_The more I_[600] _called to them, the farther they went from Me._[601] _They to the Ba'alim kept sacrificing, and to images offering incense._ But God persevered with grace, and the story is at first continued in the figure of Fatherhood with which it commenced; then it changes to the metaphor of a humane man's goodness to his beasts. _Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, holding them on Mine arms,_[602] _but they knew not that I healed them_--presumably when they fell and hurt themselves. _With the cords of a man I would draw them, with bands of love; and I was to them as those who lift up the yoke on their jaws, and gently would I give them to eat._[603] It is the picture of a team of bullocks, in charge of a kind driver. Israel are no longer the wanton young cattle of the previous chapter, which need the yoke firmly fastened on their neck,[604] but a team of toiling oxen mounting some steep road. There is no use now for the rough ropes, by which frisky animals are kept to their work; but the driver, coming to his beasts' heads, by the gentle touch of his hand at their mouths and by words of sympathy _draws_ them after him. _I drew them with cords of a man, and with bands of love._ Yet there is the yoke, and it would seem that certain forms of this, when beasts were working upwards, as we should say _against the collar_, pressed and rubbed upon them, so that the humane driver, when he came to their heads, eased the yoke with his hands. _I was as they that take the yoke off their jaws_;[605] and then, when they got to the top of the hill, he would rest and feed them. That is the picture, and however uncertain we may feel as to some of its details, it is obviously a passage--Ewald says "the earliest of all passages"--in which "human means precisely the same as love." It ought to be taken along with that other passage in the great Prophecy of the Exile, where God is described as He that led them through _the deep, as an horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble: as a beast goeth down into the valley, the Spirit of the Lord gave him rest_.[606] Thus then the figure of the fatherliness of God changes into that of His gentleness or humanity. Do not let us think that there is here either any descent of the poetry or want of connection between the two figures. The change is true, not only to Israel's, but to our own experience. Men are all either the eager children of happy, irresponsible days, or the bounden, plodding draught-cattle of life's serious burdens and charges. Hosea's double figure reflects human life in its whole range. Which of us has not known this fatherliness of the Most High, exercised upon us, as upon Israel, throughout our years of carelessness and disregard? It was God Himself who taught and trained us then;-- "When through the slippery paths of youth With heedless steps I ran, Thine arm unseen conveyed me safe, And led me up to man."