Text -- Hosea 1:10--2:1 (NET)

The Restoration of Israel

1:10 However, in the future the number of the people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea which can be neither measured nor numbered. Although it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it will be said to them, “You are children of the living God!” 1:11 Then the people of Judah and the people of Israel will be gathered together. They will appoint for themselves one leader, and will flourish in the land. Certainly, the day of Jezreel will be great! 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 1:10

Not Israel after the flesh, not those very families that are carried captive.

Wesley: Hos 1:10

In those places, were a people dwelt who were not his people, there shall be a people of God.

Wesley: Hos 1:10

Who is the fountain of life to all his children, and who enables them to offer living sacrifices to the living God.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

This verse has both an historical and a spiritual sense; the one referring to the return out of Babylon, the other to a more glorious deliverance from a more miserable captivity.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

The two tribes, who adhered to the house of David.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

Some of the ten tribes who were incorporated with the kingdom of Judah, and so carried captive with them. But this is spiritually to be understood of the whole Israel of God.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

Zerubbabel, who was appointed by Cyrus, yet with full approbation of the people. And so Christ is appointed by the Father, head of his church, whom believers heartily accept.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

Literally out of Babylon, spiritually out of captivity to sin and to Satan.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

Good, joyous and comfortable.

Wesley: Hos 1:11

Israel is here called Jezreel, the seed of God. This seed is now sown in the earth, and buried under the clods; but great shall be its day, when the harvest comes. Great was the day of the church, when there were daily added to it such as should be saved.

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 1:10

Literally fulfilled in part at the return from Babylon, in which many Israelites joined with Judah. Spiritually, the believing seed of Jacob or Israel, Gentiles as well as Jews, numerous "as the sand" (Gen 32:12); the Gentiles, once not God's people, becoming His "sons" (Joh 1:12; Rom 9:25-26; 1Pe 2:10; 1Jo 3:1). To be fulfilled in its literal fulness hereafter in Israel's restoration (Rom 11:26).

JFB: Hos 1:10

Opposed to their dead idols.

JFB: Hos 1:11

(Isa 11:12-13; Jer 3:18; Eze 34:23; Eze 37:16-24).

JFB: Hos 1:11

Zerubbabel typically; Christ antitypically, under whom alone Israel and Judah are joined, the "Head" of the Church (Eph 1:22; Eph 5:23), and of the hereafter united kingdom of Judah and Israel (Jer 34:5-6; Eze 34:23). Though "appointed" by the Father (Psa 2:6), Christ is in another sense "appointed" as their Head by His people, when they accept and embrace Him as such.

JFB: Hos 1:11

Of the Gentiles among whom they sojourn.

JFB: Hos 1:11

"The day of one" is the time of God's special visitation of him, either in wrath or in mercy. Here "Jezreel" is in a different sense from that in Hos 1:4, "God will sow," not "God will scatter"; they shall be the seed of God, planted by God again in their own land (Jer 24:6; Jer 31:28; Jer 32:41; Amo 9:15).

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 1:10

Yet the number of the children of Israel - God had promised that the children of Israel should be as the sand of the sea. See Gen 32:12; Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26. And though for their iniquities he had thinned and scattered them, yet the spirit and design of his promise and covenant shall be fulfilled. An Israel there shall be. In the place of the reprobated people, who were now no longer his people, there shall be found an Israel that shall be the children of the living God. See the above scriptures, and 1Pe 2:10. This must mean either the Israelites after their conversion to Christianity, or even the Gentiles themselves converted to God, and now become the true Israel.

Clarke: Hos 1:11

The children of Judah and the Children of Israel - After the return from Babylon, the distinction between Israel and Judah was entirely destroyed; and those of them that did return were all included under one denomination, Jews; and the one head may refer to Zerubbabel their leader, and afterwards under Ezra and Nehemiah. In the more extensive view of the prophet the one Head may mean Jesus Christ, under whom the true Israel, Jews and Gentiles, shall be finally gathered together; so that there shall be one flock, and one Shepherd over that flock

Clarke: Hos 1:11

They shall come up out of the land - Assyria and Chaldea in particular; but also from the various places of their dispersions in general

Clarke: Hos 1:11

Great shall be the day of Jezreel - He alludes to the meaning of the word, the seed of God. God who has dispersed - sown, them in different lands, shall gather them together; and that day of God’ s power shall be great and glorious. It was a wonderful seed time in the Divine justice; it shall then be a wonderful harvest in the Divine mercy. He sowed them among the nations in his wrath; he shall reap them and gather them in his bounty.

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 1:10

Now follows consolation, yet not unmixed. God seems here to meet the objections which we know hypocrites had in readiness, whenever the Prophets denounced destruction on them; for they accused God of being unfaithful if he did not save them. Arrogating to themselves the title of Church, they concluded that it would be impossible for them to perish for God would not be untrue in his promises. “Why! God has promised that his Church shall be for ever: we are his Church; then we are safe, for God cannot deny himself.” In what they took as granted they were deceived; for though they usurped the title of Church, they were yet alienated from God. We see that the Papists swell with this pride at this day. To excuse all their errors they set up against us this shield, “Christ promised to be with his own to the end of the world. Can the spouse desert his Church? Can the Son of God, who is the eternal Truth of the Father, fail in his faithfulness?” The Papists magnificently extol the faithfulness of Christ, that they may bind him to themselves: but at the same time, they consider not that they are covenant breakers; they consider not that they are manifestly the enemies of God; they consider not that they have divorced themselves from him.

The Prophet, therefore seeing that he had to do with proud men, who were wont to arraign the justice of God, says, The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea; that is, “When the Lord shall cut you off, still safe will remain this promise which was given to Abraham;

‘Look at the stars of heaven, number, if thou canst, the sand of the sea; so shall thy seed be,’” (Gen 15:5.)

We indeed know, that whenever the Prophets severely reproved the people and denounced destruction, this was ever opposed to them, “What! can it be that the Lord will destroy us? What would then become of this promise, Thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea?” Hence the Prophet here checks this vain-confidence, by which hypocrites supported themselves against all threatening, “Though God may cut you off, he will yet continue true and faithful to the promise, that Abraham’s seed shall be innumerable as the sand of the sea.”

I indeed admit that the Prophet here gave hope of salvation to the faithful; for it is certain that there were some remaining in the kingdom of Israel. Though the whole body had revolted, yet God, as it was said to Elijah, had preserved to himself some seed. The Prophet then was unwilling to leave the faithful, who remained among that lost people, without hope of salvation; but, at the same time, he had regard to hypocrites, as we have already stated. We now see the design of the Prophet, for he teaches that there would be such a vengeance as he had spoken of, though God would not yet be forgetful of his word; he teaches that there would be such a casting away of the people, though God’s election would yet remain firm and unchangeable; in short, he teaches that the adoption by which God had chosen the offspring of Abraham as his people would not be void. This is the import of the whole. Then the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which is not to be measured nor numbered.

He afterwards adds, And it shall be in the place where it had been said to them, ( shall be said, literally,) Ye are not my people; there it shall be said, Ye are the sons of the living God It has been asked, whether this prophecy belongs to the posterity of those who had been dispersed. This, indeed, would be strange; for so long a time has passed away since their exile, and dejected and broken, they dwell at this day in mountains and in other desert places; at least many of them are in the mountains of Armenia, some are in Media and Chaldea; in short, throughout the whole of the East. And since there has been no restoration of this people, it is certain that this prophecy ought not to be restricted to seed according to the flesh. For there was a prescribed time for the Jews, when the Lord purposed to restore them to their country; and, at the end of seventy years, a free return was granted them by Cyrus. Then Hosea speaks not here of the kingdom of Israel, but of the Church, which was to be restored by a return, composed both of Jews and of Gentiles. So Paul, a fit interpreter of this passage, reminds us,

‘Whom he has called, not only of the Jews,
but also of the Gentiles; as he says by Hosea,
I will call a people, who were not mine, my people;
and her beloved, who was not beloved: and it shall be,
where it had been said to them, Ye are not my people;
there shall they be called the sons of the living God,’
(Rom 9:24, etc.)

Paul applies this passage, and that rightly, to the whole body of the faithful, collected without any difference, from the Jews as well as from the Gentiles: for otherwise, as we have said, the correctness and truth of prophecy would not be evident: and this view also agrees best with the design of the Prophet which I have just explained. For, since hypocrites in a manner tie to themselves the power of God, the Prophet says, that God can, if he chooses, raise up in an instant a new Church, which would exceed in number the sand of the sea. How so? God will create a Church for himself. From what? From stones, from nothing: for, as Paul says elsewhere,

‘he calls those things which are not,
as though they were,’
(Rom 4:17.)

At the same time, God, as it has been said, by his goodness contended with the wickedness of that people; for though they rejected his favour, yea, and obstinately thrust it away from themselves, yet such perverseness did not hinder the Lord from preserving a remnant for himself.

Now, this passage teaches, that they are very perverted in their notions, who, by their own feelings, form a judgement of the state of the Church, and accuse God of being unfaithful, when its external appearance does not correspond with their opinion. So the Papists think; for except they see the splendour of great pomp, they conclude that no Church remains in the world. But God at one time so diminishes the Church, that it seems to be almost reduced to nothing; at another time, he increases and multiplies it beyond all hope, after having raised it, as it were, from death. Isaiah says in Isa 10:22,

Were the number of the children of Israel as the sand of the sea, a remnant only shall be saved.

The Prophet there designedly exposes to scorn the hypocrites, who falsely pleaded that prophecy, ‘Look on the stars of heaven, and on the sand of the sea, if thou can’t number them; so shall thy seed be.’ Since, then, Isaiah saw that hypocrites, relying on that prophecy, were rising so perversely against him, he said, “Be it so, be it so, that ye are as the stars of heaven, and as the sand of the sea; yet a remnant only shall be saved;” which means, “The Lord will at last cut you down, and reduce you to so small a number, that ye shall be extremely few.” Now, on the other hand, Hosea says, That after the Israelites shall be reduced to a very small number, that nothing but waste and solitude will appear, then the Lord will restore the Church beyond all human thoughts and will prove that he had not in vain promised to Abraham that his seed would be as the sand of the sea. Since, then, the Lord wonderfully defends his Church, and preserves it in this world, so that at one time he seems to bury it, and then he raises it from death; at one time he cuts it down as to its outward appearance, and then afterwards he renews it; we ought to take heed, lest we measure according to our own judgement and carnal reason, what the Lord declares respecting the preservation of his Church. For its safety is often hid from the eyes of men. However the case may be, God does not bind himself here to human means, nor to the order of nature, but his purpose is to surpass by his incredible power whatever the minds of men can conceive.

Thus then ought this passage, The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, to be expounded: God will gather his Church from all quarters, from the Gentiles as well as from the Jews when the whole world will think it to be extinct.

And it shall be in the place where it had been said, Ye are not my people; there it shall be said, Ye are the sons of the living God The Prophet, in these words, amplifies by a comparison the grace of God; as though he said, “When God shall restore anew his Church, its state shall be more excellent than before.” How so? “They shall not only,” he says, “be the people of God, but also the sons of the living God;” which means, that God will more familiarly show himself a Father to those, whom he will thus suddenly gather into one body. I indeed allow that the ancients under the law were honoured with this title; but we ought to attend to the present passage; for the Prophet contrasts the two clauses, the one with the other: And it shall be in the place where it had been said, Ye are not my people; it shall be said there, Ye are the sons of the living God He might have said, “And it shall be in the place where it had been said, Ye are not my people; there it shall be said, Ye are not my people:” but he ascends higher; God will confer more honour on his new people, for he will more clearly manifest his favour to them by this title of adoption: and it belongs in common to all, to the Gentiles as well as to the Israelites. We ought not to apply this, as it is commonly done, exclusively to the Gentiles: for Hosea speaks not here only of the Church which God attained for himself from the Gentiles, but of the whole Israel of God, a part of whom is the seed of Abraham. Let us then know that God here offers his grace generally, to the Israelites as well as to the Gentiles, and testifies, that after having justly cast away this people, he would make all to know that he had not been unmindful of his covenant, for he would attain to himself a much larger Church — from whom? From the children of Abraham, as it has been said, as well as from strangers.

And there is an important meaning in the verb, ‘It shall be said:’ It shall be where it had been said, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said, — The Prophet means, that our salvation appears not, before the Lord has begun to testify to us of his good-will. Hence the beginning of our salvation is God’s call, when he declares himself to be propitious to us: without his word, no hope shines on us. Hosea might have said, ‘It shall be in the place where it had been said, Ye are not my people, there they shall begin to be the sons of God:’ but he expresses more, ‘It shall be where it had been said, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said, Ye are the sons of the living God.’

As to the first clause, it must be referred to the threatenings which have been already explained; and in this way was also checked the contumacy of the people, who heedlessly despised all the Prophets. “What! God has bound himself to us: we are the race of Abraham; then we are a holy and elect nation.” But the Prophet here claims authority to himself as a teacher: “I am a herald of God’s vengeance, and seriously proclaim to you your rejection: there is then no reason why ye should now harden your hearts and close your ears; for now at length will follow the execution of that vengeance which I now declare to you.” The Prophet then declares here that he had not rashly pronounced what we before noticed, that it was not an empty bug bear, but that he had spoken in the Lord’s name; as Paul also says,

‘Vengeance is prepared by us against all them
who extol themselves against Christ,’ (2Co 10:6.)

And we see also what was said to Ezekiel, ‘Go and besiege Jerusalem; turn thy face, and stand there until thou stormest it, until thou overthrowest it.’ The prophet was not certainly furnished with an army, so that he could make an attack upon Jerusalem: but God means there that there is power enough in his word to destroy all the ungodly. So also Hosea signifies the same here: “When by the word alone the Israelites shall be cast away it shall be said, Ye are the sons of the living God.” Let us then know, that God rises upon us with certain salvation, when we hear him speaking to us. It follows —

Calvin: Hos 1:11

The Prophet speaks here peculiarly of the children of Abraham; for though God would make no more account of them than of other nations, he yet wished it to be ascribed to his covenant, that they in honor excelled others; and the right of primogeniture, we know, is everywhere given to them. Then as Abraham’s children were first-begotten in the Church, even after the coming of Christ, God here especially addresses them, Ascend together from the land shall the children of Israel and the children of Judah, and they shall assemble together, and appoint for themselves one head In the last verse, Hosea spoke of the universal gathering of the Church; but now he confines his address to the natural race of Abraham. Why? Because God commenced a restoration with that people, when he extended his hand to the miserable exiles to bring them back from the Babylonian captivity to their own country. As then this was the beginning of the gathering, the Prophet, not without reason, turns his address here to them, and thus sets them in higher honor, not that they were worthy, not that they could by any merit claim this dignity; but because God would not make void his covenant, and because he had chosen them that they might be the first-begotten, as it has been already stated, and as they are also elsewhere called, ‘My first-begotten is Ephraim,’ (Jer 31:9) We now then understand the order and arrangement of the Prophet, which is to be carefully noticed, and the more so, because interpreters confound all these things, and make no distinctions, when yet the Prophet has not here mingled together the children of Israel and the children of Judah with the Gentiles, except for a certain purpose.

Let us now consider the words of the Prophet. Assembled together, he says, shall be the children of Israel and the children of Judah No doubt, the Prophet has in view the scattering, which had now lasted more than two hundred years, when Jeroboam had led away the ten tribes. Inasmuch as the body became then torn asunder, the Prophet says, Together shall be gathered the children of Judah and the children of Israel And designedly does he thus speak, lest the Israelites should felicitate themselves on their own power; since they were a mutilated body without a head; for the king of Israel, properly speaking, was not legitimate. The Lord had indeed anointed Jeroboam; and afterwards Jehu, I admit, had been anointed; but it was done for the sake of executing judgment. For when the Lord intended really to bless the people, he chose David to rule over them; and then he committed the government over all the children of Abraham to the posterity of David. There was therefore no legitimate head over the people of Israel. And the Prophet intended distinctly to express this by saying, Gathered together shall be the children of Judah and the children of Israel; which means this, “Ye are now secure, because fortune smiles on you; because ye are overflowing with money and all good things; because ye are terrible to your neighbors; because ye have cities well fortified; but your safety depends on another thing, even on this, that ye be one body under one head. For ye must be miserable except God rules over you; and the only way in which this can be is, that ye be under the government of David. Your separation, then, proves your state to be accursed; your earthly happiness, in which you felicitate yourselves, is unhappiness before God.” The Prophet then reminded the people of Israel, that God would at last deal kindly with them by restoring them to their first unity. The import of the whole then is, that the children of Abraham shall then at length be blessed, when they shall unite again in one body, and when one head shall rule over them. They shall then be gathered together, and appoint one head. The Prophet shows here also what kind of assembling this will be which he mentions, which was to be this, they shall be gathered under the government of one king. For whenever God speaks of the restoration of the people, he ever calls the attention of the faithful to David: ‘David shall rule, there shall be one shepherd.’ Then one king and one head shall be among them. We now perceive the design of the Prophet.

But this passage clearly teaches, that the unity of men is of no account before God, except it originates from one head. Besides, it is well known that God set David over his ancient people until the coming of Christ. Now, then, the Church of the Lord is only rightly formed, when the true David rules over it; that is, when all with one consent obey Christ, and submit to his bidding, ( pendebunt ab ejus nutu hang on his nod:) and how Christ designs to rule in his Church, we know; for the scepter of his kingdom is the gospel. Hence, when Christ is honored with the obedience of faith, all things are safe; and this is the happy state of the Church, of which the Prophet now speaks. It seems, indeed, strange, that what is peculiar to God should be transferred to men that is, to appoint a king. But the Prophet has, by this expression, characterized the obedience of faith; for it is not enough that Christ should be given as a king, and set over men, unless they also embrace him as their king, and with reverence receive him. We now learn, that when we believe the gospel we choose Christ for our king, as it were, by a voluntary consent.

He afterwards subjoins, They shall ascend from the land. He expresses more than at the beginning of the verse; for he says, that God would restore them from exile to their own country. He then promises what was very necessary, that exile would be no hindrance to God to renew his Church; for it was the people’s ruin to be removed far from their country, and consequently to be deprived of their promised inheritance during their dispersion among heathen nations. The Lord then takes away this difficulty, and distinctly declares, that though for a time they should be as wholly destroyed, they shall yet come again to their own land. They shall, therefore, ascend (this is said with regard to Judea, for it is higher than Chaldea) they shall, therefore, ascend from Chaldea and other places in which they had been dispersed. We now understand what the Prophet means by saying, Gathered together shall be the children of Israel and the children of Judah that is, into one body; and further, they shall appoint for themselves one head. This is the manner of the gathering; and it must be also added, that the Church then obeys God, when all, from the first to the last, consent to one head: for it is not enough to be constrained, unless all willingly offer themselves to Christ; as it is said Psa 110:3, “There shall be a willing people in the day in which the King will call his own.’ Then the Prophet intended to express the obedience of faith, which the faithful will render to Christ, when the Lord shall restore them.

And they shall ascend, he says, from the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel. It may be asked, why does he here call the day of Jezreel great; for it seems contrary to prophecy? This passage may be explained in two ways. Great shall be the day of Jezreel, some say, because God will sow the people whom he had before scattered. So they think that the Prophet, as in a former instance, alludes to the word, Jezreel. But the sense seems to me to be another. I do not restrict this clause to the last, nor to the promise, but apply it to the slaughter which has been before mentioned; for they correspond with one another. They shall ascend from the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel. The Israelites were as yet resting in their nests, and thought that they could not by any means be torn away; besides, the kingdom of Judah did not then fear a near destruction. The Prophet, therefore, intimates here, that there would be a need of some signal and extraordinary remedy; for it shall be the severe and dreadful slaughter in the day of Jezreel. We now perceive the real meaning of the Prophet, They shall ascend from the land; for ⁸ great shall be the day of Jezreel

They might, indeed, have otherwise objected, and said, “Why dost thou thus prophesy to us about ascending? What is this ascending? Do we not rest quietly in the inheritance which God formerly promised to our fathers? What meanest thou, then, by this ascending?” The Prophet here rouses them, and reminds them that they had no reason to trust in their now quiet state, as wine settled on its lees; and this very similitude is even used in another place, (Jer 48:11.) The Prophet here declares, that there would be a most dreadful slaughter, which would call for the signal mercy of God; for he would in a wonderful manner restore the people, and draw them out like the dead from their graves: for great then shall be the day of Jezreel; that is, “As the calamity which the Lord shall bring on you will be grievous and dreadful, I do not in vain promise to you this return and ascending.” This seems to be really the meaning of the Prophet.

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 1:10

God's original promise to Abraham (Gen 22:17) must still be fulfilled, and both the "children of Judah and the children of Israel" will be gathered together in the last days (Hos 1:1)."

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 1:10

the number : Gen 13:16, Gen 32:12; Isa 48:19; Rom 9:27, Rom 9:28; Heb 11:12

and it : Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26

in the : or, instead of that

it was said : Hos 2:23; Isa 43:6, Isa 49:17-22, Isa 54:1-3, 60:4-22, Isa 66:20; 1Pe 2:9, 1Pe 2:10

Ye are the sons : Joh 1:12; Rom 8:14-17, Rom 9:26; 2Co 6:18; Gal 4:6, Gal 4:7; 1Jo 3:1, 1Jo 3:2

TSK: Hos 1:11

Then shall : This seems to refer to the future conversion and restoration of the Jews and Israelites, under on head, Jesus Christ; so that there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

the children of Judah : Hos 3:5, Isa 11:12, Isa 11:13; Jer 3:18, Jer 3:19, Jer 23:5-8, Jer 30:3, Jer 31:1-9, Jer 33:15-26; Jer 50:4, Jer 50:5, Jer 50:19; Eze 16:60-63, Eze 34:23, Eze 34:24, Eze 37:16-25; Mic 2:12, Mic 2:13; Zec 10:6-9; Rom 11:25, Rom 11:26

for : An allusion to the word Jezreel. God who sowed them among the nations in His wrath, shall reap and gather them in His mercy. See Hos 2:22, Hos 2:23; Psa 22:27-30, Psa 110:3; Rom 11:15

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 1:10

Yet - (literally, and) the number of the children of Israel ... Light springeth out of darkness; joy out of sorrow; mercy out of chastisement; life out of death. And so Holy Scripture commonly, upon the threat of punishment, promises blessings to the penitent "Very nigh to the severest displeasure is the dispersion of sorrows and the promised close of darkness."What God takes away, He replaces with usury; things of time by things eternal; outward goods and gifts and privileges by inward; an earthly kingdom by heaven. Both Peter 1Pe 2:10 and Paul Rom 9:25-26 tell us that this prophecy is already, in Christ, fulfilled in those of Israel, who were the true Israel, or of the Gentiles, to whom the promise was made Gen 22:18, "In thy Seed shall all the nations be blessed,"and who, whether Jews or Gentiles, believed in Him. The Gentiles were adopted into the Church, which, at the Day of Pentecost, was formed of the Jews, and in which Jews and Gentiles became one in Christ Gal 3:28. Yet of the Jews alone, not only did "many tens of thousands in Jerusalem believe"Act 21:20, but Peter and James both write "to the dispersed of the ten tribes"Jam 1:1; 1Pe 1:1; and the Apostles themselves were Jews. Although, then, those Jews who believed in Christ were few in comparison of those who rejected Him, yet they were, in themselves, many, and, through those who, in Christ Jesus, were "begotten by them through the Gospel"1Co 4:15, they were numberless. Yet this prophecy, although accomplished in part, will, according to Paul Rom 11:25-26, be yet more completely fulfilled in the end.

In the place where it was said - (or where it shall be said, i. e., at the first) unto them, ye are not My people, there it shall, in after-time, be said unto them, ye are the sons of the living God Both the times here spoken of by the prophet were yet future, for Israel, although they had apostatised from God, had not yet been disowned by God, who was still sending to them prophets, to reclaim them. They ceased to be owned as God’ s people, when, being dispersed abroad, they had no share in the sacrifices, no temple-worship, no prophets, no typical reconciliation for sin. God took no more notice of them than the pagan. The prophet then speaks of two futures; one, when it shall be said to them, "ye are not My people;"and a yet further future, in which it should he said, "ye are the sons of the living God."The place of both was to be the same. The place of their rejection, the dispersion, was to be the place of their restoration. And so Peter says that this Scripture was fulfilled in them, while still "scattered abroad through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia."The place, then, where they shall be called the "sons of the living God,"is, wheresoever they should believe in Christ. Although separated in body, they were united by faith. And so it shall be unto the end. "Nothing now constraineth to go up to Jerusalem, and still to seek for the temple of stones, for neither will they worship God, as aforetime, by sacrifices of sheep or oxen; but their worship will be faith in Christ and in His commandments, and the sanctification in the Spirit, and the regeneration through Holy Baptism, making the glory of sonship their’ s, who are worthy thereof and are called thereto by the Lord".

It shall be said, ye are the sons of the living God - It was the special sin of Israel, the source of all his other sins, that he had left the "living God,"to serve dead idols. In the times of the Gospel, not only should he own God as his God, but he should have the greatest of all gifts, that the living God, the fountain of all life, of the life of nature, of grace, of glory, should be his Father, and as being his Father, should communicate to him that life, which he has and is. For He who is life, imparts life. God doth not only pour into the souls of His elect, grace and faith, hope and love, or all the manifold gifts of His Spirit, but He, the living God, maketh them to he His living sons, by His Spirit dwelling in them, by whom He adopteth them as His sons, through whom He giveth them grace. For by His Spirit He adopteth them as sons. "We have received the spirit of adoption of sows, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. And if sons, then heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs of Christ"Rom 8:15.

God not only giveth us grace, but adopteth us as sons. He not only accounteth us, but He maketh us sons; He maketh us sons, not outwardly, but inwardly; not by inward grace only, but by His Spirit: not only by the birth from the Spirit, but in the Only-Begotten Son; sons of God, because members of Christ, the Son of God; sons of God, by adoption, as Christ is by Nature; but actual sons of God, as Christ is actually and eternally the Son of God. God is our Father, not by nature, but by grace; yet He is really our Father, since we are born of Him, "sons of the living God,"born of the Spirit. He giveth us of His Substance, His Nature, although not by nature; not united with us, (as it is, personally, with His Son,) but dwelling in us, and making us "partakers of the Divine Nature.""Sons of the living God"must be living by Him and to Him, by His life, yea, through Himself living in them, as our Saviour saith, "If any man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him"Joh 14:23.

Barnes: Hos 1:11

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together - A little image of this union was seen after the captivity in Babylon, when some of the children of Israel, i. e., of the ten tribes, were united to Judah on his return, and the great schism of the two kingdoms came to an end. More fully, both literal Judah and Israel were gathered into one in the one Church of Christ, and all the spiritual Judah and Israel; i. e., as many of the Gentiles as, by following the faith, became the sons of faithful Abraham, and heirs of the promise to him.

And shall make themselves one Head - The act of God is named first, "they shall be gathered;"for without God we can do nothing. Then follows the act of their own consent, "they shall make themselves one Head;"for without us God doth nothing in us. God gathereth, by the call of His grace; they make to themselves one Head, by obeying His call, and submitting themselves to Christ, the one Head of the mystical body, the Church, who are His members. In like way, Ezekiel foretells of Christ, of the seed of David, under the name of David; "I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; and I the Lord will be their God, and My servant David a Prince among them"Eze 34:23-24; and again; "I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore at all"Eze 37:22. But this was not wholly fulfilled, until Christ came, for after the captivity they were under Zorobabel as chief, and Joshua as high priest.

And shall come up out of the land - To "come up"or "go up"is a title of dignity; from where, in our time, people are said to go up to the metropolis, or the University; and in Holy Scripture, to "come up,"or "go up,"out of Egypt (Gen 13:1; Gen 45:25, etc.), or Assyria 2Ki 17:3; 2Ki 18:9, 2Ki 18:13; Isa 36:1, Isa 36:10, or Babylon 2Ki 24:1; Ezr 2:1; Ezr 7:6; Neh 7:6; Neh 12:1, to the land of promise, or from the rest of the land to the place which God chose Exo 34:24 to place His name there, Shiloh, 1Sa 1:22, or, afterward, Jerusalem; (2Sa 19:34; 1Ki 12:27-28; Psa 122:4, etc.) and it is foretold that "the mountain of the Lord’ s house shall be exalted above the hills; and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord"Isa 2:2-3; Mic 4:1-2. The land from which they should go up is, primarily and in image, Babylon, from where God restored the two tribes; but, in truth and fully, it is the whole aggregate of lands, the earth, the great "city of confusion,"which Babel designates. Out of which they shall go up, "not with their feet but with their affections,"to the "city set upon a hill"Mat 5:14, "the heavenly Jerusalem"Heb 12:22, and heaven itself, where we are "made to sit together with Christ"Eph 2:6, and where "our conversation is"Phi 3:20, that where He is, there may we "His servants be"Joh 12:26. They ascend in mind above the earth and the things of earth, and the lowness of carnal desires, that so they may, in the end, come up out of the earth, "to meet the Lord in the air, and forever be with the Lord"1Th 4:17.

For great is the day of Jezreel - God had denounced woe on Israel, under the names of the three children of the prophet, Jezreel, Lo-Ammi, Lo-Ruhamah; and now, under those three names, He promises the reversal of that sentence, in Christ. He begins with the name, under which he had begun to pronounce the woe, the first son, Jezreel. "Jezreel"means "God shall sow,"either for increase, or to scatter. When God threatened, "Jezreel"necessarily meant, "God shall scatter;"here, when God reverses His threatening, it means, "God shall sow."But the issue of the seed is either single, as in human birth, or manifold, as in the seed-corn. Hence, it is used either of Him who was eminently, "the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of the woman,"or the manifold harvest, which He, the seed-corn Joh 12:24, should bring forth, when sown in the earth, by His vicarious Death. It means, then, Christ or His Church. Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God before all worlds, was, in time, also "conceived by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary,"the Son of God Alone, in a way in which no other man was born of God. Great then should be the day, when "God should sow,"or give the increase in mercy, as before He scattered them, in His displeasure.

The Great Day wherein "God should sow, was, first, the day which the Lord hath made"Psa 118:24, the Incarnation, in which God the Son became Man, "the seed of the woman;"then, it was the Passion, in which, like a seed-corn, He was sown in the earth; then, the Resurrection, when He rose, "the Firstborn among many brethren;"then, all the days in which "He bare much fruit."It is the one day of salvation, in which, generation after generation, a new seed hath been or "shall be born"unto Him, and "shall serve Him"Psa 22:30-31. Even unto the end, every time of any special growth of the Church every conversion of Pagan tribe or people, is "a day of Jezereel,"a day in which "the Lord soweth."Great, wonderful, glorious, thrice-blessed is the day of Christ, for in it He hath done great things for us, gathering together under Himself, the Head, those scattered abroad, "without hope and without God in the world;"making "not My people"into "My people"and those not beloved into His "beloved,"the objects of His tender, yearning compassion, full of His grace and mercy. For so it follows,

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 1:10

Yet: this may anticipate the carnal Israel’ s objection, that thus God would fail of his word to Abraham, or he would lose his people. Nothing so, yet, though ten tribes be for ever captivated, God will have his Israel.

The number of the children of Israel not Israel after the flesh, not those very persons, families that are carried captive, (though for aught I know, or any can tell to the contrary, these may be so increased for Abraham’ s sake,) but the Israel of God according to the faith, the spiritual seed of Abraham, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles.

Shall be as the sand of the sea which cannot be measured nor numbered; innumerable, expressed by an elegant proverbial speech, alluding to the immenseness of the sands, Isa 10:22,23 Ro 9:27 .

It shall come to pass the time is fixed, and the thing shall certainly be, God will bring it about in his time. In the place: as we read it, it is plain that in those places or countries where a people dwelt who knew not God, were not his people, there should be a people that should both be called and be his people; the heathen should be called into the church, and in every place God should have his people. Or else thus: Instead of being called the people of God, you shall be called the children; so blessed a change, that who were once far off, and not a people, shall now be more than people, they shall be children. Where it was said unto them , the Gentiles and Jews unconverted.

Ye are not my people in the state of unconverted ones, are far from God, without his covenant, and no people.

There it shall be said known, declared, men shall confess it, God will own it himself, and make it known to others.

Ye are the sons grace shall be enlarged, your relation nearer and sweeter, you shall be sons, not servants, have communion with God as with your father; and this shall be the common or equal privilege of this whole Israel of God. This is fulfilled in the kingdom of the Messiah under the gospel, as the apostle argueth it, Rom 9:25,26 .

Of the living God who is the fountain of life to all his children, and who giveth them lively affections to serve him, to offer living sacrifices to the living God. So are we called, Rom 12:1,2 1Th 1:9 .

Poole: Hos 1:11

This verse without doubt hath in it both an historical sense and a mystical or spiritual sense; it looketh somewhat to the return out of the Babylonish captivity, and to their settling in Canaan; but it looketh further to a more glorious deliverance from a more miserable captivity.

Then in the type and history, when the Babylonish captivity is dissolved, and the captives are loosed.

The children of Judah the children of the two tribes, who adhered to the house of David, who were carried captives, but under promise of a redemption from it.

The children of Israel some of the ten tribes who either went over to and did incorporate with the kingdom of Judah, and so were carried captives with them; or some of the ten tribes which the children of Judah found in the kingdom of Babylon, which having swallowed up the Assyrian monarchy, now the ten tribes were captives to their conquering sword. Thus in type, but it is spiritually and mystically to be understood of the whole Israel of God, Jew and Gentile, redeemed by and converted to Christ, in the day of his power.

Be gathered together by the power of God, by the decree Of Cyrus, by each other, heartening one another to return; so the type: in the antitype, shall be gathered together by the Spirit of God, the preaching of the gospel, and mutual instruction, exhortation, and encouragements of each other

Appoint themselves one head Zerubbabel in type, who was appointed by Cyrus, yet with full approbation of the people, putting themselves under his conduct, to carry them up to Jerusalem. But in the antitype Christ, appointed by the Father Head of his church, whom believers, heartily accepting, may in large sense be said to appoint to themselves.

Out of the land literally, out of Babylon; spiritually, out of captivity of sill and Satan.

For great good, joyous, and comfortable,

shall be the day of Jezreel of the seed or people of God, the sons of God once dispersed, but now gathered by the gospel.

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.

PBC: Hos 1:10

The apostle Paul quotes this verse or this passage in Ro 9:1-33. Make a note and study in the book of Romans. You’ll find the reality of what Hosea clearly predicts- Israel (the Northern kingdom) will cease to exist, never again to be raised up. But God’s promise of a perpetual seed in His name and from His people will be honored in another people, through another nation. When you go to Ro 9:1-33 and context you’ll discover that no longer is the fulfillment of God’s promise for a Davidic king and a people of worship and faithfulness will be Jews but it will be Gentiles. This is all pure, and it stands out.

Haydock: Hos 1:10

The number, &c., viz., of the true Israelites, the children of the Church of Christ. (Challoner) ---

This is the primary sense, Romans ix. 25. Yet the Israelites are here also assured of their return from captivity. (Calmet) ---

God. Among many sinners, some are chosen. (Worthington)

Haydock: Hos 1:11

Head; Christ, (Challoner) the head of all the faithful, (Worthington) consisting both of Jews and Gentiles. Israel and Juda returned under Zorobabel, &c. (Calmet) ---

The prophets blend present and future transactions together. (St. Jerome in chap. iii.) ---

Jezrahel. That is, of the seed of God; for Jezrahel signifies the seed of God. (Challoner) ---

For may also be rendered, "when or though." The seed of Jehu shall be exterminated. The kingdom, signified by Jezrahel, a great city, shall fall. (Calmet)

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 1:10

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered,.... Though called Loammi, and rejected from being the people of God; yet there is a time when their number, according to the promise made to Abraham, shall be as the sand of the sea, and the stars of heaven; which, as the one cannot be measured, the other cannot be numbered; which was to be not at the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, when some of the ten tribes of Israel returned with them, as Theodoret and others think; for they were but few that then returned: but rather at the first times of the Gospel, when multitudes that came from various parts of the world were converted at the day of Pentecost, and greater numbers; who were met with in the ministry of the word, in the various parts of the world, where they were dispersed, and the Gospel came, to whom Peter and James wrote their epistles; and not these only are meant, but the vast numbers of Gentiles, who were effectually called by grace everywhere, and were true Israelites, the spiritual seed of Abraham; and to whom the Apostle Paul applies these words, producing them as a testimony of the election and calling, not of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also, Rom 9:24, and which will have a further accomplishment in the latter day, when the fulness of the Gentiles will be brought in, the Jews will be converted, and all Israel saved, Rom 11:25, then the numbers of the Israel of God, both of Jews and Gentiles, will be as the sand of the sea indeed!

and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, ye are the sons of the living God; that is, in such places where it used to be said, here live Pagans, Turks, or Jews, who worship not the true God, or at lease not aright, nor believe in Christ, and profess his name; "there it shall be said to them", by the Lord himself, by his Spirit witnessing their relation to them, and by all good men, and even by the world in general; not only that they are "the people of God", but have a superior privilege, a greater character, and a higher relation, the sons of the living God; the sons of God, not by nature, as Christ; nor by creation, as angels; nor by office, as civil magistrates; or by profession merely, as nominal Christians; but by adopting grace; which exceeds all other blessings, even of sanctification and justification; makes men honourable; is attended with various privileges, and always continues. The epithet "of the living God" is not without cause put; it stands in opposition to dead idols before worshipped by some who will now be the children of God; and who, as he has life in himself, gives it to others; to all natural life and breath, and to his children spiritual and eternal life; and, as he lives forever, so shall they his sons likewise. The Targum is,

"and it shall be in the place where they have been carried captive, when they transgressed the law; and it was said to them, ye are not my people; there they shall be converted and increased (or made great); and it shall be said to them, O ye people of the living God.''

Gill: Hos 1:11

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together,.... Not at the return from the Babylonish captivity; for, though some of the ten tribes might be mixed with the Jews when they went into captivity, and came out with them, and others might join them from the various nations where they had been dispersed; yet they did not gather together with them in a body, only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, those were the chief; of the children of Israel, but few, Ezr 1:5. Some refer this to the first times of the Gospel, when the Galileans were gathered to Christ by his ministry, who inhabited the countries where some of the tribes of Israel dwelt; and who might, at least some of them, descend from them: and when those in Jerusalem and in Judea, who also believed in Christ, united with them in their profession of him, and in affection to one another; or to the time of Christ's death, by which the whole Israel of God, who were scattered abroad, were gathered together in one; and even Jews and Gentiles were made one body, and one new man in Christ, the partition wall being broken down: or to the times of the apostles, who were successful in the conversion and gathering of many of the Jewish nation, and also of the Samaritans; and of forming churches in Judea and Samaria under one head, in whom they agreed; and likewise of many others, both Jews and Israelites, in the various parts of the world, where they carried the Gospel; and who coalesced with the believing Gentiles in one church state, under Christ their head: though it seems best to interpret this of the latter day, when the children of Israel and Judah shall join together in seeking the Lord their God, and the true Messiah, and shall be turned, and gathered to him; when they shall be no more two kingdoms or two nations, but be one under the Messiah, who shall he their King and Prince; when all their animosities shall be laid aside, and they shall no more envy or vex one another; but shall meet together in the same church state, and worship the Lord with one shoulder and consent, being of one mind and sentiment in religious things, and when all Israel shall be saved, Jer 1:4 Isa 11:13

and appoint themselves one head; not Sennacherib, as Aben Ezra, very absurdly; nor Hezekiah, nor Josiah, as others; nor Elijah the prophet, as some in Kimchi; nor Zerubbabel, to which the Targum seems to incline, paraphrasing it,

"one head of the house of David;''

but better, as Jarchi, David their King; that is, the Messiah, as Kimchi and Ben Melech expressly interpret it; and so Abarbinel ^b, though he understands it of the Messiah the son of Joseph; and undoubtedly the same is meant by the one head, as David their King and Prince, Hos 3:5 even Christ, who is the Head of angels, yea, the Head of every man, but in a special and peculiar sense the head of the body, the church; he is the federal and representative Head of his people, both in eternity and in time; and in such sense a Head to them, as a king is head of his subjects, a husband of his wife, a father of his family, and a master of his servants; and also as a natural head is to its body, of the same nature with it; in union to it; lives the same life; is above it, and more excellent than it: a perfect Head Christ is, there being nothing wanting in him as such; he has his eyes set upon his people; his ears are open to their cries; he smells a sweet saviour of rest in their persons and services; he tastes and eats their pleasant fruits, and feels all their infirmities, troubles and afflictions; and has a tongue to speak a word in season for them: there are no vicious humours in this Head to affect the body; no deformity in it, and all fulness therein to supply its wants; he is an everliving and everlasting Head, and the one, and only one; there is no other, neither the pope of Rome, nor any other; nor will true Israelites acknowledge any other: and though this Head is of God the Father's appointing, who has given him to be the Head; set him as King over Sion; raised him up to be a Prince and a Saviour; yet he is also of the saints' choosing and appointing; they approve of him as such, embrace him, own him, and submit to him, as the Jews will at the last day, though their forefathers have rejected him:

and they shall come up out of the land; not of Israel, as Schmidt, who interprets this of the apostles going out from thence, and spreading the Gospel in the world; but out of each of the lands and countries where Israel and Judah have been dispersed, and return to their own land; see Jer 3:18. So the Targum,

"and they shall come up out of the land of their captivity:''

or it may be understood, figuratively and spiritually, of their coming up out of their captivity to sin, Satan, the law, and the world, as well as out of their present temporal captivity:

and out of the earth ^c, as it were, as it may be rendered; out of their earthly state, from the graves of sin, leaving their earthly affections, and becoming spiritual and heavenly minded; willing to quit all that is dear unto them, even the country in which they were born and long lived, to follow Christ their Head and King:

for great shall be the day of Jezreel; or, though great has been or is the day of Jezreel ^d; though it has been a great and long day of trouble and affliction to them, signified by Jezreel; see Hos 1:4, yet all these good things promised shall surely be accomplished: indeed the day of Jezreel may be taken in a good sense, not for a time of dispersion and distress, but of great comfort, joy, and happiness; the word signifying, according to some, the seed of God, or the arm of God: and Jerom applies it to Christ, the seed of God; and the whole Gospel dispensation may be called his day, the day of salvation, the joyful day the Lord has made: or rather by Jezreel, the seed of God, are meant his spiritual offspring, the children of Judah and Israel; who shall now be gathered, by the arm of God, his powerful and efficacious grace, and that in large numbers, so that great will be their day; so the Targum paraphrases it,

"for great will be the day of their gathering.''

It respects the latter day glory, when will be the conversion of the Jews, and the bringing in of the fulness of the Gentiles; when there will be great peace and prosperity; great love and unity; great holiness and purity; great light and knowledge; great enjoyment of God, and of the presence of the Redeemer great glory upon the churches, and upon that a defence: in short, all the great and glorious things spoken of will now be completed; perfect deliverance from all afflictions and troubles; an entire destruction of all enemies; and a full enjoyment of the word and ordinances, in the purity of them, and large conversions everywhere.

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 1:10

¹ sn Beginning with 1:10, the verse numbers through 2:23 in the English Bible differ by two from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 1:10 ET = 2:1 HT, 1:11 ET = 2:2 HT, 2:1 ET = 2:3 HT, etc., through 2:23 ET = 2:25 HT. Beginning with 3:1 the verse numbers in the English Bible and the Hebrew Bible are again the same.

² tn The vav prefixed to וְהָיָה (véhaya) functions in an adversative sense: “however” (see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 71, §432).

³ tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); KJV, ASV “the children”; NAB, NIV “the Israelites.”

⁴ tn Heb “in the place” (בִּמְקוֹם, bimqom). BDB 880 s.v. מָקוֹם 7.b suggests that בִּמְקוֹם (preposition בְּ, bet, + noun מָקוֹם, maqom) is an idiom carrying a concessive sense: “instead of” (e.g., Isa 33:21; Hos 2:1). However, HALOT suggests that it functions in a locative sense: “in the same place” (HALOT 626 s.v. מָקוֹם 2b; e.g., 1 Kgs 21:19; Isa 33:21; Hos 2:1).

⁵ tn The predicate nominative, “You are…,” is supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁶ tn Heb “sons” (so KJV, NASB, NIV).

NET Notes: Hos 1:11

¹ tn Heb “sons” (twice in this verse, so NASB); KJV, ASV “children”; NIV, NRSV, TEV “people.”

² tn Heb “head” (so KJV, NAB, NRSV).

³ tn Alternatively, “gain possession of the land” (cf. NRSV) or “rise up from the land” (cf. NIV). This clause may be understood in two ways: (1) Israel will gain ascendancy over the land or conquer the land (e.g., Exod 1:10; cf. NAB “come up from other lands”) or (2) Israel will be “planted” in the land (Hos 2:24-25; cf. NLT “will…plant his people”).

⁴ tn Or “For” (so NASB); NCV “because”; TEV “Yes.”

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 1:10

Yet the number of the ^{( m )} children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, [that] in the place where it was said unto them, Ye [are] not my people, [there] it shall be said unto them, [Ye are] the sons of the living God.

^{( m )} Because they thought that God could not have been true in his promise unless he had preserved them, he declares that though they were destroyed, yet the true Israelites who are the sons of the promise, would be without number, who consist both of the Jews and the Gentiles; (Rom 9:26).

Geneva Bible: Hos 1:11

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be ^{( n )} gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great [shall be] the day of Jezreel.

^{( n )} That is, after the captivity of Babylon, when the Jews were restored: but chiefly this refers to the time of Christ, who would be the head both of the Jews and Gentiles.

^{( o )} The calamity and destruction of Israel will be so great, that to restore them will be a miracle.

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 1:1-11

1 Hosea, to shew God's judgment for spiritual whoredom, takes Gomer,

4 and has by her Jezreel;

6 Loruhamah;

8 and Lo-ammi.

10 The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head.

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 1:8-11

The rejection of Israel for a time, is signified by the name of another child: call him Lo-ammi, " not my people." The Lord disowns all relation to them. We love him, because he first loved us; but our being cast out of covenant, is owing to ourselves and our folly. Mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath; the rejection, as it shall not be total, so it shall not be final. The same hand that wounded, is stretched forth to heal. Very precious promises are here given concerning the Israel of God, and they may be of use to us now. Some think that these promises will not have accomplishment in full, till the general conversion of the Jews in the latter days. Also this promise is applied to the gospel, and the bringing in both the Jews and Gentiles to it, by St. Paul, Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26, and by St. Peter, 1Pe 2:10. To believe in Christ, is to have him for our Head, and willingly to commit ourselves to his guidance and government. And let us pray for the coming of the glorious day, when there shall be one Lord through all the earth.

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 1:8-11

We have here a prediction,

I. Of the rejection of Israel for a time, which is signified by the name of another child that Hosea had by his adulterous spouse, Hos 1:8, Hos 1:9. And still we must observe that those children whose names carried these direful omens in them to Israel were all children of whoredoms (Hos 1:2), all born of the harlot that Hosea married, to intimate that the ruin of Israel was the natural product of the sin of Israel. If they had not first revolted from God, they would never have been rejected by him; God never leaves any till they first leave him. Here is, 1. The birth of this child: When she had weaned her daughter, she conceived and bore a son. Notice is taken of the delay of the birth of this child, which was to carry in its name a certain presage of their utter rejection, to intimate God's patience with them, and his unwillingness to proceed to extremity. Some think that her bearing another son signifies that people's persisting in their wickedness; lust still conceived and brought forth sin. They added to do evil (so the Chaldee paraphrase expounds it); they were old in adulteries, and obstinate. 2. The name given him: Call him Lo-ammi - Not my people. When they were told that God would no more have mercy on them they regarded it not, but buoyed up themselves with this conceit, that they were God's people, whom he could not but have mercy on. And therefore he plucks that staff from under them, and disowns all relation to them: You are not my people, and I will not be your God. " I will not be yours (so the word it); I will be in no relation to you, will have nothing to do with you; I will not be your King, your Father, your patron and protector."We supply it very well with that which includes all, " I will not be your God; I will not be to you what I have been, nor what you vainly expect I should be, nor what I would have been if you had kept close to me."Observe, " You are not my people; you do not act as becomes my people; you are not observant of me and obedient to me, as my people should be; you are not my people, but the people of this and the other dunghill-deity; and therefore I will not own you for my people, will not protect you, will not put in any claim to you, not demand you, not deliver you out of the hands of those that have seized you; let them take you; you are none of mine. You will not have me to be your God, but pay your homage to the pretenders, and therefore I will not be your God; you shall have no interest in me, shall expect no benefit from me."Note, Our being taken into covenant with God is owing purely to him and to his grace, for then it begins on his side: I will be to them a God, and then they shall be to me a people; we love him because he first loved us. But our being cast out of covenant is owing purely to ourselves and our own folly. The breach is on man's side: You are not my people, and therefore I will not be your God; if God hate any, it is because they first hated him. This was fulfilled in Israel when they were utterly taken away into the land of Assyria, and their place knew them no more. They were no longer God's people, for they lost the knowledge and worship of him; no prophets were sent to them, no promises made to them, as were to the two tribes in their captivity; nay, they were no longer a people, but, for aught that appears, were mingled with the nations into which they were carried, and lost among them.

II. Of the reduction and restoration of Israel in the fulness of time. Here, as before, mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath; the rejection, as it shall not be total, so it shall not be final (Hos 1:10, Hos 1:11): Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea. See how the same hand that wounded is stretched forth to heal, and how tenderly he that has torn binds up; though God cause grief by his threatenings, yet he will have compassion, and will gather with everlasting kindness. They are very precious promises which are here made concerning the Israel of God, and which may be of use to us now.

1. Some think that these promises had their accomplishment in the return of the Jews out of their captivity in Babylon, when many of the ten tribes joined themselves to Judah, and took the benefit of the liberty which Cyrus proclaimed, came up in great numbers out of the several countries into which they were dispersed, to their own land, appointed Zerubbabel their head, and coalesced into one people, whereas before they had been two distinct nations. And in their own land, where God had by his prophets disowned and rejected them as none of his, he would by his prophets own them and appear for them as his children; and from all parts of the country they should come up to the temple to worship. And we have reason to think that, though this promise has a further reference, yet it was graciously intended and piously used for the support and comfort of the captives in Babylon, as giving them a general assurance of mercy which God had in store for them and their land; their nation could not be destroyed so long as this blessing was in it, was in reserve for it.

2. Some think that these promises will not have their accomplishment, at least not in full, till the general conversion of the Jews in the latter days, which is expected yet to come, when the vast incredible numbers of Jews, that are now dispersed as the sand of the sea, shall be brought to embrace the faith of Christ and be incorporated in the gospel-church. Then, and not till then, God will own them as his people, his children, even there where they had lain under the dismal tokens of their rejection. The Jewish doctors look upon this promise as not having had its accomplishment yet. But,

3. It is certain that this promise had its accomplishment in the setting up of the kingdom of Christ, by the preaching of the gospel, and the bringing in both of Jews and Gentiles to it, for to this these words are applied by St. Paul (Rom 9:25, Rom 9:26), and by St. Peter when he writes to the Jews of the dispersion, 1Pe 2:10. Israel here is the gospel-church, the spiritual Israel (Gal 6:16), all believers who follow the steps, and inherit the blessing of faithful Abraham, who is the father of all that believe, whether Jews or Gentiles, Rom 4:11, Rom 4:12. Now let us see what is promised concerning this Israel.

(1.) That it shall greatly multiply, and the numbers of it be increased; it shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered. Though Israel according to the flesh be diminished and made few, the spiritual Israel shall be numerous, shall be innumerable. In the vast multitudes that by the preaching of the gospel have been brought to Christ, both in the first ages of Christianity and ever since, this promise is fulfilled, thousands out of every tribe in Israel, and out of other nations, a multitude which no man can number, Rev 7:4, Rev 7:9; Gal 4:27. In this the promise made to Abraham, when God called him Abraham the high father of a multitude, had its full accomplishment (Gen 17:5), and that Gen 22:17. Some observe that they are here compared to the sand of the sea, not only for their numbers, but as the sand of the sea serves for a boundary to the waters, that they shall not overflow the earth, so the Israelites indeed are a wall of defence to the places where they live, to keep off judgments. God can do nothing against Sodom while Lot is there.

(2.) That God will renew his covenant with the gospel-Israel, and will incorporate it a church to himself, by as full and ample a charter as that whereby the Old Testament church was incorporated; nay, and its privileges shall be much greater: " In the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people, there shall you be again admitted into covenant, and owned as my people."The abandoned Gentiles in their respective places, and the rejected Jews in theirs, shall be favoured and blessed. There, where the fathers were cast off for their unbelief, the children, upon their believing, shall be taken in. This is a blessed resurrection, the making of those the people of God that were not a people. Nay, but the privilege is enlarged; now it is not only, You are my people, as formerly, but You are the sons of the living God, whether by birth you were Jews or Gentiles. Israel under the law was God's son, his first-born, but then they were as children under age; now, under the gospel, they have grown up both to greater understanding and greater liberty, Gal 4:1, Gal 4:2. Note, [1.] It is the unspeakable privilege of all believers that they have the living God for their Father, the ever-living God, and may look upon themselves as his children by grace and adoption. [2.] The sonship of believers shall be owned and acknowledged; it shall be said to them, for their comfort and satisfaction, nay, and it shall be said for their honour in the hearing of the world, You are the sons of the living God. Let not the saints disquiet themselves; let not others despise them; for, sooner or later, there shall be a manifestation of the children of God, and all the world shall be made to know their excellency and the value God has for them. [3.] It will add much to their comfort, very much to their honour, when they are dignified with the tokens of God's favour in that very place where they had long lain under the tokens of his displeasure. This speaks comfort to the believing Gentiles, that they need not go up to Jerusalem, to be received and owned as God's children; no, they may stay where they are, and in that place, though it be in the remotest corner of the earth, in that place where they were at a distance, where it was said to them, " You are not God's people, "but are separated from them (Isa 56:3, Isa 56:6), even there, without leaving their country and kindred, they may by faith receive the Spirit of adoption, witnessing with their spirits that " they are the children of God. "

(3.) That those who had been at variance should be happily brought together (Hos 1:11): Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together. This uniting of Judah and Israel, those two kingdoms that were now so much at variance, biting and devouring one another, is mentioned only as a specimen, or one instance, of the happy effect of the setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world, the bringing of those that had been at the greatest enmity one against another to a good understanding one of another and a good affection one to another. This was literally fulfilled when the Galileans, who inhabited that part of the country which belonged to the ten tribes, and probably for the most part descended from them, so heartily joined with those that were probably called Jews (that were of Judea) in following Christ and embracing his gospel; and his first disciples were partly Jews and partly Galileans. The first that were blessed with the light of the gospel were of the land of Zebulun and Naphtali (Mat 4:15); and, though there was no good-will at all between the Jews and the Galileans, yet, upon their believing in Christ, they were happily consolidated, and there were no remains of the former disaffection they had to one another; nay, when the Samaritans believed, though between them and the Jews there was a much greater enmity, yet in Christ there was a perfect unanimity, Act 8:14. Thus Judah and Israel were gathered together; yet this was but a type of the much more celebrated coalition between Jews and Gentiles, when, by the death of Christ, the partition-wall of the ceremonial law was taken down. See Eph 2:14-16. Christ died, to gather together in one all the children of God that were scattered abroad, Joh 11:51; Eph 1:10.

(4.) That Jesus Christ should be the centre of unity to all God's spiritual Israel. They shall all agree to appoint to themselves one head, which can be no other than he whom God has appointed, even Christ. Note, Jesus Christ is the head of the church, the one only head of it, not only a head of government, as of the body politic, but a head of vital influence, as of the natural body. To believe in Christ is to appoint him to ourselves for our head, that is, to consent to God's appointment, and willingly commit ourselves to his guidance and government; and this in concurrence and communion with all good Christians that make him their head; so that, though they are many, yet in him they are one, and so become one with each other. Qui conveniunt in aliquo tertio inter se conveniunt - Those who agree with a third agree with each other.

(5.) That, having appointed Christ for their head, they shall come up out of the land; they shall come, some of all sorts, from all parts, to join themselves to the church, as, under the Jewish economy, they came up from all corners of the land of Israel to Jerusalem, to worship (Psa 122:4), Thither the tribes go up, to which there is a plain allusion in that prophecy of the accession of the Gentiles to the church (Isa 2:3), Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord. It denotes not a local remove (for they are said to be in the same place, Hos 1:10), but a change of their mind, a spiritual ascent to Christ. They shall come up from the earth (so it may be read); for those who have given up themselves to Christ as their head take their affections off from this earth, and the things of it, to set them upon things above (Col 3:1, Col 3:2); for they are not of the world (Joh 15:19), but have their conversation in heaven. They shall come up out of the land, though it be the land of their nativity; they shall, in affection, come out from it, that they may follow the Lamb withersoever he goes. Thus the learned Dr. Pocock takes it.

(6.) That, when all this comes to pass, great shall be the day of Jezreel. Though great is the day of Jezreel's affliction (so some understand it), yet great shall be the day of Jezreel's glory. This shall be Israel's day; the day shall be their own, after their enemies have long had their day. Israel is here called Jezreel, the seed of God, the holy seed (Isa 6:13), the substance of the land. This seed is now sown in the earth, and buried under the clods; but great shall be its day when the harvest comes. Great was the church's day when there were added to it daily such as should be saved; then did the Almighty do great things for it.

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 1:10-11

(Heb. Bib. Hos 2:1-3). To the symbolical action, which depicts the judgment that falls blow after blow upon the ten tribes, issuing in the destruction of the kingdom, and the banishment of its inhabitants, there is now appended, quite abruptly, the saving announcement of the final restoration of those who turn to the Lord.

(Note: The division adopted in the Hebrew text, where these verses are separated from the preceding ones, and joined to the next verse, is opposed to the general arrangement of the prophetic proclamations, which always begin with reproving the sins, then describe the punishment or judgment, and close with the announcement of salvation. The division adopted by the lxx and Vulg., and followed by Luther (and Eng. ver.: Tr.), in which these two verses form part of the first chapter, and the new chapter is made to commence with Hos 1:3 (of the Hebrew), on account of its similarity to Hos 1:4, is still more unsuitable, since this severs the close connection between the subject-matter of Hos 1:2 and that of Hos 1:3 in the most unnatural way.)

Hos 1:10

(Heb. Bib. Hos 2:1). "And the number of the sons of Israel will be as the sand of the sea, which is not measured and not counted; and it will come to pass at the place where men say to them, Ye are not my people, it will be said to them, Sons of the living God." It might appear as though the promise made to the patriarchs, of the innumerable increase of Israel, were abolished by the rejection of the ten tribes of Israel predicted here. But this appearance, which might confirm the ungodly in their false security, is met by the proclamation of salvation, which we must connect by means of a "nevertheless"with the preceding announcement of punishment. The almost verbal agreement between this announcement of salvation and the patriarchal promises, more especially in Gen 22:17 and Gen 32:13, does indeed naturally suggest the idea, that by the "sons of Israel,"whose innumerable increase is here predicted, we are to understand all the descendants of Jacob or of Israel as a whole. But if we notice the second clause, according to which those who are called "not-my-people"will then be called "sons of the living God;"and still more, if we observe the distinction drawn between the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah in Gen 32:11, this idea is proved to be quite untenable, since the "sons of Israel"can only be the ten tribes. We must assume, therefore, that the prophet had in his mind only one portion of the entire nation, namely, the one with which alone he was here concerned, and that he proclaims that, even with regard to this, the promise in question will one day be fulfilled. In what way, is stated in the second clause. At the place where ( בּלמקום אשׁר does not mean "instead of"or "in the place of,"as the Latin loco does; cf. Lev 4:24, Lev 4:33; Jer 22:12; Ezekiel 21:35; Neh 4:14) men called them Lō' - ‛ammı̄ , they shall be called sons of the living God. This place must be either Palestine, where their rejection was declared by means of this name, or the land of exile, where this name became an actual truth. The correctness of the latter view, which is the one given in the Chaldee, is proved by Gen 32:11, where their coming up out of the land of exile is spoken of, from which it is evident that the change is to take place in exile. Jehovah is called El chai , the living God, in opposition to the idols which idolatrous Israel had made for itself; and "sons of the living God"expresses the thought, that Israel would come again into the right relation to the true God, and reach the goal of its divine calling. For the whole nation was called and elevated into the position of sons of Jehovah, through its reception into the covenant with the Lord (compare Deu 14:1; Deu 32:19, with Exo 4:22).

Hos 1:11

The restoration of Israel will be followed by its return to the Lord. Hos 1:11. "And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel gather together, and appoint themselves one head, and come up out of the land; for great is the day of Jezreel." The gathering together, i.e., the union of Judah and Israel, presupposes that Judah will find itself in the same situation as Israel; that is to say, that it will also be rejected by the Lord. The object of the union is to appoint themselves one head, and go up out of the land. The words of the two clauses recal to mind the departure of the twelve tribes of Israel out of Egypt. The expression, to appoint themselves a head, which resembles Num 14:4, where the rebellious congregation is about to appoint itself a head to return to Egypt, points back to Moses; and the phrase, "going up out of the land,"is borrowed from Exo 1:10, which also serves to explain הארץ with the definite article. The correctness of this view is placed beyond all doubt by Exo 2:14-15, where the restoration of rejected Israel is compared to leading it through the desert to Canaan; and a parallel is drawn between it and the leading up out of Egypt in the olden time. It is true that the banishment of the sons of Israel out of Canaan is not predicted disertis verbis in what precedes; but it followed as clearly as possible from the banishment into the land of their enemies, with which even Moses had threatened the people in the case of continued apostasy (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28). Moses had, in fact, already described the banishment of rebellious Israel among the heathen in so many words, as carrying them back into Egypt (Deu 28:68), and had thereby intimated that Egypt was the type of the heathen world, in the midst of which Israel was to be scattered abroad. On the basis of these threatenings of the law, Hosea also threatens ungodly Ephraim with a return to Egypt in Hos 8:13 and Hos 9:3. And just as in these passages Egypt is a type of the heathen lands, into which Israel is to be driven away on account of its apostasy from the Lord; so, in the passage before us, Canaan, to which Israel is to be led up out of Egypt, is a type of the land of the Lord, and the guidance of them to Canaan a figurative representation of the reunion of Israel with its God, and of its reinstatement in the full enjoyment of the blessings of salvation, which are shadowed forth in the fruits and productions of Canaan. (For further remarks, see Hos 2:14, Hos 2:15.) Another point to be noticed is the use of the word 'echâd , one (single) head, i.e., one prince or king. The division of the nation into two kingdoms is to cease; and the house of Israel is to turn again to Jehovah, and to its king David (Hos 3:5). The reason assigned for this promise, in the words "for great is (will be) the day of Jezreel,"causes not little difficulty; and this cannot be removed by giving a different meaning to the name Jezreel, on the ground of vv. 24, 25, from that which it has in Hos 1:4-5. The day of Jezreel can only be the day on which the might of Israel was broken in the valley of Jezreel, and the kingdom of the house of Israel was brought to an end (Hos 1:4). This day is called great, i.e., important, glorious, because of its effects and consequences in relation to Israel. The destruction of the might of the ten tribes, the cessation of their kingdom, and their expulsion into exile, form the turning-point, through which the conversion of the rebellious to the Lord, and their reunion with Judah, are rendered possible. The appellative meaning of יזרעאל , to which there was no allusion at all in Hos 1:4-5, is still kept in the background to a great extent even here, and only so far slightly hinted at, that in the results which follow to the nation, from the judgment poured out upon Israel in Jezreel, the valley of Jezreel becomes a place in which God sows seed for the renovation of Israel.

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 1:1-11

Hosea 1 - The Prophet and the Prostitute

A. The life and times of the Prophet Hosea.

1. (1a) Hosea the man.

The word of the LORD that came to Hosea the son of Beeri,

a. The word of the LORD: Plainly said, Hosea was a prophet. He spoke forth the word of the LORD, and applied that word to his life, and to the people and circumstances around him. Hosea was a man, but he was a man God used to speak through.

b. Hosea the son of Beeri: The name Hosea means "salvation." It comes from the same Hebrew root (hoshea) as the names Joshua and Jesus. Throughout the book, Hosea will show us that salvation is found in turning to the LORD and away from our sin.

c. Son of Beeri: This tells us the name of Hosea's father. We also know that he had a wife named Gomer (Hosea 1:3), and two sons and a daughter (Hosea 1:4, 1:6, 1:9). Nowhere else in the Bible is Hosea mentioned.

2. (1b) The times Hosea lived in.

In the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

a. Kings of Judah . . . king of Israel: Hosea's ministry spanned the years 760 to 720 B.C. during the days of the divided monarchy. This was after days of David and Solomon, when the people of God divided in a civil war, creating two nations: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. This is some 250 years after the time of King David, and some 650 years after Israel came into the Promised Land.

b. Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah: Hosea's ministry was in the northern kingdom of Israel. We know this because in Hosea 7:5 he calls the king of Israel our king, and because his ministry is focused towards the northern kingdom of Israel and its capital city Samaria. But for the benefit of his readers in the southern kingdom of Judah, Hosea gives them a reference point for the days of his ministry according to the kings of Judah.

c. Jeroboam . . . king of Israel: Hosea began his ministry in the days of Jeroboam II. From a political and economic standpoint Jeroboam II was a successful and good king (2 Kings 14:23-29). Israel prospered politically and materially under his reign, but it was a time of significant spiritual and moral decay. The terrible result of this decay wouldn't become evident until the days of Jeroboam II were finished.

i. A dramatic example of this is seen in the lives of the six kings that followed Jeroboam II during the time of Hosea's ministry. Of those six kings, four were violently overthrown and one died as a conquered exile in Assyria.

Kings of Israel during the Ministry of Hosea, 760 to 720 B.C.

Dynasty of Jehu

Jeroboam II	793-752 B.C.	Gave throne to his son
Zechariah	753-752 B.C.	Assassinated

Dynasty of Shallum

Shallum

752 B.C. (one month)

Assassinated

Dynasty of Menahem

Menahem	752-742 B.C.	Gave throne to his son
Pekahiah	724-740 B.C.	Overthrown in coup d'etat

Dynasty of Pekah

Pekah

752-732 B.C.

Assassinated

Dynasty of Hoshea

Hoshea

732-722 B.C.

Died in exile

ii. Hosea began his ministry at a time when things were so politically successful and economically prosperous that people just didn't look to the Lord the way that they should. The seeds of idolatry, spiritual failure, and moral corruption sown in days of Jeroboam II produced a tragic harvest in the following years.

iii. Significantly, Jeroboam I was the first king of a divided Israel, leading a popular revolt against the high taxation of Rehoboam, son of Solomon (1 Kings 12). Jeroboam II followed in the wicked footsteps of Jeroboam I.

B. Israel's unfaithfulness and a promise of restoration.

1. (2) The command to take a prostitute as a wife.

When the LORD began to speak by Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: "Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD."

a. The LORD said to Hosea: God's first word to Hosea was something for his own life. This is how God almost always works. Hosea probably would have preferred it if God gave him a word for someone else. But before the prophet can speak to the nation, he first has to hear from God for himself.

b. Go take yourself a wife of harlotry: The word God had for Hosea wasn't easy. Hosea was told to take a prostitute for a wife. Why? Because the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD.

i. Through His command to Hosea, God brings to life a consistent picture used throughout the Old Testament. In this picture, the LORD is the husband of Israel, and their passionate, chronic attraction for idols was like the lust of an adulterer. His people were as unfaithful as a prostitute was.

ii. In this vivid picture, we see how our idolatry and rejection of the LORD feels to God. When we put anything in front of the LORD, it hurts Him like unfaithfulness hurts the victim of an adulterous marriage. By commanding Hosea to take . . . a wife of harlotry, God will put Hosea in the place where he feels what God feels - and it won't feel good.

iii. "We cannot say that God grieves exactly as we grieve, if only because He controls all things and always works them out in accordance with His own good pleasure. Nevertheless, there is a parallel between God's feelings and ours." (Boice)

iv. Many commentators press the idea that Gomer was not a prostitute when Hosea first met and married her, she only became that later and Hosea knew from the LORD that she would become that. This may be the case, but we don't know this from the text. It could go either way.

2. (3-5) Hosea's marriage to Gomer and their first son.

So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Then the LORD said to him: "Call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. It shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel."

a. So he went and took Gomer: We can assume that Hosea would never marry a prostitute except by the commandment of the LORD. It showed a lot of obedience for him to actually carry out this difficult command.

i. As will be made clear, when Hosea married Gomer, she did not give up her career as a prostitute. It wasn't that Hosea found a fallen woman and through love and kindness restored her to virtue. He married a prostitute - no doubt hoping she would give up her sin and be devoted only to him - and she stayed a prostitute.

ii. No doubt, this happened after the pattern of human nature. When Hosea and Gomer first married, she probably promised eternal love and devotion. She probably showed every sign of being committed to Hosea. But after a while, and in difficult circumstances, she fell back into prostitution. Perhaps it was out of boredom. Perhaps it was out of a feeling of neglect. Perhaps it was out of a sense of need. Sadly, we share the same inexcusable reasons for our idolatry, when we prefer another god to the LORD God.

iii. Some commentators believe this never really happened, and that Hosea is only telling a vivid story. They think it could never have happened because God would never have a prophet marry a prostitute. But Boice rightly observes, "If Hosea's story cannot be real (because 'God could not ask a man to marry an unfaithful woman'), then neither is the story of salvation real, because that is precisely what Christ has done for us."

b. Call his name Jezreel: The first son born to Hosea and Gomer was "Jezreel" and the name spoke of two things. First, Jezreel means "Scattered," and Israel would soon be scattered in exile by an conquering Assyrian army. Second, Jezreel refers to the Valley of Jezreel, where Jehu - the founder of the dynasty that put Jeroboam II on the throne - massacred all the descendants of Ahab, thus establishing his throne (2 Kings 10:11). God directed Hosea to name his son Jezreel to confirm His promise to avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel by judging the house of Jehu.

i. Obviously, this was not good news to Jeroboam II. It said that his dynasty, the dynasty of Jehu, was coming to an end. In fact, after the death of Jeroboam II in 752 B.C. his son Zechariah barely reigned only six months before being assassinated (2 Kings 15:8-10), and that was the end of the house of Jehu.

c. And bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel: Just as the house of Jehu would fall, so would the whole kingdom of Israel. Before the prophetic ministry of Hosea was finished, Israel was defeated, destroyed, and taken captive by the mighty Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 17:20-23).

d. Break the bow of Israel: "The bow was a symbol of power in a day when it was the principle instrument of warfare. Thus a broken bow symbolized the loss of power." (Hubbard)

3. (6-7) A daughter born to Hosea and Gomer.

And she conceived again and bore a daughter. Then God said to him: "Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword or battle, by horses or horsemen."

a. Call her name Lo-Ruhamah: The name Lo-Ruhamah means "No Mercy." Every call to this child with the unfortunate name would remind Hosea and everyone else of coming judgment and exile.

b. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah: The army of Assyria that destroyed Israel also attacked Judah, but they did not conquer them. Instead, God miraculously fought on behalf of Judah against Assyria when the angel of the LORD killed 185,000 soldiers in the camp of Assyria in one night (2 Kings 19:35).

i. The fact that God had no mercy to Israel and had mercy towards Judah shows two things. First, it is true that Judah and her kings were more faithful unto the Lord during these years, as exemplified by King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-8). Second, it does not really matter if Judah was more worthy of mercy than Israel was, because by its very nature mercy is mercy. If one deserves leniency, then leniency is a matter of justice, not mercy. Mercy is only shown to the guilty. Therefore it is within the wise and loving heart of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy (Romans 9:15). But no one is ever unfair for not showing mercy.

4. (8-9) A second son born to Hosea and Gomer.

Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said: "Call his name Lo-Ammi, For you are not My people, And I will not be your God.

a. Call his name Lo-Ammi: The name Lo-Ammi means "Not My People." Every call to this unfortunately named child reminded Hosea and everyone else that the people of Israel had pushed away the Lord God, and should no longer be considered His people.

i. Since Gomer did not give up her prostitution, there may have been a cruel irony in the name Lo-Ammi. Perhaps this son really was not the son of Hosea, but of another man. Perhaps the appearance of the child made this evident. The message God had to deliver to Israel through Hosea was hard enough, but God also made Hosea have to live it.

b. For you are not My people, and I will not be your God: This is not so much of a sentence or a penalty, as it is a simple stating of fact. It isn't as if the people really wanted to be the people of God, yet God will not have them. Instead, the people of Israel rejected God, and here the LORD simply recognizes that fact. He won't play "let's pretend": "You pretend to be My people and I will pretend to be your God." The time for those games is over.

5. (1:10-2:1) A promise of future restoration.

"Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' there it shall be said to them, 'You are sons of the living God.' Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and appoint for themselves one head; and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel! Say to your brethren, 'My people,' and to your sisters, 'Mercy is shown.'"

a. Yet the number of the children of Israel: Though God has promised judgment, the days of judgment won't last forever. After judgment, there will come a day of prosperity, increase, and blessing.

b. Not My people . . . You are sons of the living God: God would fulfill the promise of Lo-Ammi (Hosea 1:9), but the judgment would not last forever. One day Israel will return to the LORD, and once again be called sons of the living God.

c. Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together: God promised a restoration so complete that the division caused by the civil war of Rehoboam and Jeroboam I - a division that stood for 170 years - would one day be erased.

i. We can say that one way this promise is fulfilled is in the church, where God brings together Israel, Judah - and even Gentiles - into one body (Ephesians 2:14-16).

d. For great will be the day of Jezreel! The first child of Hosea and Gomer was named Jezreel as a sign of judgment. But God promises a restoration so complete that Jezreel will once again be a name of greatness, not judgment.

e. Say to your brethren, "My people," and to your sisters, "Mercy is shown": This shows that the redemption is complete. The child named Jezreel has his name redeemed, and now the next two children (Lo-Ruhamah, "No Mercy" and Lo-Ammi, "Not My People") have their name redeemed as Israel is once again regarded as "My People" unto the LORD and "Mercy is shown" unto them. What was a sign of judgment is now evidence of redemption.

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

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 1 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Hos 1:1, Hosea, to shew God’s judgment for spiritual whoredom, takes Gomer, Hos 1:4, and has by her Jezreel; Hos 1:6, Loruhamah; Hos 1:8, and Lo-ammi; Hos 1:10, The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head.

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 1 (Chapter Introduction)

HOSEA CHAPTER 1

The times in which Hosea prophesied, Hos 1:1 . To show the idolatrous whoredoms of the land, he marrieth a wife of whoredom, and hath by her Jezreel, Hos 1:2-5 , Lo-ruhamah, Hos 1:6,7 , and Lo-ammi, Hos 1:8,9 . The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head, Hos 1:10,11 .

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 1 (Chapter Introduction)

(Hos 1:1-7) Under a figure, is represented the shameful idolatry of the ten tribes.

(Hos 1:8-11) The calling of the Gentiles, and the uniting Israel and Judah under the Messiah.

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 1 (Chapter Introduction)

The mind of God is revealed to this prophet, and by him to the people, in the first three chapters, by signs and types, but afterwards only by discourse. In this chapter we have, I. The general title of the whole book (Hos 1:1). II. Some particular instructions which he was ordered to give to the people of God. 1. He must convince them of their sin in going a whoring from God, by marrying a wife of whoredoms (Hos 1:2, Hos 1:3). 2. He must foretel the ruin coming upon them for their sin, in the names of his sons, which signified God's disowning and abandoning them (Hos 1:4-6, Hos 1:8, Hos 1:9). 3. He must speak comfortable to the kingdom of Judah, which still retained the pure worship of God, and assure them of the salvation of the Lord (Hos 1:7). 4. He must give an intimation of the great mercy God had in store both for Israel and Judah, in the latter days (Hos 1:10, Hos 1:11), for in this prophecy many precious promises of mercy are mixed with the threatenings of wrath.

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 1 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 1

After the general inscription of the book, in which the author, penman, and time of this prophecy, are expressed, Hos 1:1, the people of Israel are reproved for their idolatry, under the representation of a harlot the prophet is bid to marry, which he is said to do, Hos 1:2, and their ruin and destruction are foretold in the names of the children he had by her, and by what is said on the occasion of the birth of each, Hos 1:4, but mercy and salvation are promised to Judah, Hos 1:7 and the chapter is concluded with a glorious prophecy of the conversion of the Gentiles, and the calling of the Jews in the latter day; and of the union of Judah and Israel under one Head and Saviour, Christ; and of the greatness and glory of that day, Hos 1:10.

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.