Text -- Hosea 2:1 (NET)

2:1 Then you will call your brother, “My People” (Ammi)! You will call your sister, “Pity” (Ruhamah)!

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Hos 2:1

Who of no people are made a people, who were once unpitied, but now have obtained mercy.

Wesley: Hos 2:1

To those of the ten tribes, who are your brethren.

Wesley: Hos 2:1

Let them know that yet they are the people of God, they are still within the covenant of their father Abraham, if they will as their father, walk with God, all shall be well.

JFB: Hos 2:1

That is, When the prediction (Hos 1:11) shall be accomplished, then ye will call one another, as brothers and sisters in the family of God, Ammi and Ruhamah.

Clarke: Hos 2:1

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi - I prefer the interpretation of these proper names. Say ye unto your brethren, My People; and, to your sisters, who have Obtained Mercy.

Calvin: Hos 2:1

The Prophet having spoken of the people’s restoration, and promised that God would some time receive into favour those whom he had before rejected, now exhorts the faithful mutually to stir up one another to receive this favour. He had previously mentioned a public proclamation; for it is not in the power of men to make themselves the children of God, but God himself freely adopts them. But now the mutual exhortation of which the Prophet speaks follows the proclamation; for God at the same time invites us to himself. After we are taught in common, it remains then that each one should extend his hand to his brethren, that we may thus with one consent be brought together to the Lord.

This then is what the Prophet means by saying, Say ye to your brethren, עמי omi, and to your sisters רוחמה ruchamah; that is, since I have promised to be propitious to you, you can now safely testify this to one another. We then see that this discourse is addressed to each of the faithful, that they may mutually confirm themselves in the faith, after the Lord shall offer them favour and reconciliation. Let us now proceed —

Defender: Hos 2:1

Gomer's son and daughter had been named Lo-ammi ("Not my people") and Lo-ruhammah ("Not to be pitied"), but finally, in the last days, God will call their brothers and sisters Ammi and Ruhammah, ("My people have been pitied," and "belong to me once more")."

TSK: Hos 2:1

unto : Hos 1:9-11

Ammi : That is, My people, Exo 19:5, Exo 19:6; Jer 31:33, Jer 32:38; Eze 11:20, Eze 36:28, Eze 37:27; Zec 13:9

Ruhamah : That is, Having obtained mercy, Hos 2:23; Rom 11:30,Rom 11:31; 2Co 4:1; 1Ti 1:13; 1Pe 2:10

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Hos 2:1

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi - that is, "My people, and to your sisters, Ruhamah,"i. e., "beloved or tenderly pitied."The words form a climax of the love of God. First, the people scattered , unpitied , and disowned by God , is re-born of God; then it is declared to be in continued relation to God, "My people;"then to be the object of his yearning love. The words, "My people,"may be alike filled up, "ye are My people,"and "be ye My people."They are words of hope in prophecy, "ye shall be again My people;"they become words of joy in each stage of fulfillment. They are words of mutual joy and gratulation, when obeyed; they are words of encouragement, until obeyed. God is reconciled to us, and willeth that we be reconciled to Him. Among those who already are God’ s people, they are the voice of the joy of mutual love in the oneness of the Spirit of adoption; "we are His people;"to those without (whether the ten tribes, or the Jews of heretics,) they are the voice of those who know in whom they have believed, "Be ye also His people."Despair of the salvation of none, but, with brotherly love, call them to repentance and salvation."

This verse closes what went before, as God’ s reversal of His own sentence, and anticipates what is to come (Hos 5:14 ff). God commands the prophets and all those who love Him, to appeal to those who forget Him, holding out to them the mercy in store for them also, if they will return to Him. He bids them not to despise those yet alien from Him, "but to treat as brethren and sisters, those whom God willeth to introduce into His house, and to call to the riches of His inheritance."

Poole: Hos 2:1

Say declare, own, or publish.

Ye who of no people are made a people, who were once unpitied and unregarded, but now have obtained mercy; you that are the sons of the living God, whether Jews or Gentiles. You Christians, as the apostle applies the words, Rom 9:24,25 ; and so in the ant, type no doubt they are to be understood; but in the letter and type, the persons here mentioned are those who among this people were pious, feared God, and kept his law; some such there were among them.

Unto your brethren to those of the ten tribes who are, and will be these forty years, your brethren.

Ammi let them know that yet they are the people of God, and repentance may remedy all; they are still within the covenant of their father Abraham; if they will, as their father. walk with God, all shall be well.

And to your sisters, Ruhamah: in a decorum, to (what before was made an emblem of Israel) the prophet’ s daughter, Lo-ruhamah , some are here directed to reason (as it is Hos 2:2 ) with her, i.e. with Israel, whose name is yet Ruhamah, and it may be so still, if Israel will retain it by returning to God.

Haydock: Hos 2:1

Times. This was verified during the captivity.

Haydock: Hos 2:1

Brethren, &c. Or, call your brethren, My people; and your sister, Her that hath obtained mercy. This is connected with the latter end of the foregoing chapter, and relates to the converts of Israel. (Challoner) ---

I seemed to have abandoned them at the great day of carnage; (Haydock) but I will still receive (Calmet) this portion of my people, as well as Juda. (Haydock) ---

Disdain not to call them brethren. More of the ten tribes than of the others embraced the faith of Christ, and more Gentiles than Jews became converts. (Worthington)

Gill: Hos 2:1

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah. These words are to be considered either in connection with the latter part of the preceding chapter, and as directed to the sons of the living God, who had not been, but now were, "Ammi", the Lord's people; and who had not, but now have, "Ruhamah", obtained mercy; which grace and mercy shown them, it became them to speak of one to another, to affect their hearts mutually with it, and to glorify God for it, Mal 3:16 as also to speak of it to their carnal relations, that so, if it was the will of God, it might be of use to them, to show them the state they were in, the danger of it, their need of the grace and mercy of God, and the hope there was by their own instance and example of obtaining it; see Rom 9:1, or as directed to the converted Jews that appointed Christ their Head, and believed in him; exhorting them to own the believing Gentiles as their brethren and sisters, since they were the spiritual seed of Abraham their father, and walked in the steps of his faith; and to call them Ammi and Ruhamah, since they, who were not the people of God, now were, and who had not obtained mercy, now have obtained mercy, 1Pe 2:10, or else they may be considered as in connection with the following words,

plead with your mother; and that either as spoken to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who were the people of God, retained the pure worship of God, and obtained mercy of the Lord, Hos 1:7,

"O ye Ammi and Ruhamah, that are the Lord's people, and he has had mercy on; stir up and exhort your brethren and sisters of the ten tribes, for so they were, notwithstanding their separation, 1Ki 12:4, to contend with their mother, the body of the nation, about idolatry and departure from God;''

or as spoken to the godly among the ten tribes, who were the real people of God, and sharers in his grace and mercy; the remnant he reserved for himself, who had not bowed their knees to idols; or as the command of God by the prophet, to the people of Israel, to exhort one another to contend with their mother, who were, as yet, the Lord's people, had mercy shown them, when this prophecy was delivered out; though, in case of obstinacy and impenitence, they were threatened with a "Loammi" and "Loruhamah"; so Schmidt, who thinks that "ammi" and "ruhamah" are put by way of "apposition to your brethren and sisters", in which he seems to be right. Aben Ezra thinks the words are spoken ironically, like those in Ecc 11:9, and others, but without reason. The Targum is,

"O ye prophets, say to your brethren, and my people, and I will have mercy on your congregation;''

but whether the words are spoken to the Jewish converts who first believed in Christ, were his people, received grace and mercy from him, and stood in the relation of brethren and sisters to one another, both in a natural and spiritual sense, to stir up one another to reprove their mother, the Jewish church, for rejecting Christ, saying, as follows:

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Hos 2:1

¹ tn Heb “Say to….” The imperative אִמְרוּ (’imru, Qal imperative masculine plural) functions rhetorically, as an example of erotesis of one verbal form (imperative) for another (indicative). The imperative is used as a rhetorical device to emphasize the certainty of a future action.

² sn The suffixes on the nouns אֲחֵיכֶם (’akhekhem, “your brother”) and אֲחוֹתֵיכֶם (’akhotekhem, “your sister”) are both plural forms. The brother/sister imagery is being applied to Israel and Judah collectively.

Geneva Bible: Hos 2:1

Say ye unto your ^{( a )} brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.

^{( a )} Seeing that I have promised you deliverance, it remains that you encourage one another to embrace this promise, considering that you are my people on whom I will have mercy.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Hos 2:1-23

1 The idolatry of the people.

6 God's judgments against them.

14 His promises of reconciliation with them.

MHCC: Hos 2:1-5

This chapter continues the figurative address to Israel, in reference to Hosea's wife and children. Let us own and love as brethren, all whom the Lord seems to put among his children, and encourage them in that they have received mercy. But every Christian, by his example and conduct, must protest against evil and abuses, even among those to whom he belongs and owes respect. Impenitent sinners will soon be stripped of the advantages they misuse, and which they consume upon their lusts.

Matthew Henry: Hos 2:1-5

The first words of this chapter some make the close of the foregoing chapter, and add them to the promises which we have here of the great things God would do for them. When they shall have appointed Christ their head, and centered in him, then let them say to one another, with triumph and exultation ( let the prophets say it to them, so the Chaldee - Comfort you, comfort you, my people, is now their commission), "say to them, Ammi, and Ruhamah; call them so again, for they shall no longer lie under the reproach and doom of Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah; they shall now be my people again, and shall obtain mercy. "God's spiritual Israel, made up of Jews and Gentiles without distinction, shall call one another brethren and sisters, shall own one another for the people of God and beloved of him, and, for that reason, shall embrace one another, and stir up one another both to give thanks for and to walk worthy of this common salvation which they partake of. Or rather, because the following words seem to have a coherence with these, these also are designed for conviction and humiliation. The mother (Hos 2:2) seems to be the same with the brethren and sisters (Hos 2:1), the church of the ten tribes, the body of the people, who were brethren, and in a special manner with the heads and leaders, who were as the mother by whom the rest were brought up and nursed. But who are the children that must plead with their mother thus? Either, 1. The godly that were among them, that witnessed against the iniquities of the times, let them boldly go on to bear their testimony against the idolatries and gross corruptions that prevail among them. Let those that had not bowed the knee to Baal reason the case with those that had, and endeavour to convince them with such arguments as are here put into their mouths. Note, Private persons may, and ought in their places, to appear and plead against the public profanations of God's name and worship. Children may humbly and modestly argue with their parents when they do amiss: Plead with your mother, plead, as Jonathan with Saul concerning David. Or, 2. The sufferers among them, that shared in the calamities of the times, let them not complain of God, let them not quarrel with him, nor lay the blame on him, as if he had dealt hardly with them, and not like a tender father. No; let them plead with their mother, and lay the fault on her, where it ought to be laid; compare Isa 50:1. " For her transgressions is your mother put away; she may thank herself, and you may thank her for all your miseries."Let us see now how they must plead with her.

I. They must put here in mind of the relation wherein she had stood to God, the kindness he had had for her, the many favours he had bestowed upon her, and the further favours he had designed her. Let them tell their brethren and sisters that they had been Ammi and Ruhamah, that they had been God's people and vessels of his mercy, and might have been so still if it had not been their own fault, Hos 2:1. Note, Our relation to God and dependence on him are a great aggravation of our revolts from him and rebellions against him.

II. They must, in God's name, charge her with the violation of the marriage-covenant between her and God. Let them tell her that God does not look upon her as his wife, nor upon himself as her husband any longer. Tell her (Hos 2:2) that she is not my wife, neither am I her husband, that by her spiritual whoredom she has forfeited all the honour and comfort of her relation to God, and provoked him to give her a bill of divorce. Note, No consideration can be more powerful to awaken us to repentance than the provocation we have by sin given to God to disown and cast us off. It is time to look about us, and to think what course we must take, when God threatens to reject us; for woe unto us if he be not our husband. They must charge this home upon her (Hos 2:5): Their mother has played the harlot; their congregation has run a whoring after false prophets (so the Chaldee), or, rather, after idols, wherein they were encouraged by their false prophets; she that conceived them has done shamefully, in making and worshipping idols. An idol is called a shame (Hos 9:10) and idolatry is a shameful thing. It is not only an affront to God, but a reproach to men, to fall down to the stock of a tree, as the prophet speaks. Or it denotes that the sinner was shameless, impudent in sin, and could not blush; Jer 6:15. Or, She has made ashamed, has made all that see her ashamed of her; her own children are ashamed of their relation to her.

III. They must upbraid her with her horrid ingratitude to God her benefactor, in ascribing to her idols the glory of the gifts he had given her, and then giving that for a reason why she paid them the homage due to him only, Hos 2:5. In this she did shamefully indeed, that she said, I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water. Observe here, 1. Her wicked resolution to persist in idolatry, notwithstanding all that God said, both by his prophets and by his providences, to draw her from it. She said, Whatever is offered to the contrary, I will go after my lovers, or those that cause me to love them, whom I cannot but be in love with. The Chaldee understands it of the nations whose alliance Israel courted and depended upon, who supplied them with what they needed. But it is rather to be understood of the idols they worshipped, to justify their love of which they called them their lovers. See who do shamefully; those that are wilful and resolute in sin, and those that openly profess and own their resolution to go on in it. See the folly of idolaters, to call those their lovers that had not so much as life; yet let us learn to call our God our lover; let us keep up good thoughts of him, and put a high value upon our interest in him and in his love. 2. The gross mistake upon which this resolution was grounded: "I will go after my lovers, because they give me my bread and my water, which are necessary to sustain the body, my wool and my flax, which are necessary to clothe the body, and pleasant things, my oil, and my drink, my liquors"(so the word is), "wine and strong drink."Note, (1.) The things of sense are the best things with carnal hearts, and the most powerful attractives, in pursuit of which they care not what they follow after. The God of Israel set before them his statutes and judgments (Deu 4:8), more to be desired than gold, and sweeter than honey (Psa 119:10), promised them his favour, which would put gladness in their hearts more than corn, wine, and oil (Psa 4:7); but they had no relish at all for these things. Whence they thought their oil and their drink came, thither they would return their best affections. O curvae in terram animae et coelestium inanes! - O degenerate minds, bending towards the earth, and devoid of every thing heavenly! (2.) It is a great abuse and injury to God, in pursuance of the pleasures and delights of sense to forsake him, who not only gives us better things, but gives us even those things too. The idolaters made Ceres the goddess of their corn, Bacchus the god of their wine, etc., and then foolishly fancied they had their corn and wine from these, forgetting the Lord their God, who both gave them that good land and gave them power to get wealth out of it. (3.) Many are hardened in sin by their worldly prosperity. They had an abundance of those things when they served their idols, and then imagined them to be given them by their idols, which kept them to their service; thus they argued (Jer 44:17, Jer 44:18), While we burnt incense to the queen of heaven we had plenty of victuals.

IV. They must persuade her to repent and reform. God will disown her if she persist in her whoredoms; let her therefore put away her whoredoms, Hos 2:2. Let her be convinced that it is possible for her to reform; the idols, dear as they are, may yet be parted with; and it will certainly be well with her if she do reform. Note, Our pleading with sinners must be to drive them to repentance, not to drive them to despair. Let her put away her whoredoms and her adulteries; the doubling of words to the same purport, and both plural, denotes the abundance of idolatries they were guilty of, all which must be abandoned ere God would be reconciled to them. Let her put them out of her sight, as detestable things which she cannot endure to look upon; let her say unto them, Get you hence, Isa 30:22. Let her put them from her face and from between her breasts, that is, let her not do as harlots use to do, that both discover their own wicked disposition, and allure others to wickedness, by painting their faces, and exposing their naked breasts, and adorning them; let her not thus, by annexing all possible gaieties and pleasures to the worship of idols, engage herself and allure others to it. let her put away all these. Every sinful course, persisted in, is an adulterous departure from God. And here we may see what it is truly to repent of it and turn from it. 1. True penitents will forsake both open sins, will put away not only the whoredoms that lie in sight, but those that lie in secret between their breasts, the sin that is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel. 2. They will both avoid the outward occasions of sin and mortify the inward disposition to it. Idolaters walked after their own eyes, which went a whoring after their idols (Eze 6:9, Deu 4:19), and therefore they must put them away out of their sight, lest they should be tempted to worship them. Look not upon the wine when it is red. But that is not enough: the axe must be laid to the root; the corrupt bent and inclination of the heart must be changed, and it must be put away from between the breasts, that Christ alone may have the innermost and uppermost place there. Son 1:13.

V. They must show her the utter ruin that will certainly be the fatal consequence of her sin if she do not repent and reform (Hos 2:3): Lest I strip her naked. This comes in here not by way of sentence passed upon her, but by way of warning given to her, that she may prevent it: Let her put away her whoredoms, that I may not strip her naked (so it may be read), intimating that God waits to show mercy to sinners, if they would but qualify themselves for that mercy. It is here threatened that God will deal with her as the just and jealous husband at length does with an adulterous wife, that has filled his house with a spurious brood, and will not be reclaimed; he turns her and her children out of doors and sends them a begging; I will not have mercy upon her children (Hos 2:4); the particular persons that share in the calamity of the nation, and the rising generation, shall be ruined by it, for they are children of whoredoms, and keep up the vain conversation received by tradition from their fathers. Now it is here threatened that they shall be both stripped and starved. They thought their idols gave them their bread and their water, their wool and their flax; but God, by taking them away, will let them know that it was he that gave them. 1. She shall be stripped: Lest I strip her of all her ornaments which she is proud of, and with which she courts her lovers, strip her and set her as in the day that she was born, send her as naked out of the world as she came into it; this death does, Job 1:21. I will strip her, and so expose her to cold, and expose her to shame; and justly is she exposed to shame that did shamefully, Hos 2:5. The day when God brought them out of Egypt, where they were no better than slaves and beggars, was the day in which they were born; and God threatens to bring them back to as low and miserable a condition as he then found them in. Whatever they had that either gained them respect or screened them from contempt, among their neighbours, should be taken from them. See Eze 16:4, Eze 16:39. 2. She shall be starved, shall be deprived not only of her honours, but of her comforts and necessary supports. She shall be famished, shall be made as a wilderness and a dry land, and slain with thirst. She that boasted so much of her bread and water, her oil and her drinks, which her lovers had given her, shall not have so much as necessary food. The land shall not afford subsistence for the inhabitants, for want of the rain of heaven; or, if it do, it shall be taken from them by the enemy, so that the rightful owners shall perish for want of it. Some understand it thus: I will make her as she was in the wilderness, and set her as she was in the desert land, where she was sometimes ready to perish for thirst. So it explains the former part of the verse: I will set her as in the day that she was born; for it was in the vast howling wilderness that Israel was first formed into a people. They shall be in as deplorable a condition as their fathers were, whose carcases fell in the wilderness, and in this respect, worse, that then the children were reserved to be heirs of the land of promise, but now I will not have mercy upon her children, for their mother has played the harlot.

Keil-Delitzsch: Hos 2:1

To confirm the certainty of this most joyful turn of events, the promise closes with the summons in Hosea 2;Hos 1:1-11 : " Say ye to your brethren: My people; and to your sisters, Favoured." The prophet "sees the favoured nation of the Lord (in spirit) before him, and calls upon its members to accost one another joyfully with the new name which had been given to them by God"(Hengstenberg). The promise attaches itself in form to the names of the children of the prophet. As their names of ill omen proclaimed the judgment of rejection, so is the salvation which awaits the nation in the future announced to it here by a simple alteration of the names into their opposite through the omission of the לא .

So far as the fulfilment of this prophecy is concerned, the fact that the patriarchal promise of the innumerable multiplication of Israel is to be realized through the pardon and restoration of Israel, as the nation of the living God, shows clearly enough that we are not to look for this in the return of the ten tribes from captivity to Palestine, their native land. Even apart from the fact, that the historical books of the Bible (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) simply mention the return of a portion of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites, under Zerubbabel and Ezra, and that the numbers of the ten tribes, who may have attached themselves to the Judaeans on their return, or who returned to Galilee afterwards as years rolled by, formed but a very small fraction of the number that had been carried away (compare the remarks on 2Ki 17:24); the attachment of these few to Judah could not properly be called a union of the sons of Israel and of the sons of Judah, and still less was it a fulfilment of the word, "They appoint themselves one head."As the union of Israel with Judah is to be effected through their gathering together under one head, under Jehovah their God and under David their king, this fulfilment falls within the Messianic times, and hitherto has only been realized in very small beginnings, which furnish a pledge of their complete fulfilment in the last times, when the hardening of Israel will cease, and all Israel be converted to Christ (Rom 11:25-26). It is by no means difficult to bring the application, which is made of our prophecy in 1Pe 2:10 and Rom 9:25-26, into harmony with this. When Peter quotes the words of this prophecy in his first epistle, which nearly all modern commentators justly suppose to have been written to Gentile Christians, and when Paul quotes the very same words (Hos 2:1, with Hos 1:10) as proofs of the calling of the Gentiles to be the children of God in Christ; this is not merely an application to the Gentiles of what is affirmed of Israel, or simply the clothing of their thoughts in Old Testament words, as Huther and Wiesinger suppose, but an argument based upon the fundamental thought of this prophecy. Through its apostasy from God, Israel had become like the Gentiles, and had fallen from the covenant of grace with the Lord. Consequently, the re-adoption of the Israelites as children of God was a practical proof that God had also adopted the Gentile world as His children. "Because God had promised to adopt the children of Israel again, He must adopt the Gentiles also. Otherwise this resolution would rest upon mere caprice, which cannot be thought of in God"(Hengstenberg). Moreover, although membership in the nation of the Old Testament covenant rested primarily upon lineal descent, it was by no means exclusively confined to this; but, from the very first, Gentiles also were received into the citizenship of Israel and the congregation of Jehovah through the rite of circumcision, and could even participate in the covenant mercies, namely, in the passover as a covenant meal (Exo 12:14). There was in this an indirect practical prophecy of the eventual reception of the whole of the Gentile world into the kingdom of God, when it should attain through Christ to faith in the living God. Even through their adoption into the congregation of Jehovah by means of circumcision, believing Gentiles were exalted into children of Abraham, and received a share in the promises made to the fathers. And accordingly the innumerable multiplication of the children of Israel, predicted in Rom 9:10, is not to be restricted to the actual multiplication of the descendants of the Israelites now banished into exile; but the fulfilment of the promise must also include the incorporation of believing Gentiles into the congregation of the Lord (Isa 44:5). This incorporation commenced with the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles by the apostles; it has continued through all the centuries in which the church has been spreading in the world; and it will receive its final accomplishment when the fulness of the Gentiles shall enter into the kingdom of God. And as the number of the children of Israel is thus continually increased, this multiplication will be complete when the descendants of the children of Israel, who are still hardened in their hearts, shall turn to Jesus Christ as their Messiah and Redeemer (Rom 11:25-26).

Constable: Hos 1:2--2:2

II. The first series of messages of judgment and restoration: Hosea's family 1:2--2:1

Though we know nothing of Hosea's personal life before he began prophesying, we do know about a crisis that arose in his family while he ministered. This personal tragedy and its happy ending proved to be a lesson to the people of Israel. This lesson corresponds to and illustrated the other messages of judgment and restoration that follow. Other prophets also experienced personal problems that the Lord used to teach His people (e.g., Isa. 20:1-4; Ezek. 4:1-5:4).

The major themes of the book come into view in this opening section: Israel's unfaithfulness to Yahweh, His judgment of her, and His later restoration of her.

Constable: Hos 1:10--2:2

B. A promise of restoration 1:10-2:1

A promise of future restoration immediately follows this gloomy revelation of judgment. It provided encouragement to Hosea's audience by assuring a glorious and secure future for Israel.

1:10 Despite the judgment promised, Yahweh revealed that the number of the Israelites would be as the sand of the sea (i.e., innumerable, cf. Gen. 22:17; 32:12). He also said that in the same place where they heard His word of rejection (v. 9) they would hear His word of acceptance, namely, in the land of Israel. They would again be sons of the living God. This family terminology points to the restoration of intimate covenant relationship and privilege. The "living God" title recalls Joshua 3:10, where Joshua told the Israelites that they would know that the living God was among them when they saw Him defeat their enemies in the Promised Land. In this future day the Israelites would again see that Yahweh was the only living God (true God) when He defeated their enemies and led them in victory.²⁴

1:11 The Northern and Southern Kingdoms would reunite, and they would have only one king instead of two (cf. 3:5; 2 Sam. 7:11-16; Isa. 9:6-7; Ezek. 37:22; Amos 9:11; Mic. 5:2). They would also go up from the land probably in the sense of growing strong in the land, as a plant.²⁵ When this happens it will be a great day of Jezreel (lit. God sows). As Jezreel was a place of former victory for Israel (Judg. 7), so it will be again in the future (cf. Isa. 9:4-7; 41:8-16; Joel 3:9-17; Amos 9:11-12; Rev. 19:11-21).

2:1 The Lord instructed representatives of the restored nation to announce to their fellow Israelites then that they were again "my [God's] people" and that they were again Yahweh's "loved one" (cf. Deut. 30:1-9; Rom. 11:25-32).

The fulfillment of this prophecy has not come yet, so we look forward to the regathering of Israel, rule by David's descendant, and Israel's flourishing in her land in the future. Amillennial interpreters believe the church replaces Israel in the promises of God and that Jesus began the day of Jezreel.²⁶

Guzik: Hos 2:1-23

Hosea 2 - Sin, Judgment, and Restoration

A. Israel's sin.

1. (2-3) Charges against Israel.

"Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; for she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and expose her, as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst."

a. For she is not My wife: God paints Israel as an adulterous wife, who is no longer worthy to be compared to a wife. This shows that relationship is broken.

i. Israel lewdly offered herself to other gods, in the way that a woman lewdly offers herself to lovers. This is communicated by the phrase her adulteries from between her breasts. "The reference to her 'breasts' may imply that she had laid bare her bosom to entice her lovers . . . If she did not change, she would be stripped naked." (Hubbard)

b. Lest I strip her naked and expose her . . . and make her like a wilderness: God warns Israel that if she will not put away her harlot-like ways, she will be judged. Though relationship is broken, blessing continues - but will be taken away if Israel does not turn.

2. (4-5) Israel tries to justify her harlotry.

"I will not have mercy on her children, for they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'"

a. I will not have mercy on her children: If Israel as a whole is represented as an unfaithful wife, then her children represent the individual people of Israel. If they do not turn back to the LORD, they will personally experience His judgment.

b. I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen: Israel justified her harlotry because she received things from her "lovers." She looked at all the good she seemed to get from her sin, and it seemed like a good deal. Israel didn't understand the passing pleasures of sin (Hebrews 11:25).

B. God's judgment.

1. (6-8) How God will draw Israel back.

"Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and wall her in, so that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, but not overtake them; yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now.' For she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold; which they prepared for Baal."

a. I will hedge up your way with thorns: To bring Israel to repentance, God promised to set a hedge of thorns on the sides of her path, so that it would hurt whenever Israel went off the correct path, and so the wrong paths would be hard to find.

i. When God hedges our way with thorns, we usually don't like it. We sometimes think God is against us when the thorns hurt and we can't find the wrong paths. But it is really one of the sweetest expressions of God's love to hedge yp your way with thorns and to wall us in.

b. I will go and return to my first husband: When God allows the passing pleasures of sin to pass, we often then see how good it was to follow the LORD. In a marriage sometimes the grass can seem greener even with the best spouse; in our walk with the LORD our idols seem attractive until God exposes them. Then we are ready to return to our first husband, the LORD.

c. For she did not know that I gave her grain: Even when Israel went after other gods, the Lord still provided for her. This showed His great, unselfish love to Israel. Even though Israel took what God provided and prepared it for Baal, He still loved them.

i. When Hosea provided for Gomer, she spent it on her adulterous lovers. It's as if Hosea went to the house of Gomer's lover, where she lived apart from her husband and in adultery. He knew that this scoundrel of a man couldn't provide for Gomer, and that she lived in poverty and rags. Hosea knocked at the door. He spoke to the man who answered, "Are you the man living with Gomer?" The man wondered what business it was of Hosea's; then he revealed: "I'm Hosea, her husband. I've brought these groceries and money so she can be provided for." When Hosea left, Gomer and her lover must have thought he was a fool. What a great dinner they had together with the food Hosea brought! But this is how the Lord loves us, lavishing blessing on us even when we are worshipping idols, providing us with blessings we waste on other gods.

c. Which they prepared for Baal: This principle shows how offensive idolatry really is to God. Whatever we give to an idol, we have received from God.

i. God gives to man the trees of the forest and the iron in the ground. He gives man the brains to make an axe and nails from the iron, and the energy to cut down the tree, the skill to fashion the wood into beams. God gives man the cleverness to make a handle from the wood, and head from the iron, and combine it into an effective hammer. Then man takes the beams, the nails, and the hammer and he nails God to the cross - where God willingly stretched out His arms, dying on the cross to take the guilt and penalty man's sin deserved - and to make an new, restored relationship between God and man possible.

2. (9-13) How God will punish Israel.

"Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time and My new wine in its season, and will take back My wool and My linen, given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall deliver her from My hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her New Moons, her Sabbaths; all her appointed feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, 'These are my wages that my lovers have given me.' So I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. I will punish her for the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers; but Me she forgot," says the LORD.

a. I will return and take away My grain: God gave grain to Israel, and she gave what He provided in sacrifice to Baal. So God will take away this provision, and as Israel feels her need and deprivation - perhaps she will turn back to the LORD.

b. But Me she forgot: During the time of Jeroboam II, Israel enjoyed great prosperity. But she used her prosperity for idolatry and the pursuit of ungodly pleasures, so God will take away her prosperity.

C. The restoration of Israel.

1. (14-15) Abundance and joy restored.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt."

a. I will allure her . . . speak comfort to her: Once Israel has felt the discomfort of her deprivation, then she will listen to the voice of God once again, and He will allure her back to Himself.

i. Spurgeon on I will allure her: "This is a singular kind of power: 'I will allure her;' not, 'I will drive her' not even, 'I will draw her,' or, 'I will drag her;' or, 'I will force her.' No, 'I will allure her.' It is a very remarkable word, and it teaches us that the allurement of love surpasses in power all other forces. That is how the devil ruins us; he tempts us with honeyed words, sweet utterances, with the baits of pleasure and the like; and the Lord in mercy determines that, in all truthfulness, he will outbid the devil, and he will win us to himself by fascinations, enticements, and allurements which shall be stronger than any force of resistance we may offer. This is a wonderfully precious word: 'I will allure her.'"

b. The Valley of Achor as a door of hope: Achor means "trouble," so the Valley of Achor is the "Valley of Trouble." It was a place of trouble, where Achan's sin was discovered and judged (Joshua 7:26). God's restoration is so great that He will transform the "Valley of Trouble" into a door of hope.

c. She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth: When Israel is restored, she will be restored to joy. The passing pleasures of sin are forgotten and the true pleasures of God are restored.

2. (16-20) Relationship restored.

"And it shall be, in that day," says the LORD, "That you will call Me 'My Husband,' and no longer call Me 'My Master,' For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their name no more. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, to make them lie down safely. I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the LORD.

a. You will call Me "My Husband": With great anticipation, God looks forward to the day when relationship is genuinely restored with His people. He wants an intimate love-relationship with His people, and longs for the day when His people will have a marriage-like love and commitment to their God.

b. And not longer call Me "My Master": God was not satisfied with a fear-based, obedience-focused relationship with His people where they thought of Him primarily as Master. He wanted a relationship where they thought of Him primarily as Husband.

c. I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals: In Hebrew, the name "Baal" comes from the word "Master" and the two words sound alike. It was the Baals, the idols of the nations, that wanted this "master-slave" relationship with man. But not the LORD God; He wants a love-based, commitment-based relationship with His people.

d. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth: Ultimately, this blessing of restored relationship will result in a transformed earth, changed both ecologically (beasts of the field . . . birds of the air) and politically. This blessing will be fulfilled in the millennial earth, but we can come to know the transforming power of restored relationship right now.

e. I will betroth you to Me forever: When relationship with the LORD is ultimately restored, it will never be broken again. Relationship will be restored on a solid foundation (In righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy), and will result in deeper and deeper relationship (you shall know the LORD).

3. (21-23) Blessing restored.

"It shall come to pass in that day that I will answer," says the LORD; "I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. The earth shall answer with grain, with new wine, and with oil; they shall answer Jezreel. Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' and they shall say, 'You are my God!'"

a. I will answer: This is great blessing of real, vibrant relationship with God. Our hearts beat in rhythm to His, and so we want what He wants. So when we ask God to do things, we already ask what He wants to do - so He will answer.

i. This is the same principle Jesus taught: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. (John 15:7)

b. The earth shall answer with grain, with new wine, and with oil: When relationship is where it is supposed to be, God abundantly provides. This is the same principle Jesus taught in Matthew 6:33: But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

c. They shall answer Jezreel: The name "Jezreel" means "Scattered," and could be used in a negative sense (as in Hosea 1:4-5). But it was also the word used to describe the good scattering of seed, "Sowing." Here, the LORD promises glorious redemption of the name Jezreel, which was first given as a sober reminder of scattering in judgment. Now it becomes a prophecy of the promise, "I will sow her for Myself in the earth." God will restore His people to abundance and blessing. Scattering will be transformed into sowing.

d. And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy: Hosea's second child, a daughter, was named Lo-Ruhamah, meaning "No Mercy" (Hosea 1:6). That name, originally given as a marker of judgment is now transformed into a mark of restoration.

e. Then I will say to those who were not My people, "You are My people!" Hosea's third child, a son, was named Lo-Ammi, meaning "Not My People" (Hosea 1:9). That name, originally given as a marker of judgment, is now transformed into a mark of restoration.

f. And they shall say, "You are my God!" With this, the restoration is complete. The LORD relates to His people as their God, and His people relate to Him as His people. This is relationship, full of warmth and love, and what God longs for.

i. Think about it: Which one of the pagan gods of the nations ever wanted the love of their followers? Which of them ever asked, "Do you love me?" False gods don't want our love, they want our fear, our obedience, our slave-like sacrifice and devotion. But the true God, the living God, isn't satisfied with just our fear, our obedience, or even with our slave-like sacrifice and devotion. He wants our love, freely given and enjoyed in relationship with Him. If we miss this, we miss the heart of God's work in us and for us.

ii. We see complete restoration. All three of Hosea's children, named as marks of judgment, now have their names restored and made into marks of mercy, grace, and restoration. God is that good!

© 2001 David Guzik - No distribution beyond personal use without permission

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE first of the twelve minor prophets in the order of the canon (called "minor," not as less in point of inspired authority, but simply in point of size). The twelve are first mentioned by Jesus, the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus 49:10). St. Stephen, in Act 7:42 (in referring to Amo 5:27), quotes them as forming one collective body of writings, "the book of the prophets." So JEROME and MELITO, the first Greek father who has left us a catalogue of these books. The collection of the sacred books is by Jewish tradition attributed to the great synagogue of learned scribes formed by Ezra. Many think Nehemiah completed this collection by adding to the books already in the canon those of his own times. Malachi, the last in the series, probably aided him in determining with infallible authority what books were entitled to be ranked in the inspired canon. The chronological order differs from the canonical. Joel, about 810 B.C.; Jonah, about 810 B.C., or, as others, first, 862 B.C.; Amos, about 790 B.C.; Hosea, about 784 B.C. Hosea, the contemporary of Isaiah, Micah, and Amos, seems to have entered on his prophetical office in the last years of Jeroboam (contemporary in part with Uzziah), and to have ended it in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, 722 B.C., that is, about sixty years in all, from 784 B.C. to 722 B.C. The prophets, however, were not uninterruptedly engaged in prophesying. Considerable intervals elapsed, though their office as divinely commissioned public teachers was never wholly laid aside. The Book of Hosea which we have constitutes only that portion of his public teachings which the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve for the benefit of the Church. The cause of his being placed first of the twelve was, probably, the length, the vivid earnestness, and patriotism of his prophecies, as well as their closer resemblance to those of the greater prophets. His style is abrupt, sententious, and unrounded; the connecting particles are few; there are changes of person, and anomalies of gender, number, and construction. His name means Salvation. He was son of Beeri, of the tribe of Issachar, born in Beth-shemesh [JEROME]. His mention, in the inscription, of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is no proof that he belonged to Judah: for the prophets in Israel regarded its separation from Judah, civil as well as religious, as an apostasy from God, who promised the dominion of the theocracy to the line of David. Hence Elijah in Israel took twelve stones to represent Judah, as well as Israel (1Ki 18:31). Hence Hosea dates from Judah's kings, as well as from Jeroboam of Israel, though he belonged to Israel, with whose sins and fate his book is chiefly occupied. He, however, makes incidental references to Judah. His first prophecy foretells the overthrow of Jehu's house, fulfilled on the death of Jeroboam, Jehu's great-grandson (2Ki 15:12), in Zachariah, Jeroboam's son, the fourth and last from Jehu, conspired against by Shallum. This first prediction was doubtless in Jeroboam's life, as Zachariah, his son, was only suffered to reign six months; thus the inscription is verified that "the word of the Lord came unto him in the days of Jeroboam" (Hos 1:1). Again, in Hos 10:14, Shalmaneser's expedition against Israel is alluded to as past, that is, the first inroad against King Hoshea, who began to reign in the twelfth year of Ahaz; so that as Ahaz' whole reign was sixteen years, the prophecy seems to have been given about the beginning of Hezekiah's reign. Thus the inscription is confirmed that the exercise of his prophetical functions was of such a protracted duration.

Hosea (Hos 11:1) is quoted in Mat 2:15; also Hos 6:6 in Mat 9:13; Mat 12:7; compare Rom 9:25-26, quoting Hos 1:10; Hos 2:1, Hos 2:23; 1Co 15:55, quoting Hos 13:14; 1Pe 2:10, quoting Hos 1:9-10; Hos 2:23. Messianic references are not frequent; but the predictions of the future conversion of Israel to the Lord their God, and David their king, and of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that his spiritual seed should be as the sand of the sea (Hos 1:10; Hos 3:5), clearly refer to the New Testament dispensation.

The first and third chapters are in prose, the rest of the book is rhythmical.

JFB: Hosea (Outline)

• INSCRIPTION. (Hos 1:1-11) Spiritual whoredom of Israel set forth by symbolical acts; Gomer taken to wife at God's command: Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-Ammi, the children. Yet a promise of Judah and Israel's restoration.
• APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. (Hos. 2:1-23) Israel's spiritual fornication, and her threatened punishment: yet a promise of God's restored favor, when chastisements have produced their designed effect.
• ISRAEL'S CONDITION IN THEIR PRESENT DISPERSION, SUBSEQUENT TO THEIR RETURN FROM BABYLON, SYMBOLIZED. (Hos 3:1-5) The prophet is to take back his wife, though unfaithful, as foretold in Hos 1:2. He purchases her from her paramour, stipulating she should wait for a long period before she should be restored to her conjugal rights. So Israel is to live for a long period without her ancient rites of religion, and yet be free from idolatry; then at last she shall acknowledge Messiah, and know Jehovah's goodness restored to her.
• HENCEFORTH THE PROPHET SPEAKS PLAINLY AND WITHOUT SYMBOL, IN TERSE, SENTENTIOUS PROPOSITIONS. (Hos. 4:1-19) In this chapter he reproves the people and priests for their sins in the interregnum which followed Jeroboam's death; hence there is no mention of the king or his family; and in Hos 4:2 bloodshed and other evils usual in a civil war are specified.
• GOD'S JUDGMENTS ON THE PRIESTS, PEOPLE, AND PRINCES OF ISRAEL FOR THEIR SINS. (Hos 5:1-5) Judah, too, being guilty shall be punished; nor shall Assyria, whose aid they both sought, save them; judgments shall at last lead them to repentance.
• THE ISRAELITES' EXHORTATION TO ONE ANOTHER TO SEEK THE LORD. (Hos 6:1-11) At Hos 6:4 a new discourse, complaining of them, begins; for Hos 6:1-3 evidently belong to Hos 5:15, and form the happy termination of Israel's punishment: primarily, the return from Babylon; ultimately, the return from their present long dispersion. Hos 6:8 perhaps refers to the murder of Pekahiah; the discourse cannot be later than Pekah's reign, for it was under it that Gilead was carried into captivity (2Ki 15:29).
• REPROOF OF ISRAEL. (Hos. 7:1-16) Probably delivered in the interreign and civil war at Pekah's death; for Hos 7:7, "all their kings . . . fallen," refers to the murder of Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah. In Hos 7:8 the reference seems to be to Menahem's payment of tribute to Pul, in order to secure himself in the usurped throne, also to Pekah's league with Rezin of Syria, and to Hoshea's connection with Assyria during the interregnum at Pekah's death [MAURER].
• PROPHECY OF THE IRRUPTION OF THE ASSYRIANS, IN PUNISHMENT FOR ISRAEL'S APOSTASY, IDOLATRY, AND SETTING UP OF KINGS WITHOUT GOD'S SANCTION. (Hos 8:1-14) In Hos 8:14, Judah is said to multiply fenced cities; and in Hos 8:7-9, Israel, to its great hurt, is said to have gone up to Assyria for help. This answers best to the reign of Menahem. For it was then that Uzziah of Judah, his contemporary, built fenced cities (2Ch 26:6, 2Ch 26:9-10). Then also Israel turned to Assyria and had to pay for their sinful folly a thousand talents of silver (2Ki 15:19) [MAURER].
• WARNING AGAINST ISRAEL'S JOY AT PARTIAL RELIEF FROM THEIR TROUBLES: THEIR CROPS SHALL FAIL, AND THE PEOPLE LEAVE THE LORD'S LAND FOR EGYPT AND ASSYRIA, WHERE THEY CANNOT, IF SO INCLINED, SERVE GOD ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENT RITUAL: FOLLY OF THEIR FALSE PROPHETS. (Hos. 9:1-17)
• ISRAEL'S IDOLATRY, THE SOURCE OF PERJURIES AND UNLAWFUL LEAGUES, SOON DESTINED TO BE THE RUIN OF THE STATE, THEIR KING AND THEIR IMAGES BEING ABOUT TO BE CARRIED OFF; A JUST CHASTISEMENT, THE REAPING CORRESPONDING TO THE SOWING. (Hos 10:1-15) The prophecy was uttered between Shalmaneser's first and second invasions of Israel. Compare Hos 10:14; also Hos 10:6, referring to Hoshea's calling So of Egypt to his aid; also Hos 10:4, Hos 10:13.
• REPROOF OF EPHRAIM AND JUDAH: THEIR FATHER JACOB OUGHT TO BE A PATTERN TO THEM. (Hos 12:1-14) This prophecy was delivered about the time of Israel's seeking the aid of the Egyptian king So, in violation of their covenant with Assyria (see Hos 12:1). He exhorts them to follow their father Jacob's persevering prayerfulness, which brought God's favor upon him. As God is unchangeable, He will show the same favor to Jacob's posterity as He did to Jacob, if, like him, they seek God.
• EPHRAIM'S SINFUL INGRATITUDE TO GOD, AND ITS FATAL CONSEQUENCE; GOD'S PROMISE AT LAST. (Hos. 13:1-16) This chapter and the fourteenth chapter probably belong to the troubled times that followed Pekah's murder by Hoshea (compare Hos 13:11; 2Ki 15:30). The subject is the idolatry of Ephraim, notwithstanding God's past benefits, destined to be his ruin.
• GOD'S PROMISE OF BLESSING, ON THEIR REPENTANCE: THEIR ABANDONMENT OF IDOLATRY FORETOLD: THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE, THE JUST SHALL WALK IN GOD'S WAYS, BUT THE TRANSGRESSOR SHALL FALL THEREIN. (Hos 14:1-9)

TSK: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Hos 2:1, The idolatry of the people; Hos 2:6, God’s judgments against them; Hos 2:14, His promises of reconciliation with them.

Poole: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE ARGUMENT

Without dispute our prophet is one of the obscurest and most difficult to unfold clearly and fully. Though he come not, as Isaiah and Amos do sometimes, nor as Ezekiel and Zechariah do frequently, with visions; yet his sententious and concise style, peculiar to himself, renders it many times difficult to find out first, and to declare next the genuine and undoubted sense of his words. In expounding this prophet, the expositor needs the candour of his reader, and the reader owes his expositor thanks if he make some darker passages fairly intelligible, though he do not demonstrate his exposition to be the only sense of the place. This latter is not pretended to; the former it is hoped the reader will find in the most, if not in every obscure passage. It was a very debauched age our prophet did live in, and you will find him very sharp against the vices of the ten tribes, and very plain and open in his threats for their sins, which he saw punished; for he lived to see Samaria taken, and Hoshea made a prisoner, and the people carried captives. As it is not agreed when he began, so nor is it agreed how long he continued to prophesy.

The kings of Judah and of Israel, in whose time he first appeared a prophet, were of long reigns; the one forty-one, the other fifty-two; in which long space of time very different beginnings may be conjectured. All agree that he continued a prophet very long, seventy years at least, and some add more years, and make them up ninety. The sum of what he prophesied is here given us in short heads, rather than in a continued discourse. And as it was preached in Israel. (though we read not of the places where Hosea either lived, or died, or did preach, it is most likely within the hearing of the court,) so it doth more particularly refer to Israel or the ten tribes: declaring to them what were their sins; advising them to repent; promising them mercy upon sincere repentance; threatening grievous judgments on their impenitence; foretelling their rejection if they did not amend; and, for the comfort of the godly, predicting mercy to them; intermixing many promises of the future kingdom and coming of the Messiah, to whom many should be converted, and by him be saved, and especially many of the two tribes, who hear from our prophet a more comfortable message (viz. of returning to their own land) than Israel, which must not expect any such return, i.e. for the whole body of the people. And he closeth his whole prophecy either with a form of confession and supplication for the remnant returned, or a prediction in what manner they would return, confess, supplicate, and rely upon God alone; to which duty performed, he adjoineth sweet and excellent promises, containing both temporal and spiritual blessings, Ho 14 .

Poole: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 2

The people are exhorted to forsake idolatry, which is threatened with severe judgments, Hos 2:1-13 . God allureth them with promises of reconciliation, Hos 2:14-23 .

In the two last verses of the former chapter, the prophet did from God promise marvellous mercy to Judah and Israel, to that remnant of the seed of Abraham who returned out of captivity, and to the converted Gentiles; now in this verse he calls upon them to acknowledge the mercy, and to excite one another to mutual love and esteem.

MHCC: Hosea (Book Introduction)

Hosea is supposed to have been of the kingdom of Israel. He lived and prophesied during a long period. The scope of his predictions appears to be, to detect, reprove, and convince the Jewish nation in general, and the Israelites in particular, of their many sins, particularly their idolatry: the corrupt state of the kingdom is also noticed. But he invites them to repentance, with promises of mercy, and gospel predictions of the future restoration of the Israelites and of the Jews, and their final conversion to Christianity.

MHCC: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

(Hos 2:1-5) The idolatry of the people.

(Hos 2:6-13) God's judgments against them.

(Hos 2:14-23) His promises of reconciliation.

Matthew Henry: Hosea (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Book of the Prophet Hosea

I. We have now before us the twelve minor prophets, which some of the ancients, in reckoning up the books of the Old Testament, put all together, and reckon but as one book. They are called the minor prophets, not because their writings are of any less authority or usefulness than those of the greater prophets, or as if these prophets were less in God's account or might be so in ours than the other, but only because they are shorter, and less in bulk, than the other. We have reason to think that these prophets preached as much as the others, but that they did not write so much, nor is so much of their preaching kept upon record. Many excellent prophets wrote nothing, and others but little, who yet were very useful in their day. And so in the Christian church there have been many burning and shining lights, who are not known to posterity by their writings, and yet were no way inferior in gifts, and graces, and serviceableness to their own generation, than those who are; and some who have left but little behind them, and make no great figure among authors, were yet as valuable men as the more voluminous writers. These twelve small prophets, Josephus says, were put into one volume by the men of the great synagogue in Ezra's time, of which learned and pious body of men the last three of these twelve prophets are supposed to have been themselves members. These are what remained of the scattered pieces of inspired writing. Antiquaries value the fragmenta veterum - the fragments of antiquity; these are the fragments of prophecy, which are carefully gathered up by the divine Providence and the care of the church, that nothing might be lost, as St. Paul's short epistles after his long ones. The son of Sirach speaks of these twelve prophets with honour, as men that strengthened Jacob, Ecclus. 49:10. Nine of these prophets prophesied before the captivity, and the last three after the return of the Jews to their own land. Some difference there is in the order of these books. We place them as the ancient Hebrew did; and all agree to put Hosea first; but the ancient thing is not material. And, if we covet to place them according to their seniority, as to some of them we shall find no certainty.

II. We have before us the prophecy of Hosea, who was the first of all the writing prophets, being raised up somewhat before the time of Isaiah. The ancients say, He was of Bethshemesh, and of the tribe of Issachar. He continued very long a prophet; the Jews reckoned that he prophesied nearly fourscore and ten years; so that, as Jerome observes, he prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes when it was at a great distance, and lived himself to see and lament it, and to improve it when it was over, for warning to its sister kingdom. The scope of his prophecy is to discover sin, and to denounce the judgments of God against a people that would not be reformed. The style is very concise and sententious, above any of the prophets; and in some places it seems to be like the book of Proverbs, without connexion, and rather to be called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons. And a weighty adage may sometimes do more service than a laboured discourse. Huetius observes that many passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel seem to refer to, and to be borrowed from, the prophet Hosea, who wrote a good while before them. As Jer 7:34; Jer 16:9; Jer 25:10; and Eze 26:13, speak the same with Hos 2:11; so Eze 16:16, etc., is taken from Hos 2:8. And that promise of serving the Lord their God, and David their king, Jer 30:8, Jer 30:9. Eze 34:23, Hosea had before, Hos 3:5. And Eze 19:12 is taken from Hos 13:15. Thus one prophet confirms and corroborates another; and all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.

Matthew Henry: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

The scope of this chapter seems to be much the same with that of the foregoing chapter, and to point at the same events, and the causes of them. As there, so here, I. God, by the prophet, discovers sin to them, and charges it home upon them, the sin of their idolatry, their spiritual whoredom, their serving idols and forgetting God and their obligations to him (Hos 2:1, Hos 2:2, Hos 2:5, Hos 2:8). II. He threatens to take away from them that plenty of all good things with which they had served their idols, and to abandon them to ruin without remedy (Hos 2:3, Hos 2:4, Hos 2:6, Hos 2:7, Hos 2:9-13). III. Yet he promises at last to return in ways of mercy to them for his own sake (Hos 2:14), to restore them to their former plenty (Hos 2:15), to cure them of their inclination to idolatry (Hos 2:16, Hos 2:17), to renew his covenant with them (Hos 2:18-20), and to bless them with all good things (Hos 2:21-23).

Constable: Hosea (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title and Writer

The prophet's name is the title of the book. The book claims to be the word of the Lord that Hosea received (1:1). Thus he appears to have been the writer.

Unity

Historically almost all Jewish and Christian scholars have regarded the whole book as the product of Hosea. Some critics, however, believe later editors (redactors) added the prophecies concerning Judah (e.g., 4:15; 5:5, 10, 12-14; 6:4, 11; et al.), since most of the book contains prophecies against Israel, the Northern Kingdom.¹ Yet there is no good reason to deny Hosea the Judean prophecies.² All the other eighth-century prophets also spoke about Judah, including Amos, who ministered to the Northern Kingdom at this time. Some critics say the salvation passages in Hosea (e.g., 11:8-11; 14:2-9) are so different from the judgment passages that someone else must have written them. However, the mixing of judgment and salvation messages is very common in all the prophets.

Date

Hosea's ministry spanned the reigns of four Judean kings (Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; cf. Isa. 1:1) and one Israelite king (Jeroboam II; 1:1). King Uzziah (Azariah) of Judah began reigning in 792 B.C., and King Hezekiah of Judah stopped reigning in 686 B.C., spanning a period of 107 years. Probably Hosea's ministry began near the end of Jeroboam II's (793-753 B.C.) and Uzziah's (792-740 B.C.) reigns and ended in the early years of Hezekiah's reign (715-686 B.C.). This would mean that the prophet's ministry lasted perhaps 45 years (ca. 760-715 B.C.).³ It also means that Hosea's ministry extended beyond the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. since Hezekiah began ruling in 715 B.C. Hosea did not date any of his prophecies.

There were six other kings of Israel who followed Jeroboam II that Hosea did not mention in 1:1 that ruled during the reigns of the four Judean kings he named. They were Zechariah (753 B.C.), Shallum (752 B.C.), Menahem (752-742 B.C.), Pekah (752-732 B.C.), Pekahiah (742-740 B.C.), and Hoshea (732-723 B.C.). Hosea evidently prophesied during the reigns of more kings of Israel and Judah than any other prophet, probably eleven. It seems unusual that Hosea would mention four Judean kings and only one Israelite king, especially since he ministered primarily to the Northern Kingdom. He may have done this because the six Israelite kings named above were less significant in Israel's history than the other kings Hosea did mention. Another possibility is that Hosea did this because he regarded the Judean kings as Israel's legitimate kings in contrast to those of the North. He may have mentioned Jeroboam II because he was the primary king of the Northern Kingdom during his ministry or because he was the strongest king of that kingdom during that period.

Historical Background

Hosea began ministering near the end of an era of great material prosperity and military success for both Israel and Judah (cf. 2 Kings 14:25-28; 2 Chron. 26:2, 6-15). In the first half of the eighth-century B.C. Assyrian influence in the West had declined temporarily allowing both Jeroboam II and Uzziah to flourish. However, under Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C) Assyria began to grow stronger and to expand westward again. In 734 B.C. the Northern Kingdom became a puppet nation within the Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 15:29). After Israel tried to revolt, Assyria defeated Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, in 722 B.C. and deported the people of Israel into captivity (2 Kings 17:1-6; 18:10-12). Judah also became a vassal state in the Assyrian Empire during Hosea's ministry (2 Kings 16:5-10).

Hosea's prophecy reflects conditions of economic prosperity, religious formalism and apostasy, and political stability that marked Jeroboam II's reign. The historical background of the Book of Amos is almost identical.

Place of Composition

Beside the fact that Hosea ministered to the Northern Kingdom, his reference to the king of Samaria as "our king" (7:5) seems to make his residence in Israel certain. The book never states the location of any of his preaching, however.

Audience and Purpose

Hosea, like Amos, addressed the Northern Kingdom of Israel primarily.⁴ His purpose was to announce that because the nation had broken Yahweh's covenant (the Mosaic Covenant) judgment was coming (cf. Deut. 28:15-68). The people needed to repent and to return to the Lord and to His covenant. If they did, they might avoid His judgment. However, the prophet announced that the nation as a whole would not repent, though individuals could, so judgment was coming. Hosea also reaffirmed God's promise to bless His people Israel eventually, in the distant future (cf. Deut. 30:1-10).

"Understanding the message of the book of Hosea depends upon understanding the Sinai covenant. The book contains a series of blessings and curses announced for Israel by God through Hosea. Each blessing or curse is based upon a corresponding type in the Mosaic law."⁵

Theology

The major biblical doctrines that Hosea stressed were sin, judgment, salvation, and the loyal love of God.

Regarding sin, the prophet stressed the idolatry of the Israelites, which he compared to spiritual adultery. Israel had turned from Yahweh to worship Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility. The Lord told Hosea to marry a woman who would prove to be unfaithful to him so he could appreciate and communicate how the Lord felt about His wife's (Israel's) unfaithfulness to Him. Hosea also pointed out other sins that the Israelites needed to forsake: violent crimes (4:2; 6:9; 12:1), political revolt (7:3-7), foreign alliances (7:11; 8:9), spiritual ingratitude (7:15), social injustice (12:7), and selfish arrogance (13:6).

Hosea called for repentance, but he was not hopeful of a positive response because most of the people did not want to change. God's judgment would, therefore, descend in the form of infertility, military invasion, and exile. Hosea stressed the fact that God was just in sending judgment on the Israelites. He would do it by making their punishments match their crimes.

The prophet assured the Israelites that God would not abandon them completely. After judgment would come salvation. Eventually the people would return to Yahweh, as Hosea's wayward wife returned to him. In Hosea passages on salvation follow sections announcing judgment, though there are more predictions of punishment than promises of deliverance.

Judgment	Restoration
1:2-9	1:10-2:1
2:2-13	2:14-3:5
4:1-5:14	5:15-6:3
6:4-11:7	11:8-11
11:12-13:16	ch. 14

The outstanding revelation concerning God that this book contributes is the loyal love of Yahweh for His own. The great illustration of how committed God is to His people is how He instructed Hosea to relate to his unfaithful wife. The Lord will not forsake those with whom He has joined in covenant commitment even if they become unfaithful to Him repeatedly. He will be patient with them and will eventually save them (cf. 11:1-4; 14).⁶

"The Lord's covenantal relationship with His people Israel is central to the messages of the eighth-century prophets Hosea, Amos, and Micah. Each of these prophets accused God's people of violating the obligations of the Mosaic Covenant and warned that judgment was impending. Despite painting such a bleak picture of the immediate future, these prophets also saw a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel of punishment and exile. Each anticipated a time when the Lord, on the basis of His eternal covenantal promises to Abraham and David, would restore Israel to a position of favor and blessing. In fact, the coming judgment would purify God's people and thus prepare the way for a glorious new era in Israel's history."⁷

Message⁸

The book of Hosea is an unusually powerful book because the prophet ministered out of his deep personal emotions. His intellectual appeals to the Israelites in his day, and to us in ours, arose out of great personal tragedy in his own life. We might say that he cried out as he bled. Hosea appreciated the pain that God felt over His people's apostasy, as no other prophet did, because he felt the intense pain of his wife's unfaithfulness. Hosea could speak of the deepest things in the economy of God because he entered into fellowship with God in God's sufferings (cf. Phil. 3:10). That is the reason this book is so appealing and so powerful.

The permanent values of this book are its revelations of sin, judgment, and love. Hosea reveals what sin is at its worst. It also reveals the nature of judgment. Third, it reveals the unconquerable force of true love.

With regard to sin, Hosea reveals the very nature of sin, what makes it so appalling, not just the various forms of sin. Hosea was able to penetrate to the very heart of sin.

What made the sin of the Israelites so great was the fact that they had sinned against light and love.

The more light (revelation from God) that people have, the greater is their responsibility (cf. Rom. 1-3). What made Israel's sin so bad was that they were the Chosen People of God, the people of all peoples on earth who enjoyed the most revelation of the gracious person and the loving plans of Yahweh for their blessing. They had the Law, they had God's presence among them, and they had God's covenant promises (cf. Rom. 9). Yet they rebelled against Him and chose to walk in darkness rather than light.

Furthermore, they had sinned against God's love. They had experienced Yahweh's election, His provisions, His protection, and more of His blessings than any other people on the earth, but they walked away from Him and spent His gifts to them to satisfy their lewd desires. They had not only committed spiritual adultery, but they had become spiritual prostitutes. They had sinned against His love as well as against His light.

In some respects all sins are equally bad in that they are all offenses against God. But in another sense some sins are worse than others because people who have experienced much of the light and love of God have greater responsibility to respond to that light and love than people who have fewer of these blessings. In Romans 2 Paul explained that God will judge people according to the light that they had. The Israelites had much light and they had experienced much love. This made their sin especially heinous.

Hosea declared that the human marriage relationship symbolized the relationship that existed between Yahweh and His people. Israel had become unfaithful to God. God taught Hosea the seriousness of this unfaithfulness and how He felt about it through the prophet's own marriage relationship. Hosea experienced the tragedy and heartbreak of an unfaithful wife, not just an adulteress, which is bad enough, but an adulteress turned prostitute, which enabled him to enter into the fellowship of God's sufferings over the behavior of His wife, Israel. Hosea's heart was broken, and he felt the most unutterable sorrow that a man can feel when he feels his wife abandon him. He learned how God felt, and he denounced kings, priests, and people out of that broken heart that mirrored the broken heart of God. Hosea, then, revealed the deepest nature of sin, namely infidelity to the elective grace of God. The worst thing in the realm of sin is apathy to the love of God.

Hosea also revealed the nature of judgment. In view of the essential nature of sin, namely violation of covenant love, judgment will inevitably fall, unless there is genuine repentance. In view of their sin, the Israelites had no basis for hoping that God would pardon them. Hosea referred to the past love of God for Israel, His present love, and His future love for His Chosen People. Interspersed between these reminders of God's love through the book we have Hosea's tracing of Israel's history downward to the place where judgment was inevitable. Such great sinners against God's light and love had no reason to expect divine mercy. No one can see this as clearly or feel it so intensely as the man who has been sinned against so long and persistently as Hosea had been. Hosea felt the divine justice in God's action, and so he could announce it in the clearest and most forceful terms, as this book shows.

Nevertheless, in spite of the great revelations of sin and judgment that this book contains, its greatest revelation is that of love, divine love. In the midst of Hosea's personal overwhelming sorrow because of Gomer's actions, God told him to seek out his sinning wife, to go after her and bring her back, first into a wilderness seclusion for a while, but then back into a place of love and privilege at his own side. Through his wife's unfaithfulness Hosea learned the awfulness of sin, and in obedience to God's command to seek out and accept his traitorous wife, he learned God's love in spite of sin.

These three great revelations, sin, judgment, and love, constitute the living message of the Book of Hosea. These are the great lessons that we must apply to ourselves and to those to whom we minister. We need a constant reemphasis of each of these truths because we tend to get away from them individually and corporately, as the church. We fail to appreciate the love of God because we fail to appreciate the essential nature of our sin and that it makes judgment inevitable.

Hosea teaches that the most heinous and damnable sin of which people are capable is infidelity to love. This is the sin that damns unbelievers; they fail to respond to the love of God in reaching out to them. It is also the sin that will bring judgment on believers who are apathetic to the love of their Savior. Apathy toward divine love will inevitably lead to spiritual adultery. Compared to this the animalism and violence of the heathen are as nothing. It would be better not to have the light or to have known divine love than to have them and then to be unfaithful to them (cf. 2 Pet. 2:21).

Hosea also teaches that divine judgment is the fruit of sin. Infidelity to love can lead only to degradation. Israel thought she was repenting, but this prophet pointed out that her repentance was only superficial (6:4; 13:3). Just as faithfulness to the covenant brought blessing, so unfaithfulness brought discipline, and discipline in proportion to the light and love violated.

Hosea teaches too that true love will triumph over unfaithfulness. Though unfaithfulness inevitably results in chastening, and unfaithfulness to divine light and love leads unquestionably to the worst kind of misery, true love does not forsake the one loved. In fact, true love bears the judgment, the heartache and suffering, that the unfaithful lover causes. It takes this judgment on itself so that final restoration can be possible. This book closes with the Lord saying at last, "I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely" (14:4). God will not cast off those who sin against Him even in the most heinous way. He will disciple them, but He will not cast them away from His presence but will give them a new heart of faithfulness to Himself (Jer. 32:39).

The application of the message of Hosea to our generation touches the church and the Christian. It is a message to God's people, not to unbelievers, primarily. It is a message to those who walk in great light and enjoy great love, to those who are married to God.

Like Israel of old, the modern church has become apathetic to the love of God and has wandered away from Him, has become unfaithful to Him, and has even prostituted herself to the world to find satisfaction and approval. The evidence of spiritual adultery in our time is worldliness, the paganism of our day that is part of church life. The church is going after the things that the world values at the expense of faithfulness to the Word and will of God. This is due ultimately to our dissatisfaction with the love of God. We take the resources that God has given us and spend them to satisfy unworthy ambitions and pleasures. We are enflaming ourselves with carnality under every green tree as Israel did. Consequently, we are failing to bear the testimony to the light and love of God that we should be proclaiming, and unbelievers are not taking God seriously.

Hosea spoke of God's judgment coming on His people in three figures.

He said He would weaken His people's strength, as a moth and rottenness weakens clothing (5:12). That judgment is evident in the church today. We see it in the church's lack of influence in the world, the lack of conversions as the gospel is preached, and the world's indifference to the church's testimony, for example. This is because the church has turned to other sources of strength beside the Lord, as Israel did to Egypt and Assyria. The church, like Israel, has only repented superficially. This judgment is already in effect.

Second, Hosea said judgment would come like a young lion and a bear (11:10; 13:7-8). This is a manifestation of the fiercer anger of the Lord. This form of judgment is also evident in some churches. They have lost their testimony completely. They have no spiritual impact because they have abandoned the Lord. They have rejected His Word and His will and pursue other interests, like a prostitute.

The third form of judgment is God's withdrawal from His own people (5:6). When they call on Him, He does not answer them because they have refused to listen to Him for so long. His presence and blessing have departed from them so there is no more indication that they even belong to Him. Of course, God will not fully abandon His own, but He will remove His presence from them to such an extent that they are without His help. God did this to Israel when He allowed them to go into captivity.

Nevertheless, after all the failure, heartbreak, and desolation caused by the unfaithfulness of God's people, He will gather them to Himself. As He promised to restore and revive Israel's love for Himself, so He has promised to take the church to abide forever with Himself one day. What God will do for Israel at the Second Coming, He will do for the church at the Rapture. These restorations are in spite of, not because of, His people's responses to His light and love. They are due to the love of God, a love that remains committed to those whom He has chosen regardless of their faithful commitment to Him. May His love for us move us to remain faithful to Him and to practice that kind of love with those who have been unfaithful to us as well.

Constable: Hosea (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction 1:1

II. The first series of messages of judgment and restoration: Hosea's family 1:2-2:1

A. Signs of coming judgment 1:2-9

B. A promise of restoration 1:10-2:1

III. The second series of messages of judgment and restoration: marital unfaithfulness 2:2-3:5

A. Oracles of judgment 2:2-13

1. Judgment on Gomer as a figure of Israel 2:2-7

2. Judgment on Israel 2:8-13

B. Promises of restoration 2:14-3:5

1. Renewed love and restored marriage 2:14-20

2. Renewed fertility and restored favor 2:21-23

3. The restoration of Hosea's and Yahweh's wives ch. 3

IV. The third series of messages on judgment and restoration: widespread guilt 4:1-6:3

A. The judgment oracles chs. 4-5

1. Yahweh's case against Israel ch. 4

2. The guilt of both Israel and Judah ch. 5

B. The restoration promises 6:1-3

V. The fourth series of messages on judgment and restoration: Israel's ingratitude 6:4-11:11

A. More messages on coming judgment 6:4-11:7

1. Israel's ingratitude and rebellion 6:4-8:14

2. Israel's inevitable judgment 9:1-11:7

B. Another assurance of restoration 11:8-11

VI. The fifth series of messages on judgment and restoration: historical unfaithfulness 11:12-14:9

A. Judgment for unfaithfulness 11:12-13:16

1. The deceitfulness of Israel 11:12-12:14

2. Israel's impending doom ch. 13

B. Restoration in spite of unfaithfulness 14:1-8

VII. Conclusion 14:9

Constable: Hosea

Hosea

Bibliography

Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. Hosea: A New Translation, Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible commentary series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1980.

Chisholm, Robert B., Jr. "Hosea." In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, pp. 1377-1407. Edited by John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck. Wheaton: Scripture Press Publications, Victor Books, 1985.

_____. "A Theology of the Minor Prophets." In A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 397-433. Edited by Roy B. Zuck. Chicago: Moody Press, 1991.

Dyer, Charles H., and Eugene H. Merrill. The Old Testament Explorer. Nashville: Word Publishing, 2001.

Harper, William Rainey. A Critical and Exegetical Commentery on Amos and Hosea. International Critical Commentaries series. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905.

Harrison, R. K. Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1969.

Hillers, D. Treaty Curses and the Old Testament Prophets. Biblica et orientalia 16. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964.

Keil, Carl Friedrich. The Twelve Minor Prophets. 2 vols. Translated by James Martin. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Reprint ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949.

Kidner, Derek. Love to the Loveless: The Message of Hosea. The Bible Speaks Today series. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1981.

Mays, James Luther. Hosea: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library series. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969.

Stuart, Douglas. Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary series. Waco: Word Books, 1987.

Wolff, Hans Walter. Hosea. Translated by Gary Stansell. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

Wood, Leon J. "Hosea." In Daniel-Minor Prophets. Vol. 7 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary. 12 vols. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein and Richard P. Polcyn. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1985.

Young, Edward J. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Revised ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960.

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE PROPHECY OF OSEE.

INTRODUCTION.

Osee , or Hosea, whose name signifies a saviour, was the first in the order of time among those who are commonly called lesser prophets, because their prophecies are short. He prophesied in the kingdom of Israel, (that is, of the ten tribes) about the same time that Isaias prophesied in the kingdom of Juda. (Challoner) --- The chronological order is not observed in any edition. The Septuagint very from the rest. They place the less before the greater prophets, and read some of the names rather differently, as Protestants do also, though they have nothing but novelty to recommend the change. We shall here specify the Protestant names, (Haydock) in the order in which these prophets appeared: (Calmet) 1. Hosea, 2. Amos, 3. Jonah, 4. Micah, 5. Nahum, 6. Joel, 7. Zephaniah, 8. Habakkuk, 9. Obadiah, 10. Haggai, 11. Zechariah, 12. Malachi. (Haydock) --- It is not known who collected them into one volume. but the book of Ecclesiasticus (xlix. 12.) speaks of the twelve; and 4 Esdras i. 39., specifies them as they are found in the Septuagint: Osee, Amos, Micheas, Joel, Abdias, Jonas, Nahum, &c., as in the Vulgate. (Calmet) --- Many other prophets appeared before these, (Worthington) but Osee is the first of the sixteen whose works are extant. He must have continued his ministry about eighty-five years, and lived above one hundred and ten, if the first verse speaks of him alone. But some take it to regard the whole collection, and may be added by another hand. (Calmet) --- The style of Osee is sententious and very hard to be understood, (St. Jerome) as but little is known of the last kings of Israel, in whose dominions he lived, and to whom he chiefly refers, though he speaks sometimes of Juda, &c. (Calmet) --- By taking a wife, and other parables, he shews their criminal conduct and chastisment, and foretells their future deliverance and the benefits to be conferred by Christ. We must observe that the prophets often style the kingdom of the two tribes, Juda, Benjamin, Jerusalem, or the house of David; and that of the ten tribes, Ephraim, Joseph, Samaria, Jezrahel, Bethel, or Bethaven; and often Israel or Jacob till after the captivity of these tribes, when the latter titles refer to Juda, who imitated the virtues of Jacob better than the other kingdom. (Worthington) --- Then all distinction of this nature was at an end. (Haydock)

Gill: Hosea (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA

This book, in the Hebrew Bibles, at least in some copies, is called "Sopher Hosea", the Book of Hoses; and, in the Vulgate Latin and Arabic versions, "the Prophecy of Hoses": and, in the Syriac version, "the Prophecy of Hoses the Prophet". It is the first of the twelve lesser prophets, so called, not because they were of less value, credit, and authority, than the other prophets; but because of their smallness in bulk; and which, as Kimchi says, upon the authority of their Rabbins, were put together in one book, that no one of them might be lost, because of their smallness; and Josephus ^a reckons them but as one book; and they are quoted in the New Testament under the name of the Book of the Prophets ^b. This prophet was one of them, and therefore placed here; though, as Kimchi, in his preface to this book, and R. David Ganz ^c, observe, his prophecy was before the prophecy of Isaiah; and yet he was not the first of these minor prophets, as to order of time; not only Jonah, but Joel and Amos, were before him; and so they are placed by some writers; according to Mr. Whiston ^d, he began to prophesy about the year of the world 3196 A.M. and 808 B.C. Mr. Bedford ^e places him in 804 B.C. His name is the same with Joshua and Jesus, and signifies a saviour; and he was not only, as all the true prophets of the Lord and faithful ministers of the word are, the means and instruments in the hand of God of saving people; but he was a type of Christ the Saviour, as well as prophesied concerning him, and salvation by him. Of his parentage, and the time of his prophesying, see Hos 1:1, by which it appears that he lived in several reigns, and to a very great age. He chiefly prophesied against the ten tribes of Israel; reproved them for their sins; exhorted them to repentance; threatened them with destruction in case of impenitence; and comforted the truly godly with the promise of the Messiah, and of the happy state of the church in the latter day. His style, is short and concise; in some places sententious, and without connection, obscure and difficult of interpretation; and in others very pathetic and moving. Of the divine inspiration and authority of this book there is no room to doubt; since passages out of it are quoted and referred to by Christ and his apostles; by Christ himself, Mat 9:13 1Pe 2:10 There are some things said of the descent, death, and burial of this prophet, not to be depended on. Pseudo Epiphanius ^f and Isidorus ^g say he was of the tribe of Issachar, and born in Belomoth or Bethlemoth; and that he died in peace, and was buried in his own country; but, according to a tradition of the Jews ^h, he died in Babylon, and was buried in Tzapheth, a city in upper Galilee; but all this is uncertain, and not very probable, and is of no importance to be known.

Gill: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 2

This chapter is an explanation of the former, proceeding upon the same argument in more express words. The godly Israelites are here called upon to lay before the body of the people their idolatry, ingratitude, obstinacy, and ignorance of the God of their mercies; and to exhort them to repentance, lest they should be stripped of all their good things, and be brought into great distress and difficulties; all their joy and comfort cease, and be exposed to shame and contempt, Hos 2:1, yet, notwithstanding, many gracious promises are made unto them, of their having the alluring and comfortable word of the Gospel; of a door of hope; of salvation being opened to them; of faith in the Lord, and affection to him as their husband; of the removal of all idolatry from them; of safety from all enemies; of their open espousal to Christ; of his hearing of their prayers, and giving them plenty of all good things; and of their multiplication, conversion, and covenant relation to God, Hos 2:14.