Hosea 14:5-7 I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.… Hosea is eminently the prophet of repentance and pardoning love. He has also a poet's eye with which he looks on nature. The text comes from a fervent and tender appeal to Israel to come back to its God. We have here, with lovely symbolism, the various aspects of the Christian ideal of character, and the productive energy which makes them all possible. I. THE SOURCE OF FRUITFULNESS. The dew in Palestine is peculiar. The strong summer sun carries on evaporation with great activity over the surface of the Mediterranean, and the prevailing summer winds bring masses of vapour, which are condensed by the cold when evening falls, and wrap the land in a moist veil which refreshes the drooping vegetation, and saves many a little floweret. It is that moistening mist, not properly "dew" as we know it, which the prophet picks out as being a fitting emblem of the secret, silent, refreshing, quickening, life-giving influences which God will bestow upon the spirit that comes back to Him in lowly penitence. Is there no fierce sunshine blazing down on us, which needs in like manner that our inward life should be moistened and refreshed by the visitations of that silent guest that will come and bring the moisture we need? The deceitful ray of prosperity is full of danger to the spiritual life, and no less cruel are the fervid beams of fiery temptation with which we have all to be tried. And where is our strength? I know but of one source of it, — that we shall receive the communications of that spiritual life, the gift of which is the central blessing of the Gospel; the impartation of the life of God to our hearts and spirits, mediated by the indwelling in us of the Spirit of God which is the Spirit of Christ. II. THE PROFUSE BEAUTY WHICH WILL FOLLOW THE FALL OF THE DEW. The lily is most probably identified as the scarlet anemone. The idea conveyed in the figure "He shall grow as the lily " is twofold profusion, or what gardeners call freedom of growth and beauty. A profusion of grace ought to match the profusion with which the dew comes from God. The real beauty is goodness. That beauty of goodness will come wherever a man keeps himself in touch with God and Christ. We are all bound to try and make our Christianity attractive. A great many very good people are repellent and not attractive. There ought to be the beauty of holiness where there is the dew from the Lord. III. THE STRENGTH WHICH SHOULD GO WITH THE BEAUTY. "He shall cast forth his roots as Lebanon; his branches shall spread." To the beauty of the fragile lily we must add the strength of the stable cedar. There must be strength conjoined with beauty in a world like ours, full of conflict and strife. IV. THE FRUITFULNESS WHICH SHOULD CROWN BEAUTY AND STRENGTH. The olive is not a beautiful tree. It has a gnarled, often twisted and distorted, sometimes a monstrous stem and mean branches, and insignificant, pointed, pale leaves, with a silvery grey underside. Its beauty lies in its fruit, and in nothing else, and that fruit produces the oil which sustains and soothes, and smoothes and gives light. Our deeds, which are our fruit, are important, not in themselves so much as because they are the outcome and manifestation of what we are. Our fruit is the test of our Christianity. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. |
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