“Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.
I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
It will be in that day,” says Yahweh, “that you will call me ‘my husband,’ and no longer call me ‘my master.’
For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they will no longer be mentioned by name.
In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, and will make them lie down safely.
I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion.
I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know Yahweh.
It will happen in that day, I will respond,” says Yahweh, “I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth;
and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine, and the oil; and they will respond to Jezreel.
I will sow her to me in the earth; and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, ‘You are my people;’ and they will say, ‘My God!’ ”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv14–23 Here the Lord more clearly expresses, that after having…
Here the Lord more clearly expresses, that after having long, and in various ways, afflicted the people, he would at length be propitious to them; and not only so, but that he would also make all their punishments to be conducive to their salvation, and to be medicines to heal their diseases. But there is an inversion in the words, Behold, I will incline her, and I will make her to go into the wilderness; and so they ought to be explained thus, “Behold, I will incline her, or, persuade her, after I shall have drawn her into the desert; then, I will speak to her heart.” פתה, pete is often taken in a bad sense, to deceive, or, to persuade by falsehoods or, to use a vulgar word, to wheedle: but it means in this place, to speak kindly; so that God persuades a rebellious and obstinate people as to what is right: and then he declares that this would take place, when he led the people into the wilderness. This is connected with the former sentence, where it is said, ‘I will set her as on the day of her nativity:’ for God alludes to the first redemption of the people, which was like their birth; for it was the same as though the people had emerged from their grave; they obtained a new life when they were freed from the tyranny of Egypt. God therefore begot them a people for himself.
But the Prophet adds, After having led her into the wilderness, I will incline her; that is, render her pliable to myself. He intimates by these words, that there would be no hope of repentance until the people were led to extreme evils; for had their punishment been moderate, their perverseness would not have been corrected. Then God shows in this verse, that there would be no end or lessening of evils until the people were drawn into the wilderness, that is, until they were deprived of their country and sacrifices, and all their wealth; yea, until they were deprived of their ordinary food, and cast into a wilderness and solitude, where the want of all things would press upon them, and extreme necessity would threaten them with death. If then the people had been visited with light punishment, nothing would have been effected; for their hardness was greater than could have been softened by slight or common remedies.
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But this declaration was full of great comfort. The faithful might have otherwise wholly desponded, when they found themselves led into exile, and the sight of the land, which was, as it were, the mirror of the divine adoption, was taken from them, when they saw themselves scattered into various parts, and that there was now no community, no seed of Abraham. The Lord, therefore, that despair might not swallow up the faithful, intended in this way to ease their sorrow; assuring them, that though they were drawn again into the wilderness, God, who first redeemed them, was still the same, and endued with the same strength and power which he put forth in behalf of their fathers. We now apprehend the design of the Prophet. Calamity might have shaken their hearts with so much terror, as to take away every confidence in God’s favour, and make them to think themselves wholly lost: but God sets the desert before them, “What! have I not once drawn you out of the desert? Has my power diminished since that tithe? I indeed continue to be the same God as your fathers found me to be: I will again draw you out of the wilderness.” But at the same time, God reminded them that their diseases would be unhealable, until they were led into the wilderness, until they were deprived of their country and all the tokens of his favour, that they might no more delude themselves with vain confidence.
He therefore says, After I shall draw her into the wilderness, then I will persuade, or, turn her. I prefer the word, turning or inclining, though the word, persuading, is by no means unsuitable. But there seems to be an implied comparison between the present contumacy of the people, and the obedience they would render to their God after having been subdued by various afflictions. “The people,” he says, “will be then pliable, when they shall be drawn into the wilderness.”
And I will speak then to her heart. What is the import of this expression we know from Isaiah 40. To speak to the heart is to bring comfort, to soothe grief by a kind word, to offer kindness, and to hold forth some hope, that he who had previously been worn out with sorrow may breathe freely, gather courage, and entertain hope of a better condition. And this kind of speaking ought to be carefully observed; for God means, that there was now no place for his promises, because the Israelites were so refractory. Paul did not say in vain to the Corinthians
‘Open ye my mouth, O Corinthians; for I am not narrow towards you; but ye are narrow in your own bowels,’ (2 Corinthians 6:11,12.)
The Corinthians, when alienated from Paul, had obstructed, as it were, the passage of his doctrine, that he could not address them in a paternal manner. So also in this place, the Lord testifies that the floor was closed against his promises; for if he gave to the Israelites the hope of pardon, it would have been slighted; if he had invited them kindly to himself, they would have scornfully refused, yea, spurned the offer with contempt, so great was their ferocity; if he had wished to be reconciled to them, they would have despised him, or refused, or proceeded in abusing his kindness as before. He then shows, that it was their fault that he could not deal kindly and friendly with them. Hence, After I shall draw her into the wilderness, I will address her heart.
Let us then know, that whenever we are deprived of the sense of God’s favour, the way has been closed up through our fault; for God would ever be disposed willingly to show kindness, except our contumacy and hardness stood in the way. But when he sees us so subdued as to be pliable and ready to obey, then he is ready in his turn, to speak to our heart; that is, he is ready to show himself just as he is, full of grace and kindness.
We hence see how well the context of the Prophet harmonises. There are, in short, two parts, — the first is, that God takes not away wholly the hope of pardon from the Israelites, provided there were any healable among them, but shows that though the chastisement would be severe, it would yet be useful, as it would appear from its fruit; this is one clause; — and the other is, that they might not be too hasty in inquiring why God would not sooner mitigate his severity, he answers that the time was not as yet ripe; for they would not be capable of receiving his kindness, until they were by degrees subdued and humbled by heavier punishment. Let us now proceed —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21 By my benefits in offering her grace and mercy,…
By my benefits in offering her grace and mercy, even in that place where she shall think herself destitute of all help and comfort.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv14–23 Hos 2:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and…
Hos 2:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
Ver. 14. Therefore, behold, I will allure her] A strange "therefore." It may very well have "behold" at the heels of it: for the sense is this; because she hath quite forgotten me, and will never be converted of herself, I will prevent her by my mercy, recalling her mildly but mightily by my gospel. Seducam eam et deducam in desertum. Such another sweet text as this we have in Isa 57:17-18 : "For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him." Ways? what ways? his covetousness, frowardness, &c. And it is as if God should say, I see these froward children will lay nothing to heart: frowns will not humble them, blows will not better them. If I do not save them till they seek me they will never be saved: therefore I "will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners: I will create the fruit of the lips peace to him." Oh, the never enough adored depth of God’s free grace and superabundant love to his people! This David well understood, and therefore prayed, "Pardon my iniquity; for it is great," Psa 25:11. He knew that God both could and would remit more than he could commit, and that mercy rejoiceth against judgment; while God for his own sake (though not for ours) blotteth out the thick cloud as well as the cloud, enormities as infirmities, Isa 44:22. See his non-obstante, Psa 106:8, his resolve, Gen 8:21, and his mandamus, Psa 14:4, and then it must needs be done, though no God would do it but himself’, Mic 7:18, though no man could imagine how it should be done, Isa 55:7-8.
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I will allure her] That is, I will effectually persuade her by the preaching of the gospel. Men may speak persuasively, but God only can persuade; they may speak to the ear, but he to the heart: and this he doth to his elect, not only by a moral persuasion, but by an irresistible inward attraction, Act 11:17, by a merciful violence, by making them willing to follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth. They kiss the Son with a kiss of love and homage, having first been kissed with the kisses of his mouth: whereupon immediately follows, "Draw me, we will run after thee," Son 1:1; Son 1:4. Elisha could do more with a kiss than his man could with a staff in raising the dead child. Christ works upon his people fortiter, but yet suaviter, powerfully, but yet sweetly, he inclineth their hearts to his testimonies, and not to covetousness, Psa 119:36, and brings them to the obedience of faith, monendo potius quam minando, docendo quam ducendo. (Recte Calvin textum hunc reddit, Inclinabo eam.) If he do seduce them (as some render the word here) it is for no hurt, it is but to speak a word in private to them, as one friend may with another: it is but to give them his loves, as he speaks in the Canticles; to show them his glory, as he did Moses; to spread before them his beauty, and so to catch them by guile, as St Paul did the Corinthians, 2Co 12:16 to steal away their hearts before they are aware, according to that, Son 6:12, that they thenceforth may be an Aminadib, a willing people, a free hearted people, Psa 110:3, waiting for the law, Isa 42:4, and walking by the rule, Gal 6:16, &c. Oh, it is a blessed thing to be thus allured, thus inveigled, thus seduced out of the ways of sin and death, into the ways of holiness and happiness, by the doctrine of the gospel, which is the true πειθω, the suadae medulla, qua capiuntur homines, sed bone sue, the divine rhetoric, wherewith men’s minds are taken, but for their greatest good.
And I will bring her into the wilderness] Look how I at first allured my people out of Egypt, where they sat by the flesh pots, and enjoyed the pleasures of sin for a season (out of Egypt have I called my son, that I might set him higher than the kings of the earth), and brought them into the wilderness, and there extraordinarily provided for them (never was prince so served in his greatest pomp), and spake to their hearts, giving them "right judgments and true laws, good statutes and commandments," Neh 9:13, to their great comfort, Psa 19:8. So will I again do for them, and much more than so, by Christ, in the days of the gospel. Indeed, as the people at their first setting foot upon the promised land met with trouble in the valley of Achor by the sin of Achan, so shall the saints be sure of troubles: but Christ will not leave them comfortless; a door of hope he will open unto them in their deepest distresses. Death shall be unto them, not a trap-door to hell (as it is to the wicked), but an inlet into life eternal, where they shall sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, Rev 15:3. Let the saints therefore rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation. Vineyards God will give them here, some grapes at least of the heavenly Canaan beforehand, spiritual benedictions, divine comforts to sustain them, such generous wine as shall make the lips of those that are asleep to speak, Son 7:9; yea, to sing, Eph 5:18-19. Lo, such wine of the breasts and such songs of joy shall the saints have for those vines which before he threatened to destroy, Hos 2:12, and that mirth which he would cause to cease, Hos 2:11. Repentance can turn crosses into comforts, and (like the philosopher’s stone) make golden afflictions, 1Pe 1:7. As it is the fair and happy daughter of an ugly and odious mother, viz. sin, εχθρου πατρος φιλτατον τεκνον; so it is the mother of all mercies and benefits: for it is repentance unto life, Act 11:18, yea, to salvation, and therefore never to be repented of, 2Co 7:10. It is that rainbow, which, if God sees shining in our hearts and lives, he will not only not drown us, but do us all good.
And speak comfortably to her] Heb. speak to her heart such things as shall cheer her up, and make her heart leap and even dance levaltos. See Isa 60:1 cf. 1Sa 15:35. Observe that the same word נכם nacham, signifieth to repent first, and then to comfort. And to this purpose it is that some translate the text thus, "After I have brought her into the wilderness," and so humbled her thoroughly, as I once did her forefathers there, I will speak to her heart: yea, I will take her alone for the purpose, even into a solitary wilderness, where I may more freely impart my mind to her (so some sense it), that having her whole desire, she may come up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved, Son 8:5, and so be brought into the bride house with all solemnity. {Confer Gen 34:3 Rth 2:13 Jdg 19:3. Postquam perduxero eam. After I will guide her. Tremell. Benigne alloquar. Castalio.}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23 Therefore: this particle seems to connect these following passages…
Therefore: this particle seems to connect these following passages with those that went before, as causal, or giving a reason why God will do thus, and so are difficulter than if read as לכן might be, either as a particle that speaks order or time of things, and is as much as afterwards; so it will be easy, I will visit, &c., afterwards I will allure; first punish, next comfort: or else it may be adversative, as much as yet, or but; so it is plain, thus, She like an adulteress hath sinned, and I have punished; but, or yet, or notwithstanding,
I will allure: or else it is a particle that doth more strongly affirm; so rendered the place would be less obscure, thus,
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I will destroy her vines, & c.; surely I will allure, &c.: thus לכן is used Jer 5:2; Zec 11:7. Behold with attention, and wonder at the methods of Divine grace.
I will allure her; with kind words and kinder usage I will incline her mind to hear and consider what I propose; I will persuade by sweetest dealings, like a kind husband that makes use of the distresses of his disloyal wife to commend his love to her, to win her to himself, and to ways that are the honour and happiness of a wife.
And bring her into the wilderness; after that I have brought her into the wilderness; so the French, and some other versions, and so it is plainer than as we read it.
The wilderness; deep distress or captivity, with all the sorrows that attend captivity; then it is likely she will hearken: or by wilderness may be understood a retired place, and solitary, where shall be no diversions of her mind, no such temptations as formerly, where with best leisure she may consider and bethink herself: so understood, our version is easily intelligible.
And speak comfortably; things that are full of comfort, and in such manner too as is comfortable to the hearer. Here are glad tidings, gracious promises, and wonderful mercy to the true Israel after afflictions have brought them to God, after they are converted from sin by these means.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v14 The state of Israel ruined by their own sin…
The state of Israel ruined by their own sin did not look so black and dismal in the former part of the chapter, but that the state of Israel, restrained by the divine grace, looks as bright and pleasant here in the latter part of the chapter, and the more surprisingly so as the promises follow thus close upon the threatenings; nay, which is very strange, they are by a note of connexion joined to, and inferred from, that declaration of their sinfulness upon which the threatenings of their ruin are grounded: She went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the Lord; therefore I will allure her. Fitly therefore is that therefore which is the note of connexion immediately followed with a note of admiration: Behold I will allure her! When it was said, She forgot me, one would think it should have followed, "Therefore I will abandon her, I will forget her, I will never look after her more." No, Therefore I will allure her. Note, God's thoughts and ways of mercy are infinitely above ours; his reasons are all fetched from within himself, and not from any thing in us; nay, his goodness takes occasion from man's badness to appear so much the more illustrious, Isa 57:17, Isa 57:18. Therefore, because she will not be restrained by the denunciations of wrath, God will try whether she will be wrought upon by the offers of mercy. Some think it may be translated, Afterwards, or nevertheless, I will allure her. It comes all to one; the design is plainly to magnify free grace to those on whom God will have mercy purely for mercy's sake. Now that which is here promised to Israel is,
I. That though now they were disconsolate, and ready to despair, they should again be revived with comforts and hopes, Hos 2:14, Hos 2:15. This is expressed here with an allusion to God's dealings with that people when he brought them out of Egypt, through the wilderness to Canaan, as their forlorn and deplorable condition in their captivity was compared to their state in Egypt in the day that they were born, Hos 2:3. They shall be new-formed by such miracles of love and mercy as they were first-formed by, and such a transport of joy shall they be in as they were in then. It is hard to say when this had its accomplishment in the kingdom of the ten tribes; but it principally aims, no doubt, at the bringing in both of Jews and Gentiles into the church by the gospel of Christ; and it is applicable, nay, we have reason to think it was designed that it should be applied, to the conversion of particular souls to God. Now observe,
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1. The gracious methods God will take with them. (1.) He will bring them into the wilderness, as he did at first when he brought them out of Egypt, where he instructed them, and took them into covenant with himself. The land of their captivity shall be to them now, as that wilderness was then, the furnace of affliction, in which God will choose them. See Eze 20:35, Eze 20:36, I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you. God had said that he would make them as a wilderness (Hos 2:3), which was a threatening; now, when it is here made part of a promise that he would bring them into the wilderness, the meaning may be that he would by his grace bring their minds to their condition: "They shall have humble hearts under humbling providences; being poor, they shall be poor in spirit, shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity, and then they are prepared to have comfort spoken to them." When God delivered Israel out of Egypt he led them into the wilderness, to humble them and prove them, that he might do them good (Deu 8:2, Deu 8:3, Deu 8:15, Deu 8:16), and so he will do again. Note, Those whom God has mercy in store for he first brings into a wilderness - into solitude and retirement, that they may the more freely converse with him out of the noise of this world, - into distress of mind, through sense of guilt and dread of wrath, which brings a soul to be quite at a loss in itself and bewildered, and by those convictions he prepares for consolations, - and sometimes into outward distress and trouble, thereby to open the ear to discipline. (2.) He will then allure them and speak comfortably to them, will persuade them and speak to their hearts, that is, he will by his word and Spirit incline their hearts to return to him, and encourage them to do so. He will allure them with the promises of his favour, as before he had terrified them with the threatenings of his wrath, will speak friendly to them, both by his prophets and by his providences, as before he had spoken roughly, Isa 40:1, Isa 40:2. By the hand of my servants the prophets I will speak comfort to her heart; so the Chaldee. This refers to the gospel of Christ, and the offers of divine grace in the gospel, by which we are allured to forsake our sins and to turn to God, and which speaks to the heart of a convinced sinner that which is every way suited to his case, speaks abundant consolation to those that sorrow for sin and lament after the Lord. And when by the Spirit it is indeed spoken to the heart effectually, and so as to reach the conscience (which it is God's prerogative to do), O what a blessed change is wrought by it! Note, The best way of reducing wandering souls to God is by fair means. By the promise of rest in Christ we are invited to take his yoke upon us; and the work of conversion may be forwarded by comforts as well as by convictions. (3.) He will give her her vineyards thence. From that time and from that place where he has afflicted her, and brought her to see her folly and to humble herself, thenceforward he will do her good; not only speak comfortably to her, but do well for her, and undo what he had done against her. He had destroyed her vines (Hos 2:12), but now he will give her whole vineyards, as if for every vine destroyed she should have a vineyard restored, and so be repaid with interest; she shall not only have corn for necessity, but vineyards for delight. These denote the privileges and comforts of the gospel, which are prepared for those that come up out of the wilderness leaning upon Christ as their beloved, Sol 8:5. Note, God has vineyards of consolation ready to bestow on those who repent and return to him; and he can give vineyards out of a wilderness, which are of all others the most welcome, as rest to the weary. (4.) He will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope. The valley of Achor was that in which Achan was stoned; it signifies the valley of trouble, because he troubled Israel, and there God troubled him. This was the beginning of the wars of Canaan; and their putting away the accursed thing in that place gave them ground to hope that God would continue his presence with them and complete their victories. So when God returns to his people in mercy, and they to him in duty, it will be to them as happy an omen as any thing. If they put away the accursed thing from among them, if by mortifying sin they stone the Achan that has troubled their camp, their subduing that enemy within themselves is an earnest to them of victory over all the kings of Canaan. Or, if the allusion be to the name, it intimates that trouble for sin, if it be sincere, opens a door of hope; for that sin which truly troubles us shall not ruin us. The valley of Achor was a very fruitful pleasant valley, some think the same with the valley of Engedi, famous for vineyards, Sol 1:14. This God gave to Israel as a pattern and pledge of the whole land of Canaan; so "God will by his gospel give to all believers such gifts, graces, and comforts in this life, as shall be a taste of those more perfect good things of the kingdom of heaven, and shall give them as assured hope of a full possession of them in due time." So the learned Dr. Pocock expounds it; and, to the same purport, this whole context.
2. The great rejoicing with which they shall receive God's gracious returns towards them: She shall sing there as in the days of her youth. This plainly refers to that triumphant and prophetic song which Moses and the children of Israel sang at the Red Sea, Exo 15:1. When they are delivered out of captivity they shall repeat that song, and to them it shall be a new song, because sung upon a new occasion, not inferior to the former. God had said (Hos 2:11) that he would cause all her mirth to cease, but now he would cause it to revive: She shall sing as in the day that she came out of Egypt. Note, When God repeats former mercies we must repeat former praises; we find the song of Moses sung in the New Testament, Rev 15:3. This promise of Israel's singing has its accomplishment in the gospel of Christ, which furnishes us with abundant matter for joy and praise, and wherever it is received in its power enlarges the heart in joy and praise; and this is that land flowing with milk and honey which the valley of Achor opens a door of hope to. We rejoice in tribulation.
II. That, though they had been much addicted to the worship of Baal, they should now be perfectly weaned from it, should relinquish and abandon all appearances of idolatry and approaches towards it, and cleave to God only, and worship him as he appoints, Hos 2:16, Hos 2:17. Note, The surest pledge and token of God's favour to any people is his effectual parting between them and their beloved sins. The worship of Baal was the sin that did most easily beset the people of Israel; it was their own iniquity, the sin that had dominion over them; but now that idolatry shall be quite abolished, and there shall not be the least remains of it among them. 1. The idols of Baal shall not be mentioned, not any of the Baals that in the days of Baalim had made so great a noise with, O Baal! hear us; O Baal! hear us. The very names of Baalim shall be taken out of their mouths; they shall be so disused that they shall be quite forgotten, as if their names had never been known in Israel; they shall be so detested that people will not bear to mention them themselves, nor to hear others mention them, so that posterity shall scarcely know that ever there were such things. They shall be so ashamed of their former love to Baal that they shall do all they can to blot out the remembrance of it. They shall tie themselves up to the strictest literal meaning of that law against idolatry (Exo 23:13), Make no mention of the names of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth, as David, Psa 16:4. Thus the apostle expresses the abhorrence we ought to have of all fleshly lusts: Let them not be once named among you, Eph 5:3. But how can such a change of the Ethiopian's skin be wrought? It is answered, The power of God can do it, and will. I will take away the names of Baalim; as Zac 13:2, I will cut off the names of the idols. Note, God's grace in the heart will change the language by making that iniquity to be loathed which was beloved. Zep 3:9, I will turn to the people a pure language. One of the rabbin says, This promise relates to the Gentiles, by the gospel of Christ, from the idolatries which they had been wedded to, Th1 1:9. 2. The very word Baal shall be laid aside, even in its innocent signification. God says, Thou shalt call me Ishi, and call me no more Baali; both signify my husband, and both had been made use of concerning God. Isa 54:5, Thy Maker is thy husband, thy Baal (so the word is), thy owner, patron, and protector. It is probable that many good people had, accordingly, made use of the word Baali in worshipping the God of Israel; when their wicked neighbours bowed the knee to Baal they gloried in this, that God was their Baal. "But," says God, "you shall call me so no more, because I will have the very names of Baalim taken away." Note, That which is very innocent in itself should, when it has been abused to idolatry, be abolished, and the very use of it taken away, that nothing may be done to keep idols in remembrance, much less to keep them in reputation. When calling God Ishi will do as well, and signify as much, as Baali, let that word be chosen rather, lest, by calling him Baali, others should be put in mind of their quondam Baals. Some think that there is another reason intimated why God would be called Ishi and not Baali; they both signify my husband, but Ishi is a compellation of love, and sweetness, and familiarity, Baali of reverence and subjection. Ishi is vir meus - my man; Baali is dominus meus - my lord. In gospel-times God has so revealed himself to us as to encourage us to come boldly to the throne of his grace, and to use a holy humble freedom there; we ought to call God our Master, for so he is, but we are more taught to call him our Father. Ishi is a man the Lord (Gen 4:1), and intimates that in gospel-times the church's husband shall be the man Christ Jesus, made like unto his brethren, and therefore they shall call him Ishi, not Baali.
III. That though they had been in continual troubles, as if the whole creation had been at war with them, now they shall enjoy perfect peace and tranquillity, as if they were in a league of friendship with the whole creation (Hos 2:18): In that day, when they have forsaken their idols, and put themselves under the divine protection, I will make a covenant for them. 1. They shall be protected from evil; nothing shall hurt them, nor do them any mischief. Tranquillus Deus tranquillat amnia - When God is at peace with us he makes every creature to be so too. The inferior creatures shall do them no harm, as they had done when the beasts of the field ate up their vineyards (Hos 2:12) and when noisome beasts were one of God's sore judgments, Eze 14:15. The fowl and the creeping things are taken into this covenant; for they also, when God makes use of them as the instruments of his justice, may be come very hurtful, but they shall be no more so; nay, by virtue of this covenant, they shall be made serviceable to them and brought into their interests. Note, God has the command of the inferior creatures, and brings them into what covenant he pleases; he can make the beasts of the field to honour him (so he has promised, Isa 43:20) and to contribute to his people's comfort. And, if the inferior creatures are thus laid under an engagement to serve us, it is our part of the covenant not to abuse them, but to serve God with them. Some think that this had its accomplishment in the miraculous power Christ gave his disciples to take up serpents, Mar 16:17, Mar 16:18. It agrees with the promises made particularly to Israel, in their return out of captivity (Eze 34:25, I will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land), and the more general ones to all the saints. Job 5:22, Job 5:23, The beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee; and Psa 91:13, Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder. But this is not all; men are more in danger from one another than from the brute beast, and therefore it is further promised that God will make wars to cease, will disarm the enemy: I will break the bow, and sword, and battle. He can do it when he pleases (Psa 44:9), and will do it for those whose ways please him, for he makes even their enemies to be at peace with them, Pro 16:7. This agrees with the promise that in gospel-times swords shall be beaten into plough-shares, Isa 2:4. 2. They shall be quiet from the fear of evil. God will not only keep them safe, but make them to lie down safely, as those that know themselves to be under the protection of Heaven, and therefore are not afraid of the powers of hell.
IV. That, though God had given them a bill of divorce for their whoredoms, yet, upon their repentance, he would again take them into covenant with himself, into a marriage-covenant, Hos 2:19, Hos 2:20. God's making a covenant for them with the inferior creatures was a great favour; but it was nothing to this, that he took them into covenant with himself and engaged himself to do them good. Observe,
1. The nature of this covenant; it is a marriage-covenant, founded in choice and love, and founding the nearest relation: I will betroth thee unto me; and again, and a third time, I will betroth thee. Note, All that are sincerely devoted to God are betrothed to him; God gives them the most sacred and inviolable security imaginable that he will love them, protect them, and provide for them, that he will do the part of a husband to them, and that he will incline their hearts to join themselves to him and will graciously accept of them in so doing. Believing souls are espoused to Christ, Co2 11:2. The gospel-church is the bride, the Lamb's wife; and they would never come into that relation to him if he did not by the power of his grace betroth them to himself. The separation begins on our side; we alienate ourselves from God. The coalition begins on his side; he betroths us to himself.
2. The duration of this covenant: "I will betroth thee for ever. The covenant itself shall be inviolable; God will not break it on his part, and you shall not on yours; and the blessings of it shall be everlasting." One of the Jewish rabbin says, This is a promise that she shall attain to the life of the world to come, which is absolute eternity or perpetuity.
3. The manner in which this covenant shall be made. (1.) In righteousness and judgment, that is, God will deal sincerely and uprightly in covenant with them; they have broken covenant, and God is righteous. "But," says God, "I will renew the covenant in righteousness." The matter shall be so ordered that God may receive even these backsliding children into his family again, without any reflection upon his justice, nay, his justice being satisfied by the Mediator of this covenant very much to the honour of it. But what reason can there be why God should take a people into covenant with him that had so often dealt treacherously? Will it not reflect upon his wisdom? "No," says God; "I will do it in judgment, not rashly, but upon due consideration; let me alone to give a reason for it and to justify my own conduct." (2.) In lovingkindness and in mercies. God will deal tenderly and graciously in covenanting with them; and will be not only as good as his word, but better; and, as he will be just in keeping covenant with them, so he will be merciful in keeping them in the covenant. They are subject to many infirmities, and, if he be extreme to mark what they do amiss, they will soon lose the benefit of the covenant. He therefore promises that it shall be a covenant of grace, made in a compassionate consideration of their infirmities, so that every transgression in the covenant shall not throw them out of covenant; he will gather with everlasting lovingkindness. (3.) In faithfulness. Every article of the covenant shall be punctually performed. Faithful is he that has called them, who also will do it; he cannot deny himself.
4. The means by which they shall be kept tight and faithful to the covenant on their part: Thou shalt know the Lord. This is not only a promise that God will reveal himself to them more fully and clearly than ever, but that he will give them a heart to know him; they shall know more of him, and shall know him in another manner than ever yet. The ground of their apostasy was their not knowing God to be their benefactor (Hos 2:8); therefore, to prevent the like, they shall all be taught of God to know him. Note, God keeps up his interest in men's souls by giving them a good understanding and a right knowledge of things, Heb 8:11.
V. That, though the heavens had been to them as brass, and the earth as iron, now the heavens shall yield their dews, and by that means the earth its fruits, Hos 2:21, Hos 2:22. God having betrothed the gospel-church and in it all believers to himself, how shall he not with himself and with his Son freely give them all things, all things pertaining both to life and godliness, all things they need or can desire? All is theirs, for they are Christ's, betrothed to him; and with the righteousness of the kingdom of God, which they seek first, all other things shall be added unto them. And yet this promise of corn and wine is to be taken also in a spiritual sense (so the learned Dr. Pocock thinks): it is an effusion of those blessings and graces which relate to the soul that is here promised under the metaphor of temporal blessings, the dew of heaven, as well as the fatness of the earth, and that put first, as in the blessing of Jacob, Gen 27:28. God had threatened (Hos 2:9) that he would take away the corn and the wine; but now he promises to restore them, and that in the common course and order of nature. While they lay under the judgment of famine they called to the earth for corn and wine for the support of themselves and their families. Very gladly would the earth have supplied them, but she cannot give unless she receive, cannot produce corn and wine unless she be enriched with the river of God (Psa 65:9); and therefore she calls to the heavens for rain, the former and latter rain in their season, grapes for it, and by her melancholy aspect when rain is denied pleads for it. "But," say the heavens, "we have no rain to give unless he who has the key of the clouds unlock them, and open these bottles; so that, if the Lord do not help you, we cannot." But, when God takes them into covenant with himself, then the wheel of nature shall be set a-going again in favour of them, and the streams of mercy shall flow in the usual channel: Then I will hear, saith the Lord; I will receive your prayers (so the Chaldee interprets the first hearing); God will graciously take notice of their addresses to him. And then I will hear the heavens; I will answer them (so it may be read); and then they shall hear and answer the earth, and pour down seasonable rain upon it; and then the earth shall hear the corn and vines, and supply them with moisture, and they shall hear Jezreel, and be nourishment and refreshment for those that inhabit Jezreel. See here the coherence of second causes with one another, as links in a chain, and the necessary dependence they all have upon God, the first Cause. Note, We must expect all our comforts from God in the usual method and by the appointed means; and, when we are at any time disappointed in them, we must look up to God, above the hills and the mountains, Psa 121:1, Psa 121:2. See how ready the creatures are to serve the people of God, how desirous of the honour: the corn cries to the earth, the earth to the heavens, the heavens to God, and all that they may supply them. And see how ready God is to give relief: I will hear, saith the Lord, yea, I will hear. And, if God will hear the cry of the heavens for his people, much more will he hear the intercession of his Son for them, who is made higher than the heavens. See what a peculiar delight those that are in covenant with God may take in their creature-comforts, as seeing them all come to them from the hand of God; they can trace up all the streams to the fountain, and taste covenant-love in common mercies, which makes them doubly sweet.
VI. That whereas they were now dispersed, not only, as Simeon and Levi, divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel, but divided and scattered all the world over, God will turn this curse, as he did that, into a blessing: "I will not only water the earth for her, but will sow her unto me in the earth; her dispersion shall be not like that of the chaff in the floor, which the wind drives away, but like that of the seed in the field, in order to its greater increase; wherever they are scattered they shall take root downward and bear fruit upward. The good seed are the children of the kingdom. I will sow her unto me." This alludes to the name of Jezreel, which signifies sown of God, or for God; as she was scattered of him (which is one signification of the words) so she shall be sown of him; and to what he sows he will give the increase. When in all parts of the world Christianity got footing, and every where there were professors of it, then this promise was fulfilled, I will sow her unto me in the earth. Note, The greatest blessing of this earth is that God has a church in it, and from that arises all the tribute of glory which he has out of it; it is what he has sown to himself, and what he will therefore secure to himself.
VII. That, whereas they had been Lo-ammi - not a people, and Lo-ruhamah - not finding mercy with God, now they shall be restored to his favour and taken again into covenant with him (Hos 2:23): They had not obtained mercy, but seemed to be abandoned; they were not my people, not distinguished, not dealt with, as my people, but left to lie in common with the nations. This was the case with the rejected Jews; and the same, or more deplorable, was that of the Gentile world (to whom the apostle applies this, Rom 9:24, Rom 9:25), that had no hope, and was without God in the world; but when great multitudes both of Jews and Gentiles were, upon their believing in Christ, incorporated into a Christian church, then, 1. God had mercy on those who had not obtained mercy. Those found favour with God, and became the children of his love, who had been long out of favour and the children of his wrath, and, if infinite mercy had not interposed, would have been for ever so. Note, God's mercy must not be despaired of any where on this side hell. 2. He took those into a covenant-relation to himself who had been strangers and foreigners. He says to them, "Thou art my people, whom I will own and bless, protect and provide for;" and they shall say, "Thou art my God, whom I will serve and worship, and to whose honour I will be entirely and for ever devoted." Note, (1.) The sum total of the happiness of believers is the mutual relation that is between them and God, that he is theirs and they are his; this is the crown of all the promises. (2.) This relation is founded in free grace. We have not chosen him, but he has chosen us. He first says, They are my people, and makes them willing to be so in the day of his power, and then they avouch him to be theirs. (3.) As we need desire no more to make us happy than to be the people of God, so we need desire no more to make us easy and cheerful than to have him to assure us that we are so, to say unto us, by his Spirit witnessing with ours, Thou art my people. (4.) Those that have accepted the Lord for their God must avouch him to be so, must go to him in prayer and tell him so, Thou art my God, and must be ready to make profession before men. (5.) It adds to the comfort of our covenant with God that in it there is a communion of saints, who, though they are many, yet here are one. It is not, I will say to them, You are my people, but, Thou art; for he looks upon them as all one in Christ, and, as such in him, he speaks to them and covenants with them; and they also do not say, Thou art our God, for they look upon themselves as one body, and desire with one mind and one mouth to glorify him, and therefore say, Thou art my God. Or it intimates that such a covenant as God made of old with his people Israel, in general, now under the gospel he makes with particular believers, and says to each of them, even the meanest, with as much pleasure as he did of old to the thousands of Israel, Thou art my people, and invites and encourages each of them to say, Thou art my God, and to triumph therein, as Moses and all Israel did. Exo 15:2, He is my God, and my father's God.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv14–21 And it shall be at that day, saith the…
And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord,.... The Gospel day, the times of the Gospel dispensation, the latter part of them; at the time of the conversion of the Jews, and the bringing in of the fulness of the Gentiles; at the time when God will allure and persuade them to seek the Messiah, and they shall turn to him; when he shall speak comfortably to them, and give them a door of hope, and all spiritual blessings, and cause them to sing as when they came out of Egypt:
that thou shalt call me Ishi; or, "my husband" (x); returning to Christ their first husband, and being received by him, shall have faith and interest in him, and full assurance of it; and shall not only be allowed to call him their husband, but in the strength of faith, and with great freedom of soul, shall call him so, and say as the church did, "my beloved is mine, and I am his", Sol 20:16, or, "my man" (y); the man the Lord, the man Jehovah's fellow, Immanuel God with us, God in human nature; and so more manifestly points at Christ, who, most properly speaking, stands in the relation of a husband to his people: or, "my strength", as some interpret it; the husband being the strength, protection, and defence of the wife, the weaker vessel; so Christ is the strength of his saints, in whom they have righteousness and strength, and through whose strength they can do all things:
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and shalt call me no more Baali; which signifies my husband too, and is used of God and Christ; he is called Baal, and the church is called Beulah, because married together, Isa 45:5 but it signifies a lordly and imperious husband; and the other word, "Ishi", a loving one: so Jarchi observes that the sense is, that they should serve the Lord from love, and not fear; "Ishi" being a word expressive of marriage and love, and "Baali" of lordship and fear: hence some have thought this to be the reason why the one should be used, and the other not, under the Gospel dispensation; because saints now have not the spirit of bondage to fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby they call God their Father, and Christ their husband: though rather the reason is, because the word "Baal", as R. Marinns observes, is of doubtful signification, an ambiguous word, used for the idol Baal, as well as signifies lord and husband; and therefore to be laid aside, lest, when they mentioned it, it should be thought they spoke of Baal, and not of the Lord; or should be led to think of that idol, and remember him.
(x) "maritus meus", Vatablus, Pagninus, Montanus, "marite mi", Schmidt. (y) "Vir meus", V. L. "mi vir", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Liveleus.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23 I will allure - I will incline her mind…
I will allure - I will incline her mind to consider what I propose. Into the wilderness - Deep distress.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 Verse 14. I will allure her, and bring her…
Verse 14. I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.] After inflicting many judgments upon her, I will restore her again. I will deal with her as a very affectionate husband would do to an unfaithful wife. Instead of making her a public example, he takes her in private, talks to and reasons with her; puts her on her good behaviour; promises to pass by all, and forgive all, if she will now amend her ways. In the meantime he provides what is necessary for her wants and comfortable support, and thus opening a door of hope for her, she may be fully reconciled; rejoice as at the beginning, when he first took her by the hand, and she became his bride. This is most probably the simple meaning of the above metaphorical expressions. The valley of Achor was very fruitful; it lay to the north of Jericho, not far from Gilgal. See Isa 65:10.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23 Hos 2:14-15. Therefore, behold, I will allure her —…
Hos 2:14-15. Therefore, behold, I will allure her — As there is a plain alteration of the style here from threatenings to promises, so the first word of this verse should be translated nevertheless, or notwithstanding. And bring her into the wilderness — Or, after I have brought her into the wilderness. The state of the Jews in captivity is elsewhere expressed by a wilderness state: see note on Eze 20:35. It probably means here the dispersion of the ten tribes, after their first captivity by Shalmaneser, 2Ki 17:6. And speak comfortably to her — In these words, and the preceding, I will allure her, there is an allusion to the practice of fond husbands, who, forgetting past offences, use all the arts of endearment to persuade their wives, who have parted from them, to return to them again. So God will use the most powerful persuasions to bring the Israelites to the acknowledgment of the truth, notwithstanding all their former abuses of the means of grace. The Hebrew here, דברתי על לבה, is literally, I will speak to her heart, that is, speak what shall touch her heart, in her outcast state in the wilderness of the Gentile world, by the proffers of mercy in the gospel. “For the doctrine of the gospels,” says Luther on this place, “is the true soothing speech, with which the minds of men are taken. For it terrifies not the soul, like the law, with severe denunciations of punishment; but although it reproves sin, it declares that God is ready to pardon sinners for the sake of his Son; and holds forth the sacrifice of the Son of God that the souls of sinners may be assured that satisfaction has been made by that to God.” And I will give her her vineyards from thence — Or, from that time, as the word משׂםmay be rendered: then I will restore her vineyards and fruitful fields which I had taken from her, Hos 2:12: or, from that place; or, in consequence of these things; in which senses also the original word is used. God declares that from and through the wilderness lies the road to a rich, fruitful country; that is, that the calamities of the dispersion, together with the soothing intimations of the gospel, by bringing the Jewish race to a right mind, will be the means of reinstating them in that wealth and prosperity which God hath ordained for them in their own land. And the valley of Achor — Or, of trouble, or tribulation, as the Hebrew word Achor signifies; for a door of hope — The passage alludes to “the vale near Jericho, where the Israelites, first setting foot within the holy land, were thrown into trouble and consternation by the daring theft of Achan. In memory of which, and of the tragical scene exhibited in that spot, in the execution of the sacrilegious peculator and his whole family, the place was called the vale of Achor, Joshua 7. And this vale of Achor, though a scene of trouble and distress, was a door of hope to the Israelites under Joshua; for there, immediately after the execution of Achan, God said to Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed, (Jos 8:1,) and promised to support him against Ai, her king, and her people. And from this time Joshua drove on his conquests with uninterrupted success. In like manner the tribulations of the Jews, in their present dispersion, shall open to them the door of hope.” And there — That is, in the wilderness, and in the vale of tribulation, under those circumstances of present difficulty, mixed with cheering hope; she shall sing as in the days of her youth — She shall express her joy in God, as her forefathers did after their deliverance at the Red sea; when God espoused them for his peculiar people, and entered into a covenant with them at mount Sinai, where they solemnly promised an entire obedience to him. And, or rather, even, as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt — “This perpetual allusion to the exodus,” or coming out of Egypt, “to the circumstances of the march through the wilderness, and the first entrance into the holy land, plainly points the prophecy to a similar deliverance, by the immediate power of God, under that leader, of whom Moses was a type.” — Horsley.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 Therefore - The inference is not what we should…
Therefore - The inference is not what we should have expected. Sin and forgetfulness of God are not the natural causes of, and inducements to mercy. But God deals not with us, as we act one to another. Extreme misery and degradation revolt man; man’s miseries invite God’s mercies. God therefore has mercy, not because we deserve it, but because we need it. He therefore draws us, because we are so deeply sunken. He prepareth the soul by those harder means, and then the depths of her misery cry to the depths of His compassion, and because chastisement alone would stupify her, not melt her, He changes His wrath into mercy, and speaks to the heart which, for her salvation, He has broken.
I will allure her - The original word is used of one readily enticed, as a simple one, whether to good or ill. God uses, as it were, Satan’s weapons against himself. As Satan had enticed the soul to sin, so would God, by holy enticements and persuasiveness, allure her to Himself. God too hath sweetnesses for the penitent soul, far above all the sweetnesses of present earthly joys; much more, above the bitter sweetnesses of sin.
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I Myself will allure her - (Such is the emphasis). God would show her something of His Beauty, and make her taste of His Love, and give her some such glimpse of the joy of His good-pleasure, as should thrill her and make her, all her life long, follow after what had, as through the clouds, opened upon her.
And will bring her into the wilderness - God, when he brought Israel out of Egypt, led her apart from the pressure of her hard bondage, the sinful self-indulgences of Egypt and the abominations of their idolatries, into the wilderness, and there, away from the evil examples of the nation from which he drew her and of those whom she was to dispossess, He gave her His law, and taught her His worship, and brought her into covenant with Himself (see Eze 20:34-36). So in the beginning of the Gospel, Christ allured souls by His goodness in His miracles, and the tenderness of His words, and the sweetness of His preaching and His promises, and the attractiveness of His sufferings, and the mighty manifestations of His Spirit. So is it with each penitent soul. God, by privation or suffering, turns her from her idols, from the turmoil of the world and its distractions, and speaks, Alone to her alone.
And speak to her heart - Literally, on her heart, making an impression on it, soothing it, in words which will dwell in it, and rest there. Thus within, not without, “He putteth His laws in the mind, and writeth them in the heart, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God” Heb 8:10; 2Co 3:3. God speaks to the heart, so as to reach it, soften it, comfort it, tranquilize it, and, at the last, assure it. He shall speak to her, not as in Sinai, amid “blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more Heb 12:18-19, but to the heart.” But it is in solitude that he so speaks to the soul and is heard by her, warning, reproving, piercing, penetrating through every fold, until he reaches the very inmost heart and dwells there. And then he infuseth hope of pardon, kindleth love, enlighteneth faith, giveth feelings of child-like trust, lifteth the soul tremblingly to cleave to Him whose voice she has heard within her. Then His infinite Beauty touches the heart; His Holiness, Truth, mercy, penetrate the soul; in silence and stillness the soul learns to know itself and God, to repent of its sins, to conquer self; to meditate on God. “Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you” 2Co 6:17.
: “Search we the Scriptures, and we shall find, that seldom or never hath God spoken in a multitude; but so often as he would have anything known to man, He shewed Himself, not to nations or people, but to individuals, or to very few, and those severed from the common concourse of people, or in the silence of the night, in fields or solitudes, in mountains or vallies. Thus He spake with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, and all the prophets. Why is it, God always speaketh in secret, except that He would call us apart? Why speaketh He with a few, except to collect and gather us into one? In this solitude doth God speak to the soul, from the beginning of its conversion to the loneliness of death. Here the soul, which, overspread with darkness, knew neither God nor itself, learns with a pure heart to know God. Here, placed aloft, she sees all earthly things flee away beneath her, yea, herself also passing away in the sweeping tide of all passing things.” Here she learns, and so unlearns her sins, sees and hates herself, sees and loves God. : Only “the solitude of the body availeth not, unless there be the solitude of the heart.” And if God so speak to the penitent, much more to souls, who consecrate themselves wholly, cleave wholly to Him, meditate on Him. By His presence , “the soul is renewed, and cleaving, as it were, to Him, feels the sweetness of an inward taste, spiritual understanding, enlightening of faith, increase of hope, feeling of compassion, zeal for righteousness, delight in virtue. She hath in orison familiar converse with God, feeling that she is heard, and mostly answered: speaking face to face with God, and bearing what God speaketh in her, constraining God in prayer and sometimes prevailing.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14–22 I will allure her, &c. After her disloyalties, I…
I will allure her, &c. After her disloyalties, I will still allure her by my grace, &c., and send her vine-dressers, viz., the apostles, originally her own children, who shall open to her the gates of hope; as heretofore, at her coming into the land of promise, she had all good success after she had satisfied the divine justice by the execution of Achan, in the valley of Achor, Josue vii. (Challoner) --- Septuagint, "I will seduce or make her stray;" Greek: plano. (Haydock) --- I will permit her to yield to error, in captivity; (Theodoret) or will cause her hopes to be frustrated yet in exile I will comfort her. The Jews were not changed till they had seen the vanity of idols, and suffered much. (Calmet) --- God’s grace prevents sinners, that they may be converted. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 Therefore--rather, "Nevertheless" [HENDERSON]. English Version gives a more lovely…
Therefore--rather, "Nevertheless" [HENDERSON]. English Version gives a more lovely idea of God. That which would provoke all others to unappeasable wrath, Israel's perversity and consequent punishment, is made a reason why God should at last have mercy on her. As the "therefore" (Hos 2:9) expresses Israel's punishment as the consequence of Israel's guilt, so "therefore" here, as in Hos 2:6, expresses, that when that punishment has effected its designed end, the hedging up her way with thorns so that she returns to God, her first love, the consequence in God's wondrous grace is, He "speaks comfortably" (literally, "speaks to her heart"; compare Jdg 19:8; Rut 2:13). So obstinate is she that God has to "allure her," that is, so to temper judgment with unlooked-for grace as to win her to His ways. For this purpose it was necessary to "bring her into the wilderness" (that is, into temporal want and trials) first, to make her sin hateful to her by its bitter fruits, and God's subsequent grace the more precious to her by the contrast of the "wilderness." JEROME makes the "bringing into the wilderness" to be rather a deliverance from her enemies, just as ancient Israel was brought into the wilderness from the bondage of Egypt; to this the phrase here alludes (compare Hos 2:15). The wilderness sojourn, however, is not literal, but moral: while still in the land of their enemies locally, by the discipline of the trial rendering the word of God sweet to them, they are to be brought morally into the wilderness state, that is, into a state of preparedness for returning to their temporal and spiritual privileges in their own land; just as the literal wilderness prepared their fathers for Canaan: thus the bringing of them into the wilderness state is virtually a deliverance from their enemies.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 18, 21 The disciplinary effects of the judgment and the future…
The disciplinary effects of the judgment and the future exaltation of Israel, vv.14-23.
In this section appears a very marked change in the tone of the prophet. From threats he passes abruptly to promises. To some commentators (Nowack, Marti, Harper) this abruptness seems a sufficient reason for denying these verses to Hosea. But the sufficiency of this reason is not beyond question. Judgment, according to the teaching of the prophets, has always a disciplinary purpose. In Hos_2:6; Hos_2:9 ff., Hosea has announced the judgment necessary to bring the people to their senses; but Jehovah still loves his faithless spouse. When he has succeeded in making her again sensitive to his influences he will once more pour upon her expressions of his love, just as the prophet did upon his wife (Hos_3:1-3). If we have regard for the line of thought presented in chapters 1-3 (see general remarks on Hos_2:2-23), and if we take Hos_2:14-23, as the continuation of Hos_2:6-13, rather than as parallel to the same, these verses find a natural interpretation. That the emphasis should be first upon the terrors of the judgment is natural in view of the sins of the people; that the prophet should point to future glory is in perfect accord with what seems to be the ordinary line of prophetic reasoning; and, far from breaking the force of the prophetic warnings, the promises would supply a very strong incentive to become worthy of the promised blessings. Moreover, an unbiased interpretation can see no contradiction between Hos_2:14-23, and chapters 4ff., where the prophet emphasizes repentance as an essential condition of the divine favor. It goes almost without saying that the fulfillment of all Old Testament promises was dependent upon the proper attitude toward Jehovah. The verses before us touch upon one side only, namely, the part played by Jehovah. Surely it is not necessary to emphasize the condition every time a promise is made. Nor is there, as is sometimes asserted, any difference between the thought of these verses and that of chapter 3. Again, similarities with Ezekiel are not striking enough to prove the dependence of these verses upon any utterance of this exilic prophet.
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The modern tendency, to regard practically all Messianic prophecies as the products of the exilic or postexilic period, is without adequate foundation. It is almost inconceivable that the pre-exilic prophets, with their lofty conception of the character of Jehovah, should have no message but that of doom. Their very conception of the righteousness of Jehovah made it impossible for them to believe that judgment could be his last word. There must be something beyond for those who remained faithful. The promises of the prophets as found in their books, including the passage before us, are no more than one should expect from men with their lofty religious conceptions. The possibility of interpolations may, indeed, not be denied, but these must be determined on other grounds than their Messianic character. Until more convincing evidence to the contrary is offered we may safely interpret these verses as coming from Hosea, and as the natural continuation of Hos_2:6-13.
14-17. Israel will be restored to the intimate fellowship with Jehovah enjoyed in the beginning.
Therefore — In view of the general situation, as described in Hos_2:2-13. It requires divine interference. Therefore might, however, be connected only with the last clause of Hos_2:13. Because Israel has forgotten me, therefore I — that the emphasis is on Jehovah’s efforts is indicated by the use of the separate pronoun with the verb form — must reveal myself to her and thus win her back.
Behold, I will — According to G.-K., 116p, the construction points to the immediate future as the time of fulfillment; equivalent to I am about to do.
Allure — G.A. Smith, “woo her.” The verb is used here in a good sense. Whatever Jehovah does is done for the purpose of winning back the faithless wife. The prophet says nothing about the means of persuasion; evidently he has in mind the judgment which will accomplish that which pleasanter means have failed to do.
Bring her into the wilderness — The figure is that of Israel’s early wanderings in the desert (compare also Hos_2:15). But the question arises, whether the prophet has in mind an actual deportation into the wilderness, that is, an exile (Eze_20:35), or whether the removal into the desert is only a picture of the complete desolation of the land, such as is described in Hos_2:6 ff.
Hos_2:21-23 and Hos_3:4, have sometimes been thought to favor the first interpretation; the former passage is ambiguous, the latter is more readily interpreted as implying an exile, but even its meaning is not beyond question. At any rate, Hos_3:4, does not necessarily determine the interpretation of this verse; Hos_2:6-13 certainly favor the second view.
Speak comfortably unto her — Literally, speak unto her heart. “To every Israelite some of these terms must have brought back the days of his own wooing. I will speak home to her heart is a forcible expression like the German ‘an das Herz,’ or the sweet Scottish ‘it com’ up roond my heart,’ and was used in Israel as from man to woman when he won her” (compare Isa_40:1). With Israel reduced to its ancient poverty, and through such reduction persuaded to listen to the divine voice, a new beginning is to be made, while Jehovah’s blessings will fall in abundance.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 14. Therefore] i.e. because, without Jehovah’s help, Israel will…
14. Therefore] i.e. because, without Jehovah’s help, Israel will never come to herself, and reform (comp. Isa_30:18). Her punishment has an educational object; the threat has a tinge of promise.
I will allure her …] The pronoun is expressed in the Hebrew. I have not forgotten her, though she has forgotten me. ‘Allure her’ seems out of place in introducing the punishment; generally the exile is described as an expulsion (comp. Jer_8:3). Either we must read differently; the LXX. has πλανῶ αὐτὴν (comp. Psa_107:40), or we must suppose a violation of natural order such as occurs now and then in Hebrew, so that the ‘alluring’ may refer to the cordial address of Jehovah spoken of afterwards. Kimchi explains, ‘I will put into her heart to return, while she is yet in exile.’ How beautifully the promise anticipates the great prophecy of Israel’s restoration, which opens, remarkably enough, with the very phrase used by Hosea, ‘Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem’ (Isa_40:2). [According to another explanation of the passage which goes back to St Jerome, the wilderness is not only a place of affliction, but one of hope. The latter sense seems to be opposed by a passage in Ezekiel (Eze_20:33-38) which is evidently a reminiscence of our passage, and which refers to the wilderness exclusively as a place of punishment. Keil, on the other hand, thinks that Israel is to be led into the wilderness, not for punishment, but for deliverance from bondage. This certainly explains the ‘I will allure her,’ but is not consistent with the next verse, in which allusion is made to the punishment undergone in the wilderness. Comp. on. Hos_13:10.]
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into the wilderness] By ‘wilderness’ Hosea means not merely the desert which lay between Canaan and the land of captivity, but the captivity or exile itself. Sojourn in a heathen land appeared to pious Israelites like a wandering in the desert (comp. Isa_41:17).
speak comfortably unto her] Lit., ‘speak unto her heart’.
14–23. And now the notes of threatening are dying away; bright and glorious days are announced for both sections of the nation. There shall be a second Exodus; no more idolatry; no more war; no. cloud upon Israel’s relation to her God. (Notice in passing the limitations of this stage of religious knowledge; the Messianic hope is as yet confined entirely to the people of Israel.)
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23 (14) Therefore.—This word does not make God’s gentle treatment…
(14) Therefore.—This word does not make God’s gentle treatment a consequence of the sin of Israel. Some prefer to render by nevertheless, but the Hebrew word lakhçn is sometimes used in making strong transitions, linked, it is true, with what precedes, but not as an inference. (Comp. Isa_10:24.) Grace transforms her suffering into discipline. The exile in Babylon shall be a repetition of the experiences of the wilderness in which she was first espoused to Jehovah. There will I speak to her heart; i.e., comfortingly, lovingly.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her…
Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. As in vers. 2-5 we have an exposure of Israel"s sin, and in vers. 6-13 an enumeration of her sufferings by penal inflictions; so vers. 14-23 contain a touching exhibition of Divine succor and support. The transition is abrupt. Vers. 14-17 exhibit the gradual change wrought in Israel through the progressive means of improvement employed by Jehovah. Israel"s future is here reflected in the mirror of her past history. The events of that history are elegantly employed to represent as by type or symbol the mercies in store for Israel, wayward and rebellious though she had proved herself to be. Laken (from le causal, and ken, so, equivalent to "because it is so") at the beginning of this verse (14) is rendered by some,
(1) "but" or "yet;" but its natural signification is
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(2) "therefore." It is like the Greek oun (from wn , Ionic ewn , neuter eon , contracted oun ); it being so, therefore, and similar to the Latin phrase, quae cum ita slut, "therefore" implies because Israel can only be turned from her foolish idolatry by the penal measures named. Aben Ezra also understands it here, as elsewhere, in its literal sense; thus: "After she the unchaste wife representative of Israel shall know that all this evil has come upon her because that she had forgotten me, and had not known at the beginning that I dealt kindly with her; and when she will say, "Yet will I go and return to my former husband;" then will I allure her with words." htp is from the root tp cognate with the Arabic in the sense of "dividing," "being open," "standing open;" thence it signifies "to be susceptible of outward impressions," "allow access and entrance;" in Piel, "to make one open.... be susceptible or inclined," "induce by words." The word laken, "therefore," has somewhat puzzled commentators, because the connection between the judgments threatened in the preceding verses and the mercies proffered in what follows is not to a superficial view at once apparent. Yet it is mercy and truth meeting together, righteousness and peace kissing each other. It is
(3) the connecting link between the enormity of our sins and the greatness of the Divine mercy; between the vileness of our iniquities and the riches of Divine grace. In like manner the psalmist prays, "Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great;" and God promises by the prophet, "For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners." Long previously God had said, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man"s sake; for the imagination of man"s heart is evil from his youth." The secret of such striking contrasts is that where sin abounded grace did much more abound. Egypt having been to Israel the house of bondage, the exodus from that land represents deliverance out of a servile, suffering condition.
(1) The wilderness or Arabian desert into which they were brought on leaving that country was a place of freedom. They were emancipated, and breathed the free air of the wilderness; they were exercised with salutary discipline after their emancipation; as they traversed the wilderness they were trained and tried. The allurement which prefaces their deliverance refers to the persuasion of Moses and Aaron, who found it necessary to persuade and even coax their countrymen to turn their back on their bondage and follow the leaders whom God had sent them. The "comfortable words" mentioned in the clone of the verse were addressed to them at a subsequent period, when, allured out of the strange land where they had sojourned so long, they were led forth into the wilderness. The "comfortable words" comprehended both temporal and spiritual mercies relief in every time of emergency, deliverance in danger and distress, a plentiful supply of their necessities, with pardon of their sins, assurances of grace, and renewed tokens of God"s favor on repentance. A difficulty has been found in the words, "and bring her into the wilderness," being interposed between the alluring and the speaking comfortably. The difficulty is removed
(2) by translating vav, not by "and," but by "after," as if equivalent to acher; thus: "After I shall have brought her into the wilderness I wilt allure and comfort her." Then the meaning would be, "After I have humbled them thoroughly as I did their forefathers in the wilderness, then will I speak comfortably unto them." God humbled their forefathers in Egypt, yet that did not suffice; he humbled them afterwards in the wilderness, and then brought them into Canaan. Many times God sends successive afflictions upon his own people, to break their hearts, to humble them thoroughly, and at last "he speaks comfortably unto them." But
(3) the wilderness may be viewed in another light. Besides the distresses experienced in the wilderness, there were deliverances enjoyed. The reference here may be to the latter, and all the more as this part of the chapter deals with merciful providences. The particle vav and other words of the verse then retain their natural sense; and, instead of a denunciation of further afflictions, God declares to Israel that he will perform on their behalf such works of power, wisdom, and goodness, at once great and glorious, merciful and wonderful, as he had wrought for their forefathers in the wilderness after their deliverance from Egypt. Thus the Chaldee: "I will work miracles and great works of wonder for them, such as I wrought in the desert;" as though he said, "Whatever the condition may be into which you shall be brought, vet you shall have me working in as glorious a way for your good and comfort as ever I did for your forefathers when they were in the wilderness." The explanation of "wilderness" under number (1) above, combining, as it does, deliverance yet discipline, care yet chastisement, deserves the preference; it is neither to be explained with Keil exclusively in the sense of promise, nor, on the other hand, exclusively in the sense of punishment with Rashi, who comments as follows: "I will lead her into the wilderness, which for her is like a wilderness and a dry parched land; and there she shall lay it to heart that it was better with her when she did my will than when she rebelled against me.
Vers. 14-23. Sympathy with Israel in spite of their sins.
The laken which introduces ver. 14 is rendered by some notwithstanding," and this is what we might expect; but it is opposed by linguistic usage. We muse adhere to the ordinary translation, which is "therefore." The word thus translated tends to exalt our idea of God"s goodness. Israel had sinned and forgotten God; the "therefore" we would expect, and the inference we would draw is Gods final and forever abandonment of such a sinful, God-forgetting people. Not so, however. Israel had sinned by idolatry, and sunk into a depth of misery from which they were utterly unable to extricate themselves. But their extremity is God"s opportunity; their misery appeals to God"s mercy; and what man could not do, and man would not do if he could, God does, lifting Israel up out of the pit of misery into which, through sin and forgetfulness of God, they had plunged. Not their desert, but their distress, turned the eye of Divine compassion upon them. "His ways are not as our ways, neither are his thoughts as our thoughts." "He hath not dealt with us," says the psalmist, "after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." He had indeed dealt with Israel in wrath, tad prepared the people to put away their idols, and now, to prevent them giving way to despair, he deals with them in mercy.
1. "This "therefore" has a strange and wonderful "wherefore" if we dwell on what precedes: "She went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her:" there needs, indeed, a "behold" to be put to this "therefore."... The right knowledge of the fullness, and riches of the grace of the covenant will help us out of this difficulty, and tell us how these two, the greatness of man"s sin and the riches of God"s grace, may have a connection one with another, and that by an illative "therefore.
2. The allurements of God are
(1) those manifestations which he makes of himself to his people, when he displays to them the beauty of his holiness, the goodness of his grace, the greatness of his mercy, and the glory of his power. Again,
(2) he allures men when he draws them away from the specious blandishments and subtle snares of sin and Satan, the world, and the flesh. He counteracts the enticements of things temporal, and turns the affections to things spiritual and eternal. From earthly gain he allures them to godliness, which, with contentment, is great gain; from the pleasures of the world he allures them to delight themselves in God and in the things of God; from all sinful pursuits and from all unworthy ambitions he allures us to seek our satisfaction in himself, and to set our affections on things above, where Jesus sits at God"s right hand.
1. He speaks comfortably to his people, literally, to their heart. Man can only speak to the ear, God speaks to the heart; yet God"s words in man"s mouth are brought home by the Holy Spirit to the affections, and so to the comfort of man"s heart.
2. Whether, then, the wilderness state be one of afflictive dispensations or of merciful deliverances, the power of Divine attraction is experienced and Divine consolations are enjoyed.
(1) Days of even painfully afflictive dispensations are often days of spiritual consolations; whereas in days of outward prosperity there are many obstructions barring the way to man"s heart and preventing the entrance of heavenly comfort.
(2) Again, what comfort we derive from the record of God"s merciful manifestations to his people in the past! "We may read the stories of God"s wonderful power displayed in delivering his people out of their straits in the wilderness, and make them our own; and plead with God that he would show forth that old, that ancient power and wisdom and goodness of his, as he did unto his people formerly." Hence the prophet prays and teaches us to pray, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old.
I RELIEF IS THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF THIS MERCY. That relief is described in terms calculated to remind them of God"s gracious dealings with their forefathers, and to recall his merciful deliverance of them out of Egypt.
1. Several incidents connected with their redemption out of the land of bondage are laid hold of by the prophet and impressed into his prediction, which is thus rendered beautifully vivid and picturesque, of future deliverance. Among these incidents, which give such a life-like coloring to the prophecy, are God"s persuasion of Israel through his servants, Moses and Aaron; their exit from Egypt, and entrance into the wilderness on the way to Canaan; his cordial and comforting dealings with them in the wilderness, when he gave them that fiery, yet just and good and holy Law, instructed them in the ways and means whereby they might worship him acceptably, and took them into covenant with himself.
2. The Prophet Isaiah speaks of the wilderness becoming a fruitful field, and again of the wilderness and solitary place being gladdened, and of the desert rejoicing and blossoming as the rose. Whether, then, the wilderness itself shall bloom with vineyards for Israel, or whether, on emerging from the wilderness, they were to be put in possession of vineyards in the promised land, the promised blessing of restoration remains the same; while the responsive song of praise and thanksgiving, such as Moses and the men el Israel sang for the glorious triumph at the Red Sea, and in which Miriam and the women of Israel responded, shall be repeated on the occasion of Israel"s rehabilitation in their former inheritance.
3. A remembrancer of a practical kind is interjected, if we are to understand Achor rather appellatively than locally. That remembrancer of Achan"s sin, and Israel"s suffering in consequence, teaches the lesson sometimes difficult to realize, that the bitterest sorrow becomes the source of sweetest comfort to penitent souls. God subjects his people to humbling providences in order to make them contrite; he awakens within them painful convictions, to prepare them for heavenly consolations; he tries them by distressing circumstances, but it is by way of wholesome discipline; by all their wanderings in the wilderness he humbles and proves them in order to do them good at the latter end. If, too, like Israel, we put away sin, the accursed thing within us, we may confidently hope for God"s presence with us, and power to prevail over all enemies around us. Mortifying sin expels the troubles kern the camp; trouble for sin, if it be sincere, opens a door of hope, for that sin that truly troubles us shall not ruin us.
II REVIEW OF GOD"S DEALINGS WITH ISRAEL. In the strong language of prophecy, Israel had been married to God, but had proved unfaithful; going after other lovers, and thus committing spiritual adultery, which is idolatry. Her unfaithfulness had exposed her to the just judgments of God, issuing in her captivity.
1. From the fourteenth verse to the close of the present chapter, however, promises of mercy take the place of denunciation and reproof. Because of Israel"s adultery God had threatened her with a bill of divorce; but now he allures her, that is, woos her again, as a young man a maiden whom he means to make his wife, and in the sequel actually renews that relationship, as we learn from the words, "At that day thou shalt call me Ishi Husband." He here dwells with complacency on his manner of dealing with her when alluring or wooing her in order to make her his wife. Having brought her into the wilderness, or a state of trouble and distress, and thereby humbled her, he wins her heart, not merely by pleasant words, but by most valuable presents.
2. These precious gifts are comfort, hope, and joy. These are the present manifestations of his love which he promises to bestow on Israel. He gives, or rather restores, the vineyards which had been forfeited; that is to say, he gives not only necessaries but delights, not only subsistence but abundance. Vineyards affording wine, which comforts and makes glad the heart of man, imply comfort, with the subsidiary notion of rest and peace, from the figure of men sitting restfully and peacefully under their own vine and fig tree. The second gift is hope. A door of hope, wide and effectual, is opened before God"s people, and they are privileged to enter in. The third is joy, spiritual joy, so that they have good ground and a right disposition to celebrate with songs of joy the praises of their Maker, who is at once their heavenly Husband and gracious Benefactor.
3. We must, however, note the manner of bestowal. It takes place after much trouble and great abasement. He gives "her vineyards from thence," the reference being to the wilderness mentioned in the preceding verse. After difficulties and distresses in a land where they had been hardly bestead, and a condition in which they had been much straitened, they would have comforts of a most valuable kind. Further, the valley of Achor denotes the valley of trouble, and derives its name from having been the scene where God troubled the troubler of Israel, when Achan, who by his sin had troubled the host of Israel, was stoned to death. Sin is the soul troubler still; and when sin is slain and forsaken, with sorrow of heart and bitterness of repentance, the door of hope flies open. Just as the valley of Achor was the door of hope to Israel, inasmuch as-it was the first place they got possession of on entering Canaan, and inasmuch as, valley of trouble though it was, it became the source of much good to them; so the valley of trouble and humiliation is often the opening up of hope and comfort to the believer. Conviction of sin causes trouble. The awakened sinner is troubled by a sense of guilt and fear of deserved wrath; but such troubling opens the door to conversion and comfort.
4. The history of Israel repeats itself in the history of God"s people still.
(1) The trials of the wilderness were past, and Israel anticipated rest and happiness in the hind of promise, but on the very threshold a sore trouble awaited them. So with ourselves; we may fancy trouble past, and flatter ourselves with future happiness, at the very time when other great and sore troubles are awaiting us.
(2) As Israel got vineyards from the wilderness, so God prepares us for great mercies by sore troubles or severe afflictions. "The afflictions of the saints are not only harbingers of mercies, but doors of hope to let in mercies, means to advance their progress. God commands light to shine, not only after darkness, but out of darkness. Joseph"s prison, David"s persecution, Daniel"s den, made way for the glorious mercies God had m store for them." Many a one can say, "The undoing of worldly prosperity has been the making of me in religion;" in times of trouble, therefore, it is our duty to be patient, and our privilege even to be joyful.
(3) Instead of "door of hope," the Septuagint translates, "to open their understanding;" and, though an inaccurate rendering, it conveys the meaning of God"s having opened the understanding of Israel to perceive the sinfulness of sin, God"s hot displeasure against it, the dreadfulness of his wrath, the holiness of his commandments, and the duty of putting away sin.
III RENUNCIATION OF IDOLATRY IS IN CASE OF ISRAEL ANOTHER RESULT OF DIVINE MERCY. He draws them, and they run after him; he makes them willing in the day of his power. Relief from suffering is followed by renunciation of sin; this is a blessed consummation.
1. Other lords had dominion over her, but now she renounces all these, and devotes herself to Jehovah alone. So with sinners when they give up the sin that does most easily beset them. No longer is some beloved lust the subject of their thoughts or the object of their affections; no longer are they wedded to sensuality, or avarice, or ambition, or worldliness, or pride, or passion, or sin in any form; their Maker is now their Husband-even the Lord of hosts, which is his name. Nay, more; they acknowledge God as their Lord and Master, and so he is; they look up to him as their Patron and Protector, and so he is; they confess his right of ownership so as to dispose of them according to his sovereign will and pleasure and they do welt, for so he is.
2. But, above all this, they can come nearer to him and claim a closer connection; with holy boldness they can approach his throne with more confidence and less apprehension than Esther to her imperial husband, when she touched the golden scepter which he held out to her. The Church can address Jehovah not merely as Baali Lord," but with true wifely affection as Ishi Husband." Or, if the distinction we have intimated be disallowed, the name of an idol shall never again be put in the place of the living God, according to the injunction in Exo_23:13, "Make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy month." So with whatever lust, or evil appetite, or sinful gratification, or vicious course we have had for an idol, let it not be once named among us.
3. But how is the change effected? It is God himself who by his grace brings it about. "I," says God, "will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth." The very name is to be treated with abhorrence; it must never more be mentioned, but consigned to the oblivion of the past. God himself girds his people with strength for the sacrifice; "for it is God which worketh in you both to will arid to work, for his good pleasure." The dearest idol I have known, Whate"er that idol be, Help me to pluck it from thy throne, And worship only thee.
IV RESTORATION TO PEACE LIKE THAT OF PARADISE. Once sin is renounced and man is at peace with God, he has peace with all around.
1. A scene of peace did once prevail on earth; it was in Paradise. In those Eden bowers our foreparents enjoyed sweet peace; they had peace with each other, peace and communion with God. Day was succeeded by night, and night melted into day; they slept, they waked, they walked; they kept that Paradisaical spot and dressed it. Above, around, within, the Divine favor brightly shone. No sound of discord was anywhere heard, nor did jarring note intrude. But soon as man broke the peace by turning rebel against God, the beasts, that till then had been subject to man and rendered him willing service, rose in fury and in fierceness against him. Man by sin turned a foe to himself, roused to rage the creatures before subject to him, and was at war with his fellow.
2. But when Israel returns to allegiance to God, the various sections of animate creation shall resume subjection to him. Wild beasts of the most savage nature, or bloodthirsty disposition, or venomous character, shall be at peace with him; the fowls of heaven, the winged emissaries of the evil one, that snatch the Divine Word out of the heart, shall lose the power of injury; enemies resembling the creeping things of the ground, however harmful before in enticing to low lusts, and leaving the slimy trail of sin behind, shall be restrained from hurtling. Not only so; the curse of war shall cease. Jehovah pledges himself by covenant to bless Israel with peace; but the promise carries us on to that happy day when the Prince of peace shall restore peace to the individual heart, peace to the domestic hearth, and peace to the human family throughout all the world.
3. When the weapons of war shall have perished, men shall" dwell, not only in safety, but security. They shall he fearless of every foe; fearless of all the powers of evil; fearless in life, for perfect love casteth out fear;" fearless in death, and triumphant over the last enemy. May the good Lord hasten that time when No strife shall rage, nor hostile feuds Disturb these peaceful years; To ploughshares men shall beat their swords, To pruning-hooks their spears. No longer hosts, encount"ring hosts, Shall crowds of slain deplore: They hang the trumpet in the hall, And study war no more.
V RENEWAL OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT OR COVENANT. If we take this Old Testament picture and put it in a New Testament frame, or if we take this Old Testament flower and transplant it to the New Testament parterre, we shall realize the words of the apostle to the Ephesians, when he says, "Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.... This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.
1. The betrothal is in righteousness, in truthful sincerity, without the suspicion of dissimulation on the one side or the shadow of hypocrisy on the other; in judgment, with due deliberation, not rashly, not unadvisedly, not through some sudden or fitful impulse; in loving-kindness, in outward acts of kindness and innumerable love-tokens; in mercies, in bowels of mercy; this is the source whence all those countless acts of kindness proceed, the fountain from which such abundant streams of love flow forth; in faithfulness, in stability on the part of God, "with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," and steadfastness on the part of the saint. These are the precious stones in the wedding-ring which the bride, the Lamb"s wife, receives righteousness and judgment, loving-kindness and mercies, faithfulness and thus the guarantee of a union that is to last for ever.
VI REVIVAL OF PROSPERITY. In this part of the picture and a beautiful picture is here presented to us we see a specimen of the manifold wisdom of God, and of the many links in the chain of his providence. The boldness of the figure, and the beauty of the personification exhibiting the chain of second causes, and their connection with the great First Cause of all, have been much admired. When the people of God stand in need of, and prayerfully seek, outward comforts, "immediately the corn and the wine and the oil, as if they heard their complaints, shall say, O Lord, we would help Jezreel, and satisfy these thy servants. The corn shall cry to the earth, O earth, let me come into thy bowels; I will rot there that so I may bring forth fruit for this people. The vines and the olives shall desire the earth to receive them, to impart juice and nourishment to them, that they may refresh these reconciled ones of God. The earth shall say, Oh that I may receive the corn and wine and oil that I may be fruitful in my kind! but, ye heavens, I can do nothing except I have your influences, and the warm beams of the sun to make me fructify; come, therefore, and assist me, that I may bear fruit for Jezreel. And the heavens shall cry, Lord, we would fain help the earth, that the earth may help the corn and wine and oil, that they may supply Jezreel; but we can do nothing without thy hand; therefore hear us and suffer us to ram upon the earth, that it may become fruitful." Thus the creatures plead with each other for the saints of God; God hears the heavens, and the heavens the earth, and the earth the corn and wine and oil, and the corn and wine and oil supply abundance to the people of God.
1. If the creatures cry to one another for help to the people of God, shall we turn a deaf ear to the appeals of God"s afflicted people when they cry for help to us? Or shall we refuse to hearken to the call of God when he summons us to help forward his cause and extend his kingdom?
2. If God hears his creatures when they cry to him for our support, what encouragement we have to believe that he will hear his own Son, when, as Advocate and Intercessor, he pleads on our behalf and in the presence of God for us!
Vers. 14-20. Israel"s restoration.
The word "therefore," with which this strophe opens, illustrates the blessed truth that God"s thoughts are not our thoughts. The conclusion here is not what the premises would have led us to expect. This "therefore" is of Divine grace, not of hard cold intellect. Although Israel has foully dishonored her heavenly Husband, and must be severely chastised, he will not give her a" bill of divorcement" to put her away. Rather, her miseries shall attract his mercies. Jehovah"s love uses even her shameful unfaithfulness as an argument for the bestowal of his own matchless grace. These verses describe the future restoration, both of the literal and the spiritual Israel; and they are also a parable illustrative of God"s thoughts and ways towards every returning prodigal.
I THE METHODS OF ISRAEL"S RESTORATION. (Ver. 14) We need not stay to speak of its Author, even although the first "I" (ver. 14) is emphatic. Only Jehovah himself has heart and power equal to this task. Only he who makes the summer of the year can produce that spiritual summer which is here described with such tender pathos. His methods are twofold.
1. The outward discipline of the wilderness. After Israel shall have endured the punishments denounced upon her, her national life is to begin anew. The generation that had come out of Egypt with Moses had needed the protracted discipline of the Arabian desert before God could "give them their vineyards;" and so would it be again. The nation must be taken apart, and be for a time alone with Croci. Similarly, the Lord removes the individual soul whom he designs to bless, into the wilderness of temporal loss, or sickness, or sorrow. When the aged Christian reviews his spiritual experience, he generally finds that the most marked spots in it have been connected with his times of sorrow.
2. The inward realization of the constancy and tenderness of the Divine love. The discipline must be spiritual also. Outward providences alone will not restore Israel. Neither will the truth of God presented only to her mind. In the wilderness the Divine Spirit must "speak to her heart." His purpose in carrying the nation into exile is that he may "allure" her, i.e. decoy her with tender words, persuade her by the persistent manifestation of his love. He will stoop to court her. He will outbid the Baals. His inextinguishable love will woo and win her soul. So, oftentimes, God "speaks to the heart" of the prodigal when he sits by the swine-troughs, in the time of the mighty famine. He "speaks to his heart," to soften it, comfort it, cleanse it, claim it, fill it. He has his ways of holy enticement for "alluring" sinners to receive and return his love.
II THE BLESSED RESULTS OF THE RESTORATION. (Vers. 15-20) These are described with exquisite beauty. The Divine promise is that in "the wilderness" Israel"s national life shall begin afresh. God"s nuptial covenant with her shall be renewed. She shall be enfeoffed again in the land of Canaan, the possession of which she had forfeited. The Lord "will give her her vineyards from thence." And the results shall be glorious.
1. Fresh hope. (Ver. 15) The valley of Achor (i.e. trouble) was the door by which Israel had at first entered into possession of the highlands of Palestine. It had been the scene of a dreadful tragedy (Joshua 7): the defeat before Ai, and Achan"s sacrilege, conviction, and doom. But so soon as Israel purged herself of "the accursed thing," the valley of Achor had become to her "a door of hope." Now, however, she must again pass through a still more doleful Achor. The destruction of Samaria and the desolation of Jerusalem would mark a defeat greatly more disastrous than the repulse at Ai. But through "the valley of trouble" she shall come again to peace and rest. Does not the expression before us furnish a valuable watchword for the Christian? It reminds him that he must pass through "the great tribulation" (Rev_7:1-2) before he can reach the heavenly Canaan. Every ungodly lust is an Achan in the camp of the soul, which must be convicted and stoned and burned.
2. Youthful joy. (Ver. 15) Israel, n hen restored to the Divine favor, shall recover the sprightliness and joy of youth. "Site shall sing there, as in the days of her youth;" and in those days she could indeed sing. Is not the song of Moses a masterpiece both of poetry and praise? In conception it is sublime. In execution it must have been thrilling. That old Red Sea ads is the first song of redemption. But, in the days of her restoration, Israel shall resume it, and with a fuller appreciation of its meaning. For the song of salvation which returning penitents now sing is "the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb". (Rev_15:3)
3. Renewed conjugal love. (Vers. 16, 17) In the rapture of her recovered love, Israel shall call Jehovah Ishi Husband." She shall no longer use the name Baali." In itself, of course, "Baal" is a good enough word. In Hebrew it is a common noun, meaning "master," "possessor," "owner;" and it had been used as a designation of Jehovah. But, alas! the word had at length been prostituted to base purposes, and defiled by wicked associations. Its purity was now hopelessly gone. So, in the good time coming, it shall be used no more. God will not be called Baal, lest the word should tempt Israel to think of her old idols.
4. Paradisiacal peace. (Ver. 18) The picture here suggests a return to the garden of Eden. The forces of nature, once so hostile (vers. 9, 12), shall be brought into harmony with Israel. Wars shall cease forever. The face of the world shall be changed. How different this picture from the state of matters that is still thought necessary in order to the preservation of the peace of Europe! The favorite maxim just now is that the best security for peace is to be well prepared for war. The Baal-spirit professes to see the basis of peace in our arsenals and ironclads; but Jehovah"s plan is to "break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth.
5. An everlasting marriage union. (Vers. 19, 20) The Lord will forget all Israel"s past infidelity, and treat her again as if she were innocent and pure. He will espouse her, as if she were a chaste virgin, to himself. He will bestow upon her, as bridal gifts, every Divine and spiritual blessing "judgment," "loving-kindness," "mercies, faithfulness." And the new marriage-covenant shall be "for eternity" (ver. 19). The former one, alas! had been sadly broken; but the renewal of the conjugal relationship shall be enduring as Jehovah"s invincible, unchangeable love.
CONCLUSION. How important for the sinner to "know and believe the love that God hath to him"! The eternal love of God is a fact. Every pure human attachment is but a rill from the infinite fountain of the Divine tenderness. Love, no less than holiness and justice, lies at the root of the Divine wrath against sin. Jehovah our God is "a jealous God;" but he would not trouble himself to cherish holy jealousy about the affections of our poor hearts, if he did not love us with an ardent and a quenchless love. Oh for grace to love him in return as we ought! C.J.
HOMILIES BY A. ROWLAND Vers. 14, 15. The message from home.
There will be but little difficulty in the exposition of this passage if we remember that two distinct figures are blended by the prophet. On the one hand he recalls the early history of Israel. He remembers their degradation in Egypt, and traces the moral effects upon them of the wilderness-life which transformed a horde of slaves into a nation; binding each man to his fellow, and all to God. To the prophet, as a moral teacher, the wilderness appears the place for the cure of idolatry, for the reception of the Law, for the appointment of Divine worship, and for the gathering of national and moral strength. Glancing from the wilderness across the Jordan, he sees, next, the disaster at Ai which ensued on sin, and notes the way in which, in the valley of Achor, the iniquity was purged, so that the people were ready for new victories and the possession of the land of promise. After recalling these incidents, Hoses says to the Israel of his own day, "These experiences shall be repeated in all their essential features. You shall be taken from the Egypt of idolatry, you shall be led into the wilderness of exile, you shall pass through the valley of trouble, and there, your sin being discovered and removed, you shall go on to a nobler future and have the fulfillment of the promises." But with this figure is blended another, which pervades the first three chapters, in which Israel is represented as a disloyal wife, whose husband loves her still, and seeks by the gentlest means to draw her again to himself. God"s condescension and wisdom are shown in these attempts to set forth Divine responsibilities and privileges by analogies drawn from human relationships. The human is sanctified, and the Divine is made natural by such a method. Here God is represented as the Husband of the Church, bearing with her waywardness and sin, taking upon himself her sorrows and cares, purging her from all evil, that at last she may appear radiant in the sheen of her white robes, and crowned with light in his presence. (Text.)
I CONSIDER THE ENTICEMENT OF SIN LEADING TO ESTRANGEMENT which is set before us in the earlier part of this chapter. The ideal condition of Israel, and therefore of every soul, is that of one betrothed to the Lord, yearning for his society, mourning his absence, cheered by his smile, and waiting for the marriage. Nothing satisfies the soul but God. In the imperfection of our friends, in the mistakes we make about each other, in the spurning of our love, in the loss of dear ones by removal or death, we are disquieted by the ordinance of God, so that, like Augustine, we may say, "Cor nostrum inquietum est, donec in te requiescat." As Israel said, "I will go after my lovers," so one says, "I will go after pleasure;" and another, "I will go after wealth," as if the highest good could be found there. And this sin is aggravated, because (as ver. 8 implies) all that is used or enjoyed in this vain pursuit is given to us by the Cod we forget; as the prodigal wasted in the far country what his father had given to him. In order to bring us to thought and penitence, wandering from God is made difficult to us, and often the words have been fulfilled, "I will hedge up thy way with thorns." He thwarts our plans and disappoints our hopes. The idolized friend proves false, the adored child is torn from our embrace, the hoarded wealth is swept away. The fruit has its bitter kernel, and the rose its thorn. Nor is it only in what is outward that we recognize a hedge planted by God to turn us back from evil. When one is about to sin, he is checked by the thought of dishonor to his father"s name, or by the reproaches of conscience, or by the memories of old teaching, or by the tears of a mother. He can say, as Augustine did in the review of his sinful life, "I escaped not thy scourges, for what mortal can? For thou wert even with me mercifully rigorous, and besprinkling with most bitter alloy all my unlawful pleasures, that I might seek pleasures without alloy. But where to find such I could not discover save in thee, O Lord, who teachest by sorrow, and woundest us to heal, and killest us lest we die from thee.
II LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF LOVE CALLING TO THE WILDERNESS. "Therefore I will allure her." It is the last inference we should expect. Sin and forgetfulness are not inducements to mercy. If trouble is the obvious result of extreme wickedness which is still unreported, the father would say of the child, the husband of the wife, It is right she should suffer, and till she returns she cannot expect blessing from me." So long as lawful authority is set at defiance, human law knows no mercy. God does not deal with us, however, as we deal with others. He did not cast Israel off at once, nor did he summon her to his feet by the thunders of Sinai or the terrors of hell, but says, "I will allure her;" speaking gently as Christ did by his Word and life, so that the sin-stained felt that, though no other mercy could be had, it might be found at the feet of the Friend of sinners. "I will draw her into the wilderness," the place of silence and of solitude. The Divine voice is seldom heard amidst a multitude. God severs the individual from his fellows when he would give him a message far himself or for others. He spoke to Jacob, not in the family, but in the desert, where only the quiet stars wore watching; to Moses, not in the crowded camp, but high above it, on Sinai; to Samuel, not amid the worshippers, but in the silent chamber where the child slept alone; to Elijah, not in the tumult of Carmel"s victory, but in the silence of the cave at Horeb. So Israel had been taught, not in Egypt, but in the wilderness; and thus, said the prophet, it shall be again, and there "I wilt speak comfortably unto her literally, "I will speak upon her heart that henceforth my Law and my love may be graven on it. Such has been the experience of the Christian. Convinced of sin, the world seemed dreary as a desert to him, till hope was infused into his heart that pardon and reconciliation were not far from him. Believing that God was near, he lifted up his trembling heart in prayer, and in Christ, the crucified and risen Savior, he saw God reconciled to him; and the glimpse of his infinite beauty, of his unspeakable love, won his heart forever. Then the very place of grief became the place where the fruits of joy were growing, and in the wilderness of repentance the promise was fulfilled, "I will give thee vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.
III LOOK FOR THE DOOR OF HOPE IN THE VALLEY OF TROUBLE. "The valley of Achor," or of troubling, on the north of Gilgal and Jericho, was the place in which Israel was gathered after the repulse at Ai; when the sin of Achan was discovered with such terrible exactitude, and removed by dreadful expiation (see Joshua 6). But, though it seemed a valley of despair, it was really a place of hope, because the camp was purged from the curse and. the people made ready for Canaan. So, in the coming exile of which Hosea spoke, some even in Israel would cast off their sin and turn to the Lord, and that valley of Achor would be a door of hope. The principle of using the most unlikely means for deliverance and blessing has often been exemplified, by him who brought water out of the rock, and made the cross the means of the world"s salvation, and death the entrance to heaven. Most conspicuously is it seen in our redemption.
1. The door of hope was opened for the world in the valley of trouble, through which Christ walked on our behalf. We are raised to heaven because he came down to earth; we have the life eternal because he submitted to death. But for his obedience in humiliation, God"s Law would not have been vindicated in its righteousness and beauty; but for his sorrows, we should have had no almighty Intercessor whose sympathy is perfect; but for his crucifixion, the handwriting against us would never have been nailed to the cross; and but for his death, and burial, and resurrection, and ascension, we should not have seen the kingdom of heaven opened to all believers.
2. The door of hope was opened for the Jews, as a nation, in the valley of trouble. Egyptian bondage prepared for liberty, wilderness wandering was the means of moral culture, defeat led to the putting away of sin, the captivity in Babylon tore up idolatry by its roots. After the coming of Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem amidst tears and blood was the opening of a new door of hope, for by it the noblest of the race began to look for the heavenly Jerusalem, to understand the spirituality of worship, and to find in Christ the one Center round which the true Israel would gather. Thus every nation may look for a door of hope in its valley of trouble? When called to pass through commercial depression, military disasters, diplomatic defeats, there is hope of finding purification from immorality, extravagance, and self-indulgence, and a new and loftier sense of responsibility to others and to God.
3. The door of hope is opened for sinners in the valley of trouble. Trouble is not itself and of necessity a good. The wind, which wafts one vessel to the haven, may drive another on the rocks. The fiver, which today gives fertility to the fields, may to-morrow bring desolation to the works and to the homes of men. Trouble may injure us, yet it is meant to bless us; and this is specially true of the inward sorrow represented here. If one is convinced of sin, so that the old enjoyment of pleasures is gone, and paradise becomes a wilderness, his penitential grief is the true beginning of the joy the publican had, who went down to his house justified because he cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner." If we are in the sadder condition of one who has, like Israel, forsaken her first love, and are compelled to say, "Then was it better with me than now," our hope is found in going out, like Peter, weeping bitterly. And in the valley of the shadow of death, which seems to mortal eyes so dark and strange, so sad and fearsome, that it may well be called the valley of Arbor, we shall find in it the door of hope ay, the door of heaven and, like others, we shall sing in it as in the days of our youth, "Thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory. A.R.
Comfortable words.
In the later periods of Jewish history, references were frequently made to the early experiences by which Israel had been, in the providence of God, made a nation. In this verse the prophet, in assuring the people that the time of Divine reconciliation and favor was approaching, sets forth this prospect in language borrowed from the days of the Exodus. Then Jehovah had delivered his people from the bondage of Egypt, had led them into the wilderness, and there had entered into a covenant of espousals with the nation, and had spoken to them words of comfort and of encouragement. Hosea foretells that a similar experience is in reserve for the smitten but penitent and returning children of the covenant.
I MAN"S NEED OF COMFORTABLE WORDS. This may be said to arise from the fact that severe words had been uttered to the people"s sorrow. God is faithful, and he never flatters, and never withholds the correction which is deserved and required. When the voice of God has threatened, and the voice of conscience has condemned, welcome are words of consolation expressive of Divine interest and favor.
II THE IMPORT OF COMFORTABLE WORDS DIVINE.
1. They are words of forgiveness.
2. They are words expressive of favor.
3. They are words assuring of gracious help.
4. They are words faithful and certain to be exactly and entirely made good.
Unlike the well-meant comfortable words spoken by human lips, which often are nothing but words and are altogether vain, the gracious language of the Divine Deliverer is powerful to effect the purposes of the utterer, and to heal the sorrows and relieve the anxieties of those addressed.
III THE EFFECT OF COMFORTABLE WORDS.
1. They reassure the timid and trembling.
2. They bring peace to the conscience-stricken and alarmed.
3. They soothe the anxious and distressed.
4. They banish the fears of the foreboding, and inspire with hope.
APPLICATION. The preachers of the gospel are commissioned to "speak comfortably to Jerusalem," to bind up the broken-hearted, to pour the balm of consolation into the spirit of the lowly and the contrite. T.
Vers. 14, 15. Soul-restoration.
"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt." These words refer to the restoration of Israel to friendship and fellowship with God. "The desert," says Delitzsch, "into which the Lord will lead his people cannot be any other than the desert of Arabia, through which the road from Egypt to Canaan passes. Leading into this desert is not a punishment, but a redemption out of bondage. The people are not to remain in the desert, but to be enticed and led through it to Canaan, the land of vineyards. The description is typical throughout. What took place in the olden time is to be repeated, in all that is essential, in the time to come. Egypt, the Arabian desert, and Canaan are types. Egypt is a type of the land of the captivity in which Israel had been oppressed in its fathers by the heathen power of the world." The verses may be used to illustrate the subject of soul-restoration, and they suggest two facts.
I THAT THE STAGES IN SOUL-RESTORATION ARE GRADUAL. The reference throughout here is to the emancipation of the Jews from the Egyptian bondage, their Divine guidance in the wilderness, and their entrance into the promised land. And all this is here employed to illustrate spiritual restoration. We may remark, therefore:
1. That the first step to soul-restoration is froth bondage to liberty. "I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness." Into the wilderness from where? From Egyptian bondage. In Egypt the Israelites were slaves, in the wilderness they were free. All souls are in moral Egypt, and the first step to their restoration is their exodus into the moral Arabia.
2. The next step is from despondency to hope. The valley of Achor, which was situated to the north of Gilgal, is mentioned by the prophet with a manifest reference to Joshua 7. Through the sin of Achan Israel had incurred the displeasure of the Almighty, and its army against Ai was defeated. But through the prayers of Joshua and the elders, the Divine favor was again obtained, and Israel became triumphant, and the valley of Achor, where there was great trouble, radiated with "hope." The victory of Ai threw all Canaan into their hands, (Jos_7:8) and Achor, once the scene of great trouble, became to them "a door of hope." It was, indeed, the first place of which they took possession in Canaan; it was the entrance into the promised land. In spiritual restoration the soul passes from trouble into hope; in the "deep valley of affliction it finds a door of hope." Joseph in his prison, David in his persecutions, Saul in his manifold trials, all found "a door of hope." Through much-tribulation we enter into kingdoms.
3. The next step is from sterility to fruitfulness. I will give her her vineyards from thence." The wilderness was a barren desert, but Canaan was a land of vineyards; it abounded with fruit. In spiritual restoration the soul passes from the sterile into the fruitful; it leaves the desert for a paradise.
4. The next step is from sadness to exultation. "She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth." The reference here again is to the song which the Israelites sang after they had crossed the Red Sea. (Exo_15:1) The song of the redeemed soul at last will be the song of Moses and the Lamb. (Rev_15:3) Such are the stages through which the soul in its restoration passes from the bondage to liberty, despondency to hope, barrenness to fruitfulness, sadness to exultation.
II THAT THE AGENCY IN SOUL-RESTORATION IS DIVINE. Who is it that effects this restoration? God. "I will allure her," etc.; I will give her vineyards," etc. No one but God can restore souls. Mark how he does it.
1. Morally. "I will allure her." It is not by force or violence, not by menace or might, but by the enticements of the moral beauty of his character and the charms of his love. God restores souls by manifesting all his tenderness, his goodness, his perfections to them through Christ. The power of the gospel is the power of allurement. If souls are to come out of their Egypt into the wilderness, God must allure them.
2. Lovingly. "Speak comfortably unto her." He declares he has no pleasure in the death of a sinner. He assures of his readiness to pardon and to bless. He says, "Come now, and let us reason together," etc.
3. Generously. "I will give her vineyards from thence." He who gave Canaan to the Jews gives heaven to restored souls.
CONCLUSION. Brother, knowest thou aught of this soul-restoration? Have the allurements of Divine love drawn thee out of Egypt? In the midst of thy deep troubles hast thou found a "door of hope"? Is the wilderness within thee beginning to blossom as the rose, and do the fruitful vines refresh thee with their clusters? Has the song of Moses and the Lamb inspired thy heart and tuned thy voice? If so, "sing praises unto our God, sing praises. D.T.
Israel"s recovery.
It had already been told that God"s dealings with Israel would not be permanently in vain. This truth is now expanded. Times and seasons are not specified; for
(1) it was not given to the prophet to know them; (cf. Act_1:7) and
(2) it lay with Israel itself, in some measure, to make the times and seasons.
1. The earliest phase of the predicted allurement is seen in the promises held out in connection with the return from the Babylonian captivity. These promises embraced Israel as well as Judah. (Isa 40-66 Eze 37 Zec 8, etc.) The result, however, showed that Israel was not yet in a fit condition to receive the fulfillment.
2. The second phase of the allurement was in the preaching of Christ"s gospel. This, which was addressed to both Jews and Gentiles, tells of God"s redeeming love, and prays, "Be ye reconciled to God". (2Co_5:20) Many of the "house of Israel" listened many still listen to this allurement.
3. The final fulfillment will be reached in the day of Israel"s national conversion. Then, as the result, perhaps, of great experience of trouble (ver. 15), God"s words will come with new power to their hearts. Earnest penitence will ensue. "All Israel shall be saved". (Rom_11:26) The fulfillment of these promises is connected in prophecy with the coming of a Redeemer and the gift of the Spirit. This supposes new dispensational arrangements. There is implied the bringing in of a new economy, which yet, from its nature, would have a wider scope than the economy which then existed. Israel participates in the blessings of the new covenant only as part of a larger "people of God." This is the principle which legitimizes the extension of these promises so far as they are not plainly national to the whole Church of believers. J.O.
Vers. 14-18. Allurement.
Wonderful are the steps of Divine love in the history of the recovery of a soul. View those which are here presented.
I WILDERNESS PREPARATION. (Ver. 14) Chastisement would prepare the way for mercy. Israel was to be taken out "into the wilderness." There, deprived of her idols, and stripped of her earthly blessings, she would bethink herself of the God from whom she had departed. It takes much discipline, oftentimes, to bring us into the state of mind in which we are willing to listen to God. Pride needs to be humbled; self-will needs to be broken; the heart built up in self-righteousness needs to be convinced of sin. To this end God employs trials, hardships, crosses, bereavements, sorrows of various kinds. He trains us by the wilderness.
II DIVINE ALLUREMENT. (Ver. 15) We are led here to study the operations of Divine love under the character of allurement. "I will allure her." Allurement is the art of reaching the heart by soft influences. It is not compulsion. It is not conviction by argument. It is a persuasive, drawing influence exerted on the affections and will. It is gentle, not violent; it is mild, not passionate. It conquers by the might of love. Some persons have more of this power of attraction, of fascination, than others. It is a gift an influence, emanating from the personality. It cannot be communicated. The Divine Spirit is the great Allurer. His dealings with a soul are a secret between that soul and himself. God allures:
1. By solitude. "I will bring her into the wilderness." He takes the soul apart by itself, he isolates it, as he did Israel when he spoke with her at first. (Exo_19:3-5) We cannot hear God"s voice amidst the busy hum of earth. Our own age stands much in need of more solitary communion.
2. By word. "I will speak comfortably unto her." The words of God are found in Scripture. How well fitted the Bible, with its gracious, tender, comforting, reassuring utterances, is for this purpose of allurement, we all know. It is shaped and adapted in every way to draw the soul to God.
3. By gift. "I will give her vineyards from thence." The typical blessings shadow out the higher. God attests his love to us by gift as well as by word. He has given his Son. (Joh_3:16) He gives himself. He gives all spiritual blessings. (Eph_1:3) He gives eternity. Christ is "the unspeakable Gift". (2Co_9:15) "All things are yours". (1Co_3:21)
4. By chastisement. "And the valley of Achor for a door of hope." The valley of Achor lay at the entrance of Canaan. It was there that God "troubled" Israel for the sin of Achan (Joshua 7). That sin barred the entrance to the land, and only when it was judged and removed could Israel proceed. The meaning is that, so often as sin bars the way to the possession of the inheritance, and brings down chastisement, so often will grace, working through judgment on the sin, bring good out of evil, and new hope out of the experience of sorrow. (2Co_7:9-11) Israel, after the sin had been put away, received a pledge of the Divine presence with them for future victories. "In this relation the Lord here promises that the place of sanctified trial shall not only be a re, on of endurance, but a door of hope." Trouble becomes a means of spiritual profiting. God"s allurement begets joy. "She shall sing there, as in the days of her youth," etc. God puts a new song in the mouths of his people. (Psa_40:1, Psa_40:2) It is, as in the triumph at the Red Sea, a song of deliverance; of victory. "The song of Moses and the Lamb". (Re 15) . The joy is the greater after the sorrow. (Rev_7:9-17)
III HOLIER ESPOUSALS. (Vers. 16, 17) Won by the Divine allurements, Israel ratifies a new marriage covenant with Jehovah. The new union is very different from the older one. It is a union marked:
1. By earnest affection. "Thou shalt call me Ishi Husband.
2. By purified feeling. "And shalt no mere call me Baali Baal." Israel"s feelings towards Jehovah would be purged of all idolatrous associations.
3. By sincere abhorrence of the past. "I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth." So does the sinner shudder at the very thought of the things which formerly pleased him. They are hateful to him. He would count it a shame even to speak of those things in secret. (Eph_5:12)
4. By jealous care for the future. "They shall no more be remembered by their name." Israel would guard, in her future relations with Jehovah, against the intrusion of even the thought of her former paramours. J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23 I will allure her, and bring her into the…
Hos_2:14-15
I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her.
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Allure
The original word is used of one readily enticed, as a simple one, whether to good or ill. God uses, as it were, Satans weapons against himself. As Satan had enticed the soul to sin, so would God, by holy enticements and persuasiveness, allure her to Himself. God, too, hath sweetness for the penitent soul far above all the sweetness of present joys, much more above the bitter sweetness of sin. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Gods presence in loneliness
From the first dawning of conversion to the hour of death, it is in solitude mostly that God speaks to the soul. Here God spoke by His prophet to a nation which, like ourselves, had, in its prosperity, multiplied its idols, made gold and silver into gods to worship, had been unfaithful to its God, and abused His gifts. Of such God says, I will allure her. He vouchsafes to speak to us after the manner of men. He will give us, He saith, love for love. He speaks as we may best bear to hear, and is fittest for us. Blessed are those holy hours in which the soul retires from the world to be alone with God. Gods voice, as Himself, is everywhere. Only the din of the world, or the tumult of our own hearts, deafens our inward ear to it. Chiefly in the inmost soul He speaks, because there He dwells. To be alone is to feel the presence of God, in love or in displeasure, as a friend or a stranger. Until the soul will open its whole self to God, it shrinks from inward and outward loneliness. We must be alone in the hour of death, let us learn to be alone with God now. It is only afar off that the wilderness looks a waste, and terrible and dry. Until, in silence, ye enter into that sacred loneliness, ye know not whither ye are going. In loneliness a man knows himself and his God. Enter thou with Him, and by His grace, thou wilt not come forth as thou goest in. Cherished sin alone deafens us to the voice of God. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Christ allures to the wilderness
Apply these words to ourselves, as setting before us the way Almighty God will work upon our souls to bring us to repentance, or to a deeper knowledge of His ways.
I. He will allure the soul and bring it into the wilderness. This implies that it is elsewhere,--it is in the world. What is meant by the wilderness? It is spoken of our hearts. God will make us, even while living in this world, with all its pleasures and vanities around us, as dead to all as if we were in a wilderness. I spake unto thee in prosperity, and thou wouldest not hear. This is His lament. Therefore He will destroy all those things wherein we trust, that we may hear His voice and live. There is self-denial involved in following where the Spirit leads us. It allures onwards to the wilderness. Follow willingly.
II. If God has thus dealt with you, it is that he may speak to your hearts. In silence, in solitude, in the desolation of your hearts, He will come and build up their ruined breaches, and dwell therein Himself. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. God speaks to the heart; He allures it to Him; and when it has found no rest for the sole of its foot on the waters of this troubled world, bids it return to its true rest in His wounded side. (R. A. Suckling, M. A.)
Gods free grace
Therefore, because she will not be restrained by the denunciations of wrath, God will try whether she will be wrought upon by the offers of mercy. The design is plainly to magnify free grace to those on whom God will have mercy purely for mercys sake. (Matthew Henry.)
Gods wise and tender love to His people
In the Old Testament we see the struggle between the Divine love and the perverse human will. God will ever impose restraints and place barriers in the way of sin, and so would make sin difficult and painful. In addition to conscience, the inward monitor, there are outward checks placed by God to hinder men from the commission of sin. Toil is a restraint. It is a bit and bridle to the wayward and the vicious. The wave of prosperity often leaves behind it the rubbish and foam of licentiousness. Pain is also a restraint. There is pleasure in sin. It is not real, it is not enduring, but there it is, and the sinner is attracted by it. The forbidden tree is pleasant to the eyes. The sinfulness of sin may be inferred from its bitter consequences. Pain is a moral word. It implies punishment. It is the penalty of sin, it is therefore a restraint. But God not only checks, He draws.
I. He wins by his love. He allures, persuades, woos, attracts. God respects mans freedom. God Himself cannot compel us to trust and love Him. He has constituted us moral beings. God influences the motives, the desires, the judgments, the affections, operates on the secret power of the will. The only power that can win men from their sin is love. Love has the key that fits every lock in the different chambers of the soul. Love can overcome the enmity of our nature. It will not be slain by any other weapon. And thus God deals with us.
II. He appoints and uses necessary means of discipline. Having been allured, drawn to God, we are then trained, disciplined. This wilderness state is a state of--
1. Solitude. A man must get out of the crowd in order to think. Men living in a crowd become mere echoes. In solitude man discovers himself, and realises the presence of God, and these involve a burden of personal responsibility.
2. Trouble. Chastisement was, and still is, the necessary discipline for Gods children. Why does God correct them? To make them feel that sin is terribly hateful. And He shews us the tendency of sin.
3. Preparation. The training of the wilderness was necessary. Had they entered Canaan at once, they would have been unfit to take possession of it. God brings us into the wilderness in order to develop our character. The faith that will stand in the storm is the faith that has been tried.
III. God speaks to us. Lit. I will speak to her heart. Not to the intellect merely, but also to the heart. But Gods words never reach the heart until we have been prepared for them. What are His words that reach the heart? Words of forgiveness, consolation, hope. Are we then making the right use of our Fathers discipline? (James Owen.)
Mercy, troubles, and end of the Church
I. The overtures of mercy. I will allure her. The natural heart is in a state of rebellion against God, and He sends an offer of free pardon to all that will submit to Him. He allures them by His mercies. God works upon mens fears by shewing them their dangers, upon their affections by the offer of His grace.
II. Troubles that shall come after. I will bring her into the wilderness. When souls are delivered from their natural bondage to sin and Satan, they do not immediately taste all the sweets arising from the liberty of the Gospel. They often indeed suffer greater torments of mind, greater terrors of conscience, than ever they did before. But if God brings His people through a wilderness, He will speak comfortably to them at last.
III. The end of her troubles. Where God, by His Spirit, speaks comfortably to the heart, that is comfort indeed. If the heart be not at ease, nothing can give us comfort. It is one of the offices of the Spirit to comfort Gods people. (R. W. Dibdin, M. A.)
And I will give her her vineyards from thence.
Gods dealings with His Church
The Church of God means that blessed company of true believers in Christ, and true and faithful servants of God the Father, who are living by the influences of the Holy Spirit, a life of genuine devotedness to God and His Christ--whose religion is that of the Gospel, and who adorn that Gospel in all things--whose affections are set on the things which are above--who seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness--who are living as pilgrims and strangers on earth, and who are looking for a city which hath foundations. These, however dispersed, form one body. Of this Church the Jewish nation was a type and representative. In considering such a passage as the text, it becomes us to exercise a sober discretion, lest we wander into the regions of fancy. We may view it as representing.
I. The gracious dealings of god with his church.
1. He allures them by the most gracious invitations, to turn to Him with penitence and prayer. God is love; and amongst the many proofs of this, are the gracious invitations by which He allures His rebellious creatures to seek His face.
2. To these invitations the Lord adds the most encouraging assurances to all who will seek His mercy, forgiveness of their sins, and acceptance with Him. But the Lord does more than this. He not only gently raises the desire of His favour, but He power fully strengthens and confirms it--He brings her into the wilderness. Some suppose this refers to the love of solitude and retirement as affording opportunity for more unrestricted communion with God. Others consider it as alluding to those various afflictive dispensations which are often the means employed by God in leading His people to the living fountains of waters. May we not regard them as denoting more especially that state of spiritual distress into which God in mercy brings the sinner? The Lord brings His believing people into the wilderness of conviction of sin and godly repentance. Conviction leads to consolation, and repentance prepares the new-born soul for the reception of the Saviour. No language can describe the comfort which springs in the heart of the convinced and contrite sinner from the assurance that the door of mercy is not yet closed against him, and that there is a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness. Then, indeed, he has reason for blessing God in that He has brought him into the wilderness.
II. The gifts which God bestows on the Church.
1. I will give her her vineyards, rich blessings and privileges. Through the wilderness is the road to the vineyards. He gives the privileges of children. He gives His Holy Spirit. He gives them peace passing understanding--joy and peace in believing.
2. He gives also the valley of Achor for a door of hope. The present comforts and privileges of Gods people are pledges and foretastes of future and more enlarged felicity, an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. (John Vaughan, LL. B.)
Wilderness-blessings
I will do it, says God. Observe the richness of the supply. Not her corn, which is for necessity; or grapes, which are for delight; or even a vine; but a vineyard. God concerns Him self not only with our safety, our welfare, our relief, our enjoyment; He would even fill us with all joy and peace in believing. Observe the strange way in which these indulgences are to be communicated. From whence are these supplies to come? From a wilderness. Who would expect to find the vineyards of Engedi in a wilderness?
1. Earth is a wilderness. It was not designed to be. The ground is cursed for mans sake. By one man sin entered into the world. But to the Christian the curse is turned into a blessing. He has not only before him a land of promise, but even now, even here, he has a thousand alleviations and succours, and even delights.
2. Solitude is a wilderness. There is not only much to be done alone, but gained alone, and enjoyed alone. There we gain our best knowledge and our richest experience. There we enjoy the freedom of prayer and the most unreserved intercourse with God. They are never less alone than when alone.
3. Outward trouble is a wilderness. Many have been afraid to be brought into it, yet He has given them their vineyards from thence. They have been saved by their undoing, and enriched by their losses.
4. The state of mind produced by the conviction of sin is a wilderness. Who does not remember the surprise, the confusion of mind, the anguish, the self-despair he once felt; and who can forget the feelings induced by a discovery of the Cross, and the joy of Gods salvation!
5. The same may be said of that soul abase ment and distress the believer himself may feel from increasing views of his unworthiness, depravity, and guilt. The experience is truly lamentable, but will the humiliation hurt him? He giveth grace unto the humble.
6. The valley of the shadow of death is the last wilderness. There is much to render it uninviting and awful; and yet, when it has been actually entered, the apprehension and the gloom have fled: This has been the case generally, even with those who arc most subject to bondage by the fear of it. The place has been made glad for them. And what vineyards does He give them from thence! (William Jay.)
Vineyards instead of vines
He had destroyed her vines (Hos_2:12), but now He will give her whole vineyards; as if for every vine destroyed she should have a vineyard restored, and so be repaid with interest; she shall not only have corn for necessity, but vineyards for delight. These denote the privileges and comforts of the Gospel. Note that God has vineyards of consolation ready to bestow on those who repent and turn to Him; and He can give vineyards out of a wilderness, which are of all others the most welcome, as rest to the weary. (Matthew Henry.)
Desert discipline
The age of Hosea was one of great material prosperity, and one of deplorable spiritual decay. The time was at hand when prosperity was to end and privation begin. It is in view of the times coming that Hosea brings his message. And his message is a mingled one. He speaks of judgment impending, and of sin as the cause of it. Yet he has his tale of mercy. The very penalties announced by him have their side of mercy. Whether God wooed the sinful nation by means of His goodness, or chastised them by His righteous severities, He had the same end in view for them--their recovery to Himself, and it was only because the one mode had failed that the other began. The text is more than the tale of Gods dealings with Israel: it is the tale of His discipline with the Church, and with individual souls, as many as have forgotten their first love, proved false to their calling, played truant from their God.
I. Loves artifice. I will allure her. What is the wilderness? A place of blasted ground--ground where life once was, but has withered. A place of desertion and solitude. Surely a strange place for Jehovah to choose as His meeting-place with His bride. This is in its favour, it is a place of silence. The wilderness of the prophet finds its counterpart in the life of the heart. There is blight, through the drying up of the hopes that refreshed you; there is solitude, the sudden awaking to the sense that you are alone, and your desert is a school of silence. It hushes the world, and hushes the heart. There is a blessing for those in the wilderness. The grace that was unsought and unmissed amidst prosperity and plenty, you will learn to recognise and regain amidst the wilderness privations; and the voice you were deaf to amidst prosperitys clamours, you will hear and respond to in the wilderness silence.
II. Loves language. Speak comfortably to her, speak to her heart. He had often spoken to the ear. Words of solemn warning, words of melting entreaty. But He had never before spoken as He speaks now. Now in her heartache and emptiness there is none can speak to her like her Lord Himself. What presses on her heart is her trespass against love, the thought that a grace so great has been slighted, and a trust so true and loyal has been betrayed. It is when a mans sins have created a wilderness around him that the Saviour comes near and speaks to the heart. Wilderness discipline, with all its privations, and with all its pain, its remorse for the past, and its dread for the future, is well worth bearing if at the last it brings the Redeemer to speak to the heart.
III. Loves tokens. The gifts which love bestows.
1. Blessings in possession. Of the self-same kind as the blessings which the bride had lost. God took away the vines. He grants vines again, and more abundant. Whether our wilderness discipline has its issue in temporal restorations or not, it may always be rich in spiritual blessing. There are grapes of grace to be gathered from the thorns of trial, and a meeting with Christ is always sufficient to turn the wilderness to a vineyard, where the chalice of the soul may be filled, and the strength of the soul be renewed by the fulness and exhilarations of God.
2. Blessings in prospect. Achor was a passage into Canaan. Fertile in itself, it was welcome to Israel as an earnest of the greater fertility of Canaan beyond. By its physical formation the valley of Achor was, in a most literal sense, a door of hope in front of the Israelites.
IV. The effects which love produces. She shall sing there. In the old times there had been unholy mirth. Now she fears to sing the song of the old innocent time. But those whom God pardons, He pardons freely; those whom He restores, He restores right royally. In the days of your Christian youth you could sing. But the glory died, you scarce know how. Grace languished, vows were forgotten, love grew cold, and you fell by degrees from habits of secret neglect into acts of open sin. But yours may be singing days still; for with new material for such singing, the Lord will restore you the heart that can sing, with more than the old love back again. The song will be different, but fuller and richer, set to a steadier cadence, touching a deeper note; the song not of those who are ignorant of sin, but of those who have sinned, and sinned deeply, but by Gods grace are forgiven. (W. A. Gray.)
The profit of affliction
The Jews are to be regarded as a typical people. Their history is all along a parable more or less descriptive of what befalls the Christian Church, whether collectively or in its individual members. The text belongs in a special sense to the Jew. It may, however, be taken in a secondary sense. Notice the expression allure. We are often actually allured into the wilderness. You may enter the wilderness by a rough path, or by a smooth path. In the majority of cases men are allured into the wilderness. It is in a chase after happiness that men find themselves lonely and wretched. He who follows what attracts him, and finds it end in disappointment, is certainly allured into the wilderness. There is hardly a person under affliction of which this is not a faithful description. God allures, not that He may speak harshly, but that He may speak comfortably. The text declares that afflictions may be made occasions of advantage, or be converted into instruments of spiritual benefit. We may appeal concerning the gracious uses of affliction to the living and to the dead. With one voice they will reply,--that their best lessons in spiritual truth, their clearest views of the glory of heaven, their largest apprehensions of the work of the Mediator, their fullest proofs of the preciousness of God, were all acquired under processes of chastening. From the reference to the valley of Achor we may learn that sorrows which are specially the chastisement of misdoings may issue in a firmer hope of salvation. The valley of Achor is a door of hope. It is when a man is quite confounded with the view of his own sins that he is fitted for the gracious announcement of a free pardon through Christ. The figure applies to cases of conversion and renewal of heart, and also to cases of backsliding. (Henry Mevill, B. D.)
The loving discipline of God
This is the language of metaphor, borrowed from the facts of history. God is in all history. In the history of Israel He manifested Himself in an especial manner. In the Old Testament the historical passes readily into the typical. When Hosea wrote the children of Israel were once more sunk in idolatry. They were forgetting Jehovah and yielding themselves up to the self-indulgences and immoralities of heathen life. But the principles of Divine government were the same as ever. God made them feel that the land of sin is the land of bondage. He would cause them to experience the miseries that flow from idolatry. Then He would come to their rescue and reveal His compassion. He would win them back to loyalty by the twofold manifestation of His righteousness and mercy. He would make the valley of humiliation the avenue to victory.
I. The constancy and tenderness of the Divine love. Observe how the nation of Israel is personified. A faithful husband cannot become indifferent even to a faithless wife. Blended with the Divine wrath against idolatry--yea, lying at the very root of that wrath- is the Eternal Love. These words not only reveal constancy, they also breathe tenderness. Speaking to the heart reaches the affections, thrills the soul, awakens responsive echoes there. Thus God receives the penitent when they plead for pardon. The term allure expresses that kind of influence, the very strength of which lies in its subtlety and gentleness. In the Bible the word is generally used of evil enticements (e.g., Samson and Delilah)
. Men are gradually led into sin, step by step, through a seductive fascination which is far more potent than any obtrusive force. But there is a holy as well as an unholy allurement. God has His indirect methods of reaching the human will. Goodness, as well as evil, woos the soul. The love of God, as here set forth in its constancy and tenderness, is a substantial verity. The Bible speaks of Divine love in the terms of human affection. Man is made in the Divine image, and therefore, through the affection of our own souls, we can rise into some conceptions of the eternal love. Gods love is the inspirer of all true affection. His love is the very fountain of ours. By our wanderings God is grieved. God really does wish you to reciprocate His love. God does allure.
II. The beneficent purpose of the Divine discipline and chastisement. The wilderness is typical of the discipline to which God subjects His people. The Arabian desert was the school in which the Israelites were trained for the exercise of freedom. In Hoseas time Israel needed a repetition of the old lesson. She would, therefore, be brought again into the wilderness. God does not subject us to hardship for hardships sake. It is needful for us that we be led into the wilderness. To give us the vineyards at once might be only to enervate us--to loosen the fibre of our moral being to intoxicate, instead of exhilarating, our souls. And so, in one form or another, all men have to pass through discipline. Through all forms of trial there runs the same beneficent purpose. God designs to bring us into a true and safe prosperity; and so He seeks, by strengthening our character, to prepare us for entering into the land of vineyards The valley of Achor may be taken as typical of the Divine chastisements. The afflictions with which we are visited often assume to our consciences the aspect of correction. Our calamities, bringing us into the light of God, bring us also face to face with the sins which that light condemns. Sometimes we can trace the connection between our troubles and our transgressions. But accept your trouble as the chastisement of One who loves you, the valley of Achor will be made to you a door of hope. Never murmur under any of the Divine dealings. Realise the constancy and tenderness of Ills holy love. He is a jealous God; but is there no such thing as a righteous and holy jealousy in man? God cannot love us and be indifferent as to whether we love Him or not. Cling then to hope, even in the midst of severest trials. These trials are either to chastise us for our transgressions, or else to mould our characters after a nobler type. In either case a loving purpose underlies them. (T. Campbell Finlayson.)
The rod of mercy
The text describes the way God takes with those offenders to whom He has thoughts of peace and not of evil. Apply this to the spiritual Israel, to all who are called into the fold of Christ.
I. The way in which those whom God loves are rebuked and chastened by Him. I will allure her, etc. The wilderness was to the Israelites an emblem of affliction. It was a wilderness in which their forefathers had spent forty years of trial and chastisement. Into the wilderness of trouble the Lord brings every member of His family, both at the time of their conversion and after it. God often calls the Christian off from the path of ease and satisfaction, and makes him feel the thorns and briers of affliction, because he is loving earthly things too well, and losing sight of God, cleaving to the creature more than to the Creator. But the afflictions of Gods people are not like the afflictions of the world. God does not drive His people to the wilder ness, He brings them there,--that is to say, He goes with them Himself. Believers are, in a certain sense, allured to trouble, for they are well assured that their Lord knows better than they do what is really good for them.
II. The comfort which attends Gods chastisements. Speak comfortably to her. The Lord speaks thus to the newly awakened soul, and He has comforts for every after stage of experience. Never does He bring them into the wilderness of trouble but He comes down and talks with them. In distress of mind they may think God has forsaken them; but it is not so, for He is by, and full of tenderness, though He seem to deal with them severely. Soon they know and feel this, for His comforts flow into their hearts.
III. The good fruits which follow the afflictions of Gods people. Vineyards from a wilderness! A crop of grapes from a barren and dry land! In the spiritual wilderness of trouble and affliction such wonders do occur. Had the sinner never smarted for his sins he never would have reaped the fruits of a Redeemers love. The text is true with respect to all the wildernesses which the Christian enters in his pilgrimage through life. Never does he cross the desert land of trouble but he gathers fruits there. The believer is enriched by his afflictions. When the Lord straitens him in one respect, He enlarges him in another. The spiritual Achor becomes a door of hope. He expects great things from a God whose mercies and whose loving-kindnesses he has found so plenteous.
IV. The thanks givings which Gods chastened people are sure to return, in the issue, unto him who smote them. She shall sing there. This first refers to the Israelites, and recalls the song at the Red Sea. Applied to the Lords people generally, it signifies that their troubles also should-issue in a song of praise. What believer is there who would not sing, with all his heart and soul, the hymn that should bless God for his afflictions? He would never have known his joys but for his sorrows. (A. Roberts, M. A.)
The Christian in the wilderness
The wilderness became, for the Israelites, another word for trouble and sorrow.
I. The author of affliction. God forces Himself on our notice as the source Of His peoples troubles. Why this anxiety in a God of love to stand thus forward as the author of misery?
1. Because we are so backward in affliction to discern His hand.
2. We can get no good out of affliction, and no real comfort under it, till we view it as sent to us from Him. When we discern God at the very root of our sufferings, then the knee bends, the prayer goes up, and the blessing comes down. Then, for the first time, we are quieted and subdued. When we see that a Fathers hand has mingled the cup of bitterness, we soon do more than say, Shall I not drink it
II. Why God afflicts us. The text discovers to us one of the most frequent causes of our sorrows. It is our forget fulness of God, and that not in His judgments, but in His mercies, a failing to recognise His hand in them. It may be you have lost some of your earthly mercies; but you know why God has stripped you bare, as well as though His own voice sounded it from heaven in your ears. You had forgotten Him in His gifts. You tried to live without God in the world. In jealousy for His own honour, in love for your souls, He withdrew the gifts you had abused. He made you feel once again that you need Him. God never deprives us of things without a cause. But if you will not see Him in the enjoyment of them, He will make you see Him in their loss.
III. How God sometimes afflicts us. Gradually, compassionately, tenderly. Sometimes His judgments appear to come suddenly. This is His way usually with the strong. He carries the weak and inexperienced into the wilderness. A mothers tenderness could not equal His. He shows them how much they need affliction, and how much good they will derive from it, Other men are driven into the wilderness, the Christian is allured into it.
IV. The comfort which the Lord imparts in the wilderness. Others speak comfortably to us in our sorrow, but if that sorrow is deep, what power have their words! God speaks to the heart, and then everything comforts, for God speaks by everything.
V. The supplies which God furnishes in tribulation. He represents Himself as more than a Comforter, He is a Benefactor, and a rich one. He has promised vineyards in the wilderness. Such blessings as will more than supply the place of those lost. And these are actually to grow out of our afflictions.
VI. The hope that God excites in affliction. Even when trouble came on trouble, and things seemed to be quite hopeless, God opened a door of hope. Learn the effect to be produced on Israel by the mercies vouchsafed to her. (C. Bradley.)
Soul-restoration
These words are poetically descriptive of the restoration of Israel to the Divine fellowship and favour. They reveal Gods purpose in regard to every penitent prodigal m all ages.
I. Soul-restoration--in its origin. The originating causes, for the most part, lie back of what is Seen. The agencies that go to make summer are Divine. And the same is true of the soul. The only agencies that can prove effective in restoring it to summer experience and fruitfulness must come from God. It is not repentance, nor faith, nor service, nor sacrifice does it. As the sun carries all the influences needful to give richness to the trees and fragrance to the flowers, even so does God treasure up within Himself all those influences and inspirations which are essential to the enrichment of the soul. It would be a sad thing for us if our spiritual restoration were dependent on our good deeds. The Divine effulgence is necessary to our illumination. The Divine inflowing of life and warmth is essential to the production of Christian sensibility. The sun does not shine upon this earth because it is fair and fruitful; he shines rather to make it so. It is not our goodness or our prayers that cause God to love and bless, but He loves and blesses that we might become recipients of all Christian grace and excellence.
II. In its methods. How does God restore the soul In a family the disobedient one is punished. No treatment could be too severe to meet the case of backsliding Israel; and yet God m His mercy says, I will allure her. He had left her for awhile. He had permitted her to indulge her vanities unrestrained. At length He hedged up her way. But all these methods proved to be ineffectual. Is it not amazing that He did not turn away in disgust But with infinite tenderness He says, I will allure her into the wilderness. I have tried these various methods without result. I will now exercise my fascinations to win back her love. What is the wilderness into which God leads?
1. The wilderness is suggestive of barrenness. The Arabian desert is a fitting type of that souls experiences which has been led away from its vanities, and brought into a conscious sense of the Divine nearness and purity. The best men who have ever lived have shrivelled up in the all-radiant presence of the Holy One. The wilderness ever stands between guilt and holiness. You cannot become estranged from God in affection and be restored to the experiences of His favour without being brought into the wilderness. He makes you realise your poverty and guilt that you may be prepared to rejoice in His forgiveness.
2. The wilderness is suggestive of solitude. There is no scene more isolated from the busy life of the world. Solitude is necessary to repentance. It is only when alone with our great Lord that we learn to despise our frivolities and sins and yearn for succour in His unchanging love.
3. The wilderness is suggestive of terror. The Sinai Mount is in the wilderness. The flaming law lifts up its awful voice of condemnation. Sinai must frown before Calvary can smile.
III. In its blessings. She is only brought into the wilderness that she might be weaned away from her illicit loves. No sooner does she begin to blush and weep and tremble than her gracious Lord takes her into His arms and presses her to His bosom, and enriches her with all the wealth of His affection. Here we have--
1. Affluent experiences. No imagery could be more expressive. The desert transformed into a paradise. The experiences of the Christian life are too rich and exquisite to be exhausted by any imagery. The Lord gives, not merely a sufficiency but a superabundancy.
2. An inspiring hope. The valley of trouble has often become a door of hope to Gods chosen. When they have been most perplexed, their deliverance has been most glorious. On the darkest night of their sorrow has broken the effulgence of the brightest day.
IV. In its effects. When our souls have been restored, we too shall sing as in the days of our youth. How was it with us then?
1. What praise!
2. What triumph!
3. What exultation!
How many of us stand in supreme need of soul-restoration! We have lost the power and blessedness of a songful life. Our spiritual sensibilities are benumbed, and our spiritual energies paralysed. O Lord, be gracious unto us as in the days that are past! (Benjamin D. Thomas.)
Soul-restoration
These words refer to the restoration of Israel to friendship and fellowship with God.
I. The stages in soul-restoration are gradual.
1. The first step to soul-restoration is from bondage to liberty. All souls are in moral Egypt, and the first step to their restoration is their exodus into the moral Arabia.
2. The next step is from despondency to hope. In spiritual restoration the soul passes from trouble into hope. Through much tribulation we enter into kingdoms.
3. The next step is from sterility to fruitfulness. The wilderness was a barren district, but Canaan was a land of vineyards.
4. The next step is from sadness to exultation. The song of the redeemed at last will be the song of Moses and the Lamb.
II. The agency in soul-restoration is divine. No one but God can restore souls. Mark how He does it.
1. Morally. Not by force.
2. Lovingly. Speak comfortably to her.
3. Generously. He who gave Canaan to the Jews gives heaven to restored souls. (Homilist.)
The valley of Achor for a door of hope.--
The valley of Achor
The history of the nation is the history of the individual magnified. The records of Gods dealings with the nation represent to us, on a larger scale, Gods dealings with the individual. The dealings of God with the individual human heart are generally of so delicate a character, and are so frequently concealed in the secret experiences of our inner life, that it is extremely difficult for even a careful observer to follow them in detail, and apprehend them with any degree of completeness. We are helped, however, by having the history of Gods dealings with the nation, and knowing that these are His dealings with the individual magnified. In this chapter we have the record of Gods dealings with Israel at a period of national apostasy and backsliding. It is evident that God does not think slightingly of sin. The first consequence of national sin is national judgment, inflicted by a rejected God, At last judgments begin to produce the designed effect, and Israel begins to discover that the God who seemed to be her enemy is her real and only faithful friend. In all this we have a picture of Gods dealing with the wayward heart, by which His Divine love designs to win it back from its apostasy and forgetfulness of Him. Observe the first step that Divine love and pity takes. God finds us in our pride and wilfulness, and endeavouring to obtain that satisfaction in the creature which is only to be found in the Creator; and He begins by opening our eyes to the emptiness of all these things in which we have sought our satisfaction; and however slow we are to learn the lesson, He waits His opportunity to allure us into the wilderness. And a dreary wilderness it is. It is a painful process, this opening of the eyes. We shrink from being undeceived; we are reluctant to believe that the world is a grand imposture. We try to persuade ourselves that we shall find in it all we want, and shrink from the dissipation of our fondly cherished anticipations. Sometimes it is by sorrow and bereavement that we are allured into the wilderness. Sometimes God deals with His wandering ones by an inward impression, by the direct and indescribable influences of His Holy Spirit, by outward circumstances, by unlooked-for relief and deliverance. Thus He allures us into the wilderness, to draw us away from our love for, and our confidence in earthly things, and then, when we are thus prepared, to speak to our hearts as He only can. Speak comfortably, should be, speak to her heart. The world can speak to our fancy, and to our intellect, God can speak to our heart; that heart whose wants you have ignored, or to which you have denied what it most needed. He brings to our mind all His wondrous dealings with us in the past. As we look back a flood of recognition rolls over the soul, and a burden of contrition begins to weigh upon our heart, such as it never felt before. Yet from the wilderness where Gods voice has spoken to the heart, the new era of true fruitfulness is to begin. I will give her her vineyards from thence. The firstfruits of the new life are to be gathered in the vintage of joy--the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. Other fruits may follow, but this generally comes first. But how are we to enter upon this new life of fruitful joy and of joyful fruit? If we are to get into the vineyards, we must enter them through Gods appointed door--the valley of Achor. God makes it a door of hope. What we need above everything is a door of hope, a way out of the hideous desolation of our despair. But where shall it be found? None but God knows of a door of hope for perishing man, and He must give it, or our hope is vain. The valley of Achor recalls a national repentance for a national sin: an act of solemn repudiation of sin; it was the place of a great and tragic national expiation. We, too, have a door of hope, strangely similar, and yet strangely different from this. There was One found among the sons of men, who was able and willing to make expiation for mans sins. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)
A door of hope
1. How is this valley of Achor a door of hope to Israel?
(1) Because it was the first place of which they took possession in Israel, and began to have outward means of subsistence, and to eat of the corn of the land.
(2) God made their great trouble there a means of much good to them, for by that they were brought to purge their camp.
2. How was the valley of Achor to be a door of hope to Israel in after-times? The Jews think that Israel shall return into their own country again by the same way to Canaan, by that valley, which shall thus be a door of hope to them. As God turned this valley of trouble to much good to them, so He would turn all the sore afflictions of Israel in after days to their great advantage, grievous afflictions which should make way for glorious mercies. Sin will make the pleasantest place in the world a place of trouble. When may we assure ourselves that our mercies are doors of hope to further mercies?
1. When they are wrought by the more immediate hand of God.
2. When they are spiritual mercies.
3. When mercies carry to us the God of mercy, and are turned into duties. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
A door of hope
These words reminded an Israelite of a great failure, and, as the word Achor means, of a great trouble--nay, of a great tragedy. It implied to him that history was repeating itself, that old sins were to be followed by old punishments, and that beyond those punishments, as of old, there was hope. Israel, in Hoseas days, was largely apostate and idolatrous. Here it is addressed as the unfaithful bride of Jehovah. Achor is Hebrew for trouble, and it was chosen for its likeness to Achan, the troubler. Achans sin was not an open scandal which brought dishonour on the cause of God by its publicity. Secret sins are more common than public ones. They satisfy the sinful instinct more economically, and those who commit them are tempted to persuade themselves that because they do not corrupt others by the taint of bad example they are really much more venial. Achan had persuaded no one to join him in his act of sacrilege. We often wonder why great causes flag and fail, why so little comes of schemes for doing good into which much heart has been thrown, and for which great sacrifices have been made. We count up, we measure, we lay stress on the difficulties of the undertaking itself, and we satisfy ourselves that these difficulties furnish the real reason of the failure. May it not be that the true cause of failure lies nearer home, that something is hidden away in the tent of the soul? And moral weakness is contagious; it radiates from soul to soul just as does moral force. We feel its presence by a sure though inexplicable instinct, when we cannot give an account of it to our selves or to others. As the strength of the Church of Christ lies not in her external circumstances, but in the secret prayers and deeds of souls whose names are unknown, so the weakness of the Church lies not in the number or fierceness of her enemies, but in the secret unbelief and sins of her children. Achan, Judas, Diotrephes, these had a fearful power of traversing Gods purposes of mercy. If we knew more, we should see how God acts at times even now by His providence as He acted of old by Joshua: how men are removed with swift decisions from this earthly scene because they bring to the cause of truth and goodness that moral paralysis and collapse which comes with cherished wrong-doing. None of us are too high or too low to promote or to weaken the cause of Christ in the world. The well-being of Gods Israel from age to age is the law of Gods constant government, and the valley of trouble for the individual wrong-doer is the door of hope for the Church, for the nation, for the race. The fate of the family of Achan has been an occasion of difficulty. No doubt he and his family were regarded as forming, in some sense, a moral whole, not merely as a set of individuals. Scripture does take these two views of human beings. On the individual aspect the Gospel, no doubt, specially insists, but it does not by any means ignore or dispease with the corporate aspect. A common human nature we all share. This principle of the reality of a common human nature which we all share explains our loss of righteousness in Adam; but it tells to our advantage even more decisively, for it explains our recovery of righteousness in Christ. How can this be unless Christ is the head of a family which He endows with His saving righteousness, just as Adam endowed his descendants with a legacy of sin and death? The principle of the solidarity of human beings tells for good as it tells for evil. We see the operation of this law in the physical and social life of man written in characters too plain to be mistaken. Achans children were involved in their fathers guilt on a somewhat like principle. But the truth is, that we see here a deeper sense in which the valley of Achor is a door of hope. In order to explain the tragedy we must resort to that larger ,conception of the destiny of man which was affirmed with varying degrees of distinctness by the Jewish revelation. If all ended with this life it would be very difficult if not impossible to explain occurrences of this sort consistently with the belief that the world is governed by an absolute and unerring justice. Those who do not believe in a future after death are perfectly, right in taking as their do, the very gloomiest view of our present existence; while, on the other hand, faith in such a future enables us to understand how the tragedies of human life and history are strictly consistent with the moral attributes of God. In later ages than Joshuas the separate relation of each individual soul with God was more distinctly marked by revelation. And Christ our Lord, if I may say so, yet further extricated the individual soul from the mass of human nature, and placed it face to face, in an awful and a blessed solitude, with the mercy and with the justice of God. Each Christian is redeemed as though redemption had been wrought for him alone. The general truth, which is independent of the cases of Israel and Achan, is that the punishment which God sends may open the way to lifes choicest blessings, or to blessings which lie far away beyond it. What is of most importance is that when trouble comes to each one of us it should be recognised as coming from God, and accepted as His will, as due certainly to our sins, and therefore as the best thing possible that could happen. Trial is from God, and there is therefore a hope beyond it. (H. P. Liddon, D. D.)
A door of hope
In the language that God used when there was not much writing, signal events often took the place of books: Points of natural scenery were turned into historic ciphers, and geography into a chronicle. Give the story of Achan. That day was lengthened out till, seven centuries later, when another seer is lifting the curtain of Israels still later future, he takes up the old name to signify the new sorrow, the greater sacrifice, and the sublimer deliverance to come. Every Jew would understand the historic allusion, I will give her the valley of Achor for a door of hope. It is true of the first beginnings of the Christian life, and of its subsequent recovery from decline and coldness. There must be some suffering at the narrow door by which the imperilled and straitened soul passes through into liberty and rest. It is just as true of most of our richest gains, our noblest advancements, in all spiritual clear-sightedness and strength, that they are reached through pain and privation. It very rarely happens that we receive what we particularly need, without being obliged to give up what we particularly prize. If the sacrifice is not laid upon us voluntarily by ourselves, it has to be laid on by a hand more merciful than our own, and more concerned in our salvation. Trouble is the price of power. From one side of the globe to another, from the beginning to the end, the glory of the earth, the openings of its everlasting hope, are its valleys of trouble. The way to Christs final majesty lies through the humiliations of pain. From Gethsemane to Calvary was the one true valley of Achor. (F. D. Huntington, D. D.)
A door of hope
As there is light in the darkest cloud, so there is a ray of heavenly hope in the greatest calamities; yea, there is light in Gods most terrible judgments, for in punishment God mercifully opens before the sinner a door of hope. Illustrated in the incidents associated with Ai. There is no punishment so heavy, no misery so great, no sorrow so deep, and no trial so bitter, that God cannot change it into a door of hope.
I. Human suffering a door of heavenly hope. For sinful and imperfect beings there is no door of hope but in suffering, and this fact transfigures and glorifies suffering itself, and teaches sinful men to look for their redemption in what they strive to escape from. This is the glorious truth taught in the text. The wilderness itself will be changed into a glorious and blessed inheritance unto her. The valley of trouble is the threshold of the promised inheritance. There is a great difference between delivering from trouble and changing the trouble itself into a door of hope. This gives a new character to the sufferings and trials of life, and to Gods chastisements, punishments, and judgments, because there is in them all a door of hope, to which God graciously and patiently leads the sufferer. It was in this respect only that the valley of Achor could be a door of hope. The captivity in Babylon was a valley of Achor, and it proved a door of hope. National calamities are doors of hope for nations. In what respect can it be said that there is a door of hope in punishments and sufferings deserved? If they are retributive only, there cannot be a ray of hope in them, but if they are redemptive and reformative as well, they are God s wise and merciful method of leading sinners to Himself. The notion that they are retributive only is unworthy of God, for we can never conceive of Him as administering punishment for its own sake. Gods punishments are means to bless, and have great and glorious ends. God is sympathetical in all suffering, not with sin, of course, but with the sufferer, whether he is guilty or not. He is ever striving with intense yearning to lead him to Himself. Every good and holy man, who lives for the good of others and the glory of God, suffers in the sufferings of all those to whom he ministers. If this is true of man, how much more must it be so of God?
II. We are not to despair of the worst characters. However sinful and hard-hearted men may become, they can never go beyond Gods power to touch their hearts. A man who lost all his senses by paralysis was found to have a tender spot on his cheek, by which communications could be made to him. So God can always find a tender spot in the worst, and He can speak words that will melt the hardest hearts into repentance because of their sins. (Z. Mather.)
The valley of Achor
At each mention of this valley it is a door of hope.
I. The valley of entrance. It was the gateway of Canaan. It marked a great transition. Here pilgrimage ceased; here residence began. Here great changes occurred, which are accomplished by a very short march across a great boundary line. The valley of Achor was to Israel a door of hope, because it was the gateway to the full possession of the land. Across the line within the kingdom of Gods grace there is a door of hope. He who obeys the Divine command, crosses, enters, dwells, may through this entrance valley pass into all the treasures of grace and glory.
II. The valley of trouble. The first camp became a scene of disorder and dismay. Story of Achan. Hard lessons yield a rich reward. Rough places become monumental. Success is the fruit of failure. The valley of trouble becomes a door of hope to brighter scenes and deeper joys.
III. The valley of renewal. The silence of centuries passed over Achors vale. Israel had forgotten God, and broken all their vows. Then God recalled to Israel the valley of early vows and glad consecration, and proposed to make it the valley of renewal. From farthest wandering, greatest sin, saddest ruin, deepest sorrow, God can bring back the troubled one to the valley of Achor. With God nothing is irreparable. A ruined life, irreparable by human skill, may here be renewed. Its sad record may be erased. Life may be begun again. God invites the wanderer back to the starting-point. (Homiletic Magazine.)
The valley of troubling
Achor means troubling, and the valley got its name from a great crime, a great disaster, and a great act of judicial punishment. The crime was that of Achan, who hid in his tent spoil that ought to have been consecrated to Jehovah. The disaster was the consequent defeat of the Israelites in their assault upon one of the hill cities of Canaan. Hosea is prophesying of the captivity in Babylon under the figure of a repetition of the earlier history and the experience of the Exodus, and he takes some of the ancient incidents that would be familiar to his hearers memories, in order to illustrate one thought--that this second bondage shall be different from the trials of the Exodus, in so far as much that was terrible then shall be changed into blessedness. For instance, I will bring her into the wilderness,. . . and I will give her vineyards from thence,--grapes and fertility in the barren sand! Similarly, the valley of trouble shall be turned into a door of hope. Let me, then, suggest two or three ways in which, in our daily experience, this great promise may, in spirit and substance, be fulfilled. It tells us how defeat may become victory. Go back to the old story. Achan hid the Babylonish garment and the wedge of gold in his tent, and did not say a word about it to anybody. God commanded Joshua to hurl his men against At. The Hebrews went in obedience to Gods commandment, and were beaten back. But after that, they stoned Achan, and then they were victorious. It is very often the case that Christian people cannot do what they evidently are intended to do. Very often we fail in power to carry out some plain duty. That is often because there is an Achan somewhere; kill him, and you will capture At. And every hidden sin of ours that we take hold of by the throat and drag from its lair into the light, and unsparingly slay and bury under a cairn of stones, contributes to our capacity to do our duty, and to our victory over all adverse circumstances--
His strength was as the strength of ten,
Because his heart was pure.
And so we may learn that if we have been beaten once, and again attack, and again are foiled, the shameful disaster is a Divine warning to us to took not only to our equipment, but our temper, and to see whether the reason for failure lies not only in something wrong in the details or accompaniments of our effort, but in something lacking in the communion which we have with God Himself. But again, Hoseas imaginative use of the old story teaches us how hope may co-exist with trouble, sorrow, trial, affliction, or the like. Such co-existence is quite possible. Oh! you say, a mans feelings cannot be cut up into two halves after that fashion. Well, it is not being cut up into two halves; but did you ever notice that often, up in the sky, there will be two layers of clouds going in directly opposite ways? The lower one is perhaps hurrying southwards, and the upper one passing to the north. Just so there may be these two layers of feeling in a mans soul, even when he is most harassed by outward difficulties. There may be a drift in the one direction, of the lower emotions and sensitivenesses of his spirit, and a clear carry in the other direction of the uppermost element of his consciousness. It is possible that we may feel on our aching shoulders and bent backs the heavy and galling weight of some sore burden either of trouble, some duty or of crushing sorrow, and yet that side by side with that there should be the clear hope which makes it a light affliction which is but for a moment. That magician Hope turns lead into feathers, and, as in an air pump when you take out the atmospheric air, all things become of the same weight; that is, of no weight at all. If we keep near Jesus Christ, communion with Him will give an insight into His purposes, and a confidence in the love that moulds them, which will make it possible, even when most heavily weighed upon with sore distress, to be light of heart, and like Paul and Silas in prison, to sing songs though our backs be bleeding from the rods, and our wrists be fettered with the chains. They tell us that the six months of the Arctic night are the occasion for the display in the heavens of such glories of the aurora as we do not know anything about in lower latitudes. As the darkness and the deadly frost increase, it is possible that our skies may glow with these flaming lights, until there is a great brightness as in the midday, and far more of mystery and glory and beauty than midday knows, though the rocks may remain just as they were, as grim and black as before; the valley of Achor may be changed, if we see yonder, coming down it to meet us, the fair form of Hope, led by the hand of Christ Him self. Further, there is a last point that I would suggest, and that is how Hosea here teaches us, not only the possible co-existence of hope and trouble, but the sure issue of rightly borne trouble in a brighter hope. Assuredly, if a man has accepted the providences there will follow on the darkest of them a brightening hope. There are a great many reasons why that is so. If I take, as they were meant, all the annoyances, the little irritations and the great ones, mosquito bites and serpents stings, the troubles and trials that make up my life, then they will all refine my character. God uses the emery-paper of very rough circumstances to polish His instruments. Do your troubles and mine refine our character? That is what God is doing with us by all our troubles, and when we are, if I might so say, scraped thin enough, the light of heaven--that is, hope--will shine through us. The valley of Achor will be a door of hope. Then there is another reason why the sure child of trouble patiently, Christianly borne, is a more joyful hope. And that reason is set out in full by a man that was an expert in trouble, namely, Paul, when he says tribulation worketh patience. Does it, Paul? Sometimes it worketh impatience; sometimes it worketh desperation; sometimes it worketh almost the casting away of faith altogether; but if it does the right thing, it works patience. The ship has come through the hurricane, and has not started a leak, or, as the sailors say, turned turtle, and therefore we may trust the ship and its captain in any future storms. Thus tribulation, which borne in faith works patience, and patience which brings evidence of a Divine Helper, teach us to say, Thou hast been my help; Thou wilt be my help. And so hope is the last blessed result of tribulation. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The valley of Achor
The Israelite past seems to Hosea a mirror in which to read their future. The gloomy gorge through which at one time Israel journeyed proved a door of hope. In all our difficulties and sorrows it is within our power to turn them into occasions for a firmer grasp of God, and so to make them openings by which a happier hope may flow into our souls. But this promise, like all Gods promises, has its well-defined conditions. All depends on how we use the trial.
I. The trouble which detaches us from earth gives us new hope. Sometimes the effect of our sorrows is to rivet us more firmly to earth. The loss of dear friends should stamp their image on our hearts, and set it as in a golden glory. But it sometimes does more than that: it makes us put the present with its duties impatiently away from us. The trouble that does not draw us away from the present will never be a door of hope, but rather a grim gate for despair to come in at.
2. The trouble which knits us to God gives us new hope. All the light of hope is the reflection on our hearts of the light of God. It is only when we by faith stand in His grace, and live in the conscious fellowship of peace with Him, that we rejoice in hope. Sorrow forsakes its own nature, and leads in its own opposite, when sorrow helps us to see God. Hope is but the brightness that goes before Gods face, and if we would see it we must look at Him.
3. The trouble which we bear rightly, with Gods good help, gives new hope. If we have made our sorrow an occasion of learning, by living experience, somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever ready power to aid and bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible resources which we have thus once more proved. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. That is the order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation. I build upon two things--Gods unchangeableness, and His help already received. Upon these strong foundations I may wisely and safely rear a palace of hope, which shaft never prove a castle in the air. The past, when it is Gods past, is the surest pledge for the future. Then lot us set ourselves with our loins girt to the road. The slope of the valley of trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark the shadow of death which stretches athwart it is. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
A door of hope
This chapter is full of Gods I wills. It is easy to enumerate between twenty and thirty. And as we read them over, we are lost in wonder at all that God is prepared to do for us, who have wandered from Him. It is only another illustration of the truth that Gods love is inexhaustible, and that He will not fail nor be discouraged till He has executed His purpose in each of those whom He has taken to be His own. Let us imagine a narrow, rocky defile. A mountain torrent, rapid and muddy, hurries downward beside the path, strewn with rough slate and jagged stones, which climbs up to the head of the pass. On either side walls of rock rear themselves, steamy with moisture, and covered with festoons of hanging plants and ferns; above, a narrow chink of blue shows itself where the walls of rock almost meet; all is wild, and lonely, and terrible. And there, with bleeding feet, clothed in scanty rags, a female figure crouches in brokenness of heart and desperate straits. Such is the valley of Achor, or trouble; and that is Israel in the hour of her extreme distress. God has allured her from paths of vice and sin into the wilderness. Her way has been so hedged up that she could not find her paths. Corn and wine have failed; wool and flax have been withdrawn; earrings and jewels have been stripped off. Yet, as she is on the point of abandoning herself to the uttermost abyss of despair, the air seems to quiver with angel-wings, and to thrill with the repeated declarations of the Divine purposes of grace. And beneath their impulse the sinner is heard to say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now. Ah, blessed resolve! It is the angel of Hope; and when she reaches the place where the penitent kneels, she touches with her wand the adjoining rock, and lo! it swings backward, and opens a way straight into a smiling landscape of luxuriant beauty, where the corn waves, and the juice reddens in the clustered grapes. It is the door of hope in the valley of Achor, through which the penitent passes from the wilderness into the garden of paradise, where the sun ever shines, and the breeze is heavy with perfume. Something like this happens still. At some time or other we shall have to pass through the valley of Achor. The road to our home lies that way. We cannot forget the incident which first gave its name to the valley of Achor, and which will throw light on one of the frequent causes of our coming thither. Flushed with their successful capture of Jericho, the tribes of Israel chose out a handful of their number to capture the little town of Ai, which stood at the top of the defile leading from the Jordan plain into the heart of the country. The work seemed altogether inconsiderable, and any great effort needless. Ah! how little they expected that ere the night fell that little band of warriors would be fleeing in hot haste down the pass, pursued almost to the gates of the camp by the foe!--not because they were wanting in prowess, but because the forbidden thing was concealed in one of their tents, standing in apparent innocence amongst the rest, which glistened as lign-aloes beside the rivers. There are troubles which God sends us directly from His Fatherly chastening hand; these are not so hard to bear, because, if with one hand He uses the scourge, with the other He binds, and heals, and applies the leaves of the tree of life. There are other troubles which come to us from men; these, too, are bearable, because we can turn to Him for vindication, and count on Him for sympathy and fellowship. But there are other troubles for which we are ourselves accountable, because we have taken of the forbidden thing, and have hidden it in our hearts, smoothing over the earth that it appear not to men. It may be that some who read these words will find here a photograph of themselves, of the inner reason why their lives have been so full of defeat and failure. They are met in every direction by shut gates. The way is hedged up by thorns (Jos_7:10-13). Deliverance from the valley of Achor is impossible until a solemn convocation has been held in the heart, to which all the motives, and purposes, and intentions of the inner life have been summoned. The lot must be solemnly cast. Is it the inner life or the outer? And if the inner, is it soul or spirit? And if the soul, is it the past, present, or future; retrospective or prospective; memory or hope? And if it be neither of these, but some permitted evil in the present, is it in the emotions or the will? The cause of our defeat and failure must perish, that we may ourselves be saved. Maiming is, after all, not too dear a price to pay, if only we may enter into life. And if we be too tender-hearted to deal strongly and vigorously with the Achan who has caused us defeat and loss, let us go to our merciful and faithful High Priest, who carries in His hand the sharp, two-edged sword, which pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit; and let us implore Him to do for us what we cannot, or dare not, do for ourselves. He will not fail us in our extremity. He will do the work as tenderly and as thoroughly as the ease requires. Only let us believe that in every valley of Achor there is a door of hope, if we will but dare to stone Achan to death. And when the cairn of stones beneath which he lies is reared in the valley, we shall ascend the long pass to victory. As sure as God is true, there is a way out of every trouble into assured and glorious victory, if only in the trouble we will do Gods will on Achan. Time would fail to tell of all the advantages to which that door will lead. Some of them are enumerated here. She shall sing (Hos_2:15). There shall be a return of joy, which had fled from the heart. Thou shalt call Me Ishi (Hos_2:16). There shall be a deeper knowledge of God, so that He shall be rather the Husband than the Master. I will make a covenant (Hos_2:18). There shall be realised a blessed unity with all creation. I will hear (Hos_2:21). There shall be new power in prayer, and answers shall tread in each others footsteps, as they hasten into the soul. Thus through trouble we shall pass into blessedness; through the grave into life; through the iron gate into freedom. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
A door of hope
I. Achor, in the natural bountifulness of the valley, a symbol of the joys of life,--our joys may be occasions of hope.
1. In the joys of natural scenery there is an inspiration of hope to poet spirits.
2. In temporal mercies there is an inspiration of hope to grateful hearts.
3. In religious privileges there is a door of hope to desert souls.
II. Achor, in its great historic event, a symbol of the sorrows of life,--our sorrows may be occasions of hope. Septuagint renders the name door of understanding. So it was to Israel. They came to know the evil and penalty of the sin of Achan there. The valley of trouble may become to all of us a door of hope whatever the trouble is.
1. The trouble of true penitence.
2. The trouble of agonising prayer.
3. The trouble of spiritual conflict.
4. The trouble of sanctified adversity.
5. The trouble of sacrificial compassion for others.
6. The trouble of the article of our own death. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Hope, a gracious gift
What is hope? The word is closely akin to gap or gape. As little birds, when the mother-bird is away, open their mouths, gape for food, so the man of hope is the gaping man, the open man, with eyes, ears, mind, and heart open. If there is one thing more than another that Almighty God likes, it is openness. The Book is full of it. And if we be open ourselves, God will open heaven and fill us. Perhaps Gods-grace and my hope are the two shuttles that are weaving for me the white robe of righteousness. There was a corner of Cornwall where the beauty of Devonshire overflowed into it. And through the windows of hope, some of the beauties and sweets of the heavenly life overflowed into the present. My soul was thrilled in reading an account of the fighting at Colesberg, where the correspondent wrote when the boom of the cannon ceased, the birds began to sing. So when we have subdued sin, and hope for righteousness, glory, and eternal life, joy and peace will abide in our hearts. (J. H. Jowett.)
Songs of praise
Beethoven composed some of his great oratorios in the open air. He had his piano carried to the middle of a field, and there, while sunbeam and cloud-shadows played together, and birds performed their impromptu oratorios, he worked out his harmonies and wrote his score. So we would come out beneath the broad canopy of Gods everlasting love, and, encompassed by innumerable mercies, make music more pleasing to God than the finest oratorios. The music of thanksgiving for tokens of Divine goodness abounding in our lives. (Gates of Imagery.)
Nothing like youth
In the memoirs of Lady Blessington, there is given a letter addressed to her by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, and containing these instructive words, Do you know, I find Paris a melancholy place. If one has seen it in ones earliest youth, it reminds one of the vast interval of time that has elapsed. Say what we will, there is nothing like youth. All we gain in our manhood is dulness itself compared to the zest of novelty, and the worst of it is, the process of acquiring wisdom is but another word for the process of growing old.
And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth.--
Singing at work
Those who have sailed on the sea in sailing ships remember how the sailors accustom themselves to sing while they work. It is a happy memory to me to record an incident on a vessel on which I was a passenger. The mainyard came to some sort of grief, and then followed the tremendous task of raising it to its former position, for there was no steam gear on board. The passengers and crew all set to work to hoist the mainyard to its place. I think the tune the sailors set was the famous one of John Browns Body, but with it they sang as the chorus, Glory, glory, hallelujah! I am not sure they were impressed with the solemnity of these words, but I think some were who assisted to haul; and up went the mast twice as quickly as if the sailors had not sung their song.. When you have a specially tough job on hand, let your heart go up to God in song, and you will find the difficulty go sooner than you expect. (T. Spurgeon.)
Songless
It came to my lot, while staying in far-off Tasmania, to be shown into a room at a house to await the arrival of a friend. I did what I ought not to have done--I began to investigate the pictures on the walls and the articles on the table. Amongst other things I observed a canary bird in a cage before the window. I looked at it, and hoped it would sing. As it would not do so I began to sing to it--to say, Sweet! sweet! Pretty Dick! If you want people to be kind to you, you should be kind to them. But this canary would not utter a note. I was disgusted, so I looked into the cage. Doubtless the bird was living, thought I, for there was the seed in the trough; then there was a vessel filled with water, and a piece of sugar was stuck between the bars. So I said, Sweet! sweet! But still it would not sing. Then my friend came into the room, and, after talking a little while, I said, You have got a dumb canary; do what you will, it will not sing--at least to strangers. Oh, said my friend, its stuffed--its not a live bird. And I confess that I have been into churches and into Christian homes where there was bread enough and to spare, where there was seed in the trough, and water--aye, and the sugar too, but they would not say, Sweet! sweet! or be glad in their songs. (T. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv14, 17, 21 Hos_2:14. Therefore] Nevertheless a promise of conversion (Hos_2:14-17); and…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hos_2:14. Therefore] Nevertheless a promise of conversion (Hos_2:14-17); and assurance of renewed covenant (Hos_2:18-23). Misery draws mercy. Allure] in a friendly sense; decoy by words, persuade by love. God outbids the idols and displays his attractive grace. Wilderness] The way from Egypt to Canaan a type of temporal want and distress, needful discipline, and miraculous deliverance. Solitude leads to enjoyment and fellowship with God. Speak comfortably] Lit. to her heart in friendly feeling; to mitigate her grief and heal her wounds.
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Hos_2:15. Achor] Where Achan troubled Israel (Jos_7:11-15); the borders of Canaan and the place of cleansing and success. A door of hope] Hope dawned in despair, and sorrow turned into joy. Sing] When God speaks comfortably the Church responds gratefully, like Israel at the Red Sea (Exodus 15; cf. Isa_11:15-16). Youth] Days of blessed experience and vigour of life, when delivered from bondage and unwasted by sin.
Hos_2:16. Ishi] An appellation of love. Baali] An appellation of rule. B. applied to idols is now disowned by God, and not to be taken on their lips (Exo_23:13).
RESTORATION TO GOD.—Hos_2:14-16
“Therefore,” a treatment not as we should expect, not after the manner of men, but according to Divine mercy. This is not an inference from the 13th verse, but from the whole section. Because Israel had been punished severely for sin and forgetfulness of God; because reduced to distress and longing to return to God—I will go and return, Hos_2:7—“therefore” God allures and restores the sinner to himself.
I. The nature of restoration to God.
1. From bondage to liberty. Israel in Egypt, under severe, helpless, degrading servitude, a type of the sinner under the dominion, authority, and consequence of sin. Heavy tribute, cruel taskmasters, unrequited toil, render life bitter and distressing. Sin makes the sinner serve with rigour and sigh for freedom. Israel redeemed and led into the wilderness a type of separation from sin and restoration to God. An entire separation to devote oneself to God (Exo_5:3).
2. From darkness to light. Egypt not only a place of bondage, but of darkness. Sin is moral darkness. The valley of Achor is a place of Divine chastisement and suffering. Sin brings trouble, penitence bursts the clouds and brings hope. Put away the accursed thing: God will show mercy. The sinner when restored is turned from the darkness of ignorance and doubt, fear and despair, to the light of truth and joy, from the power of Satan unto God (Act_26:18).
II. The method of restoration to God.
1. By Divine attraction from without. God seeks to counteract the effects of sin by showing its exceeding sinfulness; to allure to virtue by displaying its beauty; to persuade men by the preaching of the gospel. God in Christ is placable. Hard thoughts of God are sinful. Truth is beautiful, and the promises are encouraging. Though deep and fixed dislike be rooted in the heart, yet “God is love.” This is the special revelation, the grand fact of the gospel. It is the expression of God’s love to me—“He hath loved me.” This Divine truth imparts new ideas to the mind, and stays the progress of the sinner, like that of Saul in his departure from God.
2. By Divine operation within. “And speak comfortably unto her.” The truth of God alone is not sufficient. The Spirit must enlighten the mind and work in the heart. The ear may be touched, but the soul not comforted. When truth is near it does not attract, nor kindle sympathy in the heart. Men know the truth, but do not practise it. God, Christ, and moral virtue do not attract. The Spirit renews the disposition and begets love; makes us willing, and draws us with the cords of a man and bands of love. God speaks friendly, and draws effectually when he writes his laws in our hearts (2Co_3:10).
III. The results of restoration to God. God does not speak in vain. As in the first creation he spake and it was done, so in the second his will is obeyed. “I will draw all men unto me.”
1. Response for reluctance. The sinner is unwilling to return; the penitent fears and hesitates; but when God said, “Seek ye my face,” my heart said unto thee, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” Where other voices fail God’s voice is effectual. There is a true response, a prompt and ready response. The inmost soul is moved, and, like the echo among the Alps, repeats the notes of Divine music. There is no delay nor denial, for this savours of distrust, and displeases God. There is full and complete, hearty and sincere return. The resolution is no sooner made, “I will go,” than carried out. The heart is in tune with God, and sings for joy, like Israel in her days of youth and deliverance. Israel at the Red Sea was a young and joyful nation, redeemed from bondage and ready to sacrifice. “I will sing unto the Lord” (Exodus 15). Man never rises to his dignity until he realizes his relation to God. Then he utters emotions in songs of praise, and music becomes the handmaid of memory and the instrument of praise.
2. Riches for poverty. “I will give her vineyards from thence.” The wilderness had no supply of bread and water, no fertile plains and fruitful fields. It yielded nothing, yet Israel lacked nothing. Water gushed out from the rock, and manna fell from the clouds. The sinner is in a dry and thirsty land where no water is; barren and unfruitful in heart and life; poor in spirit and prospect, in a wretched and forlorn condition, “wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” But when restored to God, he is rich in experience and life, spiritual joy and hope, rich in faith and rich in God.
3. Sonship for slavery. “Thou shalt call me Ishi, and shalt call me no more Baali.” Baal indicated lordship, and was a name given to idols. God would disown the title, lest his people should be reminded of their former condition—preferred the tender name of love to prove closer relationship. “Thy Maker (thy Baal) is thy husband.” God would have Israel forsake everything which kept up the reputation and put them in mind of idolatry. He was married again to them. The Church calls him by right names when in true relation. The sinner when restored to Divine favour, the son when introduced into the family of God, is not under the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption by which he cries, Abba, Father. God is not cold towards us; be not lukewarm towards him. “Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children.”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hos_2:14. “I will allure her,” &c. The attractions of Divine love.
1. They are innumerable, yet so frequently overlooked.
2. They are powerful, yet so frequently resisted.
3. Rich in blessing, yet so frequently unemployed. “Christ works upon his people fortiter, but yet suaviter; powerfully, but yet sweetly; he inclineth their hearts to his testimonies, and not to covetousness (Psa_119:36), and brings them to the obedience of faith. If he do seduce them it is for no hurt, it is but to speak a word in private to them, as one friend may with another; it is but to give them his loves, as he speaks in the Canticles; to show them his glory, as he did Moses; to spread before them his beauty, and so to catch them by guile as St Paul did the Corinthians (2Co_12:16); to steal away their hearts before they are aware, according to that, Son_6:12, that they thenceforth may be an Aminadab, a willing people, a free-hearted people (Psa_110:3), waiting for the law (Isa_42:4), and walking by the rule (Gal_6:16)” [Trapp].
The valley of Achor.
1. An assertion of God’s rights.
2. A warning to sinners (cf. Jos_7:25-26).
A door of Hope.
1. Trouble turned into joy.
2. Judgment turned into mercy.
3. Despair turned into hope.
Up out of the land of Egypt. Moral life an elevation in character, purpose, and pursuit; an advancement towards God and heaven. “Such as are converted to Christ, should resolve on a journey and progress, as having more before them of duty and exercise and enjoyments; for after she is ‘allured,’ Israel is to remove and come to a wilderness, whether we understand it of the progress of the godly toward heaven, or toward wonted enjoyments” [Hutcheson.]
Vineyards from thence. Observe the Author of these favours. I will do it. Every good gift is from God; and his people acknowledge that all they enjoy is not only from his agency, but from his grace. Observe also the richness of the supplies. I will give her, not her corn, which is for necessity, but grapes, which are for delight. Yea, it is not a vine, but a vineyard; yea, vineyards! As if he could not do too much for them, he engages to give; concerned not only for their safety, but welfare; not only for their relief, but enjoyment; not only for their tasting consolation, but being filled with joy and peace in believing. Observe also the strangeness of the way in which these indulgences are to be communicated. Whence are these supplies to come? From a wilderness. Loneliness and mazes, danger and beasts of prey, sand, and briers, and thorns only in a wilderness. “He only doeth wondrous things;” turns the shadow of death into morning, makes rivers in high places and streams in the desert. He makes the wilderness to rejoice and blossom as the rose, and gives us vineyards from thence.
Earth is a wilderness. It was not designed to be such, but sin entered into the world, cursed the ground, and the Fall left it such. Such it would be now but for Divine grace. Men of the world are discontented and miserable; to the Christian the curse is turned into a blessing. He has before him a land of promise, a thousand succours and delights, and in Divine ordinances he has comforts, vineyards from thence. Solitude is a wilderness. There is much to be done, gained, and enjoyed alone. There we gain our best knowledge and richest experience; enjoy the freedom of prayer and intercourse with God. Outward trouble is a wilderness. Many afraid to be brought into it, but God has given them vineyards from thence. What proofs of God’s presence in trouble! What discoveries and supports! As the sufferings of Christ have abounded, so the consolations have also abounded by Christ. The state of mind produced by conviction of sin. A wounded spirit, who can bear? Who does not remember the surprise, the confusion of mind, the terror, the anguish, and self-despair he once felt? and who can forget the feelings induced by a discovery of the cross and the joy of God’s salvation? Many are afraid when their friends tremble at God’s word and are broken in heart. Christians hail it as a token for good, and know that he gave them their vineyards from thence. The same may be said of self-abasement, and distress of soul, which a believer may feel, when he sees his unworthiness, depravity, and guilt. The experience is lamentable, but will not hurt him. He giveth grace unto the humble. The valley of the shadow of death is the last wilderness. There is much to render it awful and uninviting, but when entered the gloom flies away. The place has been made glad for those subject to its bondage and fear. They have had a peaceful and delightful entrance into the joy of their Lord. And what vineyards does he give them from thence! [Jay].
Hos_2:15. A revived Church. 1. The frequent condition of the Church. In the land of Egypt; in bondage to sin, to sense, and to materialism.
2. The means of revival. “I will allure—speak comfortably—and give her vineyards.”
3. The results of revival. “Youth,” and renewed vigour. “Sing,” joy, and rejoicing. God’s presence restored his ancient people from literal captivity, and his spiritual seed from sorrow and distress. “God’s dealings with his people will furnish them with joy and refreshment; ‘she shall sing.’ Not only should they rejoice when all things are performed according to promise, but when the Lord gives any pledge of his love, or begun evidences of it, they ought to cherish it by joy and praise, though full fruition be wanting: for even ‘there’ on the border of her wilderness, in the valley of Achor” [Hutcheson].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v15
Hosea
THE VALLEY OF ACHOR
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Hos 2:15.
The Prophet Hosea is remarkable for the frequent use which he makes of events in the former history of his people. Their past seems to him a mirror in which they may read their future. He believes that ‘which is to be hath already been,’ the great principles of the divine government living on through all the ages, and issuing in similar acts when the circumstances are similar. So he foretells that there will yet be once more a captivity and a bondage, that the old story of the wilderness will be repeated once more. In that wilderness God will speak to the heart of Israel. Its barrenness shall be changed into the fruitfulness of vineyards, where the purpling clusters hang ripe for the thirsty travellers. And not only will the sorrows that He sends thus become sources of refreshment, but the gloomy gorge through which they journey-the valley of Achor-will be a door of hope.
One word is enough to explain the allusion. You remember that after the capture of Jericho by Joshua, the people were baffled in their first attempt to press up through the narrow defile that led from the plain of Jordan to the highlands of Canaan. Their defeat was caused by the covetousness of Achan, who for the sake of some miserable spoil which he found in a tent, broke God’s laws, and drew down shame on Israel’s ranks When the swift, terrible punishment on him had purged the camp, victory again followed their assault, and Achan lying stiff and stark below his cairn, they pressed on up the glen to their task of conquest. The rugged valley, where that defeat and that sharp act of justice took place, was named in memory thereof, the valley of Achor, that is, trouble; and our Prophet’s promise is that as then, so for all future ages, the complicity of God’s people with an evil world will work weakness and defeat, but that, if they will be taught by their trouble and will purge themselves of the accursed thing, then the disasters will make a way for hope to come to them again. The figure which conveys this is very expressive. The narrow gorge stretches before us, with its dark overhanging cliffs that almost shut out the sky; the path is rough and set with sharp pebbles; it is narrow, winding, steep; often it seems to be barred by some huge rock that juts across it, and there is barely room for the broken ledge yielding slippery footing between the beetling crag above and the steep slope beneath that dips so quickly to the black torrent below. All is gloomy, damp, hard; and if we look upwards the glen becomes more savage as it rises, and armed foes hold the very throat of the pass. But, however long, however barren, however rugged, however black, however trackless, we may see if we will, a bright form descending the rocky way with radiant eyes and calm lips, God’s messenger, Hope; and the rough rocks are like the doorway through which she comes near to us in our weary struggle. For us all, dear friends, it is true. In all our difficulties and sorrows, be they great or small; in our business perplexities; in the losses that rob our homes of their light; in the petty annoyances that diffuse their irritation through so much of our days; it is within our power to turn them all into occasions for a firmer grasp of God, and so to make them openings by which a happier hope may flow into our souls.
But the promise, like all God’s promises, has its well-defined conditions. Achan has to be killed and put safe out of the way first, or no shining Hope will stand out against the black walls of the defile. The tastes which knit us to the perishable world, the yearnings for Babylonish garments and wedges of gold, must be coerced and subdued. Swift, sharp, unrelenting justice must be done on the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, if our trials are ever to become doors of hope. There is no natural tendency in the mere fact of sorrow and pain to make God’s love more discernible, or to make our hope any firmer. All depends on how we use the trial, or as I say-first stone Achan, and then hope!
So, the trouble which detaches us from earth gives us new hope. Sometimes the effect of our sorrows and annoyances and difficulties is to rivet us more firmly to earth. The eye has a curious power, which they call persistence of vision, of retaining the impression made upon it, and therefore of seeming to see the object for a definite time after it has really been withdrawn. If you whirl a bit of blazing stick round, you will see a circle of fire though there is only a point moving rapidly in the circle. The eye has its memory like the soul. And the soul has its power of persistence like the eye, and that power is sometimes kindled into activity by the fact of loss. We often see our departed joys, and gaze upon them all the more eagerly for their departure. The loss of dear ones should stamp their image on our hearts, and set it as in a golden glory. But it sometimes does more than that; it sometimes makes us put the present with its duties impatiently away from us. Vain regret, absorbed brooding over what is gone, a sorrow kept gaping long after it should have been healed, like a grave-mound off which desperate love has pulled turf and flowers, in the vain attempt to clasp the cold hand below-in a word, the trouble that does not withdraw us from the present will never be a door of hope, but rather a grim gate for despair to come in at.
The trouble which knits us to God gives us new hope. That bright form which comes down the narrow valley is His messenger and herald-sent before His face. All the light of hope is the reflection on our hearts of the light of God. Her silver beams, which shed quietness over the darkness of earth, come only from that great Sun. If our hope is to grow out of our sorrow, it must be because our sorrow drives us to God. It is only when we by faith stand in His grace, and live in the conscious fellowship of peace with Him, that we rejoice in hope. If we would see Hope drawing near to us, we must fix our eyes not on Jericho that lies behind among its palm-trees, though it has memories of conquests, and attractions of fertility and repose, nor on the corpse that lies below that pile of stones, nor on the narrow way and the strong enemy in front there; but higher up, on the blue sky that spreads peaceful above the highest summits of the pass, and from the heavens we shall see the angel coming to us. Sorrow forsakes its own nature, and leads in its own opposite, when sorrow helps us to see God. It clears away the thick trees, and lets the sunlight into the forest shades, and then in time corn will grow. Hope is but the brightness that goes before God’s face, and if we would see it we must look at Him.
The trouble which we bear rightly with God’s help, gives new hope. If we have made our sorrow an occasion for learning, by living experience, somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever ready power to aid and bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible resources which we have thus once more proved, ‘Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.’ That is the order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation. But if, in my sorrow, I have been able to keep quiet because I have had hold of God’s hand, and if in that unstruggling submission I have found that from His hand I have been upheld, and had strength above mine own infused into me, then my memory will give the threads with which Hope weaves her bright web. I build upon two things-God’s unchangeableness, and His help already received; and upon these strong foundations I may wisely and safely rear a palace of Hope, which shall never prove a castle in the air. The past, when it is God’s past, is the surest pledge for the future. Because He has been with us in six troubles, therefore we may be sure that in seven He will not forsake us. I said that the light of hope was the brightness from the face of God. I may say again, that the light of hope which fills our sky is like that which, on happy summer nights, lives till morning in the calm west, and with its colourless, tranquil beauty, tells of a yesterday of unclouded splendour, and prophesies a to-morrow yet more abundant. The glow from a sun that is set, the experience of past deliverances, is the truest light of hope to light our way through the night of life.
One of the psalms gives us, in different form, a metaphor and a promise substantially the same as that of this text. ‘Blessed are the men who, passing through the valley of weeping, make it a well.’ They gather their tears, as it were, into the cisterns by the wayside, and draw refreshment and strength from their very sorrows, and then, when thus we in our wise husbandry have irrigated the soil with the gathered results of our sorrows, the heavens bend over us, and weep their gracious tears, and ‘the rain also covereth it with blessings.’ No chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.’
Then, dear friends, let us set ourselves with our loins girt to the road. Never mind how hard it may be to climb. The slope of the valley of trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark is the shadow of death which stretches athwart it. If there were no sun there would be no shadow; presently the sun will be right overhead, and there will be no shadow then. Never mind how black it may look ahead, or how frowning the rocks. From between their narrowest gorge you may see, if you will, the guide whom God has sent you, and that Angel of Hope will light up all the darkness, and will only fade away when she is lost in the sevenfold brightness of that upper land, whereof our ‘God Himself is Sun and Moon’-the true Canaan, to whose everlasting mountains the steep way of life has climbed at last through valleys of trouble, and of weeping, and of the shadow of death.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v14 The Renewal of the Lord’s Marriage Contract
The Renewal of the Lord’s Marriage Contract
v. 14. Therefore, behold, I will allure her, deliberately leading the idolatrous Israel astray and visiting His punishment upon her, but with a wonderful object in mind, and bring her into the wilderness, where there was nothing to detract her attention any more, and speak comfortably unto her, in a friendly, heart-to-heart talk, with the intention of once more manifesting His love, now that Israel was ready to acknowledge her transgression.
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v. 15. And I will give her her vineyards from thence, the very wilderness again blossoming as the rose, that is, the Gospel-teaching once more bringing forth glorious fruits, and the Valley of Achor, southwest of Jericho, here used only in a figurative way, for a door of hope, so that the crime of Achan would not be repeated, Jos 7:26; and she shall sing there, once more with the true happiness of a believing people, as in the days of her youth, when the Lord first led His people into the Land of Promise, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt, when the Lord first made His covenant with His people.
v. 16. And it shall be at that day, at the time of this wonderful deliverance of the Messianic period, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call Me Ishi, that is, "My Husband,". and shalt call Me no more Baali, in the form of idolatry by which Israel had transferred the worship of the one true God to the Phoenician idol.
v. 17. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, so that the people would no longer mention them in prayer, and they shall no more be remembered by their name, so that idolatry would completely be forgotten in the midst of the Lord’s people.
v. 18. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of heaven and with the creeping things of the ground, with all those things which might prove harmful and dangerous to them, under the picture of ravenous beasts, birds of prey, and poisonous reptiles, and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, so that the instruments of war would be destroyed and war itself cease, and will make them to lie down safely. All this, of course, is figurative description of the time when there would be peace on earth through Him who is our Peace.
v. 19. And I will betroth thee, so the Lord says to His bride, the Church of the New Testament, unto Me forever; yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, namely, that earned by Christ when He cleansed His Church from all unrighteousness through the blood of His cross, and in judgment, by which He interferes in behalf of His people on the basis of Christ’s perfect atonement, and in loving-kindness, in His free and merciful favor, and in mercies. Every idea of merit on the part of man is thus entirely excluded; God accepts every member of the Church on the basis of His own mercy in Christ Jesus alone.
v. 20. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness, with a pledge of the eternal duration of the covenant on His side; and thou shalt know the Lord, the saving knowledge of Jehovah being imparted through this Gospel-message.
v. 21. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, His ears, as it were, being attuned to the slightest stirring on the part of those who know Him as their Savior, I will hear the heavens, who here appear as interceding in behalf of the believers, and they shall hear the earth, which likewise is represented as pleading for mercy;
v. 22. and the earth shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil, so that its blessings would once more richly be given; and they shall hear Jezreel, the people of the true Israel, of the Church of God, becoming partakers of the rich blessings of the Lord in the Messianic era.
v. 23. And I will sow her unto Me in the earth, planting His Church anew by the operation of His divine grace; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, the congregation of Israel; and I will say to them which were not My people, men and women from every part of the world, chosen by the Lord to be included in His communion of saints, Thou art My people; and they shall say, accepting their salvation at the hand of the Father through the redemption of Christ, Thou art my God. That is the confession of the Church and of all its members. Wherever the Gospel of Christ is preached, members are won for the Church, and the sum total of these believers are the bride of Christ and partake of all the blessings which He has gained for all men by His redemption.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Yahweh is speaking about Israel.
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So I am going to win her back
"I, Yahweh, will bring her back to me"
the Valley of Achor as a door of hope
As Yahweh lead Israel out of Egypt, he will lead Israel to the Valley of Achor so that Israel will hope again in Yahweh.
She will answer me there as she did in the days of her youth, as in the days that she came out of the land of Egypt
Yahweh hopes that the nation of Israel will repent and again choose to worship him as their God. (See: Metaphor)
She will answer
Some modern versions understand the Hebrew word to mean "She will sing."
translationWords
desert
vineyard
hope
Egypt
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23 2:14-15 The third judgment (see note on 2:6-7) is…
2:14-15 The third judgment (see note on 2:6-7) is completely unexpected. The Lord, who had innocently suffered Israel’s repeated unfaithfulness, announces that he will take the initiative in wooing Israel in order to win her back once again. He will lead her into the desert where he first entered into covenant with her, away from the seductive influences of Canaanite religion. • The Valley of Trouble was the scene of Israel’s first act of disobedience after they entered the Promised Land (Josh 7:24-26). The Lord had both the will and the power to grant Israel a new beginning after their sin and trouble (Josh 8:1-22), so Israel would again be offered a gateway of hope.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.