Deceit.
Deception.
Being deceived.
Israel and Judah are in that danger zone of thought. In chapter 12, God is accusing them, starting with Israel, of chasing after deception (even though they would not call it that):
The people of Israel feed on the wind;
they chase after the east wind all day long.
They pile up lies and violence;
they are making an alliance with Assyria
while sending olive oil to buy support from Egypt. (12:1)
Israel thinks that what they are basing their national life on is secure. They don't need to rely on God. They have figured it out: Give your enemies what they want and they will stand by you.
They are seeking to take good from evil. Something from nothing. Think about it: Isn't that what deception is? When what you are considering looks like something that you want or think is necessary, but you have no guardrails to guide you, you risk deception. Deception can take you, given enough time, into something deeper, darker and more corrupting than you think.
Deception appeals to pride: I got this all figured out. I am smarter than that guy. I know what this all really means. You are too stupid to see how wonderful this is! You just don't get it: This is everything we have hoped for and wanted--you need to be like me and get on the bus.
That is why deception is so dangerous. It starts from a place of limited knowledge and thus the real consequences of that knowledge. Otherwise, deception wouldn't work. If you knew what was really going on and how devastating the consequences would be, you'd avoid it.
Israel is deceived in thinking that God is not their sole Protector and that they need allies. Pagan allies. Huh?
Pagans have a different value system than Israel. You can't negotiate with evil. Its "moral" code is derived from what is culturally determined. The moral code of Israel and Judah was not crafted by human beings; it was given to the people by God through Moses. It transcended culture and time. God said His ways were the basis upon which the people should live.
No exceptions. No deceptions.
But evil is based on the reasoning of fallen human beings, who are deceived by their sinful blindness to truth and justice. Assyria and Egypt's values are based on empire: unrestrained power, violence, exploitation, the devaluing of human life and using whatever means are necessary to further their advancement in the world.
Judah and Israel have the Torah. The prophets. The very words of God Himself.
But they are now deceived.
But do deceived people know they are deceived?
The way to expose deception is with the truth.
I just finished watching Nuremberg, starring Russell Crow. I have studied the Holocaust for most of my adult life, and so I was eager to watch this movie. It was excellent.
This trial of the Nazi leaders begins with the prosecutor reading out the charges against the defendants. They all sit there, listening through their headphones with stony faces. Each one, of course, says, "Not guilty" to the charges.
After some preliminary testimony, the prosecution shows the film footage the Allies shot as they liberated the camps. The prosecutor says that this is the first time this film has been shown.
The implication is: You wanted the Final Solution? Well, here it is: Stacks and stacks of bodies; bulldozers pushing bodies into ditches; more bodies; ovens with burned bodies still in them; skeletal bodies of people barely able to walk and still more bodies.
Camp after camp after camp. The images are relentless because the evil the Nazis operated in was relentless.
We see the faces of the people in the courtroom, who are devastated by what they are seeing. They didn't truly know what had gone on in these camps. We then see the faces of the Nazi leaders and some are visibly shaken. How much did they know? Did it matter? They were all complicit in one of the worst crimes that humans could devise.
The deception that these were just relocation or work camps is destroyed by the unrelenting truth of the film's images. The Final Solution's goals were not just rhetoric or grandiose language uttered by a maniacal leader: it was a policy of extermination, implemented with devastating consequences.
The people sitting in that courtroom in 1945 saw into the abyss of where deception takes you: into the very regions of hell.
God does not tolerate deception in any way, shape or form. He knows all too well where it leads. Adam and Eve's deception by Satan led to a fallen and sin-soaked planet. The fact that Israel and Judah, who had received the very words of God, were allying themselves with the forces of darkness is a recreation of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had the very words of God, but listened to the seductive and deceitful words of evil.
Where did it lead? Sin's road is littered with murder and mayhem. Those images in those liberation films should still shock us, because deception is still alive and well.
God's truth, spoken by His prophets, is to counteract the deception His people fall under, and Hosea's words are no exception. God wants His children to live in truth and by truth, so that deception will not gain a foothold and lead to literally God knows what.
God then invokes one of the Jewish people's founding fathers: Jacob. He uses the truth of Jacob to remind the people that repentance and return is always God's desire:
Now the Lord is bringing charges against Judah.He is about to punish Jacob* for all his deceitful ways,
and pay him back for all he has done.
Even in the womb,
Jacob struggled with his brother;
when he became a man,
he even fought with God.
Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won.
He wept and pleaded for a blessing from him.
There at Bethel he met God face to face,
and God spoke to him—
the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies,
the Lord is his name!
So now, come back to your God.
Act with love and justice,
and always depend on him. (11:2-6)
* "Jacob sounds like the Hebrew word for 'deceiver.'” (Bible Gateway notes on verse 2)
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