the rhetorical question

I was reading through Hosea at servants' meeting two weeks ago, and a passage really stuck out at me:

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.

I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim.
For I am God, and not man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come in wrath.

(Hosea 11:8-9)

The book of Hosea can be kind of scary at first because God is essentially hardcore rebuking the Israelites for essentially pimping themselves out to other idols/nations/etc. (hence the symbolism through Hosea's prostitute wife?) but this one section entitled "God's Love for Israel" is just so encouraging and enveloping. What calls to my heart in this section is God's use of rhetorical questions — He asks, how can I give you up? How can I hand you over? How can I treat you so coldly and fiercely when my love for you runs so deep? It has that same heartbroken tone as when God calls out to Adam and Eve (after they have eaten the fruit of knowledge and sinned against God), "Where are you?" These questions also sound like they're from the exact same heart that the father has in the story of the prodigal son — no matter what the son has done, how can the father give up on him? How can God just let Satan take ahold of us?

He can't. And that's the point.

I guess the point of the rhetorical question in general is that it's not one that necessarily needs to be answered; it's used for persuasion, so the point is oftentimes to stun the listener into silence, into consent. And God's pretty good at persuading us that He wants to be with us no matter what, so He's always trying to get us to be repentant and ready to come back to His embrace. That's where we belong, and God wants us to see that.

There are a ton of other places where rhetorical questions are used to make a point. I never really noticed before until I started jotting down some verses in the back of my planner so that even if I forget to take my Bible with me to classes, I still have the Word of God somewhere handy on me; and there are quite a few that use these questions so powerfully.

For example:

"Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Psalm 42:5)

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." (Isaiah 40:28)

"Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?" (Deuteronomy 4:32-34)

Jesus asks, "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work." (John 14:10)

And of course, my favorite: "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

I don't know about you, but I'm just stopped when I'm faced with these kinds of questions. Do I not know? Have I not heard? Do I believe that God isn't enough to triumph over my fears and trials? Do I really have reason to be stuck in a gloom? And the answer is a resounding "NO." But I don't even need to say this out loud because it's unnecessary — God knows the answer He expects, and I know what it is as well.

God is constantly saying to us, Am I not the LORD your God? Didn't I create the heavens and the earth? Did I not wash away all your sins when I sent my son Jesus to die on the cross for you? Did I not search for you when you fell away? Did I not heal you when you were deeply wounded by man, deeply corrupted by sin?

And before we can muster up a humbled "yes," God is already one step ahead, smiling down at us, saying, "That's what I thought."

And I love that bold-attitude side of Him :)