COVENANT MOTIF IN HOSEA: ITS RESONANCES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NIGERIAN CHRISTIANS

Abstract

The covenant of Yahweh with Israel is central in understanding her religion and it dominates the entire Old Testament corpus. Indeed, Israel’s origin, nationhood, survival, blessings, and victories, all swivel around covenant. Unfortunately, Israel’s tendency of recurrent breaching of her covenant with Yahweh despite its values, seems to be a reality among Christians today. As a contribution to scholarly efforts on the relevance of the Old Testament to contemporary Christianity, this paper sets out to examine covenant motif in the book of Prophet Hosea, find out its resonance in the New Testament and explore its relevance for modern Nigerian Christianity. Adopting historical and theological approaches, the writers discovered in Hosea, covenant motif such as election and parental relationship, apostasy and harlotry, lack of knowledge, faithfulness and love, and curses and blessings of the covenant. These also resonate in the New Testament. It is also discovered that Christians in contemporary Nigeria do not take these motifs seriously as they relate with fellow humans and nature. The paper concludes that lack of commitment to covenant motif as exemplified in Hosea is at the root of corruption, violence and insecurity, underdevelopment, ecological crisis and others, being experienced in the world and in modern Africa. It is therefore recommended that Christians should tenaciously adhere to covenantal virtues such as faithfulness, obedience, committed sense of service to God among others, in order to enjoy the blessings of obedience to covenant and for the global society to be a better place to inhabit.