The haftarah for the Torah portion “Vayetze” (Hosea 12:13-14:10 according to the Ashkenazi custom) is a piercing yet redemptive passage. It provides a blistering moral audit of Israel’s failures and an encouraging blueprint for its renewal. Indeed, it speaks with raw relevance to the present moment.
Hosea begins by recalling our patriarch Jacob’s lonely journey: “Jacob fled to the field of Aram; Israel served for a wife and for a wife he guarded” (12:13). This is not merely a biographical sketch: It is a reminder of what spiritual perseverance looks like. Jacob had nothing – no wealth, no army, no status. What he had was faith, grit, and the unshakable belief that God’s promise would sustain him. The prophet Hosea invokes Jacob to shame his descendants who enjoyed prosperity but abandoned purpose.
From there, the prophet pivots sharply: “Ephraim vexed Him most bitterly” (12:15). Israel built altars to false gods, deceived itself with hollow piety, and chased foreign alliances as if salvation could be outsourced. They worshiped Baal, trusted Egypt and Assyria, and mistook political maneuvering for national strength. Hosea exposes the great irony: While Israel relied on idols and empires, it ignored the very God who had rescued it from bondage.
Then comes the heart of the haftarah: a devastatingly honest, though ultimately compassionate, divine rebuke. God declares, “When they grazed, they were filled; when they were filled, their hearts were lifted up; therefore they forgot Me” (13:6). Comfort bred complacency. Success eroded memory. A nation that once cried out in hunger now choked on its own abundance.
And once again, Hosea’s ancient message speaks directly to our world
In the years preceding Oct. 7, 2023, Israel – and indeed the West – succumbed to the same illusion Hosea diagnosed. Prosperity became a narcotic. Many convinced themselves that history had softened, terror had been tamed, and the world had matured beyond fanaticism. In Israel, political polarization deepened; abroad, moral clarity dimmed. The culture of comfort became a culture of denial.
Then the predators pounced, just as Hosea warned: “So I will be like a lion to them; like a leopard I will lie in wait” (13:7). Illusions evaporated in a single morning of unspeakable horror. The barbarism unleashed by Hamas shattered any pretense that evil had gone dormant.
And yet, the haftarah does not end in despair: It crescendos into one of the most hopeful calls to national renewal in all of the Tanach.
“Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity” (14:2). Hosea outlines a path of restoration that is startlingly direct: Reject foreign dependencies, renounce false saviors, abandon moral evasions, and speak honestly before God. No horsemen from Assyria will save you; only a return to identity, mission, and faith can do so.
What follows is an astonishing promise of healing: “I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely” (14:5). God will once again be “like dew to Israel,” allowing the nation to blossom like the lily, grow deep like Lebanon, flourish like an olive tree, and revive like a vineyard. It is a vision of spiritual, moral, and even agricultural renaissance, a rebirth rooted in memory and longing.
This redemptive hope is precisely what unfolded in Israel after the Oct. 7 war began. Volunteers poured into hospitals, bases, and refugee centers. Israelis who had not prayed in years whispered Psalms for kidnapped children and fallen soldiers. Jacob’s courage – forgotten during years of complacency – has resurfaced in a generation Hosea might very well have initially condemned.
The haftarah ends with an admonition that could have been written for our own times: “The ways of the Lord are straight; the righteous walk in them, and sinners stumble upon them” (14:10). Moral clarity is not negotiable. Nations that stand in truth endure; those that chase illusions collapse.
Hosea’s message is thus a challenge and a comfort. In a world increasingly hostile to Israel and confused about right and wrong, the prophet reminds us: Strength comes not from alliances but from identity; not from convenience but from conviction; not from forgetting but from remembering.
If Israel, like Jacob, holds fast to its mission – even in exile, even in danger, even in darkness – then the promise of Hosea still stands: Renewal will come, and Israel will rise again, stronger than before.