Hosea 11:1 (KJV) Pictures are Pictures

Hosea 11:1 (KJV)
When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

I was impressed that Israel is referred to in the masculine gender. Generally, when speaking of a nation of people they are referred to in the feminine. Indeed, Israel is pictured as a wife[1], married to God, even in this book. Yet here Israel is a “him”.

The possible explanation would be that this is a specific reference to Jacob as an individual and not as the nation. He is clearly spoken of at the end of the next chapter. But this possibility is eliminated within the verse, as Jacob was not individually called out of Egypt.

My point is that we must not make more out of the types and pictures of the Bible than are there.

I have been in communication just this week with a man who insists that the church, as New Testament Christians understand it, cannot exist. God has, in his view, just one bride who is Israel. He cannot be an adulterer therefore the New Testament bride must not be a Scriptural entity. Another man, a pastor and much used Bible teacher, justified his own multiple divorces and subsequent remarriages by claiming God is divorced from Israel and espoused to the New Testament church.

But pictures are pictures and not substance. They serve to illustrate truths but they are not the truths they illustrate.

Many a false doctrine has been born through making more of a type than we ought.

[1] Albeit unfaithful.

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Hosea 11:1 (KJV) Pictures are Pictures

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