind or practical effort. It is sometimes the talent conceived as the trust, sometimes the enlistment of all the affections. It is knowledge that is followed by shame, or by love, or by reverence, or by the sense of a duty. One sees that it closely approaches the meaning of our "conscience," and understands how easily there was developed from it the evangelical name for repentance, Metanoia—that is, change of mind under a new impression of facts.
There are three writers who thus use knowledge as the key to the Divine life—in the Old Testament Hosea and the author of Deuteronomy, in the New Testament St. John. We likened Amos to St. John the Baptist: it is not only upon his similar temperament, but far more upon his use of the word knowledge for spiritual purposes, that we may compare Hosea to St. John the Evangelist.
Hosea's chief charge against the people is one of stupidity. High and low they are a people without intelligence.[687] Once he defines this as want of political wisdom: Ephraim is a silly dove without heart, or, as we should say, without brains;[688] and again, as insensibility to every ominous fact: Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are scattered upon him, and he knoweth it not,[689] or, as we should say, lays it not to heart.
But Israel's most fatal ignorance is of God Himself. This is the sign and the cause of every one of their defects. There is no troth, nor leal love, nor knowledge of God in the land.[690] They have not known the LORD.[691] They have not known Me.