Text -- Hosea 2:3 (NET)

2:3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked, and expose her like she was when she was born. I will turn her land into a wilderness and make her country a parched land, so that I might kill her with thirst.

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Hos 2:3

As was usually done by incensed husbands, divorcing impudent adulteresses.

Wesley: Hos 2:3

Barren and desolate.

JFB: Hos 2:3

(Eze 16:4; Eze 23:25-26, Eze 23:28-29). The day of her political "birth" was when God delivered her from the bondage of Egypt, and set up the theocracy.

JFB: Hos 2:3

(Jer 6:8; Zep 2:13). Translate, "make her as the wilderness," namely, that in which she passed forty years on her way to her goodly possession of Canaan. With this agrees the mention of "thirst" (compare Jer 2:6).

Clarke: Hos 2:3

Lest I strip her naked - Lest I expose her to infamy, want, and punishment. The punishment of an adulteress among the ancient Germans was this: "They shaved off her hair, stripped her naked in the presence of her relatives, and in this state drove her from the house of her husband."See on Isa 3:17 (note); and see also Eze 16:39; Eze 23:26. However reproachful this might be to such delinquents, it had no tendency to promote their moral reformation

Clarke: Hos 2:3

And set her like a dry land - The Israelites, if obedient, were promised a land flowing with milk and honey; but, should they be disobedient, the reverse. And this is what God here threatens against disobedient Israel.

Calvin: Hos 2:3

Though the Prophet in this verse severely threatens the Israelites, yet it appears from a full view of the whole passage, that he mitigates the sentence we have explained: for by declaring what sort of vengeance was suspended over them, except they timely repented, he shows that there was some hope of pardon remaining, which, as we shall see, he expresses afterwards more clearly.

He now begins by saying, Lest I strip her naked, and set her as on the day of her nativity This alone would have been dreadful; but we shall see in the passage, that God so denounces punishment, that he cuts not off altogether the hope of mercy: and at the same time he reminds them that the divorce, for which they were disposed to contend with God, was such, that God yet shows indulgence to the repudiated wife. For when a husband dismisses an adulteress, he strips her entirely, and rightly so: but God shows here, that though the Israelites had become wanton, and were like a shameless woman, he had yet so divorced them hitherto, that he had left them their dowry, their ornaments and marriage gifts. We then see that God had not used, as he might have done, his right; and hence he says, Lest I strip her naked; which means this, “I seem to you too rigid, because I have declared, that I am no longer a husband to your mother: and yet see how kindly I have spared her; for she remains as yet almost untouched: though she has lost the name of wife, I have not yet stripped her; she as yet lives in sufficient plenty. Whence is this but from my indulgence? for I did not wish to follow up my right, as husbands do. But except she learns to humble herself, I now gird up myself for the purpose of executing heavier punishments.” We now comprehend the whole import of the passage.

What the Prophet means by the day of nativity, we may readily learn from Eze 16:0; for Ezekiel there treats the same subject with our Prophet, but much more at large. He says that the Israelites were then born, when God delivered them from the tyranny of Egypt. This then was the nativity of the people. And yet it was a miserable sight, when they fled away with fear and trembling, when they were exposed to their enemies: and after they entered the wilderness, being without bread and water, their condition was very wretched. The Prophet says now, Lest I set her as on the day of her nativity, and set her as the desert. Some regard the letter כ caph to be understood, as if it were written, כבמדבר as in the desert; that is, I will set her as she was formerly in the desert; and this exposition is not unsuitable; for the day of nativity, the Prophet doubtless calls that time, when the people were brought out of Egypt: they immediately entered the desert, where there was the want of every thing. They might then have soon perished there, being consumed by famine and thirst, had not the Lord miraculously supported them. The sense then seems consistent by this rendering, Lest I set her as in the deserts and as in a dry land. But another exposition is more approved, Lest I set her like the desert and dry land

With regard to what the Prophet had in view, it was necessary to remind the Israelites here of what they were at their beginning. For whence was their contempt of God, whence was their obstinate pride, but that they were inebriated with their pleasures? For when there flowed an abundance of all good things, they thought of themselves, that they had come as it were from the clouds; for men commonly forget what they formerly were, when the Lord has made them rich. As then the benefits of God for the most part blind us, and make us to think ourselves to be as it were half-gods, the Prophet here sets before the children of Abraham what their condition was when the Lord redeemed them. “I have redeemed you,” he says, “from the greatest miseries and extreme degradation.” Sons of kings are born kings, and are brought up in the midst of pomps and pleasures; nay, before they are born, great pomps, we know, are prepared for them, which they enjoy from their mother’s womb. But when one is born of an ignoble and obscure mother, and begotten by a mean and poor father, and afterwards arises to a different condition, if he is proud of his splendour, and remembers not that he was once a plebeian and of no repute, this may be justly thrown in his face, “Who were you formerly? Why! do you not know that you were a cow-herd, or a mechanic, or one covered with filth? Fortune has smiled on you, or God has raised you to riches and honours; but you are so self-complacent as though your condition had ever been the same.”

This is the drift of what the Prophet says: I will set thy mother, he says, as she was at her first nativity. For who are you? A holy race, a chosen nation, a people sacred to me? Be it so: but free adoption has brought all this to you. Ye were exiles in Egypt, strangers in the land of Canaan, and were nothing better than other people. Besides, Pharaoh reduced you to a base servitude, ye were then the most abject of slaves. How magnificent, with regard to you, was your going forth! Did you not flee away tremblingly and in the night? And did you not afterwards live in a miraculous way for forty years in the desert, when I rained manna on you from the clouds? Since then your poverty and want has been so great, since there is nothing to make you to raise your crests, how is it that you show no more modesty? But if your present condition creates in you forgetfulness, I will set you as on the day of your nativity.” It now follows —

TSK: Hos 2:3

I strip : Hos 2:10; Isa 47:3; Jer 13:22, Jer 13:26; Eze 16:37-39, Eze 23:26-29; Rev 17:16

was born : Eze 16:4-8, Eze 16:22

as : Isa 32:13, Isa 32:14, Isa 33:9, Isa 64:10; Jer 2:31, Jer 4:26, Jer 12:10, Jer 22:6; Eze 19:13; Eze 20:35, Eze 20:36

a dry : Jer 2:6, Jer 17:6, Jer 51:43

and slay : Exo 17:3; Jdg 15:18; Amo 8:11-13

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Hos 2:3

Lest I strip her naked - " There is an outward visible nakedness and an inward, which is invisible. The invisible nakedness is, when the soul within is bared of the glory and the grace of God."The visible nakedness is the privation of God’ s temporal and visible gifts, the goods of this world, or outward distinction. God’ s inward gifts the sinful soul or nation despises, while those outward gifts she prizes. And therefore, when the soul parts with the inward ornaments of God’ s grace, He strips her of the outward, His gifts of nature, of His providence and of His protection, if so be, through her outward misery and shame and poverty, she may come to feel that deeper misery and emptiness and disgrace within, which she had had no heart to feel. So, when our first parents lost the robe of innocence, "they knew that they were naked"Gen 3:7.

And set her - (Literally "I will fix her,"so that she shall have no power to free herself, but must remain as a gazing stock,) "as in the day that she was born,"i. e., helpless, defiled, uncleansed, uncared for, unformed, cast out and loathsome. Such she was in Egypt, which is in Holy Scripture spoken of, as her birthplace Eze 16:4; for there she first became a people; thence the God of her fathers called her to be His people. There she was naked of the grace and of the love of God, and of the wisdom of the law; indwelt by an evil spirit, as being an idolatress; without God; and under hard bondage, in works of mire and clay, to Pharaoh, the type of Satan, and her little ones a prey. For when a soul casts off the defense of heavenly grace, it is an easy prey to Satan.

And make her as a wilderness, and set her as a dry land, and slay her with thirst - The outward desolation, which God inflicts, is a picture of the inward. Drought and famine are among the four sore judgments, with which God threatened the land, and our Lord forewarned them, "Your house is left unto you desolate"Mat 23:38; and Isaiah says, "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee"Isa 60:15. But the prophet does not say, make her a wilderness, but make "her as a wilderness."The soul of the sinner is solitary and desolate, for it has not the presence of God; unfruitful, bearing briars and thorns only, for it is unbedewed by God’ s grace, unwatered by the Fountain of living waters; athirst, "not with thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord,"yet also, burning with desire, which the foul streams of this world’ s pleasure never slake. In contrast with such thirst, Jesus says of the Holy Spirit which He would give to them that believe in Him, "Whosoever drinketh of the water, that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water, that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life"Joh 4:14; Joh 7:38-39.

: "But was not that certain, which God had said, ‘ I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel?’ How then does God recall it, saying, ‘ Let her put away her fornications, etc. lest I do to her this or that which I have spoken?’ This is not unlike to that, when sentence had been passed on Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel saying, ‘ This is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my Lord the king; they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling; the same Daniel says, Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and redeem thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy on the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility’ Dan 4:24-25, Dan 4:27. What should we learn hereby, but that it hangs upon our own will, whether God suspend the judgment or no? For we ought not to impute our own evil to God, or impiously think that fate rules us. In other words, this or that evil comes, not because God foreknew or foreordained it; but, because this evil was to be, or would be done, therefore God both foreknew it, and prefixed His sentence upon it. Why then does God predetermine an irrevocable sentence? Because He foresaw incorrigible malice. Why, again, after pronouncing sentence, doth God counsel amendment? That we may know by experience, that they are incorrigible. Therefore, He waits for them, although they will not return, and with much patience invites them to repentance."Individuals also repented, although the nation was incorrigible.

Poole: Hos 2:3

Lest: this little word suggests great hopes; if this treacherous wife will cease her lewdness, and become chaste, she may be forgiven; it reserves room for repentance and reconciliation, without these it threatens.

Strip her naked as was usually done by incensed husbands, divorcing impudent adulteresses: see Eze 16:38,39 23:26 . So God will strip her of all her ornaments which he gave; so he did gradually by Israel’ s enemies the Assyrians, till at last by Shalmaneser she was stripped to the skin, and led away captive; God east her out thus by him.

And set her as in the day that she was born: it is not much material to fix the period of this birth, but it is enough God threatens, as sometimes we do, an extreme, poor, desolate, and comfortless condition, by a kind of proverbial speech, as naked as ever born.

And make her as a wilderness: this phrase may somewhat intimate the time of Israel’ s birth, viz. between their going out of Egypt and the giving of the law, or their entering upon their travels in the wilderness. Their state was poor enough then, now it shall be as bad, or worse; they shall be as the wilderness, barren and desolate, affording nothing for life or delight, much less for profit: whereas adulteresses ordinarily hunt after profit and delights, God will punish adulterous Israel with denying both to her, she shall be like the wilderness, horrid and starving.

And set her like a dry land: this is much the same with the former, and added to confirm and illustrate it.

And slay her: all this shall be done to the end she may be destroyed: of old God led his people through the. wilderness to a city of habitation, now he will make them as the wilderness that they may perish in it.

With thirst: a miserable end, surely, thus to be scorched up with parching heat! so will God’ s wrath burn up these wicked, idolatrous Israelites.

Haydock: Hos 2:3

Drought. In Egypt the people were plunged into idolatry, and oppressed. (Calmet)

Gill: Hos 2:3

Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born,.... Alluding to the case of an infant when born, which comes naked into the world; and referring to the state and condition of the Israelites in Egypt, which was the time of their nativity, as a people and church; see Eze 16:4, and when they were in a state of servitude and bondage, and had no wealth and substance, and without possessions and lands, and had no country of their own to inhabit; and signifying that this should be their case again, if they persisted in their idolatry, impenitence, and unbelief; as has been the case of the ten tribes upon their captivity, when they were stripped of all their wealth and riches, carried away out of their own land, and scattered among the nations, and have never returned since; and as was the case of the Jews in their last destruction, for the rejection of Christ, they were stripped of their civil and religious privileges, of their temporal and spiritual mercies as a nation and church; what they feared is come upon them, that the Romans would come and take away their place and nation, Joh 11:48

and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land; having some respect to her former condition in the wilderness, where they had no food nor drink but what they had from God, as Abarbinel thinks; or else to the destruction and consumption of them in the wilderness, their carcasses falling there, who sinned against the Lord, as the Targum and Jarchi; and denoting the utter destruction of their commonwealth and church, when their land was laid waste, their city destroyed, their house and temple left desolate and burnt, and they deprived of all the necessaries of life, which was their case at their last destruction by the Romans; and to this day they are as they are described, Hos 3:4,

and slay her with thirst; after their vainly expected Messiah, which has brought them to desperation; or with a thirst, not for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord, Amo 8:11, the Gospel, and the ordinances of it, being taken away from them, and the clouds ordered to drop down no rain upon them; that is, the ministers of the word not to preach the Gospel to them; and so are left destitute of the means of grace, and of spiritual life, and of escaping eternal death, Mat 21:43. The Targum of the whole is,

"lest I remove my Shechinah from her, and take away her glory, and set her forsaken, as in the days of old, before she came to my worship; and my fury shall remain upon her, as it remained upon the people of that generation that transgressed my law in the wilderness; and I will set the land desolate, and kill her with thirst.''

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Hos 2:3

¹ tn Heb “and kill her with thirst.” The vav prefixed to the verb (וַהֲמִתִּיהָ, vahamittiha) introduces a purpose/result clause: “in order to make her die of thirst” (purpose) or “and thus make her die of thirst” (result).

Geneva Bible: Hos 2:3

Lest I strip her naked, and ^{( d )} set her as in the day that she was ^{( e )} born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.

^{( d )} For even though his people were as a harlot for their idolatries, yet he had left them with their dress and dowry and certain signs of his favour, but if they continued still, he would utterly destroy them.

^{( e )} When I brought her out of Egypt. See Eze 16:4

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Hos 2:1-23

1 The idolatry of the people.

6 God's judgments against them.

14 His promises of reconciliation with them.

MHCC: Hos 2:1-5

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

Matthew Henry: Hos 2:1-5

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keil-Delitzsch: Hos 2:2-3

What the prophet announced in Hosea 1:2-2:1, partly by a symbolical act, and partly also in a direct address, is carried out still further in the section before us. The close connection between the contents of the two sections is formally indicated by the simple fact, that just as the first section closed with a summons to appropriate the predicted salvation, so the section before us commences with a call to conversion. As Rückert aptly says, "The significant pair give place to the thing signified; Israel itself appears as the adulterous woman."The Lord Himself will set bounds to her adulterous conduct, i.e., to the idolatry of the Israelites. By withdrawing the blessings which they have hitherto enjoyed, and which they fancy that they have received from their idols, He will lead the idolatrous nation to reflection and conversion, and pour the fulness of the blessings of His grace in the most copious measure upon those who have been humbled and improved by the punishment. The threatening and the announcement of punishment extend from Hos 2:2 to Hos 2:13; the proclamation of salvation commences with Hos 2:14, and reaches to the close of Hos 2:23. The threatening of punishment is divided into two strophes, viz., Hos 2:2-7 and Hos 2:8-13. In the first, the condemnation of their sinful conduct is the most prominent; in the second, the punishment is more fully developed.

"Reason with your mother, reason! for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband: that she put away her whoredom from her countenance, and her adultery from between her breasts." Jehovah is the speaker, and the command to get rid of the whoredom is addressed to the Israelites, who are represented as the children of the adulterous wife. The distinction between mother and children forms part of the figurative drapery of the thought; for, in fact, the mother had no existence apart from the children. The nation or kingdom, regarded as an ideal unity, is called the mother; whereas the several members of the nation are the children of this mother. The summons addressed to the children to contend or reason with this mother, that she may give up her adultery, presupposes that, although the nation regarded as a whole was sunken in idolatry, the individual members of it were not all equally slaves to it, so as to have lost their susceptibility for the divine warning, or the possibility of conversion. Not only had the Lord reserved to Himself seven thousand in Elijah's time who had not bowed their knees to Baal, but at all times there were many individuals in the midst of the corrupt mass, who hearkened to the voice of the Lord and abhorred idolatry. The children had reason to plead, because the mother was no longer the wife of Jehovah, and Jehovah was no longer her husband, i.e., because she had dissolved her marriage with the Lord; and the inward, moral dissolution of the covenant of grace would be inevitably followed by the outward, actual dissolution, viz., by the rejection of the nation. It was therefore the duty of the better-minded of the nation to ward off the coming destruction, and do all they could to bring the adulterous wife to desist from her sins. The object of the pleading is introduced with ותסר . The idolatry is described as whoredom and adultery. Whoredom becomes adultery when it is a wife who commits whoredom. Israel had entered into the covenant with Jehovah its God; and therefore its idolatry became a breach of the fidelity which it owed to its God, an act of apostasy from God, which was more culpable than the idolatry of the heathen. The whoredom is attributed to the face, the adultery to the breasts, because it is in these parts of the body that the want of chastity on the part of a woman is openly manifested, and in order to depict more plainly the boldness and shamelessness with which Israel practised idolatry.

The summons to repent is enforced by a reference to the punishment. Hos 2:3. "Lest I strip her naked, and put her as in the day of her birth, and set her like the desert, and make her like a barren land, and let her die with thirst." In the first hemistich the threat of punishment corresponds to the figurative representation of the adulteress; in the second it proceeds from the figure to the fact. In the marriage referred to, the husband had redeemed the wife out of the deepest misery, to unite himself with her. Compare Eze 16:4., where the nation is represented as a naked child covered with filth, which the Lord took to Himself, covering its nakedness with beautiful clothes and costly ornaments, and entering into covenant with it. These gifts, with which the Lord also presented and adorned His wife during the marriage, He would now take away from the apostate wife, and put her once more into a state of nakedness. The day of the wife's birth is the time of Israel's oppression and bondage in Egypt, when it was given up in helplessness to its oppressors. The deliverance out of this bondage was the time of the divine courtship; and the conclusion of the covenant with the nation that had been brought out of Egypt, the time of the marriage. The words, "I set (make) her like the desert,"are to be understood as referring not to the land of Israel, which was to be laid waste, but to the nation itself, which was to become like the desert, i.e., to be brought into a state in which it would be destitute of the food that is indispensable to the maintenance of life. The dry land is a land without water, in which men perish from thirst. There is hardly any need to say that these words to not refer to the sojourn of Israel in the Arabian desert; for there the Lord fed His people with manna from heaven, and gave them water to drink out of the rock.

Constable: Hos 2:2--4:1

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

These messages develop the comparison between Hosea's relationship with his adulterous wife and Yahweh's relationship with unfaithful Israel more fully. In both relationships, restoration followed judgment.

Constable: Hos 2:3-14

A. Oracles of judgment 2:2-13

Two judgment oracles follow. In the first one, Hosea and Gomer's relationship is primarily in view, but the parallels with Yahweh and Israel's relationship are obvious. In the second one, it is almost entirely Yahweh and Israel's relationship that is in view. In both parts the general form of the messages is that of the lawsuit or legal accusation (Heb. rib).

Constable: Hos 2:3-8

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

In this message, the Lord described Israel's unfaithfulness to Him in terms similar to those that a husband would use to describe his wife's unfaithfulness to him. The whole message appears to be one that Hosea delivered to his children, but it really describes Israel as the unfaithful "wife" of Yahweh. As explained above (cf. 1:2), it appears that Hosea's wife really was unfaithful to him; this is not just an allegory in which God projected His relationship with Israel onto Hosea and his wife for illustrative purposes.

2:2 Hosea called on his children to act as witnesses against the conduct of their mother. She was not acting like a true wife, so he could not be a true husband to her. Perhaps they had separated. She needed to stop practicing harlotry and adultery.

In the figure Yahweh used, He called on the Israelites to contend with their mother, a figure for the nation as a whole. "Contend" (Heb. rib) probably refers to a legal accusation. Yahweh was bringing legal charges against Israel that could stand up in court. The legal charge was not a formal declaration of divorce, however, because He wanted to heal the relationship, not terminate it (cf. vv. 6-7, 14-23). The relationship between Yahweh and Israel was not what it should have been because Israel had become a harlot.²⁷ She had stopped worshipping and serving Yahweh exclusively and had worshipped and served other gods. This was spiritual adultery. Under the Mosaic Law, a husband could have his wife stoned for being unfaithful (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22), but this was not God's intention for Israel.

2:3 If she did not respond appropriately, Hosea threatened to strip her as naked as when she was born, namely, to expose her to shame and helplessness. Stripping naked like a prostitute was a metaphor used to describe the punishment due a covenant breaker in the ancient Near East.²⁸ Gomer had exposed herself to her lovers (v. 2), and now her husband would expose her for all to see. He would also make her like a desert wilderness in that she would become sterile and incapable of bearing other children. Her insistence on having sexual relations with many men would result in her not being able to bear the fruit of sexual relations, children. Even though she thirsted for children, she would bear no more.

The threat to Israel involved, first, making the nation an object of shame and ridicule in the world (cf. v. 10; Ezek. 16:35-43). Second, Yahweh would remove all her powers of fertility. Her flocks and herds would not flourish, her fields would become unproductive, and her women would be unfruitful.

2:4 Furthermore Hosea threatened to have no compassion on the children that Gomer had given birth to in her harlotry, children of other fathers.

For Israel this signified that Yahweh would not own as His own and love as His own the descendants that the Israelites bore. He would regard them as the products of others, not Himself.

Rather than slaying the guilty, steps would follow to restore the fallen to their former state.

2:5 The reason for Hosea's lack of compassion for these children was that Gomer had shamelessly played the harlot and had conceived them in adultery. She had brazenly sought out lovers who promised to provide money adequate to take care of her needs.

Israel pursued other gods (Baals) because she believed they could take care of her better than Yahweh. Trade agreements required acknowledging foreign gods.²⁹

2:6 Hosea said he would oppose Gomer as though he put a hedge of thorns or a wall across her path so she would turn aside from her ways.

Yahweh would make it perilously difficult for Israel to pursue idols.

2:7 Consequently Gomer would pursue her lovers but not be able to catch up with them. She would seek them but not find them. Out of frustration she would give up pursuing them and return to her husband. She would conclude that she was better off with him than with them.

Out of frustration Israel would turn back to Yahweh.

Guzik: Hos 2:1-23

Hosea 2 - Sin, Judgment, and Restoration

A. Israel's sin.

1. (2-3) Charges against Israel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

B. God's judgment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. The restoration of Israel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. (16-20) Relationship restored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. (21-23) Blessing restored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Hosea (Book Introduction)

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

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

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

JFB: Hosea (Outline)

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

TSK: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

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

Poole: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE ARGUMENT

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

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

Poole: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

CHAPTER 2

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

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

MHCC: Hosea (Book Introduction)

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

MHCC: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

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

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

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

Matthew Henry: Hosea (Book Introduction)

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

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

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

Matthew Henry: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

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

Constable: Hosea (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title and Writer

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

Unity

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

Date

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

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

Historical Background

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

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

Place of Composition

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

Audience and Purpose

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

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

Theology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Message⁸

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Constable: Hosea (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction 1:1

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

A. Signs of coming judgment 1:2-9

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

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

A. Oracles of judgment 2:2-13

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

2. Judgment on Israel 2:8-13

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

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

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

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

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

A. The judgment oracles chs. 4-5

1. Yahweh's case against Israel ch. 4

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

B. The restoration promises 6:1-3

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

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

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

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

B. Another assurance of restoration 11:8-11

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

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

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

2. Israel's impending doom ch. 13

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

VII. Conclusion 14:9

Constable: Hosea

Hosea

Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE PROPHECY OF OSEE.

INTRODUCTION.

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

Gill: Hosea (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA

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

Gill: Hosea 2 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 2

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