
Proper 13(18) C
Hosea 11:1-11
By Laurel Dykstra
Today’s lectionary passage from Hosea is a potent cocktail that mixes parental love and anger with political violence and nature imagery. More broadly and more problematically, the prophet’s oracles:
- imagine religious fidelity and commitment to justice, as sexual fidelity within patriarchy
- conflate non-monogamy and sex commerce
- assume that sexual violence (reparative rape) is a husband’s prerogative
- equate military violence and invasion with divine judgement.