2Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
4Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness;
5For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
2 Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3 Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst.
4 Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness;
5 For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
KJVKing James Version
2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3 Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.
4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.
5 For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.
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JPSJPS Tanakh (1917)
2 (2-4) Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not My wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her harlotries from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3 (2-5) Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.
4 (2-6) And I will not have compassion upon her children; for they are children of harlotry.
5 (2-7) For their mother hath played the harlot, she that conceived them hath done shamefully; for she said: 'I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.'
Isaiah 50:1(vv2, 5)Yahweh says, “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorce, with which I have put her away? Or to which of my creditors have I sold you?…
Ezekiel 16:22(v3)In all your abominations and your prostitution you have not remembered the days of your youth, when you were naked and bare, and were…
Jeremiah 3:13(v2)Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against Yahweh your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under…
Jeremiah 44:17-18(v5)But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink…
Ezekiel 16:25(v2)You have built your lofty place at the head of every way, and have made your beauty an abomination, and have opened your feet to everyone…
Show all 79 cross-references
Ezekiel 23:45(v2)Righteous men will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood; because they are…
Isaiah 1:21(v5)How the faithful city has become a prostitute! She was full of justice. Righteousness lodged in her, but now there are murderers.
Isaiah 32:13-14(v3)Thorns and briers will come up on my people’s land; yes, on all the houses of joy in the joyous city. For the palace will be forsaken. The…
Jeremiah 3:1(v2)“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that…
Hosea 2:8(v5)For she didn’t know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.
Hosea 3:1(v5)Yahweh said to me, “Go again, love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel, though they…
Hosea 1:2(vv2, 4)When Yahweh spoke at first by Hosea, Yahweh said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness;…
Exodus 17:3(v3)The people were thirsty for water there; so the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to kill…
Jeremiah 3:1-9(v5)“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that…
Jeremiah 3:6-9(v2)Moreover, Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every…
Jeremiah 13:14(v4)I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says Yahweh: “I will not pity, spare, or have compassion,…
Jeremiah 13:22(v3)If you say in your heart, “Why have these things come on me?” Your skirts are uncovered because of the greatness of your iniquity, and your…
Jeremiah 16:5(v4)For Yahweh says, “Don’t enter into the house of mourning. Don’t go to lament. Don’t bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this…
Jeremiah 19:3(v2)Say, ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem: Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says, “Behold, I will bring…
Ezekiel 8:18(v4)Therefore I will also deal in wrath. My eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity. Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, yet I will…
Ezekiel 9:10(v4)As for me also, my eye won’t spare, neither will I have pity, but I will bring their way on their head.”
Ezekiel 19:13(v3)Now it is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land.
Hosea 1:6(v4)She conceived again, and bore a daughter. Then he said to him, “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah; for I will no longer have mercy on the house of…
Hosea 2:5(v2)For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give…
Hosea 2:12-13(v5)I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, about which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me; and I will make…
Amos 8:11-13(v3)Behold, the days come,” says the Lord Yahweh, “that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of…
James 2:13(v4)For judgment is without mercy to him who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Judges 15:18(v3)He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die…
Judges 16:23(v5)The lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice; for they said, “Our god has…
2 Kings 9:22(v4)When Joram saw Jehu, he said, “Is it peace, Jehu?” He answered, “What peace, so long as the prostitution of your mother Jezebel and her…
Ezra 9:6-7(v5)and I said, “My God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to you, my God; for our iniquities have increased over our head, and our…
Isaiah 27:11(v4)When its boughs are withered, they will be broken off. The women will come and set them on fire, for they are a people of no understanding.…
Isaiah 33:9(v3)The land mourns and languishes. Lebanon is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.
Isaiah 47:3(v3)Your nakedness will be uncovered. Yes, your shame will be seen. I will take vengeance, and will spare no one.”
Isaiah 57:3(v4)“But draw near here, you sons of a sorceress, you offspring of adulterers and prostitutes.
Isaiah 57:7-8(v5)On a high and lofty mountain you have set your bed. You also went up there to offer sacrifice. You have set up your memorial behind the…
Isaiah 58:1(v2)“Cry aloud! Don’t spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins.
Isaiah 64:10(v3)Your holy cities have become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
Jeremiah 2:2(v2)“Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Yahweh says, “I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your weddings;…
Jeremiah 2:6(v3)They didn’t say, ‘Where is Yahweh who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts…
Jeremiah 2:20(v5)“For long ago I broke off your yoke, and burst your bonds. You said, ‘I will not serve;’ for on every high hill and under every green tree…
Jeremiah 2:25-27(v5)“Keep your feet from being bare, and your throat from thirst. But you said, ‘It is in vain. No, for I have loved strangers, and I will go…
Jeremiah 2:31(v3)Generation, consider Yahweh’s word. Have I been a wilderness to Israel? Or a land of thick darkness? Why do my people say, ‘We have broken…
Jeremiah 4:26(v3)I saw, and behold, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down at the presence of Yahweh, before his fierce…
Jeremiah 11:13(v5)For according to the number of your cities are your gods, Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have you set up…
Jeremiah 12:10(v3)Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard. They have trodden my portion under foot. They have made my pleasant portion a desolate…
Jeremiah 13:26(v3)Therefore I will also uncover your skirts on your face, and your shame will appear.
Jeremiah 17:6(v3)For he will be like a bush in the desert, and will not see when good comes, but will inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, an…
Jeremiah 22:6(v3)For Yahweh says concerning the house of the king of Judah: “You are Gilead to me, the head of Lebanon. Yet surely I will make you a…
Jeremiah 51:43(v3)Her cities have become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land in which no man dwells. No son of man passes by it.
Ezekiel 16:4-8(v3)As for your birth, in the day you were born your navel was not cut. You weren’t washed in water to cleanse you. You weren’t salted at all,…
Ezekiel 16:15-16(v5)“ ‘ “But you trusted in your beauty, and played the prostitute because of your renown, and poured out your prostitution on everyone who…
Ezekiel 16:20(v2)“ ‘ “Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and you have sacrificed these to them to be devoured.…
Ezekiel 16:28-34(v5)You have played the prostitute also with the Assyrians, because you were insatiable; yes, you have played the prostitute with them, and yet…
Ezekiel 16:37-39(v3)therefore see, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you have taken pleasure, and all those who you have loved, with all those who you…
Ezekiel 20:4(v2)“Will you judge them, son of man? Will you judge them? Cause them to know the abominations of their fathers.
Ezekiel 20:35-36(v3)I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face. Just as I entered into…
Ezekiel 23:5-11(v5)“Oholah played the prostitute when she was mine. She doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbors, who were clothed with blue,…
Ezekiel 23:16-17(v5)As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them into Chaldea. The Babylonians came to her into the bed of love,…
Ezekiel 23:26-29(v3)They will also strip you of your clothes, and take away your beautiful jewels. Thus I will make your lewdness to cease from you, and remove…
Ezekiel 23:40-44(v5)“Furthermore you sisters have sent for men who come from far away, to whom a messenger was sent, and behold, they came; for whom you washed…
Ezekiel 23:43(v2)Then I said of her who was old in adulteries, ‘Now they will play the prostitute with her, and she with them.’
Daniel 9:5-8(v5)we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your…
Hosea 2:2(v5)Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face,…
Hosea 4:5(v5)You will stumble in the day, and the prophet will also stumble with you in the night; and I will destroy your mother.
Hosea 4:12-15(v5)My people consult with their wooden idol, and answer to a stick of wood. Indeed the spirit of prostitution has led them astray, and they…
Hosea 8:9(v5)For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has hired lovers for himself.
Hosea 9:10(v5)I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to…
Zechariah 1:12(v4)Then Yahweh’s angel replied, “O Yahweh of Armies, how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which…
Matthew 23:37-39(v2)“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children…
John 8:41(v4)You do the works of your father.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, God.”
Romans 9:18(v4)So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.
Romans 11:22(v4)See then the goodness and severity of God. Toward those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness;…
2 Corinthians 5:16(v2)Therefore we know no one after the flesh from now on. Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.
Revelation 2:20-23(v5)But I have this against you, that you tolerate your woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. She teaches and seduces my servants to…
Revelation 17:1-5(v5)One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the judgment of the great…
Revelation 17:16(v3)The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the prostitute, will make her desolate, will strip her naked, will eat her…
Hosea 2:10(v3)Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of my hand.
Acts 7:51-53(v2)“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do. Which of the…
79 distinct cross-references across this passage (81 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (22 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv2–5The Prophet seems in this verse to contradict himself;…
The Prophet seems in this verse to contradict himself; for he promised reconciliation, and now he speaks of a new repudiation. These things do not seem to agree well together that God should embrace, or be willing to embrace, again in his love those whom he had before rejected, — and that he should at the same time send a bill of divorce, and renounce the bond of marriage. But if we weigh the design of the Prophet, we shall see that the passage is very consistent, and that there is in the words no contrariety. He has indeed promised that at a future time God would be propitious to the Israelites: but as they had not yet repented, it was needful to deal again more severely with them, that they might return to their God really and thoroughly subdued. So we see that in Scripture, promises and threatening are mingled together, and rightly too. For were the Lord to spend a whole month in reproving sinners they may in that time fall away a hundred times. Hence God, after showing to men their sins adds some consolation and moderates severity, lest they should despond: he afterwards returns again to threatening, and does so from necessity; for though men may be terrified with the fear of punishment, they do not yet really repent. It is then necessary for them to be reproved not only once and again, but very often.
We now then perceive what the Prophet had in view: he had spoken of the people’s defection; afterwards he proved that the people had been justly rejected by the Lord; and then he promised the hope of pardon. But now seeing that they still continued obstinate in their vices, he reproves again those who had need of such chastisement. He, in a word, has in view their present state.
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Almost all so expound this verse as if the Prophet addressed the faithful: and with greater refinement still do they expound, who say, that the Prophet addresses the faithful who had fallen away from the synagogue. They have and I have no doubt, been much deceived; for the Prophets on the contrary, shows here that God was justly punishing the Israelites, who were wont to excuse themselves in the same way as hypocrites are wont to do. When the Lord treated them otherwise than according to their wishes, they expostulated, and raised up contention — “What does this mean?” So do we find them introduced as thus speaking, by Isaiah. [Isaiah 58:1-3.] There, indeed, they fiercely contend with God, as if the Lord dealt with them unjustly, for they seemed not conscious of having done any evil. Hence the Prophet, seeing the Israelites so senseless in their sins, says, Contend, contend with your mother. He speaks here in the person of God: and God, as it has been stated, uses the similitude of a marriage. Let us now see what is the import of the words.
When a husband repudiates his wife, he fixes a mark of disgrace on the children born by that marriage: their mother has been divorced; then the children, on account of that divorce, are held in less esteem. When a husband repudiates his wife through waywardness, the children justly regard him with hatred. Why? “Because he loved not our mother as he ought to have done; he has not honoured the bond of marriage.” It is therefore usually the case, that the children’s affections are alienated from their father, when he treats their mother with too little humanity or with entire contempt. So the Israelites, when they saw themselves rejected, wished to throw the blame on God. For by the name, “mother”, are the people here called; it is transferred to the whole body of the people, or the race of Abraham. God had espoused that people to himself, and wished them to be like a wife to him. Since then God was a husband to the people, the Israelites were as sons born by that marriage. But when they were repudiated, the Israelites said, that God dealt cruelly with them, for he has cast them away for no fault. The Prophet now undertakes the defence of God’s cause, and speaks also in his person, Contend, contend, he says with your mother In a word, this passage agrees with what is said in the beginning of Isaiah 50:1,
‘Where is the bill of repudiation? Have I sold you to my creditors? But ye have been sold for your sins, and your mother has been repudiated for her iniquity.’
Husbands were wont to give a bill of divorce to their wives, that they themselves might see it: for it freed them from every reproach, inasmuch as the husband bore a testimony to his wife: “I dismiss her, not that she has been unfaithful, not that she has violated the bond of marriage; but because her beauty does not please me, or because her manners are not agreeable to me.” The law compelled the husband to give such a testimony as this. God now says by his Prophet, “Show me now the bill of repudiation: have I of my own accord cast away your mother? No, I have not done so. Ye cannot accuse me of cruelty, as though her beauty did not please me, and as though I had followed the common practice approved by you. I have not willingly rejected her, nor at my own pleasure, and I have not sold her to my creditors, as your fathers were sometimes wont to do, as to their children, when they were in debt.” In short, the Lord shows there that the Jews were to be blamed, that they were rejected together with their mother. So he says also in this place, Contend, contend with your mother; which means, “Your dispute is not with me:” and by the repetition he shows how inveterate was their perverseness, for they never ceased to glamour against God. We now see the real meaning of the Prophet.
In vain then do they philosophise, who say that the mother was to be condemned by her own children; because, when they shall be converted to their former faith, they ought then to condemn the synagogue. The Prophet meant no such thing; but, on the contrary, he brings this charge against the Israelites, that they had been repudiated for the flagitious conduct of their mother, and had ceased to be counted the children of God. For the comparison between husband and wife is here to be understood; and then the children are placed as it were in the middle. When the mother is dismissed, the children indignantly say that the father has been too inhuman if indeed he wilfully divorces his wife: but when a wife becomes unfaithful to her husband, or prostitutes herself to any shameful crime, the husband is then free from every blame; and there is no cause for the children to expostulate with him; for he ought thus to punish a shameless wife. God then shows that the Israelites were justly rejected, and that the blame of their rejection belonged to the whole race of Abraham; but that no blame could be imputed to him.
And for a reason it is added, Let her then take away her fornication from her face, and her adulteries from the midst of her breasts The Prophet, by saying, “Let her then take away her fornications”, (for the copulative ו, vau, ought to be regarded as an illative,) confirms what we have just now said; that is that God had stood to his pledged faith, but that the people had become perfidious; and that the cause of the divorce or separation was, that the Israelites persevered not, as they ought to have done, in the obedience of faith. Then God says, Let her take away her fornications. But the phrase, Let her take away from her face and from her breasts, seems singular; and what does it mean? because women commit fornication neither by the face nor by the breasts. It is evident the Prophet alludes to meretricious finery; for harlots, that they may entice men, sumptuously adorn themselves, and carefully paint their face and decorate their breasts. Wantonness then appears in the face as well as in the breasts. But interpreters do not touch on what the Prophet had in view. The Prophet, no doubt, sets forth here the shamelessness of the people; for they had now so hardened themselves in their contempt of God, in their ungodly superstitions, in all kinds of wickedness, that they were like harlots, who conceal not their baseness, but openly prostitute themselves, yea, and exhibit tokens of their shamelessness in their eyes as well as in every part of their bodies. We see then that the people are here accused of disgraceful impudence as they had grown so callous as to wish to be known to be such as they were. In the same way does Ezekiel set forth their reproachful conduct,
‘Spread has the harlot her feet, she called on all who passed by the way,’ (Ezekiel 16:25.)
We now then understand why the Prophet expressly said, Let her take away from her face her fornication, and from her breasts her adulteries: for he teaches that the vices of the people were not hidden, and that they did not now sin and cover their baseness as hypocrites do, but that they were so unrestrained in their contempt of God, that they were become like common harlots.
Here is a remarkable passage; for we first see that men in vain complain when the Lord seems to deal with them in severity; for they will ever find the fault to be in themselves and in their parents: yea, when they look on all impartially, they will confess that all throughout the whole community are included in one and the same guilt. Let us hence learn, whenever the lord may chastise us, to come home to ourselves, and to confess that he is justly severe towards us; yea, were we apparently cast away, we ought yet to confess, that it is through our own fault, and not through God’s immoderate severity. We also learn how frivolous is their pretext, who set up against God the authority of their fathers, as the Papists do: for they would, if they could, call or compel God to an account, because he forsakes them, and owns them not now as his Church. “What! has not God bound his faith to us? Is not the Church his spouse? Can he be unfaithful?” So say the Papists: but at the same time they consider not, that their mother has become utterly filthy through her many abominations; they consider not, that she has been repudiated, because the Lord could no longer bear her great wickedness. Let us then know, that it is in vain to bring against God the examples of men; for what is here said by the Prophet will ever stand true, that God has not given a bill of divorce to his Church; that is, that he has not of his own accord divorced her, as peevish and cruel husbands are wont to do, but that he has been constrained to do so, because he could no longer connive at so many abominations. It now follows —
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 translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv2–5God showeth that the fault was not in him,…
God showeth that the fault was not in him, but in their Synagogue, and their idolatries, that he forsook them, Isa. 50:1.
Meaning, that their idolatry was so great, that they were not ashamed, but boasted of it, Ezek. 16:25.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Hos 2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she…
Hos 2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she [is] not my wife, neither [am] I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
Ver. 2. Plead with your mother, plead] Here of right begins the second chapter (the former verse being not so fitly separated from the former chapter), and it is nothing else but a commentary upon the first, as Pareus well noteth. For the prophet here proceedeth in accusing the people of disloyalty and ingratitude: whereupon he denounceth a divorce and punishment: and then foretelleth their repentance and return into favour with God under the kingdom of the Messiah. Now the end wherefore both the accusation and the promise is here reiterated, is not so much to confirm what had been before affirmed, as to set forth the means whereby this cast off people was to be at length added unto the Church: viz. partly by external means (as sharp sermons and sore afflictions), and partly by the internal grace of the Spirit of God, and good affiance of his love sealed up to them, by various spiritual and temporal favours conferred upon them; as so many love tokens. Come we now to the words of this verse; where Oecolampadius begins the chapter: Plead with our mother, plead It is verbum forense, saith Mercer; an expression borrowed from pleaders at the bar: q.d. Be in good earnest with her, rebuke her roundly and openly, according to the nature of her offence: that she may be sound in the faith, and ashamed of her perfidiousness. What though she be your mother, and in that respect to be honoured by you, yet she is a perverse rebellious woman, as Saul once said of his son Jonathan’s mother, 1Sa 20:30 (how truly I inquire not: malice little regards truth, so it may gall or kill), and therefore to be barely and boldly told her own. Besides, we cannot better show our respect to parents than by seeking their souls’ health, and by dealing fairly but freely with them therein. Not as Walter Mapes (sometime Archdeacon of Oxford) did by his mother Church of Rome: for relating the gross simony {a} of the Pope in confirming the election of Reginald, bastard son of Jocelin, Bishop of Sarum, into the see of Bath, he thus concludes his narration, Sit tamen Domina materque nostra Roma baculus in aqua fractus: et absit credere quae vidimus: yet let our lady and mother Rome be as a stick put into the water, which seems to be broken, but is not so: and far be it from us to believe our own eyes against her. Was this charity? or stupidity rather? Charity may be ingenuous, but not servile and blockish. It is not love, but hatred (if Moses may judge), to suffer sin in a dearest friend to pass uncontrolled, Lev 19:17. Good Asa deposed his own mother for her idolatry: and our Edward VI would not be drawn by any persuasion of friends or fear of enemies, to indulge his sister, the Lady Mary, to have mass said in her house. The truth is, those Ammis and Ruhamahs that have found mercy from God, they have their hearts so fired up thereby with a holy zeal for him, that they cannot endure to see him dishonoured, but must appear and plead for him against any in the world. Again, as any one is more assured of his own salvation by Christ, the more he thirsteth after the salvation of others; as we see evidently in St Paul, that vessel of mercy. I am persuaded, saith he, or I am sure, that neither life nor death, &c., shall ever separate me from God’s love in Christ. And what follows in the very next words, but this, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also hearing me witness in the Holy Ghost; that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," &c., Rom 8:38-39; Rom 9:1-4. And how effectually and convincingly he pleadeth with them to draw them to Christ and hold them close to him, that golden Epistle to the Hebrews will well witness to the world’s end.
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For she is not my wife] For I have put her away by a bill of divorcement, Isa 50:1, with a Habe tibi quae tua sunt (which was the form of divorce among the Romans), Take thine own things and be gone. Now, the Jewish synagogue had nothing she could properly call her own, but sin and misery: when God first took her, she had not a rag to her back, Eze 16:10, nor any kind of comeliness, but what he was pleased to put upon her, Eze 16:14. But she (foolish woman and unwise, Deu 32:6), trusting in her borrowed beauty, played the harlot, and poured out her fornication on every one that passed by: his it was, Eze 16:15. The synagogue of Rome is such another meretrix meretricissima quae gremium claudit nemini, as her own sons say of her, by way of commendation. St John calleth her the whore, the great whore, Rev 17:1; Rev 17:15; and further telleth us that she sitteth upon her paramours in a base manner, in an unseemly sort, she sitteth upon their very consciences, and keeps them under by force: whereas Stephen, king of Poland (one of her sons, but not altogether so obsequiuus), was wont to say, that God had required three things to himself, sc. ex nihilo aliquid facere, scire futura, et dominari velle conscientiis, that is, to make something of nothing, to know things to come, and to bear rule over men’s consciences. How she forceth men to commit folly with her by the cruel Inquisition; and bow she hireth others for preferments (Luther was offered a cardinalship; Bessarion of Nice was won over to her by such an offer; Thomas Saranzius was of a poor shoemaker’s son made bishop, cardinal, and pope, all in one year, and called Nicolas V; the like might be said of Aeneas Sylvius, Canon of Trent, afterwards Pope Pius II), and for a price too, is notoriously known to the Christian world. Stratagem nunc est Pontificium ditare multos ut pii esse desinant, saith a good author. It is one of the pope’s stratagems to enrich men that he may oblige them to himself, and bring them into his own vassalage (John Baptist. Gelli. Dialog. 5). In various towns of Germany (as at Augsburg, &c.) there was a known allowance by the year for such Lutherans as would become Papists. Thus this whore of Rome imitateth her in the text: of whom it is elsewhere complained, Eze 16:33, "They give gifts to all whores" (and so buy repentance at too dear a rate, Nolo tanti paenitentiam emere, Dem.), but "thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom: yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldst not be satisfied," Eze 16:28. It was but time therefore that God should cast her off as now no wife of his, but an adulteress of the devil, as she showed herself notably in the Trent Conventicle: where with a whore’s forehead that refused to be ashamed, Jer 3:3, she not only established by a law their abominable idolatry, but also set forth that heathenish decree, whereby she equaleth (at least) the Apocrypha to the holy Canon, the vulgar puddle to the Hebrew and Greek fountains, unwritten verities and traditions to the sacred Scriptures: and further addeth, that the Holy Ghost himself is not to be hearkened unto speak he never so plainly and expressly, nisi accedat meretricis purpuratae effrons interpreratio, unless she may have the interpreting of his meaning according to her way. O monstrous impudence, deserving a divorce! True it is that God hateth putting away, Mal 2:16 Isa 50:1; he tells these Jews that he had not given their mother a bill of divorcement, ut solent morosi et crudeles mariti, as cruel and froward husbands used to do for every light offence. But what he had done this way, he was merely compelled to it; as not able to wink any longer at their flagitious practices. Hear his own words, "Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you sold yourselves; and for your transgressions is your mother put away." And yet not so far put away either, but that if she repent, she may be received again: and that is no small mercy. See Jer 3:1, "They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord." Lo, God is above law; and his mercy is matchless: he will do for his people what none else in like case would ever he drawn to do: Mic 7:18, "Who is a God like unto thee?" saith the prophet, by way of admiration. David never came near his concubines more after Absalom had gone in to them; and Ahithophel judged that act would be such an injury, as David would never put up with, and therefore gave that pernicious counsel. But God’s thoughts are not as man’s thoughts, neither are our ways his ways, of mercy, and multiplied pardons. But "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts," Isa 55:8-9. We are not to measure things according to our own model; and to have as low thoughts of God and his goodness as those miscreants once had of his power when they demanded, "Can God prepare a table for us in the wilderness? Can he give us water out of the rock?" Surely a finite creature cannot believe the infinite attributes of God thoroughly, without supernatural grace: which therefore must be implored, and every one of us excited not to cast away our confidence which hath so great recompense, so great encouragement: but to say to our mother, and each to other, "Put away your whoredoms," &c., "Cast away all your transgressions," Eze 18:31. "Ye have done all this wickedness" (saith Samuel to the revolted people of his time), but what of that? "yet turn not aside from following the Lord": for that were to add rebellion to sin, as Herod to all his other hateful practices added that of beheading the Baptist. Do not therefore turn aside from following the Lord, but go home again to him, and he will speak peace. "For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: since it hath pleased the Lord once to make you his people," 1Sa 12:20-22. He chose you for his love: and now loves you for his choice; yea, he cries after you, as once, "Return, you blacksliding children, and I will heal your backsliding." Oh that you would reciprocate and say, "Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the Lord our God," Jer 3:22.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight] Not out of my sight (as a Lapide readeth it, neither according to the original, nor yet his own Vulgate translation), but "out of her sight," or from her face, {b} and her adulteries from between her breasts. Sed quid hoc sibi vult? saith Calvin here. But what may be the meaning of this? It surely seemeth harsh to say that women play the whores, either with their faces or with their breasts: and yet it is not unknown to the learned what Archesilaus the philosopher said to a young wanton, that cast lustful looks and lascivious glances upon others: Nihil interest quibus membris cinaedi sitis, posterioribus an prioribus: You may be naughty packs more ways than one. And Plutarch tells of a certain orator, that said of an impudent fellow: Quod in oculis haberet non κορας sed πορνας, that he had in his eyes not pupils, but punks. {c} And St Peter saith of the heretical sects of his time, that they had eyes full of the adulteress (so runs the original, μεστους μοιχαλιδος), and that could not cease to sin, 2Pe 2:14. It is evident enough (saith Calvin) that the prophet in this text alludeth to the manner of harlots painting their faces, decking or laying out their breasts to allure lovers. Filthy dressing and naked breasts (saith another divine), this is whoredom between the breasts. A third calleth naked breasts and wrists, abhorred filth. Jerome saith, If a man or woman adorn or carry themselves so as to provoke others to lust after them, though no evil follow upon it, yet the parties shall suffer eternal damnation; because they offered poison to others, though none would drink it. In Scripture, women taxed for this were notorious wicked persons, and usually whores: as Tamar, Jezebel, those damsels, Isa 3:12; Isa 3:16-17 Dives, the rich man, Luk 16:19-31 Lupa Romana, the Roman wolf, Rev 17:3. Our Henry VI, when a mask of women were presented unto him, whereof some of them showed their naked breasts, he left the presence, crying, “Fie, fie, ladies, in sooth ye are to blame, to bare those parts to the eyes of man that nature appointed modesty to conceal.” Frederick the Emperor, seeing some country wenches, near Florence, in dancing to show their naked legs, Eamus, said he, meretricum hic ludus est non virginum, Let us go hence, for this is not maids’ play, but whores’ rather. That younker in the Proverbs was met by a woman with the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart, or trussed up about the breasts, with her upper parts naked, like a bedlam. So Levi Ben Gersom, she met him with her naked breasts, yea, with something else naked, {d} which modesty forbids to name, as some construe that text, Pro 7:10. So she caught him and kissed him, Hos 2:13, with strange impudence: and no question but having caught him, her lust grew more flagrant: as by unclean touches of the face and breasts men are more enkindled. Hence that of our Saviour in expounding the seventh commandment, Mat 5:30, "If thy right hand offend thee," sc. by dalliance and wanton touches, "cut it off," &c. Hippocrates observeth that there are venae et viae ab utero ad mamillas, veins and passages that go from the belly to the breasts; and that is the reason he gives of the temptation to lust that is in the breasts. "Keep thyself pure," saith St Paul to his son Timothy. And again, "The younger women exhort with purity," or chastity. It is not safe to pry into the beauty of young women. Ut vidi ut perii, &c. The eyes are those windows of wickedness and loop holes of lust. "Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight." And let not the strange woman "take thee with her eyelids," saith Solomon, Pro 6:25. For prevention hereof, in Chrysostom’s time, the women were separated from the men in the church by a wooden wall. And Tertullian saith to the Christian women, Iudicabunt vos Arabiae feminae ethnicae, &c., The heathen women of Arabia shall judge you: for they do not only cover their faces but their heads too; and rather than they will have any part appear naked, they will let the light but into one eye. In Barbary, they say, it is death for any man to see one of the Xeriffe’s concubines; and for them too, if when they see a man (though but through a casement) they do not suddenly screech out. Millions of people have died of the wound in the eye. Aholah and Aholibah, that is, Israel and Judah, no sooner saw the Assyrians (those desirable young men), though but portrayed upon the wall, but they doted upon those paramours, and received them into the bed of love, Eze 23:16-17. Et divaricavit tibias suas, Eze 16:25, and multiplied their whoredoms. The very sight of the altar at Damascus set Ahaz agog to have one of the same fashion, 2Ki 16:10. And Jeroboam, coming out of Egypt, where the ox was worshipped, brought home two calves with him; and set them up at Dan and Bethel. The Nicodemites and Familists hold it no sin to be present at idol service, and allege a text for it out of Apocryphal Baruch. But Mr Burroughes, a good interpreter, well observeth, that that which is intended specially here, in these words, "Let her put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries," &c., is, that they should not be content merely with change of their hearts, to say, Well, we will acknowledge the Lord to be the true God, and our hearts shall wholly trust in him; but for these external things, what great matter is in them? Oh no, they must abstain from all appearance of evil, from the badges of idolatry, &c. Thus he. Those badges or ensigns of idolatry they usually carried between their breasts (saith another author), to testify that the idol had their hearts; whereas Christ should have been there, Son 1:13, who to show his dear love to his Church appeared to John, girt about the paps with a golden girdle, Rev 1:13. {See Trapp on "Rev 1:13"} Cor sedes amoris. The heart is the seat of the affections. Hence God calleth for it; "My son, give me thine heart": and the devil strives for it, Luk 22:3 Act 5:3. Once he strove about a dead man’s body, Jdg 1:9, but his design therein was to have set up an idol for himself in the hearts of the living. His eldest son and successor, the pope, useth the same policy. It was a watch word in Gregory XIII’s time, in Queen Elizabeth’s days, My son, give me thy heart: dissemble, go to Church, be a Papist in heart, and then do what ye will: take the oath of allegiance, supremacy, anything that shall be put to you, I will absolve you. Do but carry a crucifix between your breasts (that is the place where they wear such idols), and kiss it when you have sworn (as Louis XI of France used to do), and it shall suffice. An oath upon the conscience of a popish idolater is like a collar upon a monkey’s neck, - that he will slip on for his master’s pleasure and slip off again for his own. Pascenius scoffs King James for the invention of the oath of allegiance. Equivocation the Jesuits have invented, or revived rather, ad consolationem afflictorum Catholicorum, for the comfort of afflicted Catholics, as Garnet and Blackwell profess. So impudent is idolatry, such frontless whoredoms appear in their very faces, they openly prostitute themselves; Imo volunt extare signa foeditatis sum, saith Calvin, here they hang out their filthy superstitions in the sight of the sun, as Sodom: they set them upon the cliff of the rock, as Jerusalem, Eze 24:7-8, ut similes sint publicis scortis, like common whores that solicit lovers, and send to them, as she, Eze 23:2-21. It was a sad complaint God made, Hos 7:1 of this prophecy, "When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, then it broke forth as the leprosy in their foreheads": their fornications were not only covert, but overt. Their whoredoms in the face were their worshipping the two golden calves and Baalim (saith Pareus); their "adulteries between their breasts" were their trust in idols, in the arm of flesh, in confederacies, &c., when they would seem nevertheless to trust in God alone: as now the Papists profess to do, and have therefore coined diverse nice distinctions of worship, per se, et per accidens, proprie, et impropriae, and a hundred the like evasions. But there is no hiding of their asses’ ears by these subtilties. Dr Reynolds, in his Books de Idolatria Romana, hath (among others) proved them rank idolaters. Weston writes, that his head ached in reading that book; but they all yield it unanswerable: and yet they "repent not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk," Rev 9:20. But, as those that make them are like unto them, so are all those that trust in them, stockish and stupid; given up to the efficacy of error, to believe a lie, yea, and that against common sense, Isa 44:17, which is no small stumblingblock to both Jews and Mahometans.
{a} The act or practice of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferments, benefices, or emoluments; traffic in sacred things. ŒD
{b} So the Septuag. εκ προσωπου μου.
{c} Lib. περι δυσωπιας. Kορη puellam et pupillam oculi significat.
{d} שׁית pro שׁת quasi nudato pudendo. And verse 18, Nerveh dodim inebriabimur uberibus.
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 Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Plead; argue the case, state it aright between me…
Plead; argue the case, state it aright between me and your mother, then debate it fully; lay open either my displeasure, how great it is, or the effects of it already upon the house of Israel, or my menaces against them for the future, by my prophet Hosea: and next recollect the carriage of your mother of Israel; consider her sins, her lewdness, her adulteries, her unthankfulness, how notorious, how long, how multiplied and aggravated.
With your mother; the synagogues, the whole body of the people Israel, which were emblemized in Gomer, the wife of whoredoms.
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Plead; ye that are sons or daughters of God amidst this degenerate, idolatrous nation, you that have any resentments for your Father, debate, or at least deal plainly with her, who is called your mother, and say how little right she hath to be called my wife, and how little reason I have to own myself her Husband.
She is not my wife; in point of right she is not, for by her adulteries she hath dissolved the marriage covenant, and so abolished the relation, though in point of fact she is not cast off utterly; I have not sued out the divorce, nor turned her out of doors. but yet for all that she is no wife, nor hath any right to the honour, maintenance, or love of a wife.
Neither am I her husband; I do not account myself bound by any covenant of marriage to love, maintain, comfort, or protect her; nor will I long do it, if by her continued lewdness she still violate her faith, and abuse my patience. Tell idolatrous Israel, that her God will deal with her as an abused husband will deal with an unreclaimed adulterous wife.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms; when you have pleaded, then make an offer to her yet once more, counsel, persuade, entreat, and encourage her to do what becomes a wife that would not be divorced; try if you can prevail with her to cast aside and to remove from her all evil practices and inclinations, to cast off spiritual whoredoms, which all her idolatrous practices are accounted to be.
Out of her sight; either remove the idols, their temples, priests, and gaudy rites, for ever out of her sight, as they did, Isa 2:20; or else cease from her whorish looks, her unchaste and immodest framing her face and gestures.
And her adulteries, idolatries, which are spiritual adulteries,
from between her breasts: by an immodest and lascivious manner of framing the breasts, and laying them open, these kinds of women here alluded to did entice adulterers; and so were idolatrous Israelites grown impudent in their idolatries, and courted others in shameless manner to turn idolaters also.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel,…
Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel, as the Targum; the body of the Jewish nation, which, with respect to individuals, was as a mother to her children; see Mat 21:37, that is, lay before her, her sin in rejecting the Messiah, the Head and Husband of his true church and people; endeavour to convince her of it; reprove her for it; expostulate with her about it; argue the case with her, and show her the danger of persisting in such an evil, as the apostles did, Act 2:23
for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; for though there had been such a relation between them, yet it was now dissolved; she had broken the marriage covenant and contract, and God had given her a bill of divorce, Jer 31:32 or, however, as she behaved not as a wife towards him, showing love and affection, honour and reverence, and performing duty, and yielding obedience; so he would not carry it as a husband towards her, nourishing and cherishing her, providing for her, and protecting and defending her; but leave her to shift for herself, and to the insults and abuses of others; having been guilty of idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, as the Israelites before the captivity were; and as the Jews in Christ's time were guilty of rejecting the word of God, and preferring their own traditions to it: hence it follows,
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let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, or "from her face" (e),
and her adulteries from between her breasts; alluding to the custom of harlots, who used to paint their faces, and to allure with their looks, words, and actions, and to make bare their breasts, or adorn them, or carry in them what were enticing and alluring. These adulteries and whoredoms, which are the same thing, may signify the many idolatries of the people of Israel before their captivity, and which were the cause of it; or the sins of the Jews before their dispersion; or their evil works, as the Targum, by which they departed from God and the true Messiah, and went a whoring after other lovers: thus they rejected, transgressed, and made of none effect the commandments of God by their traditions; paid tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and neglected the weighty matters of the law; sought not the honour of God, but that which comes from men; and therefore confessed not the true Messiah, though under convictions of him, and went about to establish their own righteousness, and submitted not to his; these were the idols of their hearts, and the whoredoms and adulteries the Jewish converts, that truly believed in Christ, are ordered to exhort them to put away. The Septuagint and Arabic versions are, "I will take away her whoredoms &c.",
(e) "a facie sua", Calvin, Pagninus, Piscator, Cocceius; "a faciebus suis", Montanus, Schmidt.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv2, 3, 5Your mother - The whole body of the people…
Your mother - The whole body of the people Israel, which were typified in Gomer. Plead - Ye that are sons and daughters of God amidst this idolatrous nation. Not my wife - For by her adulteries she hath dissolved the marriage-covenant.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Verse 2. Plead with your mother] People of Judah,…
Verse 2. Plead with your mother] People of Judah, accuse your mother, (Jerusalem,) who has abandoned my worship, and is become idolatrous; convince her of her folly and wickedness, and let her return to him from whom she has so deeply revolted.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv3–4Hos 2:3. Lest I strip her naked, &c. —…
Hos 2:3. Lest I strip her naked, &c. — The punishment frequently inflicted upon harlots was, to strip them naked and expose them to the world. The punishment of adulteresses among the Germans is thus described by Tacitus, “Accisis crinibus nudatam coram propinguis expellit domo maritus.” Or the allusion may be to the ignominy which brutal conquerors sometimes inflicted on the captives they took in war, by stripping them of their clothing and causing them to travel in that condition, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and, which was yet worse, to the intolerable heat of the sun: see note on Isa 3:17. Thus God threatens to deal with the Israelites: to deliver them into the hands of their enemies, and carry them away naked into captivity, (see Hos 2:9,) in as forlorn and desolate a condition as they were in during their bondage in Egypt. And make her as a wilderness — A state of captivity is fitly compared to being placed in a wilderness, in want of common necessaries: compare Eze 19:13. “It may seem harsh,” says Bishop Horsley, “to say of a woman that she shall be laid waste like a wilderness, and reduced to the condition of a parched land. But it is to be observed that the allegorical style makes an intercommunity of attributes between the type and the thing typified. So that when a woman is the image of a country or of a church, that may be said of a woman, which, in unfigured language, might be said of the country, or the church, which she represents. The country might literally be made a waste wilderness, by unfruitful seasons, by the devastations of war, or of noxious vermin: a church is made a wilderness and a parched land, when the living waters of the Spirit are withheld.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Plead with your mother, plead - The prophets close…
Plead with your mother, plead - The prophets close the threats of coming judgments with the dawn of after-hopes; and from hopes they go back to God’s judgments against sin, pouring in wine and oil into the wounds of sinners. The “mother” is the Church or nation; the “sons,” are its members, one by one. These, when turned to God, must plead with their mother, that she turn also. When involved in her judgments, they must plead with her, and not accuse God. God “had not forgotten to be gracious;” but she “kept not His love, and refused His friendship, and despised the purity of spiritual communion with Him, and would not travail with the fruit of His will.” : “The sons differ from the mother, as the inventor of evil from those who imitate it. For as, in good, the soul which, from the Spirit of God, conceiveth the word of truth, is the mother, and whoso profiteth by hearing the word of doctrine from her mouth, is the child, so, in evil, whatsoever soul inventeth evil is the mother, and whoso is deceived by her is the son. So in Israel, the adulterous mother was the synagogue, and the individuals deceived by her were the sons.”
“Ye who believe in Christ, and are both of Jews and Gentiles, say ye to the broken branches and to the former people which is cast off, “My people,” for it is your brother; and “Beloved,” for it is “your sister.” For when Rom 11:25-26 the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then shall all Israel be saved. In like way we are bidden not to despair of heretics, but to incite them to repentance, and with brotherly love to long for their salvation” .
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For she is not My wife - God speaketh of the spiritual union between Himself and His people whom He had chosen, under the terms of the closest human oneness, of husband and wife. She was no longer united to Him by faith and love, nor would He any longer own her. Plead therefore with her earnestly as orphans, who, for her sins, have lost the protection of their Father.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms - So great is the tender mercy of God. He says, let her but put away her defilements, and she shall again be restored, as if she had never fallen; let her but put away all objects of attachment, which withdrew her from God, and God will again be All to her.
Adulteries, whoredores - God made the soul for Himself; He betrothed her to Himself through the gift of the Holy Spirit; He united her to Himself. All love, then, out of God, is to take another, instead of God. “whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.” “Adultery” is to become another’s than His, the Only Lord and Husband of the soul. Whoredom is to have many other objects of sinful love. Love is one, for One. The soul which has forsaken the One, is drawn here and there, has manifold objects of desire, which displace one another, because none satisfies. Hence, the prophet speaks of “fornications, adulteries;” because the soul, which will not rest in God, seeks to distract herself from her unrest and unsatisfiedness, by heaping to herself manifold lawless pleasures, out of, and contrary to the will of, God.
From before her - Literally “from her face.” The face is the seat of modesty, shame, or shamelessness. Hence, in Jeremiah God says to Judah, “Thou hadst a harlot’s forehead; thou refusedst to be ashamed” Jer 3:3; and “they were not at all ashamed, neither will they blush” Jer 6:15. The eyes, also, are the “windows” Jer 9:21, through which “death,” i. e., lawless desire, “enters into” the soul, and takes it captive.
From her breasts - These are exposed, adorned, degraded in disorderly love, which they are employed to allure. Beneath too lies the heart, the seat of the affections. It may mean then, that she should no more gaze with pleasure on the objects of her sin, nor allow her heart to dwell on tilings which she loved sinfully. Whence it is said of the love of Christ, which should keep the soul free from all unruly passions which might offend him Son 1:13, “My Well-beloved shall lie all night between my breasts Son 8:6, as a seal upon the heart” beneath.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Your mother: the synagogue. (Calmet) --- He addresses Juda,…
Your mother: the synagogue. (Calmet) --- He addresses Juda, (ver. 11, 15.) or all God’s people, chap. i. 11. This vineyard yields no good fruit, Isaias v. Idolatry prevails, Ezechiel xvi. 5., and xxiii. 3.
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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures1864 · Public DomainOn v4Fuller Discourse of Jehovah Concerning His Adulterous Spouse, Israel
Fuller Discourse of Jehovah Concerning His Adulterous Spouse, Israel
Hos_2:4-23
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A. Complaint and Threatening of Punishment
Hos_2:4-15
4 Plead with your mother, plead!
For she is not my wife
And I am not her husband,
That she put away her whoredom from before her
And her adultery from between her breasts.
5 Lest I strip her naked,
And place her as (she was in) the day of her birth,
And make her like the wilderness,
And set her (so as to be) like a barren land,
And slay her with hunger.
6 And on her children I will not have mercy,
For they are children of whoredom
7 Because their mother has committed whoredom
And she that bore them has caused shame,
Because she said: I will go after my lovers,
Who furnished my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax,
My oil and my (pleasant) drinks.
8 Therefore behold I am hedging up thy way with thorns,
And will wall up a wall [raise a wall before her ]
And she will not find her paths.
9 And she will pursue her lovers and not overtake them
And will seek them and not find;
And she will say: I will go and return to my former husband,
For (it was) better with me then than now.
10 And she did not know that I gave her
The corn and the wine and the oil,
And that I increased for her silver and gold,
(Which) they used for Baal.
11 Therefore will I take back my corn in its time
And my wine in its season,
And snatch away my wool and my flax
(Which was) to cover her nakedness,
12 And then will I uncover her shame
In the eyes of her lovers,
And none will deliver her from my hands.
13 And I will bring to an end all her joy;
Her feast-making, her new-moons, her sabbaths,
And all her festivals.
14 And will lay waste her vine and her fig tree
Of which she said: they are my reward
Which my lovers gave to me:
And will make her a forest,
And the beast of the field will devour her.
15 And I will visit upon her the days of the Baals;
To which she burnt incense,
And (then) put on her ring and her jewels,
And went after her lovers,
And forgot me, saith Jehovah.
B. The Punishment leads to Conversion, and thus to the glorious Renewal of the Marriage Contract between Jehovah and Israel
Hos_2:16-23
16 Therefore, behold, I am alluring her,
And will lead her into the wilderness
And speak unto her heart [speak with comfort ].
17 And I will give her her 1vineyards from thence,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope,
And she will answer then as in the days of her youth,
As in the day of her coming up from the land of Egypt.
18 And it will be in that day, saith2 the Lord,
Thou wilt call: My husband,
And thou wilt no more call me: My Baal.
19 And I will remove the names of the Baals3 from her mouth,
And they shall no more be remembered by their name,
20 And I will make for them in that day a covenant
With the beast of the4 field,
And with the birds of heaven,
And the creeping things of the earth,
And bow and sword and war will I destroy from the land,
And make them dwell in security.
21 And I will betroth thee to me for ever,
And betroth thee to me in righteousness5 and justice,
And in mercy and in compassion;
22 And betroth thee to me in faithfulness,
And thou shalt know Jehovah.
23 And it will be in that day,
I will answer, saith the Lord,
Will answer the heavens,
And they will answer the earth,
24 And the earth will answer the corn and the wine and the oil,
And they will answer Jezreel [God’s sowing ]
25 And I will sow her for myself in the land,
And favor “Unfavored,”
And say to “Not-my-people”:
“Thou art my people,”
And they shall say: “My God.”
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
This chapter is the essential supplement to chap. 1. It contains, in a more discursive style, an exposition, justifying and elucidating that which in chap. 1 was presented only as a theme, and in some parts even enigmatically in its brief sentences. The complaint and threatening of destroying judgments were uttered without any preparation; and still more suddenly were they followed immediately by as glorious an announcement of salvation. Chap. 1 must thus excite inquiries, not so much through the symbolical representation of the first part, as by these unexpected utterances, inquiries which demand an answer. Such answer is given by the Lord Himself in Hos_2:4 ff., in a longer discourse. This is now altogether based upon the conception of Israel as an unchaste wife, which was only indicated in chap. 1 and then disappeared, and is developed in two sections, of threatening and of promise. A complaint is first raised against the unchaste wife, and then the course of punishment is figuratively described, which, however, is seen to be really a chastening with the view to conversion from idolatry. This conversion itself is promised, and the way thus prepared for the announcement of salvation. Israel, returning as penitently as a wife to her husband, finds mercy with God. So the close, Hos_2:23 f., returns expressly to chap. 1–2:3, and the discourse is thus shown to be most closely connected with that section.
The complaint and announcement of punishment occupy Hos_2:4-15. The discourse takes a turn with Hos_2:16. The declaration of deliverance is introduced by the announcement of conversion, and from Hos_2:20 onwards becomes a glorious promise.
A. Hos_2:4-15. Complaint, and Announcement of Punishment.
Hos_2:4-6. Plead with your mother—for they are children of whoredom. The person who makes the demand is naturally Jehovah. Those who are addressed are not the children of the Prophet, Hos_1:4 ff. (Kurtz), but the children of the adulterous spouse, Israel (and therefore those who are designated children of whoredom, Hos_1:2). These children are distinguished ideally from their mother, because Israel is from one point of view regarded as the spouse. Israel viewed as a unit is the mother: the children then represent the individual Israelites (the mother can not be conceived as existing without the children). The children are now to plead with their mother. But this does not mean that a part of Israel did not serve idols, so that the better disposed among the people would be addressed (Keil, et al.). This would conflict with what has been said of the relation between the mother and the children. The children are conceived of as those who have to dread misfortune on account of the prevailing “whoredom.” They, in fact, however, represent just what the mother does; they are to suffer the same punishment with her, though in Hos_2:6 the punishment is as yet only mentioned expressly as that about to fall upon the children. But the distinction made between the mother and the children is only a rhetorical mode of presentation resorted to for the purpose of casting upon the mother, through the children, the reproach that she by her conduct was bringing misfortune upon them, and thus persuading her to abandon her lewdness. Not as though the children had acted differently from the mother, but now when the punishment is to be presented, the complaint is naturally directed against the latter. For if the children have sinned, they have followed their mother in doing so. She is the really guilty one in this punishment. The children are comparatively innocent, and have been only seduced, and yet they must suffer like their mother! And then they must participate in the sufferings which the mother endures for her own sins. They are therefore the ones who should be represented as pleading with the mother. This mode of representation is not pursued beyond the beginning of the chapter. For she is not my wife, expresses well the sin of the mother. It is as though Jehovah had said: “It is her sin that she deports herself as one who could not be my wife, and whose husband I could not be, and I cannot look upon myself any more as her husband.” The next member of the verse shows the cause of this feeling, for it is the conduct of the mother that gives occasion to the children to upbraid her. The punishment would be: I know her no longer as my wife, and will be her husband no longer. But punishment is not introduced before Hos_2:5—ותָסֵר. The רִיב involves the demand to cease from the present conduct. This conduct is “whoredom,” but in the case of a wife it is also more, it is “adultery.” From her face—from between her breasts. The whoredom (idolatry) of Israel is thus not secret, but is done openly. Israel is like a public barefaced whore, who displays her profession in her face and (bared) breasts.
Hos_2:5. The demand is supported by calling attention to the punishment. Lest I strip her naked. This is perhaps connected with the foregoing so as to=as a punishment for the shameless exposure of her person which she wantonly practices, strip her bare in a way she does not like and of which she would be ashamed. Divested of the figure the expression would mean: lest I take from her everything that I have given her and reduce her to the condition in which she was before I delivered her and made her what she now is (comp. Eze_16:4 ff.) The prophet now turns to this earlier condition with the words: as in the day of her birth. Primarily this is an image of nakedness=like a new-born child, but not simply =without clothing, but=divested of everything, stripped of all she can call her own. Thus was Israel on the day of its birth. This birth took place when Israel was chosen to be the people of God. According to Hos_11:1, this was done in Egypt. Israel was there naked, for it dwelt as an oppressed nation of slaves without a country. And make her like a wilderness, that is, reduce her to a situation where the necessaries of life are wanting as they are to those in a desert, so that they die of hunger; and like a parched land, that is, a place in which there is no water, so that she may “die of thirst.” This dying of thirst is only mentioned because her situation is compared to a desert; and the general sense is=reduce her to a situation of utter destitution from a condition of great abundance. A reference to Israel’s sojourn in the desert cannot be well disproved (as by Keil) along with the mention of the day of her birth. Israel, it is true, was supplied with food and water by God. But the desert itself had neither food nor drink, as Israel felt only too keenly. And that desert is an image of the condition to which Israel is to be reduced by God.
Hos_2:6. And will not have compassion upon her children. This verse is in sense still dependent upon פֶּן of Hos_2:5. The want of compassion is a consequence of the conduct of the mother, but may be turned away by conversion. Even the children shall share the same lot, that is, all individually; none are to suppose that they shall escape punishment,—for they are children of whoredom. Because they are begotten of whoredom and also witnesses of it, the Lord who is to punish his adulterous spouse cannot endure them. Still the question of Hos_1:2 repeats itself here, whether בְּנֵי זְנ׳ are not rather: children who commit whoredom. This is most natural, for the children are in fact identical with the mother.
Hos_2:7-9. Because their mother hath practiced whoredom—it was better with me then than now. The last explanation given of בְּנֵי זְ׳ would certainly be incorrect if Hos_2:7 were an explanation of Hos_2:6 b = They are children of whoredom, for their mother, etc. But such an explanation, continued too in the parallelism (Hos_2:7 a, and b), would make the sense extremely prolix. The same remark would apply if the verse were coördinate to Hos_2:6 b, and supported it along with Hos_2:6 a. Besides, this expression concerning the mother’s sin would not be appropriate as justifying the punishment threatened against the children. The solution is to be found in the wider scope of Hos_2:7. For here the thought is so enlarged that it cannot be regarded simply as an explanation of Hos_2:6, and at the same time coördinate to the second member of that verse. Such a view supposes that if that verse is an explanation, Hos_2:7 must be so also. The thought is, however, evidently an independent one. Nor does it refer backwards, but, as its contents show, it reaches forward and is therefore rather to be connected with Hos_2:8-9. (So Meier; even the Vulgate and Luther have detached it from Hos_2:6.) [So also Henderson, and Cowles in his exposition though not in his translation.—M.]—הוֹבִישָׁה here not=to become a disgrace, but=to commit shame. Luther: conduct herself shamefully.—Who gave my bread, etc.=food, clothing, and the enjoyments of life (Keil), comp. Jer_44:17 ff. We may refer this to a condition of things which actually prevailed in Israel (comp. also Hos_2:16). If it did exist along with idolatry, it would be naturally suggested that it was due to the idols. In the figurative representation it is the reward which the adulteress received from her paramours (comp. Hos_2:14). [Keil: “This delusive idea entertained by the wife arose from the sight of the heathen nations round about, who were rich and mighty, and attributed this to their gods.”—M.]
Hos_2:8. Therefore behold, I hedge up her way with thorns. The hedging up of the way, strengthened in the parallel member by the figure of raising up a wall, means in general to place an obstacle in the way, to set up a wall of separation, and that evidently between the wife and the paramours, Israel and the idols, so that the alliance between them will be dissolved. This is shown further by the words: and she will not find the path to them, and also in Hos_2:9. This causa dirimens is here intentionally referred to only in a general way, in a sort of enigmatical allusion. The “that” is expressed only once with its immediate sequence in Hos_2:9. The “how” does not appear till Hos_2:11 ff. It is already hinted at in the conclusion of Hos_2:9. It is the feeling of distress in strong contrast to the situation just extolled so highly as the gift of the idols. This privation must itself excite doubts as to the power of the idols, and still more must their impotence in the midst of her distress. Israel would indeed become at first more ardent in its worship of idols; to “pursue” after them, etc., the more their prosperity was regarded as their gift, the more would they be missed. But “she will not reach them and will not find them.” It is represented, as though outwardly it were no longer possible to hold intercouse with the idols. This mode of representation, however, is connected only with the image of raising a hedge, etc., something which effects an external separation. But the expression is very suitable, especially as the idols denoted by the paramours, prove themselves to be a mere phantom, dead nothings, just when men turn to them for help. They are therefore really not found. Such experience of the nothingness of idols then awakens again a longing after Jehovah as the One, in whom alone help is to be found, a longing after the good bestowed by Him upon his people. The discourse here is just ready to pass over into the thought that this punishment is a chastening to lead to conversion (Hos_2:16 ff.), but upon the mention of former prosperity, it turns again to complaint, in order to complete the announcement of the punishment merited by the ungrateful forgetfulness of the giver of such prosperity. This is continued till Hos_2:15. [Hengstenberg: “There can be no doubt, that by the hedging and walling about, severe sufferings are intended, by which the people are encompassed, straitened, and hindered in every free movement. For sufferings appear constantly as the specific against Israel’s apostasy from God.… We can by no means think of an external obstacle. Outwardly there was, during the exile, and in the midst of idolatrous nations, a stronger temptation to idolatry than they had in their native land. Hence we can think of an internal obstacle only, and then again, only of an absolute incapacity of the idols to grant to the people consolation and relief in their sufferings. If this incapacity is first ascertained by experience, men lose their confidence in them, and seek help where alone it is to found.”—M.]
Hos_2:10-12. She knew not, etc. The reference is to Hos_2:7. Israel had shamefully ascribed to the idols what they owed to God. That God was the Giver they must have been inwardly conscious, in fact could have known it from the Law; but they ignored this truth, denied it, and naturally so, because they had departed from their God. The abundance of the natural productions of the country then led to an abundance of silver and gold, but—cutting reproach—that which they owed to God עָשוּ לַבַּעַל, probably; they employed it for Baal, not: they made it a Baal, as the article especially shows. “Employed,” partly in making idol images, partly in the service of idols. Baal may be taken here for idols generally, since the actual Baal-worship was done away with by Jehu, though not entirely, comp. 2Ki_13:6 (Keil).
Hos_2:11. Now the punishment is expressed which was in Hos_2:8-9, only hinted at, the withdrawal of the good things which had been so enjoyed. My corn = the corn which they received from me. In its time, that is, the season when corn and wine are expected. Hence the absence of them was the more distressing, but also more significant and striking, showing itself to be a punishment from God. Since He was not acknowledged as the Giver when He gave them, He will manifest Himself more clearly as such in taking them away. Which was to cover her nakedness. The resulting want should be complete, its consequence ignominious bareness=utter destitution. And then will I uncover her shame. = her lovers (idols) shall also look upon her nakedness to her disgrace. She would become so miserable, that even they shall despise her, though she once held herself so highly with them.
Hos_2:13-15. And I will bring to an end all her joy, etc. A still more definite indication of the punishment before threatened. All joy must cease. But joy culminates, and has its purest expression in the festivals, the yearly feasts, strictly speaking. חַג. Upon these follows the monthly feast, that of the new moon, and the weekly one, that of the Sabbath. כָל־מוֹעֲדָהּ then gathers all these up in one general expression. Even during the prevalence of idolatry the feast-days probably remained outwardly the same as before.
Hos_2:14. The devastation mentioned here is probably intended to follow up the cessation of joy; for the vine and the fig tree are the finest productions of Canaan, not necessary to the support of life, but affording the choicest delicacies (comp. Joe_1:7-12). [Henderson: “These nouns are to be taken as collectives, or rather, as Horsley suggests, as plantations of vines and fig trees. These should be left uncultivated on the removal of the inhabitants to a foreign region, comp. Isa_5:6; Isa_7:23-24.—M.]
Hos_2:15. And will visit upon her the days of Baal, that is, the feast-days just mentioned, for they were celebrated in honor of Baal, and not of Jehovah. And put on her ring, etc. This is an expression which in its strictness belongs only to the image; for Israel is compared to a coquettish prostitute, who is in the habit of thus adorning herself. Yet there may be allusion to the festal attire worn at the idol-feasts. And forgot me. A sharp and mournful contrast to the vain adornments of the prostitute. For the sake of the paramours she was never weary of decking herself out; but no more thought of Jehovah. It is plain how completely this whole threatening was fulfilled by the Assyrian invasion. Yet it is to be observed that this itself is not threatened here, and still less banishment. In general, no enemy is yet named, at least none definitely, but only the laying waste of the land. [Henderson: “Their entirely abandoning themselves to the service of idols, and their dereliction from the God of their fathers, are brought forward at the conclusion of this description of their conduct, in order to heighten the aggravation of their guilt, and render the announcement of the kindly disposition of Jehovah toward them, at the beginning of the following verse, the more surprising.”—M.]
B. Announcement of the Conversion of Israel and the beneficent Renewal of the Covenant.
Hos_2:16-19. Therefore behold I will allure her, etc. לָכֵן. We have had this word twice already in a similar construction (Hos_2:8; Hos_2:11) with the sense: because Israel has transgressed, therefore God will punish them. לכן also here naturally means: therefore. Every other explanation, such as veruntamen, or profecto, is arbitrary, and has arisen from the embarrassment occasioned by the difficulty which a “therefore” causes in this connection; for it is not clear from what a conclusion is drawn, whether from their sin or from their punishment or from their sudden desire to return (Hos_2:9). Nor is it clear what conclusion is drawn, whether punishment or a display of love. As regards the first question it is to be observed that the mention of Israel’s sin immediately precedes (Hos_2:15 at the end), while their punishment had been previously described, whose converting influence Hos_2:9 had already indicated. The expression: I will allure her, might certainly form a contrast to the words: she forgot me=while she forgets me, I am mindful of her and recall her to my thoughts. But the whole can hardly be merely an inference from what is said at the close of Hos_2:15, for the reference to the sin is there only incidental and subordinate to the description of the punishment. לכן therefore draws an inference not from Israel’s sin in itself, but from that sin as being punished, and punished not without severity, as was before plainly stated. Hence we find that לכן introduces a conclusion drawn from the contents of the whole preceding section=therefore because Israel has been punished for her sin and forgetfulness of me, and has been so reduced to a condition of distress that she longs after happiness in communion with me, I will allure her, etc. This reference to the whole of the preceding is certainly justified in our verse, since the discourse evidently takes here a new direction. if this is the sense of לכן, the conclusion which is drawn is not an announcement of punishment, against which the expression, “I will allure her” is decisive, but an exhibition of love, and yet such a display as is virtually determined by the sin that is punished, and which is connected immediately with the punishment, in order to foster those first motions of longing into a steadfast resolution to return. [Pocock, Newcome, Noyes, and Henderson translate: nevertheless, notwithstanding. They failed to discern the inner connection between the passages divided by this particle, which, in fact, never has the meaning they assign to it. Cowles reaches the right conclusion, though not upon exegetical grounds: “Some have found a difficulty here, inasmuch as the grievous sins of Israel seem to be no natural reason for giving the blessings hereafter promised. But the reasons, viewed fundamentally, lie deeper than the sins of Israel, even in God’s covenant love and faithfulness. He cannot bear that his own Israel should sink hopelessly under her sins into ruin. Therefore his pity moves Him to discipline and to mercy.” So also Pusey with most of the German Expositors—M.] And lead her into the desert: not as a punishment, for the allusion is to the leading of the children of Israel into the desert by Moses (comp. Hos_2:17). But this was really a deliverance, namely, from the afflictions of Egypt. At first it is such only negatively, implying that they will no longer continue in such distress. They are not yet in Canaan. Even the desert brought want and destitution with it: and this is brought first into view here. In so far the situation indicated by the leading into the desert coincides actually and outwardly with the punishment by affliction and calamity pictured in Hos_2:11 (the “wilderness” is the realization of that which is threatened in Hos_2:11 ff.). But this situation is presented here also under another point of view, namely (as being compared with the wanderers in the desert under Moses), that of a situation while surrounded with affliction yet leading in truth to deliverance, and the idea of punishment is thereby converted into that of chastisement. For the destitution felt in the desert meant here had its definite disciplinary aim,—to shut up the people to the discovery of their need of help, and to lead them to faith in God through the help and gracious guidance which they then experienced. Thus they in the desert, even though encompassed with need, were still upon the way to Canaan, the land of blessings, and salvation. This is made plain from what follows: And speak to her heart = comfort her (comp. e. g.Gen_34:3; Gen_50:21; Isa_40:2). These words imply an inward consolation by manifestations of love which immediately follow—the blessings that were withdrawn are again supplied.
Hos_2:17. And I will give her her vineyards from thence = from the desert, so that they, as soon as they shall have passed the limits of Canaan, shall receive them, that is, the vineyards which Israel once possessed but had lost (Hos_2:14), therefore: her vineyards. What happened once is a type of that which shall happen again. And the Valley of Achor for a door of hope. The Valley of Achor here comes into view: (1) on account of its appellative signification: valley of trouble, affliction (Isa_7:25). This shall be made a gate of hope (a valley=a natural gate): therefore a transformation of mourning into joy; (2) but also on account of its position near the border of Canaan. For Israel is conceived of as marching out of the desert into Canaan. It remains a question whether the occasion of the name is also to be taken into account. In this valley the anger of God was appeased by the stoning of Achan, and was removed from Israel to give place to renewed favor. Through that which then happened to Achan, this valley became a door of hope to Israel, which lay exposed to the anger of God. And this again sets forth the thought that punishment, affliction, shall become to them the way to renewed favor. The conception is more profound than if it merely set forth a change from one situation to another. But the image and the thing represented are not exact counterparts. Here Israel is the party who is punished and is again to find favor. But there Israel finds favor through the punishment of a single individual. [Hengstenberg: “The people when they entered into Canaan were immediately deprived of the favor of God by the transgression of an individual—Achan,—which was only a single fruit from the tree of the sin which was common to all. But God himself in his mercy made known the means by which his lost favor might be regained; and thus the place which seemed to be the door of destruction became the door of hope.… This particular dealing of God, however, is based upon his nature, and must therefore repeat itself when Israel again comes into similar circumstances.”—M.]
And she shall shout aloud thither. The Lord comes to meet Israel (comp. Hos_2:16 : shall comfort her); and Israel cries out towards the plaee whence he comes forth, looking back to the מִשָׁם. The meaning is, that with thankful acknowledgments she accepts these tokens of his love; not only receives them but answers to them by suitable conduct. Others suppose that עָנָה means here: to be afflicted, or to be humbled. But such a sense is unsuitable in this verse. Besides, שָׁמָּה would be equal to simple שָׁם. [The view given above as to the meaning of this clause, and adopted by most of the German expositors, is defended at length by Hengstenberg, and is probably the correct one. All the English expositors, on the other hand, follow the old explanation which translates the verb: to sing, and see a special allusion to the song of Miriam and the Israelites after the crossing of the Red Sea. The chief arguments in favor of the former view are, (1.) The greater fitness of the idea of “answering,” as exhibiting a change of character in the Israelites and their readiness to turn to God. Singing would merely indicate that their distress was removed, which was not the ultimate object of God’s dealing with them. (2.) The meaning, “answering,” is the leading usage of the Kal; that of singing is proper to the Piel. (3.) שָׁמָּה ought to be rendered “thither,” which suits the idea of answering, especially as explained above, but not that of singing.—M.] As on the day, etc. Perhaps there is an allusion here to the song of Moses (Exodus 15), in which Israel gave a grateful answer to the deliverance which God had wrought for them. ענה would then be rendered directly: sing. So the Vulgate and Luther (comp. 1Sa_18:7; 1Sa_21:11; 1Sa_29:5, to strike up a responsive song). Yet the general signification is probably to be preferred.
Hos_2:18 is then attached to this ענה. My husband. That is, she will recognize in Jehovah her true spouse, regard Baal no longer as combined with God, thus (by a convenient escamotage so natural to the human heart which becomes inwardly apostate from God) to all appearance calling upon Jehovah, but really putting Baal in his place and thus dispossessing Him.
Hos_2:19. And I will remove the name of Baal from her mouth = I will so act that thou shalt not take the name of the idols into thy mouth any longer, that is, shalt not honor them (for as long as they are honored they are taken into the mouth, are thought of), but wilt depart from them entirely, have nothing more to do with them. The promise is a literal fulfillment of Exo_23:13; (comp. also Zec_13:2), and expressed in the same words.
Hos_2:20-22. And I will mate a covenant for them in that day, etc. A covenant for them, in their interest, so that they shall suffer no injury. Observe here how the figure of the woman as addressed is here departed from, only to be returned to in the next verse. The covenant with the wild beasts lays upon them the obligation not to injure mankind, and especially not to lay waste the land. That punishment was threatened for the immediate future (comp Hos_2:14). Just for that reason it is now promised to the converted and favored people that they shall be defended from it. [Keil: “The three classes of animals that are dangerous to men are mentioned here, as in Gen_9:2. Beasts of the field as distinguished from the domestic animals (behemoth are beasts that live in freedom in the fields, either wild beasts, or game that devours or injures the fruits of the field). By the fowls of heaven, we are to understand chiefly the birds of prey. Remes does not mean reptiles, but active creatures, the smaller animals of the earth which move about swiftly.”—M.] And I will break bow and sword and war. To break the weapons of war means to cause war to cease forever. This is expressly intimated in what is attached here by a zeugma. To break war in pieces,—to break bow and sword, and so to put an end to war. The whole is the fulfillment of Lev_26:3 ff.; comp. Isa_2:4; Isa_11:6 ff; Isa_35:9; Zec_9:10; Eze_34:25 ff. And not merely will a condition of security and peace be afforded, but also that after which Israel longs (Hos_2:18) will be given, namely, intercourse with God. Upon this alone is Israel’s renewed prosperity based.
And I will betroth thee to me forever. A new marriage-contract is to be signed. Israel now converted, becomes altogether different, is regarded again as an unstained virgin, and is betrothed by God to Himself. What formerly existed, that she was once a faithless spouse, is left quite out of sight. For אֵרֵשׂ means: to woo a maiden, to betroth her. The words, “I will betroth her,” are thrice repeated, to take all doubt away from the statement. This covenant is now to last forever without any interruption—in righteousness and justice, in mercy and compassion. We are evidently to understand here the righteousness which is displayed in Jehovah’s appearing to favor his people and defending their cause against their enemies, from whose power he delivers them. Such righteousness and judgment are, with relation to the enemies, only negative, that is, they are displayed in punishing them; but, with relation to God’s people, positive, so that righteousness really bears the sense of salvation, deliverance. In so far Luther is right, when he holds that such righteousness is the imputed righteousness of Christ. For there is certainly presented the notion of God’s intervention to bestow favor upon man, and therefore of an act of justification, only not at first as connected with the accusings of conscience by reason of guilt, but in relation to God’s punitive judgments against sin. These, so to speak, lose the right to destroy God’s people any longer, because they are accepted by Him as converted. Keil explains the words as meaning, the righteous judgment by which God purifies his people, in order to eradicate everything which, on the side of the Church, could do prejudice to the covenant. But the discourse has already passed beyond this. The judgment has been already inflicted, and we are now upon the ground of the complete promises of salvation, when God no more appears against his people, but interferes in their behalf in accordance with the purification which has been effected. The disposition of mind in God represented by this righteousness and judgment is still further brought out by the two words: in mercy and compassion. Every idea of an intervention of God in his people’s behalf upon the ground of their merit is thus excluded. What God exercises towards them is purely favor and compassion.
Hos_2:22. But these shall never cease. Hence the addition: in faithfulness. Only thus does this engagement receive the pledge of its eternal duration, while by the preceding generally the possibility of its ratification is set forth. Righteousness and judgment, favor and compassion, are the conditio sine qua non and causa efficiens; faithfulness is the essential modus of the engagement. The end then is: And thou shalt know Jehovah. No interruption of such relation shall ever intervene between Jehovah and Israel; upon the establishment of such intercourse, a true knowledge of God will be imparted. This naturally does not mean a mere cognition of God, least of all a mere logical conception of Him,—in general, not a mere intellectual relation to Him based upon the operations of the understanding, but a personal living relation, that deeper notion which is certainly sometimes conveyed by יָדַע.
Hos_2:23-23. And it will be on that day that I will answer, etc. The consequence of the covenant newly ratified is the readiness of God to bless his people most richly. The betrothal having been accomplished, the marriage presents are not wanting, and heaven and earth, standing in the service of the bridegroom and husband, must contribute their share. The heavens, etc., in a descending series, are represented as earnestly asking the personified objects above them respectively whether the blessing which they expect is to be dispensed. The heavens ask Jehovah, the earth the heavens, etc., or they look towards them with longing. And now this questioning, this earnest request (in the time of Israel’s rejection) is “answered” cordially and assuringly. In how far, however, this original sense of ענה is carried out, or whether it does not pass over into the signification of our “agree with”=comply, listen to, cannot be definitely shown. It is, however, in accordance with the largely poetical conception to assume here a strict prosopopœia. The first object of the representation is Jehovah; therefore the sense of the whole naturally is, that Jehovah, upon whom all blessing depends, will confer upon his Church the blessings He had withdrawn from it (comp. Deu_28:12 and the contrast, Deu_28:23 f.; Lev_26:19). [Keil: “By prosopopæia the prophet represents the heavens as praying to God, to allow it to give to the earth that which will insure its fertility, whereupon the heavens fulfill the desires of the earth, and the earth yields its produce to the nation.” Umbreit: “It is as though we heard the exalted harmonies of the united powers of creation sending forth their notes as they are sustained and moved by the eternal key-note of the creative and moulding Spirit.” Henderson compares the personification in Tibullus, I., Eleg. vii. 25. The extreme beauty of the figure here has often been praised.—M.] Will answer Jezreel. The name Jezreel is here used unexpectedly instead of Israel. The same name which symbolized the judgment upon Israel (Hos_1:4) is here employed directly to designate the favored people according to its appellative significance: God will sow, especially as in Hos_2:2 the hope of victory was connected with Jezreel. Israel appears as the sowing of God, because planted anew by divine grace, as Hosea 2:25 shows immediately. Thus the first name of evil omen is taken away and converted into its opposite. The same is true of the other two names. Israel will again be called “Favored,” and the “People of God,” because it is his. It is therefore said, beautifully completing the picture, that the people again know God as their God. Thus God’s renewed favor, and the people’s new heart, go hand in hand. On the fulfillment of the promise, see the Doctrinal Section, No. 4.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The whole tenor of our chapter presupposes that Jehovah’s relation to Israel as his people is compared to a marriage. If we seek the tertium comparationis in this comparison, it is manifest upon a general view, that everything of an accidental or external nature is denied of this relation, that it is presented as a union inward, sacred, and indissoluble, involving indefeasible rights and obligations. But, more especially, there are two elements entering into the nature of marriage, which form the points of comparison, namely, love, by which the husband is bound to the wife, and its correlative the requirement of fidelity, or of exclusive reciprocal affection, which He makes of her. Hence the relation of Jehovah to his people is compared to a marriage because his love to Israel is as strong and intimate as that of a husband to his wife. As the husband chooses the wife from love, and perhaps, urged by love, takes a poor maiden and raises her to himself, and in his married life attests his affection by being her protector and benefactor who cannot show her too many evidences of his devotion, so is it with Jehovah towards his people (comp. Hosea 2:10, 23, 24). Such love on the part of the husband must have as its correlative on the part of the wife, fidelity, undivided, exclusive affection. As certainly as the husband should expect this fidelity from his wife, so certainly shall Jehovah expect it from Israel; as strongly as the wife is bound to love him to the exclusion of all others, and as she does basely violate this duty by attaching herself to another, the same is true of the relation of Israel, God’s people, to Jehovah. But if unfaithfulness on the part of the wife is a violation of duty, it is also worthy of punishment. And if the punishment (rejection) of an unfaithful, adulterous wife is justifiable, so also is the punishment (rejection) of God’s faithless people. But this is only a chastisement wrung from love, and the source of deep anguish to the loving husband. Therefore the husband who loves his wife truly, with a love answering to the idea of marriage, while angry at her infidelity and employing the most severe means to punish it, only does so in order if possible to bring her back to her duty and as the only way to continue the alliance. Thus is it with Jehovah towards Israel. As his love has established the covenant with Israel, and displayed itself in it, so does it seek with its whole strength to preserve it unbroken through all interruptions,—in other words, to restore it.
2. The exhibition of God’s relation to his people under the figure of a marriage permits us, on the other hand, to draw an inference as to the nature of the marriage itself. Such an exalted and sacred relation could only be thus represented under an exalted view of marriage. The lively, strong, unchangeable love of God to his people, and the demand of an unchangeable fidelity answering to such love, and turning aside to no other object, is the subject of the representation. This marriage is necessarily conceived of as a relation constituted by such love on the part of the husband and such fidelity on the part of the wife. Without these it is not contracted; where these are wanting or cease to exist, it is shaken to its foundation. The husband cleaves in love to his wife and to none other: true marriage is in its very nature monogamic; the wife must in fidelity belong to this husband and to none other.
How severe is thus the condemnation of all actual adultery, and of all unchastity as the source of adultery, as read in the strong complaints against Israel as the unfaithful wife! What a spirit of moral purity and of chastity is expressed here! We find here already just the view of marriage, and, on the other side, of adultery and whoredom, which meets us in the New Testament, e. g., in the writings of Paul. The prophet know no better image than that of marriage to set forth the depth and sacredness of Jehovah’s relation to Israel, and the Apostle knows no better image than the relation of Christ to his Church to set forth the depth and sacredness of the marriage union.
3. “She knew not that I gave her,” etc. This is perpetually repeated. God blesses men with good things—undeservedly, even when they do not serve Him but “idols.” But they do not know that it is his hand from which they receive everything. It is just the superabundance of his gifts, that makes them so self-exalted and completely forgetful of Him. God must then change this abundance into want, and make presumptuous men feel their own impotence. And how deeply God can humble men! Such visitations are then the means by which God draws them again to Himself, teaches them to know Him, how unjust and at the same time how foolish is their apostasy from Him, how little their “idols” can help them, rather how ill they reward them; and how good it is, on the other hand, to abide by the service of the true God (“it was better with me then than now”). The fruit of such knowledge by humiliation is then the abandonment of idols and a turning to God.
4. That Hosea reverts with special fondness to the ancient history of Israel was already remarked in § 2 of the Introduction, and there shown to be connected with the fundamental idea of his prophetic discourses. In the later chapters (from the ninth onwards) this is specially apparent: but it is also found in our chapter, and thus in the earlier portion of his writings. In this he chiefly takes up the great deeds by which God manifested Himself to the fathers,—the exodus from Egypt, the journey through the Desert, the entrance into the Promised Land. These were the great fundamental acts of God in behalf of Israel, and were most deeply impressed upon the consciousness of the people; for they owed to these their very existence as his people, so that they could never forget them, not even in the season of their greatest decline. Prophetic discourse has in them therefore a sure, unassailable foundation upon which to take its stand. It can point out to the present, in a manner not to be resisted, the dealings of God in his specific relation to Israel his people, can draw from thence its most forcible arguments for its warning and chastening, as well as for its comfort and promises. It has been an advantage which it well understands and knows well how to use.
Special stress is in our chapter laid upon the journey through the desert as upon a season of great significance for Israel. Israel was in the wilderness: the milk and honey of the Promised Land were not yet; the flesh-pots of Egypt were no more. In the latter respect this season was one of deprivation and of want, and apparently of loss. But this was only apparent; for in reality it was not only a deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, which had both outwardly and inwardly injured the people, but God could draw so much nearer to the people spiritually as they were now reduced to corporeal distress, and attest and reveal Himself to them by his helpful and blessed mercy. It was just here that God concluded his covenant with Israel and made them his people, so that their real gain outweighed their apparent loss; and the people to whom God betrothed Himself was or became the people which found itself upon the way to the Promised Land. So the Prophet sees in the profound and fruitful significance of this journey, or rather of this leading through the Desert, a type of the blessing which a removal into the desert as a chastening would convey to the people who had become unfaithful to their God. They are deprived of their possessions, but so only stripped of the prosperity which had made them forgetful of God, and which was therefore an evil. And now when they have these no longer, and are thus freed from the fetters which have bound them spiritually, when, by foreign influences, so to speak, they are brought face to face with God, He has again free access to them; the time has come when God can again betroth Himself to the people who again return to Him, lead them again into the Promised Land, and restore them to a state of renewed prosperity and of richest blessing.
Those then who were led forth into the Desert did not realize the object of that experience. Nor was it individuals whom it was to profit, but the people as such. For them the journey through the wilderness was a season of trial in which they were being prepared to become God’s people, who should take possession of the Promised Land. And so in the sense of the prophetic promise the individuals who should suffer the judgment of devastation were not the same as those for whom the day of the new salvation was to break forth. That was to be a new generation. But the people were still the same, in the sense to be stated more clearly immediately.
5. With regard to the promise of our chapter and its fulfillment, the remark made in chap. 1 applies, namely, (a.) The fulfillment is not to be seen in the return of the Jews from the exile. This was, to be sure, a fulfillment, but only a small and feeble beginning. For the promise is to be regarded as essentially Messianic. And therefore we Christians, if to us the truth is fully and differently realized that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, must hold that this promise has found its fulfillment in Christ, and still finds it in Him; that is, in Christ the new “betrothal” of God to his people has already taken place; but the great salvation which is involved in this is as yet only partially realized, the completion is yet to come. The people of God are still marching through the desert; in Christ we are upon the sure way to the Promised Land, but that goal is not yet reached. (b.) Israel, to whom salvation is here promised by the Prophet, comes into view, not according to its natural nationality, but according to its divine destiny, or according to its typical significance as the People of God. They cannot perish beneath any judgment: for them a new day of salvation is waiting. But as this salvation is conditioned upon the coming of the Messiah, and we know clearly that the Messianic salvation is and shall be universal, so we are forbidden to restrict this great promised day of salvation to the external Israel, although the Prophet undeniably speaks of it,—Israel and God’s people being as yet to him essentially one,—and must extend it to the people of God generally, therefore to all believers, believers of Israel together with those of the Gentiles incorporated into the ancient Churchy, which must ever remain the parent stem. To Israel, who had become “Not-my-people,” many of the heathen who had been “Not-my-people” will unite themselves, and to them, to this whole complex “Not-my-people,” will God say: “Thou art my people:” and they will say: “My God.” So clearly and truly has Paul shown that the Gentiles must first become what Israel was, and that they shall and will really become so, that they shall actually overshadow Israel and so repair what they had lost. If these promises have not found and still do not find their fulfillment in the literal interpretation of what is said of Israel, it is clear that it is not a literal fulfillment of their contents, which speak of temporal blessings in the Holy Land, that is to be expected. Such limited blessings are inseparably connected with the limited range of application; but if the latter, the restriction to Israel, is only the shell and not the kernel, so is it with the former.
When the people of God were embodied in a nation, under the Old Testament, the possession of a definite country as the inheritance assigned them by God was something essential, and therefore, as the desolation of the country was a token of the Divine anger, so its fruitfulness, or in general a state of temporal prosperity, was necessarily an indication of the Divine favor. And so the temporal blessings predicted by the Prophet are the tokens of acceptance, of the returning favor of God. The latter, however, the return of favor, is the main element, the kernel which remains after the husk is stripped off. Yet the favor of God manifests itself still under the New Covenant in temporal blessings, while his wrath is declared in temporal punishments. But it does not need to be shown that the complete abandonment of the notion of a national and local settlement in a definite country, as belonging to the conception of a people of God, went further than this; that the New Covenant opens up a prospect of spiritual and inward blessings and enjoyments of which the former were only a thin shadow; and, in spite of this, to insist upon the literal sense is to beat in the face of the New Covenant, and to deny to the prophetic promises generally their lasting significance. For the legitimate consequence of such a theory is to declare that these are not and never shall be fulfilled; it is not simply to dream of a fulfillment expected still in the millennium, and to transfer to this epoch, which is not described any more definitely in the Apocalypse, conditions for which it is felt that room can be found nowhere else.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
God’s testimony against this apostate people: (1) threatening them with severe judgment; (2) and yet alluring them back with glorious promises.—The judgments of God, (1) invoked only by faithless apostasy from Him and base disowning of his favor; (2) aiming only at the complete conversion of the apostate and the joyful acceptance of the converted.
Hos_2:4. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Believers are bound to warn in love their brothers, sisters, or parents, who are remiss in the practice of true religion, and to bring them to the right way.
Hos_2:7. God is the real Giver of all temporal and spiritual blessings. If, therefore, thou hast any want, seek its supply from God.
Lange: It is much more easy and pleasant for a true child of God to serve Him in the enjoyment of his favor and with inward peace, than it is for an untaught child of the world to cleave to it with its restless service of sin.
[Matthew Henry: Crosses and obstacles in an even course are great blessings, and are so to be accounted; they are God’s hedges to keep us from transgressing, to restrain us from wandering out of the green pastures, to “withdraw man from his purpose” (Job_33:17), to make the way of sin difficult that we may not go on in it, and to keep us from it whether we will or not. We have reason to bless God for restraining grace and for restraining judgment. God is a bountiful benefactor even to those whom He foresees will be ungrateful and unthankful to Him.—M.]
Hos_2:10. God ever remains the Possessor of the gifts He bestows. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: It is a shameful and inexcusable sin to misuse the gifts of God, in order to serve our evil desires or to promote evil ends. It is a great sin to devote the riches, which God bestows, to the service of idolatry or superstition.
[Pusey: Since “men have as many strange gods as they have sins,” what do they who seek pleasure or gain greatness or praise in forbidden ways or from forbidden sources, than make their pleasure or gain or ambition their god, and offer their time and understanding and ingenuity and intellect, yea their whole lives and their whole selves, their souls and bodies, all the gifts of God, in sacrifice to the idols they have made?—M.]
Hos_2:11. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: God takes his gifts from us when we misuse them. He demands a heavy reckoning.
[Matthew Henry: Those that abuse the mercies God gives them to his dishonor cannot expect to enjoy them long.—M.]
Hos_2:12. Hengstenberg: Him who forsakes God for the world, God puts to shame before the world, and that all the more, the nearer he formerly stood to Him.
[Matthew Henry: Those who will not deliver themselves into the hand of God’s mercy cannot be delivered out of the hand of his justice.—M.]
Hos_2:14. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Thus on account of false worship of God and impious doctrine, are whole countries destroyed by the Lord. O, that true zeal would animate the great ones of this world to destroy the kingdom of Satan everywhere powerfully, so that the hand of the Lord may not smite them.
[Hengstenberg: The sacred writers are not ashamed to use a base word for such base traffic. They speak throughout of common things in a common manner; for the vulgar word is the most suitable for a vulgar thing. The morality of a people or of an age may be measured by their speaking of a vulgar thing in a vulgar manner, or the reverse.—M.]
Hos_2:15. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: This is the way of the gracious and merciful God: if He does first lead us into the desert and make us feel the rod of his wrath, He speaks kindly to us afterwards when we repent, and applies his mercy to our stricken hearts, which are thus made more capable of using it aright.
[Matthew Henry: 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.
Pusey: God has mercy, not because we deserve it, but because we need it. He draws us because we are so deeply sunken. He prepares the soul by these harder means, and thus the depths of her misery cry to the depths of his compassion: and because chastisement alone would stupefy her, not melt her, He changes his wrath into mercy, and speaks to the heart which, for her salvation, He has broken.—M.]
Hos_2:17. Strife and tribulation are to believers by God’s grace a door of hope (Rom_5:4). It is a peculiar and special work for God’s children to praise Him with mouth, heart, and life, for so many blessings received.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Behold, O soul, the consequence of thy true repentance. Thou hast new hope, new joy, new faith in Jesus the Bridegroom of our souls, the abandonment of all false and hypocritical worship, new blessings from God, security, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost!
[Pusey: To each returning soul, the valley of trouble, or the lowliness of repentance, becometh a door of patient longing, not in itself but because God giveth it so; a longing which reacheth on, awaiteth on, entering within the vail, and bound fast to the throne of God.—M.]
Hos_2:19. Keil: The abandonment of idolatry and mixed religion is a work of divine grace which renews the heart and fills it with abhorrence of idolatry in its gross or refined forms.
Hos_2:20. Only then can men live with full enjoyment and security in the world, when they feel assured that they have a merciful God.
[Matthew Henry: Tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia.—M.]
Hos_2:21. Rieger: When the kind alluring of God finds entrance into us, when it educes an answer of humble penitence, how the faithful God becomes inclined to make all his covenant good to us, and to let no good thing fail of all that He has spoken.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: How highly are the souls of believers esteemed by God that He should betroth Himself to them, and that to eternity, and present Himself and his love to them literally as their own! For in this He presents to them his dear righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, which is of infinite worth; He acquits them in judgment; He displays toward them mercy and compassion by the forgiveness of sins. He even betroths Himself to them in faithfulness, and thus implants the true knowledge of Him in their souls. Prove, O soul, whether thou art as intimate with Him: Dost thou enjoy with Him a blessed and true communion of love? Why is it then that thou dost still love so much the world and sin, and that thy mind is ever occupied with other objects than Jesus?
[Saint Bernard: How can it be that so mighty a king should become a Bridegroom, that the Church should be exalted into a bride? That alone which is all-powerful hath power for this, Love that is strong as death. How should that not raise her up, which has already made Him to stoop? If He hath not acted as a spouse, if He hath not loved as a spouse, been jealous as a spouse, then hesitate thou to think thyself espoused.—M.]
Hosea 2:23, 24. If God be for us, who can be against us. Faith will assuredly gain a hearing. Behold, all creatures are ready to serve believers. Everything must drop blessings upon them.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: God pours down upon believers from the lofty heaven of his mercy a shower of spiritual gifts, yes, even the oil of the Holy Spirit Himself. It is our part to open the mouths of our heart, and most eagerly receive those blessing which God’s mercy vouchsafes to us.
[Matthew Henry: 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 run up all the streams to the fountain, and taste covenant love in common mercies, which makes them doubly sweet.—M.]
Hosea 2:25. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: There is thus always time left for repentance, and the Lord still preserves a seed for Himself, which He makes fruitful and increases. If He then is so rich in mercy, O let us become ready to receive it by a true repentance and conversion, and not suppose that this great work can be accomplished in a life-less spirit or with a hypocritical behavior.
Cramer: True faith knows God not only as God, but as its God.
Rieger: All in this life that is truly good is included in this: My God! if said not from habit, but with a full title to its use. This is a word of faith, by which we place our whole reliance upon the almighty, true, and compassionate God; it is a word of hope by which we provide ourselves with all good perpetually in God, who is a Rock of Eternity, a word of love and fellowship by which we delight ourselves in the goodness of God, and give ourselves wholly up to Him.
[Pusey: To say my God, is to own an exclusive relation to God alone. It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and my Salvation, in whom alone I will hope, whom alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, and obey, and serve, with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, my God and my All!—M.]
Footnotes:
[1]Hos_2:4.—נַאֲפוּפִים, ἅπ. λεγ.= נִאֻפִיכ. Fürst regards it as signifying objects of idolatrous worship, there fore: little images, which are represented as being carried upon the breast. [But this is opposed to the parallel expression, זְנוּכִים, which, as Hengstenberg says, is evidently to be taken as the species (adultery) of which the other (whoredoms, acts of unchastity) is the genus. As illustrating the fitness of this picture, Manger compares Eze_23:3, and Horace, Od., i., 19, 7, 8.—M.]
[2][Hos_2:8—גְּדֵיָה. J. H. Michaelis and Jahn point in their editions נְּדֵרָהּ, her wall, and this reading, Hengstenberg assumes, without any discussion, to be correct. But there is an obvious unsuitableness in this. The wall could not be represented as being “her” wall unless it were conceived of as existing before the action on the part of Jehovah, which action was to make the wall.—M.]
[3][Hos_2:11.—לְכַסּוֹת, (which were) to cover. Such an ellipsis is quite common. The rendering of the LXX. γοῦ μὴ καλύπτειν, conveys the sense, but is not a translation. It was quite unnecessary for Newcome, Horsley, Boothroyd, and others following Houbigant, who was misled by the LXX., to change the לְ into מְ.—M.]
[4]Hos_2:14.—אֶתְנָה. This is usually derived from תנה, as also is the usual synonym, אֶתְנָן. Hengstenberg labors to prove the derivation of both words from נתן and its 1st fut.: a “I-will-give-thee,” similar to our “forget-me-not.” The absence of daghesh-forte in both nouns would seem to prove the untenableness of this hypothesis.—M.]
[5]Hos_2:17.—עָנְתָה. Some take this from ענה, to be bowed down, here: to be humble. But this does not suit the sense of the verse. Besides, שָׁמָּהּ would then = שָׁם.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv2–5mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to…
Plead--expostulate.
mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to "her children," that is, to the individual citizens of the state (compare Isa 50:1).
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for she is not my wife--She has deprived herself of her high privilege by spiritual adultery.
out of her sight--rather, "from her face." Her very countenance unblushingly betrayed her lust, as did also her exposed "breasts."
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. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn v2APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLIC ACTS AND NAMES IN Hosea…
APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLIC ACTS AND NAMES IN Hosea 1, 3 — Hos_2:2-23
Chapters 1-3 are not arranged in what appears to be the logical order: chapter 3 attaches itself to Hos_1:9; Hos_3:1, continues the story of Hosea’s domestic life. He is told to go and “love a woman beloved of her friend, and an adulteress.” Marti thinks, but without good reason, that this act is entirely independent of chapter 1. The symbolism would be destroyed if the woman of Hos_3:1, were any other than Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim (Hos_1:3). Lo-ammi (Hos_1:9) suggests the step in the domestic drama which is left unrecorded. The woman had fled from her home to give herself more freely to her shameful practices; Hos_3:2 seems to imply that she had become the slave concubine of another. Hosea, impelled by love and adivine impulse, buys her back, though for a while he does not restore her to the full privileges of wifehood (Hos_3:3).
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This entire history is presupposed in Hos_2:2-23; Hos_3:4-5, which sections contain the application of the prophet’s own experience to the history of Israel. The historical persons in Hos_1:2-9, and Hos_3:1-3. the prophet, his wife, his children, here become allegorical figures. Israel is the adulterous wife, Jehovah the deceived but still loving husband; the individual Israelites are the children. Some of the latter have remained free from the sins of their mother. To these Jehovah addresses himself, that they should attempt the restoration of the faithless wife and mother, Israel, to the wronged but yearning husband, Jehovah. The utterance opens with a description of Israel’s whoredom (Hos_2:5), which is followed by an announcement of the evil consequences of the faithlessness (Hos_2:6-13); it closes with a delineation of the efforts to be put forth by Jehovah to win back the faithless wife, and of the glories awaiting her when she comes to her senses (Hos_2:14-23).
The faithlessness of Israel, Hos_2:2-5.
2. Plead [“Contend”] — The urgency of the appeal is indicated by its repetition. The individual Israelites who are still sensitive to the divine influence are addressed; they are urged to “exert a corrective, reforming influence on the corrupt aggregate” in order to avoid more serious consequences. The nation is called their mother — Out of love to her they should work for her best interests.
She is not my wife, neither am I her husband — The marriage tie is already dissolved through her whoredom; and unless she repents there is no reason why she should not be utterly cast off.
Out of her sight — Literally from her face; as the next clause shows, to be understood literally. The expression of the countenance reveals the character (Jer_3:3).
Adulteries from between her breasts — Interpreted by some as referring to the wearing of amulets between the breasts in honor of the deities with whom the Israelites committed adultery; but of such a custom we have no knowledge. It is better understood as another bold expression of her adulterous character, the shameless uncovering of the breast. Another possible interpretation is to regard the abstract adultery used for the concrete adulterer, a usage not uncommon in Hebrew. The adulterer who lies between the breasts (Son_1:13) is to be driven away. 3. If this is not done she must suffer the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Lest I strip her naked — Seems to have been one way of punishing an adulteress (Eze_16:38-39).
As in the day that she was born — At the time of the Exodus; then Israel had nothing. All she acquired subsequently she owed to Jehovah; but if she continues in her disloyalty to him he will withdraw his support, and she will relapse into a state of complete destitution.
Wilderness — In punishment for Israel’s adulteries the land will be robbed of its glory and fertility; the fruitful fields will be turned into a dreary desert. The same thought is expressed in the next clause: as a result of drought the land will become utterly desolate. People and land are not kept apart; both will suffer.
The last clause of Hos_2:3 should be combined with the first clause of Hos_2:4.
And slay her with thirst — The final punishment of an adulteress was death (Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22; Eze_16:40). In this case Israel, or rather the land, will perish of thirst, that is, drought.
Her children — The inhabitants of the land must share in the punishment of the mother, because they are children of whoredoms. As said above, the children are the individual Israelites; in their individual capacity they manifest the same tendencies as the nation as a whole. The phrase, therefore, means not simply children born of a mother with unchaste tendencies, but children possessing such tendencies, and indulging in unchaste practices.
The guilt of Israel is described further in Hos_2:5; the verse thus supplies the ground for the earnest appeal in Hos_2:2.
Played the harlot — Openly she violated her obligations to Jehovah; such conduct is rightly called shameful. It was also premeditated; deaf to all exhortations, she declared firmly,
I will go after my lovers — Or, paramours. By these are meant not the surrounding nations, but the Baalim (Hos_2:13), the gods of the native Canaanites. Among the latter no supreme deity seems to have been worshiped; separate districts each had its own deity. The worship of these probably arose in connection with agriculture. “The local Baals fertilized each his own district by his streams and springs, and hence they were the owners — this is the meaning of the term Baal — of these naturally fertile spots.” In time they were regarded also as the spenders of rain; and the Baals were worshiped as the givers of fertility and prosperity. When the Israelites came into the land they, though nominally continuing to worship Jehovah, were to some extent influenced by the natives, so that they came to see in these Baalim the givers of “every good and perfect gift,” and to pay them the homage belonging exclusively to Jehovah. Herein consisted their whoredom which the prophet condemns. The Baal against whom Elijah fought was an entirely different deity. Several products are enumerated as being ascribed to the power of the Baalim. These, the most important, are only samples; everything else was thought to come from them.
Bread — Food.
Water — Because of its scarcity prized very highly by an agricultural people.
Wool and flax — From which clothing was made.
Oil — See on Joe_1:10.
Drink — Literally, drinks. Wine and other drinks made of fruit, such as dates, figs, raisins. Food, clothing, and articles of luxury were all traced to the Baalim. For this disloyalty to Jehovah, Israel must be punished. Jehovah must vindicate himself.
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 Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv2–52. Plead with your mother, plead] The repetition of…
2. Plead with your mother, plead] The repetition of the appeal shews its urgency. ‘Do not murmur against me’, Jehovah seems to say, ‘plead your cause against your own mother: Israel is the author of her own calamities.’
for she is not my wife …] A parenthetical explanation of the expression ‘your mother’. Adultery has destroyed the relation of the wife to the husband, but not of the mother to the children. Comp. Isa_50:1.
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her whoredoms out of her sight] Rather, from her face, the index of obstinacy (comp. Jer_3:3), as the breasts of shamelessness.
2–7. The prophecy begins with a solemn admonition on the faithless conduct of Israel towards her Divine Bridegroom. The dramatis personæ are the same as in chap. 1; only, whereas in chap. 1 the husband, wife, and children, are both historical persons and significant symbols, in chap. 2 they are obviously pure allegories. Israel becomes the adulterous wife, and Jehovah the aggrieved husband. The individual Israelites are the children. The appeal of Jehovah to the latter implies that they have not altogether given way to their inherited propensities; they can still be expected, at least in some cases, to cooperate for the extinction of a corrupt worship. Comp. 1Ki_19:18 ‘seven thousand in Israel … which have not bowed unto the Baal’.
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 Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv2–5(2) Plead with your mother . . .—Contend, or…
(2) Plead with your mother . . .—Contend, or plead in judgment. Let the awakened conscience of the present generation rise up in judgment with the nation as a whole. By “mother” we are to understand the nation Israel, viewed as a collective abstract; and by the “children” (Hos_2:4) the inhabitants who are units in the total aggregate. Ammi and Ruhamah without the negative prefix, show that this awakening of conscience has given them back their privileges.
Render, That she may put away her whoredoms from her face: i.e., her meretricious guiles, her unblushing idolatry, her voluptuous service of gods that are no God. This strong image was constantly on the lips of the prophets, and had been burned by cruel sorrow into the very heart of Hosea. It acquired portentous meaning in the hideous impurities of the worship of Baal-peor and Ashtoreth, against which the Jehovah worship was a tremendous protest.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv2–5Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not…
Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not thy wife, neither am I her husband. In this second chapter the same cycle of events recurs as in the first, with this difference, that what is expressed by symbol in the one is simply narrated in the other. The cycle is the common one of sin: its usual consequences of suffering and sorrow; then succor and sympathy in case of repentance. The persons addressed in the verse before us are those individuals in Israel who had still retained their integrity, and who, notwithstanding surrounding defection and abounding ungodliness, had continued steadfast in their loyalty and love to the Lord. They might be few in number, widely scattered, perhaps unknown to each other, and of comparatively little note; yet they are here called on to raise their voice in solemn warning and earnest protest against the national defection and wickedness. The congregation in its totality, or whole people taken conjointly, is compared to the mother, but individual members to the children, and the sense is that they are to plead with each other to bring them back to the way of goodness" (Kimchi). The nation as such, and in its impiety, is the mother; the pious persons still found in it are here required to testify for God both by exhortation and example. "The congregation of Israel is compared to an adulteress, and the children of the different generations to the children of whoredoms. Before them the prophet says, "Plead with your mother (Kimchi). Adultery per se is a virtual dissolution of the marriage-tie; idolatry is spiritual adultery; the close and tender relationship into which God has graciously condescended to take Israel is rendered null and void, and that through Israel"s own fault. God threatens the renunciation of it, unless perchance the pleading of the still faithful children might recall the erring mother to penitence and purity. A case the converse of this is that presented in Isa_1:1, where the mother"s divorce is attributed to the unfaithfulness of the children. Where," asks the Lord in that passage, is the bill of your mother"s divorcement, whom I have put away?... for your transgressions is your mother put away." Ki before the second clause is either recitative, introducing the words of pleading, or assigns a reason; the latter seems preferable. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts. The word mippaneyha is rather to be rendered "from her face" than "out of her sight." The expression is to be taken literally, as the word "breasts" in the parallel clause proves. Thus Kimchi rightly explains it, saying, "Since he compares her to harlot, he attributes to her the ways of harlots; for the harlot"s way is to adorn her face with various kinds of colors, that she may appear fair in the eyes of her paramours." But in addition to ornaments as earrings or nose-rings, and other ways of decking herself, as by painting, the expression may imply lascivious looks and wanton expressions of countenance; while the mention of breasts may indicate the making of them bare for the purpose of meretricious blandishments, or as indicating the place of the adulterer. (comp. Eze_23:3 and Son_1:13) The Jewish commentators adopt the latter sense. Aben Ezra comments on the grammatical form of the words teuncha and naaphupheha (the former by duplication of the second radical, and the latter by that of the third) as intensive; while Rashi and Kimchi refer to the pressure of the breasts. But others understand them figuratively, the countenance indicating boldness, and the breasts shamelessness. Thus Horace speaks of the brilliant beauty (nixor) and coquettishness (protervitas) of Glyeera.
Vers. 2-5. The prophet exhibits the gross sin of idolatry.
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The prophet in this section exposes the shame as well as sin of idolatry. It is a mistaken notion to suppose, with some, that the tribe of Judah is here urged to plead with the tribes of Israel; for Israel cannot, with any propriety of speech or figure, be spoken of as the mother in this case, however possibly they may be addressed as brethren and sisters. The Church or nation is the mother, and the individual members, as nursed and brought up by her, are the children. The doctrines symbolized in the preceding chapter are here more fully developed and plainly set forth.
I PLEADING COMMANDED. The explanation which Calvin gives of the first clause of this second verse is ingenious, yet we must regard it as rather specious than sound. Instead of "plead," he employs the word "contend;" and interprets the contention to imply that Israel, instead of censuring the seeming severity of God"s dealings with them, should rather condemn their mother"s sin as the guilty cause of that severity, and thus cast the blame of their sufferings, not on God, as though he had falsified his covenant, but upon their mother, the Israelitish Church or kingdoms that had fallen away and fallen far from fulfilling the conditions of the covenant. After referring to the mark of disgrace fixed on the children born by a marriage with a wife who has been repudiated by her husband, he says, "When a husband repudiates his wife through waywardness, the children justly regard him with hatred. Why? "Because he loved not our mother as he ought to have done; he has not honored the bond of marriage." It is, therefore, usually the case that the children"s affections are alienated from their father, when he treats their mother with too little humanity or entire contempt. So the Israelites, when they saw themselves rejected, wished to throw the blame on God. For by the name mother are the people here called; it is transferred to the whole body of the people, or the race of Abraham. God had espoused that people to himself, and wished them to be like a with to him. Since, then, God was a Husband to the people, the Israelites were as sons born by that marriage. But when they were repudiated, the Israelites said that God dealt cruelly with them, for he had cast them away for no fault. The prophet now undertakes the defense of God"s cause, and speaks also in his person. Contend, contend,"he says, with your mother your dispute is not with me." He brings this charge against the Israelites, that they had been repudiated for the flagitious conduct of their mother, and had ceased to be counted the children of God... the blame of their rejection belonged to the whole race of Abraham (i.e. the mother); but no blame could be imputed to God." We rather understand the pleading mentioned as that which the pious remnant of the nation, who had still kept themselves separate from idolatry and the general degeneracy, are exhorted to address to their mother, that is to say, to the bulk of the people with the heads of the congregation and rulers of the nation. It is the duty of believers to plead for God and his truth, even though the great body of Church or nation should be opposed to them. This is specially the case in times of spiritual leanness, and in days of deep declension or entire apostasy. Thus our Lord and his apostles plod with the people of the Jews in their days, charging their rulers, the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees, with the gravest dereliction of duty. Yet there must be tenderness in this pleading. It is remarkable that, as Jerome remarks, he commands "the sons (children) to speak not at all to the wife of their father whom she forsook, but to their mother who bare them." Neither is there, on the other hand, any impropriety in thus pleading with an erring parent, for we find that Jonathan thus pleaded with his father, Saul, on behalf of David. Humble and modest, yet firm and faithful pleading, is not only lawful, but dutiful even on the part of private persons against national corruptions or public profanations, as of God"s Name, or Word, or day, or worship.
II PENITENCE ENJOINED. Though Israel had forfeited her right to the name or privilege of wife since she had so grievously fallen away from faithfulness and affection, and though God disowned the relationship as she had virtually dissolved her marriage union by her unfaithfulness, yet she had not actually and formally received the bill of divorce parting her away; in other words, her outward and public rejection. There was thus still left space for repentance, and room for hope in case of repentance. So great is the mercy of God, that if she lent an ear to the pleadings of her children orphaned through her misconduct, and put away her whoredoms or defilements with many lovers, and her adulteries or departures from her rightful Husband and Lord, she might hope for restoration. Thus God deals with sinners in general, if they will only hearken to the admonitions and invitations of his Word, and put away from them the objects, one or many, of their sinful attachment, which withdraw their affection from him who is their true and proper Object. There is a practical comment by Matthew Henry on the close of this verse which appears to us well worth quoting. He says, "Every sinful course persisted in is an adulterous departure from God; and here we may see what it is truly to repent of it and turn from it.
(1) True penitents will forsake both open sins and secret sins; will put away, not only the whoredoms that lie in sight, but those that lie in secret between their breasts the sin that is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel.
(2) They will both avoid the outward occasions of sin and mortify the inward disposition to it.
III PUNISHMENT THREATENED. The punishment threatened in case of impenitence consists of several particulars.
1. There is destitution of the extremest kind. Israel would be stripped of all the favors, temporal and spiritual, which God had bestowed, and be so situated that she could not help herself. The idea is more fully developed by Ezekiel, who in Hosea 16 presents us with a most pitiable picture that of an infant exposed, neglected, nude, and helpless: "As for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.
2. Next to destitution is desolation. In this particular the representation is that of a wilderness and a dry land, or rather of a traveler in such a district. The nature of the wilderness or of the way through it is easily inferred from other Scriptures; thus we read of Israel"s departure from Horeb: "We went through all that great and terrible wilderness;" again it is written, "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness." A traveler, in journeying through that waste and howling and terrible wilderness, would meet with many a rough road, many a rugged way, many a rocky ascent, many an uncultivated waste, many a harsh sound, many a scaresome sight, many a tangled spot, many a thorny place, many a toil, and many a trial. Travelers passing through such a scene of desolation are said to wander "in the wilderness in a solitary way.
3. The dangers of the wilderness are manifold. There is the place of lions" dens. and of the mountains el the leopards. There, too, the Israelites of old encountered the fiery serpents that infested it. For a time they had been restrained, but afterwards they were uncontrolled, and even commissioned to chastise the erring Israelites.
4. Death itself is included in the threatened punishment:" And slay her with thirst." There is no water to cleanse, no thirst-satisfying fountain, no life-giving spring. Of wayfarers in such a region it is written," They were hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted in them.
IV POSTERITY INVOLVED IN THE THREATENED PUNISHMENT. The repetition of" lest" at the beginning of ver. 4 is needed to make the meaning plain and carry on the connection. Particular members of a Church or nation too oten share the sins of the general body or rulers of the people; so too children, frequently following in the footsteps of godless parents, suffer by the sad heritage of those parents" guilt; for God "visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate him." It has been well said that "God visits the sins of the parents upon the children until the entailed curse be cut off by repentance.
V PERSISTENCE IN SIN. The harlotry and shameful conduct of the libidinous woman, who represents Israel in this passage, evidence the greatest perversity. In spite of warnings ant threatenings, in spite of entreaties and exhortations, and in spite of inducements and invitations, Israel persists in her iniquitous idolatry and perseveres in her shameless conduct. Like an abandoned woman, who has renounced all the instinctive modesty of womanhood, and who, instead of waiting for the addresses of paramours, actually takes the initiative, and pursues them with her unwomanly appeals, Israel goes after her lovers, that is, her idols, or, as some think, her idolatrous allies We may not, however, overlook the fact that, besides the gross idolatry of Israel, there is a spiritual idolatry, to which all are exposed, and to which many are addicted. Anything that draws away our thoughts and affections from God, or that occupies that place in our heart that belongs to him, is an idol not so rude as the image of wood, or stone, or metal, but not less perilous, not less pernicious, not less insidious. Let us beware of following such lovers; let us beware of spiritual harlotry, and of shamefully pursuing wealth, or fame, or power, or pleasure, anti of turning aside from God!
VI PROSPERITY REGARDED AS THE BESTOWMENT OF IDOLS. Israel in time of plenty forgot the important lesson that her prosperity came from God. Her clottish stupidity was only equaled by her ingratitude, when she attributed all she had to those miserable idols on which her heart was fixed, and of which she showed herself so dotingly fond. Put by Jehovah into the possession of such a lifesome land, of food in abundance, of raiment garments tinier and outer and of the luxuries as well as the comforts of life, she forgot basely forgot that she continued a pensioner on his providence and blessed by his bounties. Bad enough and base enough as such ingratitude was, it was still worse to transfer her love and her gratitude to idols dumb such as blinded nations fear. How unspeakably mean it was on Israel to form such a low estimate of religion as to value it according to the worldly advantages to be derived from it, or in proportion to the selfish interests served by it! How much worse stilt to depend on idols for such advantages, and in hope of furthering those interests!
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN Vers. 2-7. Jehovah"s condemnation of faithless Israel.
In Hosea 1. the prophet has Fainted a "vigorous fresco" (Ewald) illustrative of his domestic sorrows. And now he presents an explanation of the sad picture in its prophetic meaning. The supreme thought of the Book of Hosea is that of Jehovah"s conjugal love for Israel, which she by her unfaithfulness had so foully dishonored. Here, in Hosea 2., accordingly, we have an allegory suggested by the prophet"s symbolic marriage with Gomer; which depicts the deep sorrow of Jehovah on account of Israel"s fall, and his long-suffering tenderness towards her. The first strophe (vers. 2-7) is occupied chiefly with words of solemn condemnation.
I THE DIVINE, REPROACH. Jehovah charges Israel with:
1. Spiritual adultery. (Vers. 2, 4, 5) He was himself the rightful Husband of the nation, but she had slighted and rejected his love. With infatuated determination she kept saying, "I will go after my lovers." There was the calf-worship; and the calves were simply idols. (Hos_13:2) There was the Baal-worship, with its shameful impurities. There was the infidelity which had shown itself in separation from the dynasty of David. These were spurious, carnal loves; and the people who cherished them were guilty of spiritual harlotry.
2. Ascribing her material prosperity to their idols. (Ver. 5) Jeroboam I had done so: "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up cut of the land of Egypt". (1Ki_12:28) Jeroboam II was still doing so; during these gala-days of his reign Israel trusted in her own might, and boasted of her military glory. The calf-worship meant virtually the deification of nature. The Baal-worship was the idolatry of mere power, apart altogether from righteousness. Among Hosea"s fellow-countrymen, as by so many in our own days, the worship of the living God was neglected amidst the deification of the popular will, reverence for physical law, and the idolatry of worldly success. These were the powers Israel judged in her blindness that made her land prosperous.
3. The guilt of an outrage upon the Divine honor. (Ver. 2) In degrading herself, Israel had foully dishonored her rightful Husband. For two centuries now her infidelity had been one long agony to Jehovah"s heart. And how often, since the days of Hosea, has God been similarly grieved!
He was so with Judah before her captivity, (Jer_3:8-11) and with the Jewish Church in the time of our Lord. Of how many Christian communities also has the Lord been constrained to say, "She is not my wife e.g., the Churches at Ephesus and Thyatira; (Rev_2:4, Rev_2:20) the Church of the dark ages before the Reformation; every Church that remains in Erastian bondage; every one that is grossly impure in doctrine or communion.
II THE DIVINE THREATENING. The word "lest" was fitted to remind Israel that, guilty and fallen though she was, it was still possible for her, by timely repentance, to avert the impending judgments. Should she, however, stop her ears to the Lord"s reproaches:
1. He will take away her temporal prosperity. (Ver. 3) At the time of her birth as a nation, Israel was in a low condition indeed. In Egypt she had to struggle for life, like a castaway child. The very continuance of her existence seemed a miracle. (Eze_16:3-6) But God now threatens to chastise her for her faithlessness by making her again a castaway. He will strip her of her material resources, bring to the ground her national pride, and cause her to become like a parched and desolate desert. The Almighty will touch with his finger her choicest possessions, and consign to destruction everything which has become tainted with the Baal-spirit.
2. He will involve in this distress the individual children of the nation. (Ver. 4) The ten tribes had been unanimous in their apostasy. Each citizen had brought his own contribution to the universal guilt. There was meantime no godly remnant who could be thought of with comfort as still the Lord"s people. So all must suffer in one common punishment. And what a dreadful doom to become "Lo-ruhamah to be shut out even from the very "mercy" of God!
III THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE. The condemnation is not, after all, with a view to "a bill of divorcement;" rather it is the first step of a course of gracious discipline. The discipline consists of:
1. Restraining words. (Ver. 2) Jehovah"s heart is so full of relenting towards Ephraim that he summons individual citizens, who may have become themselves penitent, to reason with the nation at large about its sin. The children are to share in the mother"s punishment; and it is right that they should expostulate with her regarding her manifold idolatry.
2. Restraining providences. (Vers. 6, 7) God will effect a forcible separation between Israel and her idols. The seventy years" captivity of Judah would be as it were a "hedge" of thorns." The perpetual exile of Ephraim would be a solid wall interposed between the northern tribes and their "Baalim." Such methods of restraint God had often employed heretofore. The Book of Judges tells us of no fewer than six thorn-fences which God planted in succession, to break off the seductive alliances formed from time to time with the idolatrous Canaanites. The long drought during Ahab"s reign was a wail thrown up between him and his Baal-worship. But none of these obstructions had been permanently effectual. Only the Assyrian and Babylonish captivities were so. By their long exile the Jews were at length forever weaned from all gross idolatry. They could not forget that their false gods had given them no aid against the thundering advance of the Assyrian, or during the last agonies of Samaria and Jerusalem.
3. Restraining grace. (Ver. 7) It is here predicted that the distresses of the protracted exile shall induce repentance, and awaken a longing desire to return to Jehovah. By the moral discipline of sorrow he will operate upon the hearts of his erring people, and sweetly draw them back to himself. As the "mighty famine" became the means of convincing the prodigal that he had wandered from his true well-being in leaving his father"s house; (Luk_15:14-19) so Israel, in her days of sad adversity, shall resolve to return to the home of her Divine Husband, to whom she has for so long been unfaithful. This glorious consummation is still future. We think of it as belonging to "the last things." But it shall most surely be accomplished. There will be a national conversion of the Jews to the Christian faith. Israel shall "go and return to her first Husband;" "for the Lord delighteth in her, and her land shall be married". (Isa_62:4)
LESSONS.
1. The exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is whoredom and adultery. How it debases and brutifies man"s noble nature! It also blinds the mind to the true source of blessing (ver. 5). And what an agony it must be to the pure and loving heart of God!
2. The unprofitableness of a sinful life. Even from the sinner"s point of view, such a life never pays. What expenditure of time and toil, of health and substance, a career of vice entails I How precarious, too, are all merely temporal blessings, and how utterly unsatisfying to those who choose them as their soul"s portion!
3. The goodness of God in the restraints which he imposes upon the sinner. He has many "hedges" and "wails public opinion, conscience, temporal loss, personal sickness, family bereavement, etc. These become inestimable blessings to a man when they hinder him in a course of sin, and constrain him, not only to confess his folly (ver. 7), but to turn from it to the Lord. C.J.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 2-5. Spiritual adultery.
The individuals of the nation are exhorted to plead with their mother Israel, that she may turn from her adulterous courses, and so avert the doom which is otherwise certain to overtake her. Consider
I ISRAEL"S SHAMELESS PROFLIGACY. (Vers. 2, 5) The sin charged against Israel is that of adultery, in her relations with Jehovah. Owing to the peculiarity of these relations, the sin was of a specially aggravated kind.
1. The people had withdrawn from Jehovah that undivided allegiance which, as the one living and true God, he demanded of them.
2. They had set up idol images (the calves), and had changed God in their thoughts to a mere nature-deity, like the heathen Baals.
3. They had gone after the heathen Baals as well. In form, the worship of Jehovah was kept up; in reality, idolatry had the sole dominion. This was their adultery. It was public and unblushing. Even in the eyes of the heathen, Israel was guilty of great wantonness, for the heathen were not wont thus lightly to change their gods. (Jer_2:11) The crime for which Israel is indicted, however, is not peculiar to that nation. In a deeper regard, it is the fundamental sin of the race. The soul made by God for himself has left him, and gone after other lovers. It has turned to the creature. It lusts for illicit satisfactions. Its dispositions are "evil and adulterous". (Mat_12:39) Especially is this sin committed by those who, entering into a new covenant with God by grace, afterwards go back to the world.
II HER CERTAIN PUNISHMENT. (Vers. 3, 4) Israel"s adultery dissolved de facto the marriage relation between the nation and Jehovah. Ver. 2 is the Divine deed of separation. Separation is followed by punishment. Under the Law, adultery was punished by death. This doom also, as respects corporate existence, was about to overtake Israel. But the figure in the text alludes rather to the withdrawal of God"s good gifts the gifts bestowed on Israel in her relation of spouse with its result in the reduction of the nation to a condition of utter wretchedness and want. The "slaying with thirst" (ver. 3) is not absolute, since recovery is predicted (ver. 7), but denotes a state of extreme anguish, in which multitudes would actually perish. (Deu_28:33, Deu_28:34, Deu_28:48, Deu_28:65-68) There is here:
1. A reminder of the source of natural blessings. God could take away, because it was he who at first gave. It was he who gave Israel all she had. Hence the destitution to which the withdrawal of his gifts reduced her. "If God withdraws his gifts, the consequences are infinitely awful, because, altogether unlike the natural husband, he has everything in his possession; if he does not give anything to drink, he then slays by thirst" (Hengstenberg).
2. A correspondence between sin and punishment. What Israel possessed, she received in virtue of the marriage covenant. At first she had nothing. God had given her all. Answerably to this, she is punished by being reduced to her original destitute condition. Marriage unfaithfulness leads to the withdrawal of the marriage gifts. "The eternal and universal truth which, in the verse before us, is expressed with a special reference to Israel, is, that all the gifts of God are bestowed on individuals as well as upon whole nations, only in order to lead them to the communion of life with him, or because this communion already exists. If we fail to see that the gifts of God have this object, if they be not received and enjoyed as the gifts of God, if the spiritual marriage be refused, or if, having been already entered into, it be broken, sooner or later the gifts will be withdrawn" (Hengstenberg).
3. A picture of the state of the soul from which God has withdrawn himself. The outward is the image of the inward. The soul which has forsaken God which God has forsaken is solitary and desolate, burnt with hunger, parched with intolerable thirst, a desert. God"s design in withdrawing the outward gifts is that the soul may be led to feel the deeper misery and disgrace within.
III THE ONE WAY OF ESCAPE. (Ver. 2) Repentance-turning from the evil courses. God is unwilling to proceed to extremities, though, if the sin be persisted in, he must. He gives here a final warning, a last opportunity. There is thus a limit to the Divine forbearance. The last appeal will come some day. Often, by the time it comes, we are so sunk in sin as to be past attending to it, While, however, mercy lasts, the moat abandoned may return.
IV THE DUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. "Plead with your mother, plead" (ver. 2). Individuals are implicated in the guilt of the community. They have a stake in the general well-being (ver. 4). They have, accordingly, a responsibility in connection with national backslidings. It is their duty
(1) to separate themselves from the prevailing wickedness;
(2) to testify against it;
(3) to use every means to try to bring about repentance and reformation. 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 Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv3–5Lest I strip her naked.
Hos_2:3
Lest I strip her naked.
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Eastern divorce custom
It was the custom among the Jews when any married that what dowry they brought their husbands was written down in a table; and if afterwards the husband should divorce his wife, except there could be proved some gross and vile thing against the woman, she was to go away with her table, with her dowry; she must not go away empty, or naked. But if there could be proved some notorious villainy which she had committed, then she was sent away naked, without her tables, her dowry. Thus God threatens this people. She is not My wife. She shall be sent away without any tables, naked and wholly destitute. Observe--
1. The beginnings of great excellences are sometimes very low and mean. Set her as in the day that she was born.
2. Gods mercy is a peoples beauty and glory. When we have any excellency, any beauty upon us, it is Gods mercy that is all our beauty.
3. Though sinners deserve great evils, to be stripped of all comforts, yet God, in patience and clemency continues them a long time.
4. The mercies that God bestows upon a nation, are but common favours, not spiritual graces, they are such ornaments as a people may be stripped of. The great mercies a people have, they may wholly lose.
5. Continuance in sin, and especially the sin of spiritual whoredom, is that which will strip a nation from all their excellences, from all their ornaments and beauty.
6. It is time for a people to plead, when there is danger of desolation.
7. Those who will not be convinced by the Word, God has other means to convince them besides the Word. If pleading and convincing arguments will not do it, well then, stripping naked shall do it.
8. Whatever are the means of stripping a nation, it is really God that does it.
9. It is a grievous judgment for one that is advanced from a low to a high degree to be brought down again.
10. When God has delivered a people out of misery, and bestowed upon them great mercies, it is their duty often to think of the poor condition in which they were, and to use all the means they can that they may not be brought thither again. God loves this, that we should remember and seriously take to heart what once we were. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Spiritual chastity
It is not enough that God should choose any people for Himself, except the people themselves persevere in the obedience of faith; for this is the spiritual chastity which the Lord requires from all His people. But when is a wife, whom God hath bound to Himself by a sacred marriage, said to become wanton? When she falls away from pure and sound faith. Then it follows that the marriage between God and men so long endures as they who have been adopted continue in pure faith. Apostasy in a manner frees God from us, so that He may justly repudiate us. (John Calvin.)
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 Commentary1892 · Public DomainOn v5Hos_2:6. Hedge and make] Build a wall, a double…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hos_2:6. Hedge and make] Build a wall, a double enclosure of stones and thorns. In the East cattle are fenced with thorns and closes. God with determined purpose will interpose between Israel and her idols. Behold, I will hedge] Exile and distress, and the inability of her gods to help, would prove the folly of her conduct (Job_19:18; Lam_3:7-9).
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Hos_2:7. Follow after and seek] In eager pursuit and diligent search. “They express together a pursuit, whose minuteness is not hindered by its vehemence, nor its extent and wideness by its exactness. She shall seek far and wide, minutely and carefully, everywhere and in all things, and shall fail in all” [Pusey]. Not find] deliverance from calamity.
HOMILETICS
THE UNSUCCESSFUL PURSUIT.—Hos_2:6-7
Though Israel is dishonoured and fallen, she is not left to herself. God’s mercy yearns over and seeks to check her in sin and recall her to himself. God even now has not written a bill of divorcement, nor cast away the people whom he did foreknow. Through eighteen hundred years they have been wandering without a dwelling-place and a temple; but the day will come, when she will “no more be termed Forsaken,” nor “the land be termed Desolate; but she will be called Hephzi-bah and the land Beulah.” Men are prone to wander. They are disappointed in their wanderings, and God rouses, instructs, and restores his backsliding people.
I. A pursuit after wrong objects. Man is a creature of strong affections. His feelings cling round the objects of his choice like ivy round a tree. Through sin these affections are misplaced. He loves the things which he should hate, and hates the things which he should love; forsakes the true God, and pursues lovers of his own. He must love, he will worship, something; “that I may win” is the desire of every soul. Wealth, honour, position, and learning are eagerly sought, loved for their own sake and for the sake of what they are thought to give. Thus men are seeking happiness where it cannot be found; committing two evils, forsaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns which will hold no water. “Who will show us any good?” is the cry of the many. “Lord, lift thou upon us the light of thy countenance,” is the prayer of the few.
II. A pursuit with intense anxiety. Man’s spiritual desires are insatiable, yet ever seek gratification. They forbid him to rest, and compel him to seek supply. Inward sense of want, incapacity for alliance with sin, and instinctive longing for God, the “first good, first perfect, and first fair”—of whom all created beauty and good are mere shadows—make men restless and discontented. But instead of lifting the soul to God, they look to the creature for satisfaction; “seek” and “follow after” in eager pursuit of what they love; labour harder in sin, and seeking pleasure, than in serving God. They weary themselves in pursuit, rendered more eager by thorn-hedges and hindrances. Vexation and disappointment excite to desperate tenacity; affliction and remorse are often no check to the sinner; fuel is added to the fire, and with renewed ardour onward he goes to ruin and despair. “I will go after my lovers.” The impenitent struggle on after that which God is taking from them, and will not give up, until the pursuit is found hopeless and exhaustive, and God in preserving mercy brings him back. “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
III. A pursuit under Divine restraint. God governs the world, and seeks the good of his creatures. The way of transgressors is rendered hard “through much tribulation.” It is a warfare against conscience, reason, and revelation. In consciousness of guilt we may discern our relationship to God. The trouble and anguish of spirit springing from this consciousness, “the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the slave of sin are proofs that he has not quite broken away from God.” God works within by his Spirit and without by his providences. Hedges and walls are fixed up to restrain men in sin.
1. The restraints of God’s providence are various in their nature. God sought to cut off Israel from idolatry by solitude and affliction. Like a thorn-hedge, affliction is painful. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” Conscience, the Divine officer, warns and checks the sinner. Disappointments in pursuits, pains attending pleasures, Divine judgments, and special manifestations, turn men from their purpose. Saul was overcome by light from heaven; Balaam was met by an angel, and David by Abigail (1Sa_25:32).
2. The restraints of God’s providence are merciful in their design, “that she shall not find her paths.” (a) Given to withdraw men from sinful pursuits. “She shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them.” (b) Given to restore men to God. “Then shall she say, I will go and return.” Strong barriers and painful providences are not sufficient. If God did not mercifully interfere we should all go astray. Let us repent of sin, be thankful for correction, and admire the wondrous grace of God. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.”
IV. A pursuit ending in failure. “She shall not overtake” what she follows; “she shall not find” what she seeks. Failure and disappointment after all her eagerness and effort! Egypt and Assyria were trusted in vain. Worldly alliances were of no service; did not give the anticipated deliverance. Idols were impotent; foreign nations were a broken reed, a source of sorrow and bitterness of spirit. Israel was obliged to confess, “it was better with me than now.” The sinner gains nothing, but loses everything, by forsaking God. He pursues phantoms of bliss. The pursuit will disgust, and end in failure. “Why did the cannon-balls spare me to die in this manner? I am no longer the Great Napoleon. How fallen and disappointed I am!” cried Napoleon in his latter end. Nothing can take the place of God—nothing can satisfy but bread. A sinful life can never give peace of conscience and peace with God. The beast may be satisfied with what it finds on earth, for its nature aspires no higher; but man is linked to God, longs for him, and cannot be contented without him. Though the heart once alienated from him turns further away, and moves not towards him until renewed, yet even in its wandering it retains its nature and necessities. God is its centre, and it is restless and void till it meets with him again. Men go here and there, do this and that, in quest of good, as moments dictate and circumstances call forth, but all in vain. They faint in mind and fail in hope. God never created man to find rest and happiness in utter rejection of himself. “Thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in thee” [Augustine]. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”
THE BACKSLIDER’S WAY HEDGED UP.—Hos_2:5-7
Consider the text, and seek to arouse and restore backsliders, who have left their first love, and may have forsaken the Church of God, given up their profession and all attendance upon Divine worship.
I. While sinful men are in prosperity they pervert the mercies of God to their own injury, making them instruments of sin and weapons of warfare against God. While Israel enjoyed abundance of temporal comforts they ascribed all these blessings to false gods. Prosperous sinners make three great mistakes. At the outset they give their temporal mercies the first place in their hearts. Business prospers, but they consider not their soul. They say, “We must live,” but they forget that they must die. Such folly most shameful, base ingratitude, in one who has known, or professed to have known, better. One error leads to another, and hence such people hold their temporal things upon a wrong tenure. Observe how many times the word “my” is found in the text. “Give me my bread,” &c. They were not hers, but God’s, who expressly claims them, and threatens to take them all away (Hos_2:9). The backslider once professed himself to be God’s servant; nothing is his now—houses, lands, profits, and children, only lent for a season. He is but God’s under-bailiff, possesses only as tenant-at-will, or as a borrower, holding a loan. Then, further, backsliders are apt to ascribe their prosperity and their mercies to their sins. I have even heard one say, “Ever since I gave up a profession of religion I have made more headway in business than I did before.” Some apostates have boasted, “Since I broke through puritanical restraint, and went out into worldly company, I have been better in spirits, and better in purse than ever I was before.” Thus they ascribe the mercies which God has given them to their sins, and wickedly bow down to their lusts, as Israel did before the golden calf, and cry, “These be thy gods, O Israel!” These things are given to try you, to see how far you will go, and to what extravagances of ingratitude you will descend.
II. Turn from the gloomy side, and observe that the Lord interposes adversity in order to bring back his wandering children. Consider the hindrances which a God of love puts in the way. You see an unexpected hindrance, for it is placed right in the man’s way. “I will hedge up thy way”—it was his way, his habit; he had fallen into it, and he meant to keep on; but suddenly he met with an unlooked-for obstacle. This hedge is placed in your way in different shapes. Business grows slack; bad debts multiply; bankruptcy stares you in the face; and where you had enough to lavish on pleasure you have not enough to supply your need. You thought you would live a millionnaire; more likely now to die a pauper. Or sudden sickness falls upon a strong healthy person. Possibly the hedge is of other thorns. The first-born son, the expected heir, the joy of the father’s heart, falls like a withered flower; his wife is cut off as a lily snapped from its stalk. These are walls across the way of those whom God ordains to bless. Observe, it has a very disappointing impediment. The prosperous sinner is stopped when securely pursuing his way. “Why,” says the man, “if it had not been for that I should have made a fortune.” “Why did death come just when my fair girl looked so lovely, and when my dear boy had grown so engaging? Ah! this is trouble indeed. To meet with misfortune just when I built that new house, and held my head so high, and expected to see my daughters so respectably married; this is very disappointing.” The man kicks, and though once professed to be a child of God, he is ready to curse God and die. If he knew the Divine nature, he would thank God for his troubles on bended knees. What painful hindrances our heavenly Father often uses. He hedges the sinner’s path, not with rhododendrons and azaleas, not with roses and laurels, but with thorns—prickly thorns, which curse the soil and tear the flesh, are God’s instruments of restraint. Furthermore, the fence is effectual; if the thorn hedge will not suffice, it is written, “I will make a wall.” Some are so desperate in sin that they break through ordinary restraints; then a wall shall be tried, through which there is no breaking, over which there is no climbing.
III. You would think that the sinner would now stop, but instead of that, according to the text, even though God walls up the way of sin, men will try to follow it, but this resolve shall be in vain. He is desperately set on destruction, as though it were to be desired. What a creature is man, though he knows that sin will be his ruin, yet he hugs it as though it were his chief mercy; heaps to himself destruction as though it were gold. If the righteous were half as intent in seeking after goodness as the wicked are in hunting sin, how much more active would they be. Truly this love is so strange, that if we did not see it in ourselves we should wonder at it. It is in you, Christians, as in the worst of men, and but for Divine mercy you would have plunged on from bad to worse.
IV. Consider that the backslider’s failure is followed by a blessed result. Observe, here is repentance attended with sorrow. The poor creature deeply feels to the very soul the wretchedness of her condition. It is an active repentance. It is not merely “I will return,” but, “I will go and return.” There is much earnestness in a sinner seeking Christ; but more, if possible, in a backslider returning from the error of his ways; for he has not only the guilt of sin to mourn over, but the double guilt of having despised the Saviour, of having known the way of righteousness and turned from it. The confession which this poor soul makes of folly is one which is sustained by the best of reasons. “Then was it better with me than now.” Backslider, what have you gained? Have you gained anything more comfortable than the light of your Father’s face? Before, you had the privilege of going to the throne of grace, you could tell your wants before God, and spread your sorrows there; but now you have no throne of grace to go to. Then you had God’s promises to fall back upon. Once you had communion with Christ. What can the world afford you comparable to this? There is no room to entertain a comparison for a moment. Lastly, this repentance was acceptable. It is not often that a husband is willing to take back his wife when she has so grossly sinned, as the metaphor here implies; yet God is willing to receive the sinner, though his sin is even more aggravated. “Return unto me, for I am married unto thee.”
V. Observe that there is an awful contrast to all this. Some prosper until, like a wide-spread tree, they are cut down and cast into the fire. There are backsliders who, never having had the root of the matter in them, go back unto their own ways and continue there for ever. Never trifle with backsliding. Chosen vessels, notwithstanding their backslidings, are brought back; but, ah! remember that nine out of ten of those who backslide never were God’s people. You must be born again, and only the man who continues to the end shall be saved.
VI. We conclude with this—is not this subject a very solemn warning to the people of God? If one man falls, another may. If one professor turns out to be a hypocrite, another may. There must be the continual keeping and anointing of the Holy Spirit. No man backslides at once. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Wake up your coldness in private prayer. If love to Christ has grown cold, pray to the Master to inflame your heart again. Let us trust the Saviour. There is the sinner’s hope; there is the saint’s strength [Spurgeon].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hos_2:6. Subject:—Divine Restraints. I. These restraints are manifold. “I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall.” The first metaphor is from a husbandman who plants a prickly hedge to prevent cattle from breaking away. The other from architecture. If thorns are insufficient, high and massive walls must be built.
1. There is the restraint of affliction. When the wicked purpose some great crime, affliction comes, breaks their plans, and strikes them down.
2. There is the restraint of public sentiment. Public opinion, as it gets enlightened and strong, is a tremendous check to the wicked. The most daring cower before the public voice.
3. There is the restraint of conscience. Conscience is a Divine officer holding the sinner.
II. These restraints are necessary. It is necessary that God should plant thorny hedges and build massive walls around the sinner.
1. It is necessary for the sinner himself. Were it not for these he would go galloping to perdition. “O, unhappy men,” says Luther, “when God leaves them to themselves, and does not resist them in their lusts. You bless yourselves many times that in the way of sin you find no difficulty. Bless thyself! Thou hast cause to howl and wring thy hands, thou hast the curse of God on thee. A dreadful curse to make pleasant the way of sin.”
2. It is necessary for the world. What would become of the world if the wicked were not reined in? Were it not for restraints the Cæsars, the Alexanders, and the Napoleons would soon turn it into a Pandemonium.
3. It is necessary for the Church. Had wicked men their full fling, how long would the Church last? The flames of martyrdom would soon blaze to heaven and consume Zion to ashes. Thank God for thorny hedges and massive walls, for all the restraints he puts on sinful men [The Homilist].
The Danger of outward Prosperity—sufferings a specific against apostasy.
Divine Chastisements.
1. Love, their source.
2. Sorrow, their means.
3. Good, their end. “Crosses and obstacles in an evil course are a great blessing, and are so to be accounted. They are God’s hedges, to keep us from transgressing, to restrain us from wandering out of the green pastures, to withdraw man from his purpose (Job_33:17), to make the way of sin difficult, that we may not go on in it, and to keep us from it whether we will or not. We have reason to bless God both for restraining grace and for restraining providences” [Matt. Henry].
Hos_2:7. The Course of Sin.
1. A course of labour—unrequited toil—vexation of spirit and bitter bondage. Sinners labour harder than saints, and receive nothing but exhaustion and fatigue.
2. A course of failure. Loss of health and peace—all loss and no gain.
3. The service of God the only true gain. “It was better with me.” Godliness is profitable to all things—body and soul, this world and the next. Sin suicidal. God’s service real advantage. Those who embrace God, would take him up as the best of choices, and his way as the shortest cut to do well and to be well: they are sensible of their own disadvantage in forsaking him: for so much is imported as the reason for her return, “for then was it better with me than now” [Hutcheson].
I will go and return.
1. The sinner’s wandering.
2. The sinner’s penitence.
3. The sinner’s return to God. “By this text we may gather what true repentance is: namely, when a sinner not only confesseth himself guilty and worthy of punishment, but truly displeaseth himself and seriously returns to God. Here we have two essential parts of true repentance—namely, contrition and conversion; or humiliation and reformation. The former is called in Scripture repentance for sin, the latter repentance from sin: and the one without the other is to no purpose or profit” [Trapp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Hos_2:6-7. Affliction. The hedge stops or gives a turn. God, in pursuance of his covenant, and with a gracious meaning to a revolting people, hedges them up by affliction to stop them from undoing. It is a mercy to be kept out of the pond, though it be by a thorn hedge, sharpest troubles. This stop the Lord doth often give, though not always to sinners; he sometimes lets them run on to fill up their measure of sin and to receive their full measure of punishment. Reproof for sin is a great favour. Though God is angry for what we have done, yet it is a mercy that he will not let us do more, and so make ourselves vile and miserable [Caryl].
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.
J. R. Dummelow1909 · Public DomainOn v2The Discipline and Restoration of Faithless Israel
The Discipline and Restoration of Faithless Israel
The unfaithful conduct of Gomer and the prophet's gentle treatment of her are regarded as an analogue of the nation's faithlessness and God's gentle correction, a proof of the love which will triumph in the end. But the acted parable and its interpretation are so blended that they cannot always be separated; and frequently the prophet's personal experience is overshadowed by the larger thought of God's dealings with His people.
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2. Plead] addressed to Gomer's sons. The people Israel in this acted allegory are sometimes the sons, as in Hos_2:1, but more generally the wife. When as here distinguished we may suppose that the prophet is appealing to those willing to hear to remonstrate with the faithless majority. There is a somewhat similar mixture of figure in Isa_62:5. She is not my wife] The people by their idolatry had put themselves into a false relation with Jehovah. He was no longer their God, nor they His people: cp. Hos_1:9.
3, 4. As a punishment for her faithlessness, the country would be made desolate by an invading enemy, and the inhabitants slain with the sword. So would she be put to shame.
Children of whoredoms] By their idolatries the people had proved themselves to be children of other gods, the lovers of Hos_2:5.
5. They worshipped the gods of the land—the local deities who were supposed to give abundant crops if propitiated. See Intro. They did not ascribe the fertility of the land to Jehovah, but to the local Baalim, who were personifications of the reproductive powers of nature, and in whose worship they had practically merged the worship of Jehovah.
6, 7. Through the disasters brought by a foreign enemy, including the siege of their cities, the people would discover the impotence of their idols, and seek Jehovah in earnest: cp. Hos_14:3, etc. Make a wall] RV 'make a fence against her.'
7. Lovers] i.e. the Baalim.
8. They prepared for Baal] RM 'made into the image of Baal.' How absurd and how insulting to use God's gift in this way!
9. Will I.. take away] RV 'will I take back.' In the time thereof] i.e. when it should be ripe, the crop would fail. God would thus punish them for the abuse of His gift.
10. Her lovers] The idols would be ashamed, unable to help their devotees, when the land was laid waste. 11. Jehovah would put an end to her religious feasts of all kinds. New moons and sabbaths were the most distinctive feasts in connexion with the worship of Jehovah in the N. (1Sa_20:5; 2Ki_4:23).
12. Rewards] RV 'hire': the bribe for which Israel had worshipped the idols (lovers) under the mistaken belief that they gave them these things: see on Hos_2:5.
13. Baalim] RV 'the Baalim,' i.e. the images of Baal: cp. Hos_2:8. The allusion here is to heathen or heathenish festivals looked upon as acts of faithlessness to Jehovah. They are spoken of as past in relation to the future judgment which Hosea has in mind, or because idolatry had from the first been the besetting sin of the northern kingdom.
14. Therefore, etc.] 'This being her miserable condition, I will entice her to repent by gentle discipline.' The key to such expressions lies in the tenderness felt by Hosea for his sinning wife (see Intro.). The wilderness] either the land of captivity in which she realises her sin and turns to God, or the land wasted by the enemy. Men allure to destruction: God allures to punishment, to make the outpouring of love possible. Comfortably] Heb. 'to her heart,' as in Isa_40:1, etc.
15. I will give] The vineyards destroyed by the enemy (Hos_2:12) would be restored. Achor] i.e. trouble. Achor was the valley where Achan was stoned for his sin (Jos_7:26). It was on this account called the valley of Achor, or trouble. What is meant by its use here is that, while the Israelites would find that as of old sin would be followed by punishment, the punishment was meant to purify and discipline, and the 'trouble' was thus the 'door of hope.' Though Israel had been again unfaithful, God was still 'plenteous in mercy.' Sing] RV 'make answer,' i.e. listen to the call of God.
16. Ishi.. Baali] Both words were used by a wife to her husband. The first, 'my man,' implied a relation of intimacy: the second, 'my lord,' that of servitude, or at least ownership. But the passage seems to imply that Baal, a common name for all heathen gods, had in common practice been used also of Jehovah. This would account for its appearing in several place-names, such as Baal-Hamon, Baal-Shalisha.
17. Baalim] RV 'the Baalim.' Whether they represented Jehovah or heathen gods, the names with their debasing associations would be utterly discarded.
18. Make a covenant] Jehovah is here represented poetically as making an agreement with, or laying a command upon, noxious animals, that they will not, it may be supposed, hurt either man or the fruits of his labours: cp. Isa_11:9. Break the bow, etc.] destroy the weapons of warfare no longer needed in a land of security: cp. Isa_9:5 (RV).
19, 20. The idols had hired Israel's love with gifts of worldly prosperity, and even these they could not really give (Hos_2:12). Jehovah would woo Israel in the first place with much higher gifts, righteousness, judgment, etc.
21, 22. I will hear, etc.] The natural order of thought is reversed, because Jehovah (through the prophet) is speaking of His work. The whole thought is highly poetical. Jezreel ('God-soweth,' used for Israel, for the sake of the play on the word) cries for the com and wine and oil. These cry to the earth to produce them. The earth in its turn cries to the heaven for rain, and the rain cries to Jehovah to send it. Jehovah hears the cry, and so the heart's desire of the people is granted, even without their expressly asking Jehovah for it.
23. I will sow] With reference to the name Jezreel see on Hos_1:4. Jehovah promises the renewed increase of the population: cp. Jer_31:27.
I will have mercy] a repetition of the promises of Hos_1:10; Hos_2:1.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v2She is not my wife
She is not my wife
That Israel is the wife of Jehovah Hos 2:16-23, now disowned but yet to be restored, is the clear teaching of the passages. This relationship is not to be confounded with that of the Church of Christ. (See Scofield "Joh 3:29"). In the mystery of the Divine tri-unity both are true. The N.T. speaks of the Church as a virgin espoused to one husband 2Co 11:1; 2Co 11:2 which could never be said of an adulterous wife, restored in grace. Israel is, then, to be the restored and forgiven wife of Jehovah, the Church the virgin wife of the Lamb; Joh 3:29; Rev 19:6-8. Israel Jehovah’s earthly wife Hos 2:23, the Church the Lamb’s heavenly bride, Rev 19:7.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv2, 4General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh is speaking to Hosea.
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lawsuit
This is a complaint by one person against another person in a court of law.
your mother
Here "mother" refers to the nation of Israel. (See: Metaphor)
for she is not my wife
Yahweh is stating that Israel, spoken of here as a woman, is no longer acting like a wife to Yahweh. Instead Israel has turned away from following and worshiping him. (See: Metaphor)
neither am I her husband
Yahweh can no longer be in relationship with the nation of Israel as a husband would be to his wife. (See: Metaphor)
her acts of adultery
A wife who is adulterous leaves her husband to sleep with another man. This is how Israel was acting toward Yahweh. (See: Metaphor)
from between her breasts
This imagery suggests that Israel is relying on the idols and not Yahweh. (See: Metaphor)
I will strip her naked and show her nakedness as on the day that she was born
Yahweh will no longer protect and provide for Israel because the nation has turned away from him. In Israel, husbands were obliged by law to provide clothes for their wives. Not to do so was a sign that a man was rejecting his wife. The full meaning of this may be made clear. (See: Metaphor and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
I will make her like the wilderness
Yahweh will change Israel to resemble the wilderness, which is a region that is bare and unproductive. (See: Simile)
I will make her die from thirst
Here "thirst" refers to the need to worship and rely on Yahweh, not idols, or Israel will not be able to survive as a nation. (See: Metaphor)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv2, 3, 52:2-23 bring charges against Israel: At first glance, the…
2:2-23 bring charges against Israel: At first glance, the Lord, as the aggrieved husband, appears to be issuing a bill of divorce against his unfaithful spouse, Israel (see Deut 24:1). As the passage continues, however, it becomes clear that God’s purpose in this lawsuit is not divorce, but reconciliation (Hos 2:14-23). God’s case against Israel is intended to awaken Israel to her sin and offer her a chance to return to her true husband. The Lord’s desire for reconciliation with Israel is all the more surprising inasmuch as the law stipulated the death penalty for an adulterous spouse (Deut 22:22; see also Gen 38:24; Lev 21:9).
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv2–5 The Prophet seems in this verse to contradict himself;…
The Prophet seems in this verse to contradict himself; for he promised reconciliation, and now he speaks of a new repudiation. These things do not seem to agree well together that God should embrace, or be willing to embrace, again in his love those whom he had before rejected, — and that he should at the same time send a bill of divorce, and renounce the bond of marriage. But if we weigh the design of the Prophet, we shall see that the passage is very consistent, and that there is in the words no contrariety. He has indeed promised that at a future time God would be propitious to the Israelites: but as they had not yet repented, it was needful to deal again more severely with them, that they might return to their God really and thoroughly subdued. So we see that in Scripture, promises and threatening are mingled together, and rightly too. For were the Lord to spend a whole month in reproving sinners they may in that time fall away a hundred times. Hence God, after showing to men their sins adds some consolation and moderates severity, lest they should despond: he afterwards returns again to threatening, and does so from necessity; for though men may be terrified with the fear of punishment, they do not yet really repent. It is then necessary for them to be reproved not only once and again, but very often.
We now then perceive what the Prophet had in view: he had spoken of the people’s defection; afterwards he proved that the people had been justly rejected by the Lord; and then he promised the hope of pardon. But now seeing that they still continued obstinate in their vices, he reproves again those who had need of such chastisement. He, in a word, has in view their present state.
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Almost all so expound this verse as if the Prophet addressed the faithful: and with greater refinement still do they expound, who say, that the Prophet addresses the faithful who had fallen away from the synagogue. They have and I have no doubt, been much deceived; for the Prophets on the contrary, shows here that God was justly punishing the Israelites, who were wont to excuse themselves in the same way as hypocrites are wont to do. When the Lord treated them otherwise than according to their wishes, they expostulated, and raised up contention — “What does this mean?” So do we find them introduced as thus speaking, by Isaiah. [Isaiah 58:1-3.] There, indeed, they fiercely contend with God, as if the Lord dealt with them unjustly, for they seemed not conscious of having done any evil. Hence the Prophet, seeing the Israelites so senseless in their sins, says, Contend, contend with your mother. He speaks here in the person of God: and God, as it has been stated, uses the similitude of a marriage. Let us now see what is the import of the words.
When a husband repudiates his wife, he fixes a mark of disgrace on the children born by that marriage: their mother has been divorced; then the children, on account of that divorce, are held in less esteem. When a husband repudiates his wife through waywardness, the children justly regard him with hatred. Why? “Because he loved not our mother as he ought to have done; he has not honoured the bond of marriage.” It is therefore usually the case, that the children’s affections are alienated from their father, when he treats their mother with too little humanity or with entire contempt. So the Israelites, when they saw themselves rejected, wished to throw the blame on God. For by the name, “mother”, are the people here called; it is transferred to the whole body of the people, or the race of Abraham. God had espoused that people to himself, and wished them to be like a wife to him. Since then God was a husband to the people, the Israelites were as sons born by that marriage. But when they were repudiated, the Israelites said, that God dealt cruelly with them, for he has cast them away for no fault. The Prophet now undertakes the defence of God’s cause, and speaks also in his person, Contend, contend, he says with your mother In a word, this passage agrees with what is said in the beginning of Isaiah 50:1,
‘Where is the bill of repudiation? Have I sold you to my creditors? But ye have been sold for your sins, and your mother has been repudiated for her iniquity.’
Husbands were wont to give a bill of divorce to their wives, that they themselves might see it: for it freed them from every reproach, inasmuch as the husband bore a testimony to his wife: “I dismiss her, not that she has been unfaithful, not that she has violated the bond of marriage; but because her beauty does not please me, or because her manners are not agreeable to me.” The law compelled the husband to give such a testimony as this. God now says by his Prophet, “Show me now the bill of repudiation: have I of my own accord cast away your mother? No, I have not done so. Ye cannot accuse me of cruelty, as though her beauty did not please me, and as though I had followed the common practice approved by you. I have not willingly rejected her, nor at my own pleasure, and I have not sold her to my creditors, as your fathers were sometimes wont to do, as to their children, when they were in debt.” In short, the Lord shows there that the Jews were to be blamed, that they were rejected together with their mother. So he says also in this place, Contend, contend with your mother; which means, “Your dispute is not with me:” and by the repetition he shows how inveterate was their perverseness, for they never ceased to glamour against God. We now see the real meaning of the Prophet.
In vain then do they philosophise, who say that the mother was to be condemned by her own children; because, when they shall be converted to their former faith, they ought then to condemn the synagogue. The Prophet meant no such thing; but, on the contrary, he brings this charge against the Israelites, that they had been repudiated for the flagitious conduct of their mother, and had ceased to be counted the children of God. For the comparison between husband and wife is here to be understood; and then the children are placed as it were in the middle. When the mother is dismissed, the children indignantly say that the father has been too inhuman if indeed he wilfully divorces his wife: but when a wife becomes unfaithful to her husband, or prostitutes herself to any shameful crime, the husband is then free from every blame; and there is no cause for the children to expostulate with him; for he ought thus to punish a shameless wife. God then shows that the Israelites were justly rejected, and that the blame of their rejection belonged to the whole race of Abraham; but that no blame could be imputed to him.
And for a reason it is added, Let her then take away her fornication from her face, and her adulteries from the midst of her breasts The Prophet, by saying, “Let her then take away her fornications”, (for the copulative ו, vau, ought to be regarded as an illative,) confirms what we have just now said; that is that God had stood to his pledged faith, but that the people had become perfidious; and that the cause of the divorce or separation was, that the Israelites persevered not, as they ought to have done, in the obedience of faith. Then God says, Let her take away her fornications. But the phrase, Let her take away from her face and from her breasts, seems singular; and what does it mean? because women commit fornication neither by the face nor by the breasts. It is evident the Prophet alludes to meretricious finery; for harlots, that they may entice men, sumptuously adorn themselves, and carefully paint their face and decorate their breasts. Wantonness then appears in the face as well as in the breasts. But interpreters do not touch on what the Prophet had in view. The Prophet, no doubt, sets forth here the shamelessness of the people; for they had now so hardened themselves in their contempt of God, in their ungodly superstitions, in all kinds of wickedness, that they were like harlots, who conceal not their baseness, but openly prostitute themselves, yea, and exhibit tokens of their shamelessness in their eyes as well as in every part of their bodies. We see then that the people are here accused of disgraceful impudence as they had grown so callous as to wish to be known to be such as they were. In the same way does Ezekiel set forth their reproachful conduct,
‘Spread has the harlot her feet, she called on all who passed by the way,’ (Ezekiel 16:25.)
We now then understand why the Prophet expressly said, Let her take away from her face her fornication, and from her breasts her adulteries: for he teaches that the vices of the people were not hidden, and that they did not now sin and cover their baseness as hypocrites do, but that they were so unrestrained in their contempt of God, that they were become like common harlots.
Here is a remarkable passage; for we first see that men in vain complain when the Lord seems to deal with them in severity; for they will ever find the fault to be in themselves and in their parents: yea, when they look on all impartially, they will confess that all throughout the whole community are included in one and the same guilt. Let us hence learn, whenever the lord may chastise us, to come home to ourselves, and to confess that he is justly severe towards us; yea, were we apparently cast away, we ought yet to confess, that it is through our own fault, and not through God’s immoderate severity. We also learn how frivolous is their pretext, who set up against God the authority of their fathers, as the Papists do: for they would, if they could, call or compel God to an account, because he forsakes them, and owns them not now as his Church. “What! has not God bound his faith to us? Is not the Church his spouse? Can he be unfaithful?” So say the Papists: but at the same time they consider not, that their mother has become utterly filthy through her many abominations; they consider not, that she has been repudiated, because the Lord could no longer bear her great wickedness. Let us then know, that it is in vain to bring against God the examples of men; for what is here said by the Prophet will ever stand true, that God has not given a bill of divorce to his Church; that is, that he has not of his own accord divorced her, as peevish and cruel husbands are wont to do, but that he has been constrained to do so, because he could no longer connive at so many abominations. It now follows —
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 vv2–5 God showeth that the fault was not in him,…
God showeth that the fault was not in him, but in their Synagogue, and their idolatries, that he forsook them, Isa. 50:1.
Meaning, that their idolatry was so great, that they were not ashamed, but boasted of it, Ezek. 16:25.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv2–5 Hos 2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she…
Hos 2:2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she [is] not my wife, neither [am] I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
Ver. 2. Plead with your mother, plead] Here of right begins the second chapter (the former verse being not so fitly separated from the former chapter), and it is nothing else but a commentary upon the first, as Pareus well noteth. For the prophet here proceedeth in accusing the people of disloyalty and ingratitude: whereupon he denounceth a divorce and punishment: and then foretelleth their repentance and return into favour with God under the kingdom of the Messiah. Now the end wherefore both the accusation and the promise is here reiterated, is not so much to confirm what had been before affirmed, as to set forth the means whereby this cast off people was to be at length added unto the Church: viz. partly by external means (as sharp sermons and sore afflictions), and partly by the internal grace of the Spirit of God, and good affiance of his love sealed up to them, by various spiritual and temporal favours conferred upon them; as so many love tokens. Come we now to the words of this verse; where Oecolampadius begins the chapter: Plead with our mother, plead It is verbum forense, saith Mercer; an expression borrowed from pleaders at the bar: q.d. Be in good earnest with her, rebuke her roundly and openly, according to the nature of her offence: that she may be sound in the faith, and ashamed of her perfidiousness. What though she be your mother, and in that respect to be honoured by you, yet she is a perverse rebellious woman, as Saul once said of his son Jonathan’s mother, 1Sa 20:30 (how truly I inquire not: malice little regards truth, so it may gall or kill), and therefore to be barely and boldly told her own. Besides, we cannot better show our respect to parents than by seeking their souls’ health, and by dealing fairly but freely with them therein. Not as Walter Mapes (sometime Archdeacon of Oxford) did by his mother Church of Rome: for relating the gross simony {a} of the Pope in confirming the election of Reginald, bastard son of Jocelin, Bishop of Sarum, into the see of Bath, he thus concludes his narration, Sit tamen Domina materque nostra Roma baculus in aqua fractus: et absit credere quae vidimus: yet let our lady and mother Rome be as a stick put into the water, which seems to be broken, but is not so: and far be it from us to believe our own eyes against her. Was this charity? or stupidity rather? Charity may be ingenuous, but not servile and blockish. It is not love, but hatred (if Moses may judge), to suffer sin in a dearest friend to pass uncontrolled, Lev 19:17. Good Asa deposed his own mother for her idolatry: and our Edward VI would not be drawn by any persuasion of friends or fear of enemies, to indulge his sister, the Lady Mary, to have mass said in her house. The truth is, those Ammis and Ruhamahs that have found mercy from God, they have their hearts so fired up thereby with a holy zeal for him, that they cannot endure to see him dishonoured, but must appear and plead for him against any in the world. Again, as any one is more assured of his own salvation by Christ, the more he thirsteth after the salvation of others; as we see evidently in St Paul, that vessel of mercy. I am persuaded, saith he, or I am sure, that neither life nor death, &c., shall ever separate me from God’s love in Christ. And what follows in the very next words, but this, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also hearing me witness in the Holy Ghost; that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," &c., Rom 8:38-39; Rom 9:1-4. And how effectually and convincingly he pleadeth with them to draw them to Christ and hold them close to him, that golden Epistle to the Hebrews will well witness to the world’s end.
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For she is not my wife] For I have put her away by a bill of divorcement, Isa 50:1, with a Habe tibi quae tua sunt (which was the form of divorce among the Romans), Take thine own things and be gone. Now, the Jewish synagogue had nothing she could properly call her own, but sin and misery: when God first took her, she had not a rag to her back, Eze 16:10, nor any kind of comeliness, but what he was pleased to put upon her, Eze 16:14. But she (foolish woman and unwise, Deu 32:6), trusting in her borrowed beauty, played the harlot, and poured out her fornication on every one that passed by: his it was, Eze 16:15. The synagogue of Rome is such another meretrix meretricissima quae gremium claudit nemini, as her own sons say of her, by way of commendation. St John calleth her the whore, the great whore, Rev 17:1; Rev 17:15; and further telleth us that she sitteth upon her paramours in a base manner, in an unseemly sort, she sitteth upon their very consciences, and keeps them under by force: whereas Stephen, king of Poland (one of her sons, but not altogether so obsequiuus), was wont to say, that God had required three things to himself, sc. ex nihilo aliquid facere, scire futura, et dominari velle conscientiis, that is, to make something of nothing, to know things to come, and to bear rule over men’s consciences. How she forceth men to commit folly with her by the cruel Inquisition; and bow she hireth others for preferments (Luther was offered a cardinalship; Bessarion of Nice was won over to her by such an offer; Thomas Saranzius was of a poor shoemaker’s son made bishop, cardinal, and pope, all in one year, and called Nicolas V; the like might be said of Aeneas Sylvius, Canon of Trent, afterwards Pope Pius II), and for a price too, is notoriously known to the Christian world. Stratagem nunc est Pontificium ditare multos ut pii esse desinant, saith a good author. It is one of the pope’s stratagems to enrich men that he may oblige them to himself, and bring them into his own vassalage (John Baptist. Gelli. Dialog. 5). In various towns of Germany (as at Augsburg, &c.) there was a known allowance by the year for such Lutherans as would become Papists. Thus this whore of Rome imitateth her in the text: of whom it is elsewhere complained, Eze 16:33, "They give gifts to all whores" (and so buy repentance at too dear a rate, Nolo tanti paenitentiam emere, Dem.), but "thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom: yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldst not be satisfied," Eze 16:28. It was but time therefore that God should cast her off as now no wife of his, but an adulteress of the devil, as she showed herself notably in the Trent Conventicle: where with a whore’s forehead that refused to be ashamed, Jer 3:3, she not only established by a law their abominable idolatry, but also set forth that heathenish decree, whereby she equaleth (at least) the Apocrypha to the holy Canon, the vulgar puddle to the Hebrew and Greek fountains, unwritten verities and traditions to the sacred Scriptures: and further addeth, that the Holy Ghost himself is not to be hearkened unto speak he never so plainly and expressly, nisi accedat meretricis purpuratae effrons interpreratio, unless she may have the interpreting of his meaning according to her way. O monstrous impudence, deserving a divorce! True it is that God hateth putting away, Mal 2:16 Isa 50:1; he tells these Jews that he had not given their mother a bill of divorcement, ut solent morosi et crudeles mariti, as cruel and froward husbands used to do for every light offence. But what he had done this way, he was merely compelled to it; as not able to wink any longer at their flagitious practices. Hear his own words, "Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities you sold yourselves; and for your transgressions is your mother put away." And yet not so far put away either, but that if she repent, she may be received again: and that is no small mercy. See Jer 3:1, "They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord." Lo, God is above law; and his mercy is matchless: he will do for his people what none else in like case would ever he drawn to do: Mic 7:18, "Who is a God like unto thee?" saith the prophet, by way of admiration. David never came near his concubines more after Absalom had gone in to them; and Ahithophel judged that act would be such an injury, as David would never put up with, and therefore gave that pernicious counsel. But God’s thoughts are not as man’s thoughts, neither are our ways his ways, of mercy, and multiplied pardons. But "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts," Isa 55:8-9. We are not to measure things according to our own model; and to have as low thoughts of God and his goodness as those miscreants once had of his power when they demanded, "Can God prepare a table for us in the wilderness? Can he give us water out of the rock?" Surely a finite creature cannot believe the infinite attributes of God thoroughly, without supernatural grace: which therefore must be implored, and every one of us excited not to cast away our confidence which hath so great recompense, so great encouragement: but to say to our mother, and each to other, "Put away your whoredoms," &c., "Cast away all your transgressions," Eze 18:31. "Ye have done all this wickedness" (saith Samuel to the revolted people of his time), but what of that? "yet turn not aside from following the Lord": for that were to add rebellion to sin, as Herod to all his other hateful practices added that of beheading the Baptist. Do not therefore turn aside from following the Lord, but go home again to him, and he will speak peace. "For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: since it hath pleased the Lord once to make you his people," 1Sa 12:20-22. He chose you for his love: and now loves you for his choice; yea, he cries after you, as once, "Return, you blacksliding children, and I will heal your backsliding." Oh that you would reciprocate and say, "Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the Lord our God," Jer 3:22.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight] Not out of my sight (as a Lapide readeth it, neither according to the original, nor yet his own Vulgate translation), but "out of her sight," or from her face, {b} and her adulteries from between her breasts. Sed quid hoc sibi vult? saith Calvin here. But what may be the meaning of this? It surely seemeth harsh to say that women play the whores, either with their faces or with their breasts: and yet it is not unknown to the learned what Archesilaus the philosopher said to a young wanton, that cast lustful looks and lascivious glances upon others: Nihil interest quibus membris cinaedi sitis, posterioribus an prioribus: You may be naughty packs more ways than one. And Plutarch tells of a certain orator, that said of an impudent fellow: Quod in oculis haberet non κορας sed πορνας, that he had in his eyes not pupils, but punks. {c} And St Peter saith of the heretical sects of his time, that they had eyes full of the adulteress (so runs the original, μεστους μοιχαλιδος), and that could not cease to sin, 2Pe 2:14. It is evident enough (saith Calvin) that the prophet in this text alludeth to the manner of harlots painting their faces, decking or laying out their breasts to allure lovers. Filthy dressing and naked breasts (saith another divine), this is whoredom between the breasts. A third calleth naked breasts and wrists, abhorred filth. Jerome saith, If a man or woman adorn or carry themselves so as to provoke others to lust after them, though no evil follow upon it, yet the parties shall suffer eternal damnation; because they offered poison to others, though none would drink it. In Scripture, women taxed for this were notorious wicked persons, and usually whores: as Tamar, Jezebel, those damsels, Isa 3:12; Isa 3:16-17 Dives, the rich man, Luk 16:19-31 Lupa Romana, the Roman wolf, Rev 17:3. Our Henry VI, when a mask of women were presented unto him, whereof some of them showed their naked breasts, he left the presence, crying, “Fie, fie, ladies, in sooth ye are to blame, to bare those parts to the eyes of man that nature appointed modesty to conceal.” Frederick the Emperor, seeing some country wenches, near Florence, in dancing to show their naked legs, Eamus, said he, meretricum hic ludus est non virginum, Let us go hence, for this is not maids’ play, but whores’ rather. That younker in the Proverbs was met by a woman with the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart, or trussed up about the breasts, with her upper parts naked, like a bedlam. So Levi Ben Gersom, she met him with her naked breasts, yea, with something else naked, {d} which modesty forbids to name, as some construe that text, Pro 7:10. So she caught him and kissed him, Hos 2:13, with strange impudence: and no question but having caught him, her lust grew more flagrant: as by unclean touches of the face and breasts men are more enkindled. Hence that of our Saviour in expounding the seventh commandment, Mat 5:30, "If thy right hand offend thee," sc. by dalliance and wanton touches, "cut it off," &c. Hippocrates observeth that there are venae et viae ab utero ad mamillas, veins and passages that go from the belly to the breasts; and that is the reason he gives of the temptation to lust that is in the breasts. "Keep thyself pure," saith St Paul to his son Timothy. And again, "The younger women exhort with purity," or chastity. It is not safe to pry into the beauty of young women. Ut vidi ut perii, &c. The eyes are those windows of wickedness and loop holes of lust. "Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight." And let not the strange woman "take thee with her eyelids," saith Solomon, Pro 6:25. For prevention hereof, in Chrysostom’s time, the women were separated from the men in the church by a wooden wall. And Tertullian saith to the Christian women, Iudicabunt vos Arabiae feminae ethnicae, &c., The heathen women of Arabia shall judge you: for they do not only cover their faces but their heads too; and rather than they will have any part appear naked, they will let the light but into one eye. In Barbary, they say, it is death for any man to see one of the Xeriffe’s concubines; and for them too, if when they see a man (though but through a casement) they do not suddenly screech out. Millions of people have died of the wound in the eye. Aholah and Aholibah, that is, Israel and Judah, no sooner saw the Assyrians (those desirable young men), though but portrayed upon the wall, but they doted upon those paramours, and received them into the bed of love, Eze 23:16-17. Et divaricavit tibias suas, Eze 16:25, and multiplied their whoredoms. The very sight of the altar at Damascus set Ahaz agog to have one of the same fashion, 2Ki 16:10. And Jeroboam, coming out of Egypt, where the ox was worshipped, brought home two calves with him; and set them up at Dan and Bethel. The Nicodemites and Familists hold it no sin to be present at idol service, and allege a text for it out of Apocryphal Baruch. But Mr Burroughes, a good interpreter, well observeth, that that which is intended specially here, in these words, "Let her put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries," &c., is, that they should not be content merely with change of their hearts, to say, Well, we will acknowledge the Lord to be the true God, and our hearts shall wholly trust in him; but for these external things, what great matter is in them? Oh no, they must abstain from all appearance of evil, from the badges of idolatry, &c. Thus he. Those badges or ensigns of idolatry they usually carried between their breasts (saith another author), to testify that the idol had their hearts; whereas Christ should have been there, Son 1:13, who to show his dear love to his Church appeared to John, girt about the paps with a golden girdle, Rev 1:13. {See Trapp on "Rev 1:13"} Cor sedes amoris. The heart is the seat of the affections. Hence God calleth for it; "My son, give me thine heart": and the devil strives for it, Luk 22:3 Act 5:3. Once he strove about a dead man’s body, Jdg 1:9, but his design therein was to have set up an idol for himself in the hearts of the living. His eldest son and successor, the pope, useth the same policy. It was a watch word in Gregory XIII’s time, in Queen Elizabeth’s days, My son, give me thy heart: dissemble, go to Church, be a Papist in heart, and then do what ye will: take the oath of allegiance, supremacy, anything that shall be put to you, I will absolve you. Do but carry a crucifix between your breasts (that is the place where they wear such idols), and kiss it when you have sworn (as Louis XI of France used to do), and it shall suffice. An oath upon the conscience of a popish idolater is like a collar upon a monkey’s neck, - that he will slip on for his master’s pleasure and slip off again for his own. Pascenius scoffs King James for the invention of the oath of allegiance. Equivocation the Jesuits have invented, or revived rather, ad consolationem afflictorum Catholicorum, for the comfort of afflicted Catholics, as Garnet and Blackwell profess. So impudent is idolatry, such frontless whoredoms appear in their very faces, they openly prostitute themselves; Imo volunt extare signa foeditatis sum, saith Calvin, here they hang out their filthy superstitions in the sight of the sun, as Sodom: they set them upon the cliff of the rock, as Jerusalem, Eze 24:7-8, ut similes sint publicis scortis, like common whores that solicit lovers, and send to them, as she, Eze 23:2-21. It was a sad complaint God made, Hos 7:1 of this prophecy, "When I would have healed Israel, then the iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, then it broke forth as the leprosy in their foreheads": their fornications were not only covert, but overt. Their whoredoms in the face were their worshipping the two golden calves and Baalim (saith Pareus); their "adulteries between their breasts" were their trust in idols, in the arm of flesh, in confederacies, &c., when they would seem nevertheless to trust in God alone: as now the Papists profess to do, and have therefore coined diverse nice distinctions of worship, per se, et per accidens, proprie, et impropriae, and a hundred the like evasions. But there is no hiding of their asses’ ears by these subtilties. Dr Reynolds, in his Books de Idolatria Romana, hath (among others) proved them rank idolaters. Weston writes, that his head ached in reading that book; but they all yield it unanswerable: and yet they "repent not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood, which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk," Rev 9:20. But, as those that make them are like unto them, so are all those that trust in them, stockish and stupid; given up to the efficacy of error, to believe a lie, yea, and that against common sense, Isa 44:17, which is no small stumblingblock to both Jews and Mahometans.
{a} The act or practice of buying or selling ecclesiastical preferments, benefices, or emoluments; traffic in sacred things. ŒD
{b} So the Septuag. εκ προσωπου μου.
{c} Lib. περι δυσωπιας. Kορη puellam et pupillam oculi significat.
{d} שׁית pro שׁת quasi nudato pudendo. And verse 18, Nerveh dodim inebriabimur uberibus.
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 vv2–5 Plead; argue the case, state it aright between me…
Plead; argue the case, state it aright between me and your mother, then debate it fully; lay open either my displeasure, how great it is, or the effects of it already upon the house of Israel, or my menaces against them for the future, by my prophet Hosea: and next recollect the carriage of your mother of Israel; consider her sins, her lewdness, her adulteries, her unthankfulness, how notorious, how long, how multiplied and aggravated.
With your mother; the synagogues, the whole body of the people Israel, which were emblemized in Gomer, the wife of whoredoms.
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Plead; ye that are sons or daughters of God amidst this degenerate, idolatrous nation, you that have any resentments for your Father, debate, or at least deal plainly with her, who is called your mother, and say how little right she hath to be called my wife, and how little reason I have to own myself her Husband.
She is not my wife; in point of right she is not, for by her adulteries she hath dissolved the marriage covenant, and so abolished the relation, though in point of fact she is not cast off utterly; I have not sued out the divorce, nor turned her out of doors. but yet for all that she is no wife, nor hath any right to the honour, maintenance, or love of a wife.
Neither am I her husband; I do not account myself bound by any covenant of marriage to love, maintain, comfort, or protect her; nor will I long do it, if by her continued lewdness she still violate her faith, and abuse my patience. Tell idolatrous Israel, that her God will deal with her as an abused husband will deal with an unreclaimed adulterous wife.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms; when you have pleaded, then make an offer to her yet once more, counsel, persuade, entreat, and encourage her to do what becomes a wife that would not be divorced; try if you can prevail with her to cast aside and to remove from her all evil practices and inclinations, to cast off spiritual whoredoms, which all her idolatrous practices are accounted to be.
Out of her sight; either remove the idols, their temples, priests, and gaudy rites, for ever out of her sight, as they did, Isa 2:20; or else cease from her whorish looks, her unchaste and immodest framing her face and gestures.
And her adulteries, idolatries, which are spiritual adulteries,
from between her breasts: by an immodest and lascivious manner of framing the breasts, and laying them open, these kinds of women here alluded to did entice adulterers; and so were idolatrous Israelites grown impudent in their idolatries, and courted others in shameless manner to turn idolaters also.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–5 Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel,…
Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel, as the Targum; the body of the Jewish nation, which, with respect to individuals, was as a mother to her children; see Mat 21:37, that is, lay before her, her sin in rejecting the Messiah, the Head and Husband of his true church and people; endeavour to convince her of it; reprove her for it; expostulate with her about it; argue the case with her, and show her the danger of persisting in such an evil, as the apostles did, Act 2:23
for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; for though there had been such a relation between them, yet it was now dissolved; she had broken the marriage covenant and contract, and God had given her a bill of divorce, Jer 31:32 or, however, as she behaved not as a wife towards him, showing love and affection, honour and reverence, and performing duty, and yielding obedience; so he would not carry it as a husband towards her, nourishing and cherishing her, providing for her, and protecting and defending her; but leave her to shift for herself, and to the insults and abuses of others; having been guilty of idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, as the Israelites before the captivity were; and as the Jews in Christ's time were guilty of rejecting the word of God, and preferring their own traditions to it: hence it follows,
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let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, or "from her face" (e),
and her adulteries from between her breasts; alluding to the custom of harlots, who used to paint their faces, and to allure with their looks, words, and actions, and to make bare their breasts, or adorn them, or carry in them what were enticing and alluring. These adulteries and whoredoms, which are the same thing, may signify the many idolatries of the people of Israel before their captivity, and which were the cause of it; or the sins of the Jews before their dispersion; or their evil works, as the Targum, by which they departed from God and the true Messiah, and went a whoring after other lovers: thus they rejected, transgressed, and made of none effect the commandments of God by their traditions; paid tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and neglected the weighty matters of the law; sought not the honour of God, but that which comes from men; and therefore confessed not the true Messiah, though under convictions of him, and went about to establish their own righteousness, and submitted not to his; these were the idols of their hearts, and the whoredoms and adulteries the Jewish converts, that truly believed in Christ, are ordered to exhort them to put away. The Septuagint and Arabic versions are, "I will take away her whoredoms &c.",
(e) "a facie sua", Calvin, Pagninus, Piscator, Cocceius; "a faciebus suis", Montanus, Schmidt.
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 vv2, 3, 5 Your mother - The whole body of the people…
Your mother - The whole body of the people Israel, which were typified in Gomer. Plead - Ye that are sons and daughters of God amidst this idolatrous nation. Not my wife - For by her adulteries she hath dissolved the marriage-covenant.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv2–5 Verse 2. Plead with your mother] People of Judah,…
Verse 2. Plead with your mother] People of Judah, accuse your mother, (Jerusalem,) who has abandoned my worship, and is become idolatrous; convince her of her folly and wickedness, and let her return to him from whom she has so deeply revolted.
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 vv3–4 Hos 2:3. Lest I strip her naked, &c. —…
Hos 2:3. Lest I strip her naked, &c. — The punishment frequently inflicted upon harlots was, to strip them naked and expose them to the world. The punishment of adulteresses among the Germans is thus described by Tacitus, “Accisis crinibus nudatam coram propinguis expellit domo maritus.” Or the allusion may be to the ignominy which brutal conquerors sometimes inflicted on the captives they took in war, by stripping them of their clothing and causing them to travel in that condition, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and, which was yet worse, to the intolerable heat of the sun: see note on Isa 3:17. Thus God threatens to deal with the Israelites: to deliver them into the hands of their enemies, and carry them away naked into captivity, (see Hos 2:9,) in as forlorn and desolate a condition as they were in during their bondage in Egypt. And make her as a wilderness — A state of captivity is fitly compared to being placed in a wilderness, in want of common necessaries: compare Eze 19:13. “It may seem harsh,” says Bishop Horsley, “to say of a woman that she shall be laid waste like a wilderness, and reduced to the condition of a parched land. But it is to be observed that the allegorical style makes an intercommunity of attributes between the type and the thing typified. So that when a woman is the image of a country or of a church, that may be said of a woman, which, in unfigured language, might be said of the country, or the church, which she represents. The country might literally be made a waste wilderness, by unfruitful seasons, by the devastations of war, or of noxious vermin: a church is made a wilderness and a parched land, when the living waters of the Spirit are withheld.”
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 vv2–5 Plead with your mother, plead - The prophets close…
Plead with your mother, plead - The prophets close the threats of coming judgments with the dawn of after-hopes; and from hopes they go back to God’s judgments against sin, pouring in wine and oil into the wounds of sinners. The “mother” is the Church or nation; the “sons,” are its members, one by one. These, when turned to God, must plead with their mother, that she turn also. When involved in her judgments, they must plead with her, and not accuse God. God “had not forgotten to be gracious;” but she “kept not His love, and refused His friendship, and despised the purity of spiritual communion with Him, and would not travail with the fruit of His will.” : “The sons differ from the mother, as the inventor of evil from those who imitate it. For as, in good, the soul which, from the Spirit of God, conceiveth the word of truth, is the mother, and whoso profiteth by hearing the word of doctrine from her mouth, is the child, so, in evil, whatsoever soul inventeth evil is the mother, and whoso is deceived by her is the son. So in Israel, the adulterous mother was the synagogue, and the individuals deceived by her were the sons.”
“Ye who believe in Christ, and are both of Jews and Gentiles, say ye to the broken branches and to the former people which is cast off, “My people,” for it is your brother; and “Beloved,” for it is “your sister.” For when Rom 11:25-26 the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then shall all Israel be saved. In like way we are bidden not to despair of heretics, but to incite them to repentance, and with brotherly love to long for their salvation” .
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For she is not My wife - God speaketh of the spiritual union between Himself and His people whom He had chosen, under the terms of the closest human oneness, of husband and wife. She was no longer united to Him by faith and love, nor would He any longer own her. Plead therefore with her earnestly as orphans, who, for her sins, have lost the protection of their Father.
Let her therefore put away her whoredoms - So great is the tender mercy of God. He says, let her but put away her defilements, and she shall again be restored, as if she had never fallen; let her but put away all objects of attachment, which withdrew her from God, and God will again be All to her.
Adulteries, whoredores - God made the soul for Himself; He betrothed her to Himself through the gift of the Holy Spirit; He united her to Himself. All love, then, out of God, is to take another, instead of God. “whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.” “Adultery” is to become another’s than His, the Only Lord and Husband of the soul. Whoredom is to have many other objects of sinful love. Love is one, for One. The soul which has forsaken the One, is drawn here and there, has manifold objects of desire, which displace one another, because none satisfies. Hence, the prophet speaks of “fornications, adulteries;” because the soul, which will not rest in God, seeks to distract herself from her unrest and unsatisfiedness, by heaping to herself manifold lawless pleasures, out of, and contrary to the will of, God.
From before her - Literally “from her face.” The face is the seat of modesty, shame, or shamelessness. Hence, in Jeremiah God says to Judah, “Thou hadst a harlot’s forehead; thou refusedst to be ashamed” Jer 3:3; and “they were not at all ashamed, neither will they blush” Jer 6:15. The eyes, also, are the “windows” Jer 9:21, through which “death,” i. e., lawless desire, “enters into” the soul, and takes it captive.
From her breasts - These are exposed, adorned, degraded in disorderly love, which they are employed to allure. Beneath too lies the heart, the seat of the affections. It may mean then, that she should no more gaze with pleasure on the objects of her sin, nor allow her heart to dwell on tilings which she loved sinfully. Whence it is said of the love of Christ, which should keep the soul free from all unruly passions which might offend him Son 1:13, “My Well-beloved shall lie all night between my breasts Son 8:6, as a seal upon the heart” beneath.
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 vv2–5 Your mother: the synagogue. (Calmet) --- He addresses Juda,…
Your mother: the synagogue. (Calmet) --- He addresses Juda, (ver. 11, 15.) or all God’s people, chap. i. 11. This vineyard yields no good fruit, Isaias v. Idolatry prevails, Ezechiel xvi. 5., and xxiii. 3.
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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v4 Fuller Discourse of Jehovah Concerning His Adulterous Spouse, Israel
Fuller Discourse of Jehovah Concerning His Adulterous Spouse, Israel
Hos_2:4-23
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A. Complaint and Threatening of Punishment
Hos_2:4-15
4 Plead with your mother, plead!
For she is not my wife
And I am not her husband,
That she put away her whoredom from before her
And her adultery from between her breasts.
5 Lest I strip her naked,
And place her as (she was in) the day of her birth,
And make her like the wilderness,
And set her (so as to be) like a barren land,
And slay her with hunger.
6 And on her children I will not have mercy,
For they are children of whoredom
7 Because their mother has committed whoredom
And she that bore them has caused shame,
Because she said: I will go after my lovers,
Who furnished my bread and my water,
My wool and my flax,
My oil and my (pleasant) drinks.
8 Therefore behold I am hedging up thy way with thorns,
And will wall up a wall [raise a wall before her ]
And she will not find her paths.
9 And she will pursue her lovers and not overtake them
And will seek them and not find;
And she will say: I will go and return to my former husband,
For (it was) better with me then than now.
10 And she did not know that I gave her
The corn and the wine and the oil,
And that I increased for her silver and gold,
(Which) they used for Baal.
11 Therefore will I take back my corn in its time
And my wine in its season,
And snatch away my wool and my flax
(Which was) to cover her nakedness,
12 And then will I uncover her shame
In the eyes of her lovers,
And none will deliver her from my hands.
13 And I will bring to an end all her joy;
Her feast-making, her new-moons, her sabbaths,
And all her festivals.
14 And will lay waste her vine and her fig tree
Of which she said: they are my reward
Which my lovers gave to me:
And will make her a forest,
And the beast of the field will devour her.
15 And I will visit upon her the days of the Baals;
To which she burnt incense,
And (then) put on her ring and her jewels,
And went after her lovers,
And forgot me, saith Jehovah.
B. The Punishment leads to Conversion, and thus to the glorious Renewal of the Marriage Contract between Jehovah and Israel
Hos_2:16-23
16 Therefore, behold, I am alluring her,
And will lead her into the wilderness
And speak unto her heart [speak with comfort ].
17 And I will give her her 1vineyards from thence,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope,
And she will answer then as in the days of her youth,
As in the day of her coming up from the land of Egypt.
18 And it will be in that day, saith2 the Lord,
Thou wilt call: My husband,
And thou wilt no more call me: My Baal.
19 And I will remove the names of the Baals3 from her mouth,
And they shall no more be remembered by their name,
20 And I will make for them in that day a covenant
With the beast of the4 field,
And with the birds of heaven,
And the creeping things of the earth,
And bow and sword and war will I destroy from the land,
And make them dwell in security.
21 And I will betroth thee to me for ever,
And betroth thee to me in righteousness5 and justice,
And in mercy and in compassion;
22 And betroth thee to me in faithfulness,
And thou shalt know Jehovah.
23 And it will be in that day,
I will answer, saith the Lord,
Will answer the heavens,
And they will answer the earth,
24 And the earth will answer the corn and the wine and the oil,
And they will answer Jezreel [God’s sowing ]
25 And I will sow her for myself in the land,
And favor “Unfavored,”
And say to “Not-my-people”:
“Thou art my people,”
And they shall say: “My God.”
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
This chapter is the essential supplement to chap. 1. It contains, in a more discursive style, an exposition, justifying and elucidating that which in chap. 1 was presented only as a theme, and in some parts even enigmatically in its brief sentences. The complaint and threatening of destroying judgments were uttered without any preparation; and still more suddenly were they followed immediately by as glorious an announcement of salvation. Chap. 1 must thus excite inquiries, not so much through the symbolical representation of the first part, as by these unexpected utterances, inquiries which demand an answer. Such answer is given by the Lord Himself in Hos_2:4 ff., in a longer discourse. This is now altogether based upon the conception of Israel as an unchaste wife, which was only indicated in chap. 1 and then disappeared, and is developed in two sections, of threatening and of promise. A complaint is first raised against the unchaste wife, and then the course of punishment is figuratively described, which, however, is seen to be really a chastening with the view to conversion from idolatry. This conversion itself is promised, and the way thus prepared for the announcement of salvation. Israel, returning as penitently as a wife to her husband, finds mercy with God. So the close, Hos_2:23 f., returns expressly to chap. 1–2:3, and the discourse is thus shown to be most closely connected with that section.
The complaint and announcement of punishment occupy Hos_2:4-15. The discourse takes a turn with Hos_2:16. The declaration of deliverance is introduced by the announcement of conversion, and from Hos_2:20 onwards becomes a glorious promise.
A. Hos_2:4-15. Complaint, and Announcement of Punishment.
Hos_2:4-6. Plead with your mother—for they are children of whoredom. The person who makes the demand is naturally Jehovah. Those who are addressed are not the children of the Prophet, Hos_1:4 ff. (Kurtz), but the children of the adulterous spouse, Israel (and therefore those who are designated children of whoredom, Hos_1:2). These children are distinguished ideally from their mother, because Israel is from one point of view regarded as the spouse. Israel viewed as a unit is the mother: the children then represent the individual Israelites (the mother can not be conceived as existing without the children). The children are now to plead with their mother. But this does not mean that a part of Israel did not serve idols, so that the better disposed among the people would be addressed (Keil, et al.). This would conflict with what has been said of the relation between the mother and the children. The children are conceived of as those who have to dread misfortune on account of the prevailing “whoredom.” They, in fact, however, represent just what the mother does; they are to suffer the same punishment with her, though in Hos_2:6 the punishment is as yet only mentioned expressly as that about to fall upon the children. But the distinction made between the mother and the children is only a rhetorical mode of presentation resorted to for the purpose of casting upon the mother, through the children, the reproach that she by her conduct was bringing misfortune upon them, and thus persuading her to abandon her lewdness. Not as though the children had acted differently from the mother, but now when the punishment is to be presented, the complaint is naturally directed against the latter. For if the children have sinned, they have followed their mother in doing so. She is the really guilty one in this punishment. The children are comparatively innocent, and have been only seduced, and yet they must suffer like their mother! And then they must participate in the sufferings which the mother endures for her own sins. They are therefore the ones who should be represented as pleading with the mother. This mode of representation is not pursued beyond the beginning of the chapter. For she is not my wife, expresses well the sin of the mother. It is as though Jehovah had said: “It is her sin that she deports herself as one who could not be my wife, and whose husband I could not be, and I cannot look upon myself any more as her husband.” The next member of the verse shows the cause of this feeling, for it is the conduct of the mother that gives occasion to the children to upbraid her. The punishment would be: I know her no longer as my wife, and will be her husband no longer. But punishment is not introduced before Hos_2:5—ותָסֵר. The רִיב involves the demand to cease from the present conduct. This conduct is “whoredom,” but in the case of a wife it is also more, it is “adultery.” From her face—from between her breasts. The whoredom (idolatry) of Israel is thus not secret, but is done openly. Israel is like a public barefaced whore, who displays her profession in her face and (bared) breasts.
Hos_2:5. The demand is supported by calling attention to the punishment. Lest I strip her naked. This is perhaps connected with the foregoing so as to=as a punishment for the shameless exposure of her person which she wantonly practices, strip her bare in a way she does not like and of which she would be ashamed. Divested of the figure the expression would mean: lest I take from her everything that I have given her and reduce her to the condition in which she was before I delivered her and made her what she now is (comp. Eze_16:4 ff.) The prophet now turns to this earlier condition with the words: as in the day of her birth. Primarily this is an image of nakedness=like a new-born child, but not simply =without clothing, but=divested of everything, stripped of all she can call her own. Thus was Israel on the day of its birth. This birth took place when Israel was chosen to be the people of God. According to Hos_11:1, this was done in Egypt. Israel was there naked, for it dwelt as an oppressed nation of slaves without a country. And make her like a wilderness, that is, reduce her to a situation where the necessaries of life are wanting as they are to those in a desert, so that they die of hunger; and like a parched land, that is, a place in which there is no water, so that she may “die of thirst.” This dying of thirst is only mentioned because her situation is compared to a desert; and the general sense is=reduce her to a situation of utter destitution from a condition of great abundance. A reference to Israel’s sojourn in the desert cannot be well disproved (as by Keil) along with the mention of the day of her birth. Israel, it is true, was supplied with food and water by God. But the desert itself had neither food nor drink, as Israel felt only too keenly. And that desert is an image of the condition to which Israel is to be reduced by God.
Hos_2:6. And will not have compassion upon her children. This verse is in sense still dependent upon פֶּן of Hos_2:5. The want of compassion is a consequence of the conduct of the mother, but may be turned away by conversion. Even the children shall share the same lot, that is, all individually; none are to suppose that they shall escape punishment,—for they are children of whoredom. Because they are begotten of whoredom and also witnesses of it, the Lord who is to punish his adulterous spouse cannot endure them. Still the question of Hos_1:2 repeats itself here, whether בְּנֵי זְנ׳ are not rather: children who commit whoredom. This is most natural, for the children are in fact identical with the mother.
Hos_2:7-9. Because their mother hath practiced whoredom—it was better with me then than now. The last explanation given of בְּנֵי זְ׳ would certainly be incorrect if Hos_2:7 were an explanation of Hos_2:6 b = They are children of whoredom, for their mother, etc. But such an explanation, continued too in the parallelism (Hos_2:7 a, and b), would make the sense extremely prolix. The same remark would apply if the verse were coördinate to Hos_2:6 b, and supported it along with Hos_2:6 a. Besides, this expression concerning the mother’s sin would not be appropriate as justifying the punishment threatened against the children. The solution is to be found in the wider scope of Hos_2:7. For here the thought is so enlarged that it cannot be regarded simply as an explanation of Hos_2:6, and at the same time coördinate to the second member of that verse. Such a view supposes that if that verse is an explanation, Hos_2:7 must be so also. The thought is, however, evidently an independent one. Nor does it refer backwards, but, as its contents show, it reaches forward and is therefore rather to be connected with Hos_2:8-9. (So Meier; even the Vulgate and Luther have detached it from Hos_2:6.) [So also Henderson, and Cowles in his exposition though not in his translation.—M.]—הוֹבִישָׁה here not=to become a disgrace, but=to commit shame. Luther: conduct herself shamefully.—Who gave my bread, etc.=food, clothing, and the enjoyments of life (Keil), comp. Jer_44:17 ff. We may refer this to a condition of things which actually prevailed in Israel (comp. also Hos_2:16). If it did exist along with idolatry, it would be naturally suggested that it was due to the idols. In the figurative representation it is the reward which the adulteress received from her paramours (comp. Hos_2:14). [Keil: “This delusive idea entertained by the wife arose from the sight of the heathen nations round about, who were rich and mighty, and attributed this to their gods.”—M.]
Hos_2:8. Therefore behold, I hedge up her way with thorns. The hedging up of the way, strengthened in the parallel member by the figure of raising up a wall, means in general to place an obstacle in the way, to set up a wall of separation, and that evidently between the wife and the paramours, Israel and the idols, so that the alliance between them will be dissolved. This is shown further by the words: and she will not find the path to them, and also in Hos_2:9. This causa dirimens is here intentionally referred to only in a general way, in a sort of enigmatical allusion. The “that” is expressed only once with its immediate sequence in Hos_2:9. The “how” does not appear till Hos_2:11 ff. It is already hinted at in the conclusion of Hos_2:9. It is the feeling of distress in strong contrast to the situation just extolled so highly as the gift of the idols. This privation must itself excite doubts as to the power of the idols, and still more must their impotence in the midst of her distress. Israel would indeed become at first more ardent in its worship of idols; to “pursue” after them, etc., the more their prosperity was regarded as their gift, the more would they be missed. But “she will not reach them and will not find them.” It is represented, as though outwardly it were no longer possible to hold intercouse with the idols. This mode of representation, however, is connected only with the image of raising a hedge, etc., something which effects an external separation. But the expression is very suitable, especially as the idols denoted by the paramours, prove themselves to be a mere phantom, dead nothings, just when men turn to them for help. They are therefore really not found. Such experience of the nothingness of idols then awakens again a longing after Jehovah as the One, in whom alone help is to be found, a longing after the good bestowed by Him upon his people. The discourse here is just ready to pass over into the thought that this punishment is a chastening to lead to conversion (Hos_2:16 ff.), but upon the mention of former prosperity, it turns again to complaint, in order to complete the announcement of the punishment merited by the ungrateful forgetfulness of the giver of such prosperity. This is continued till Hos_2:15. [Hengstenberg: “There can be no doubt, that by the hedging and walling about, severe sufferings are intended, by which the people are encompassed, straitened, and hindered in every free movement. For sufferings appear constantly as the specific against Israel’s apostasy from God.… We can by no means think of an external obstacle. Outwardly there was, during the exile, and in the midst of idolatrous nations, a stronger temptation to idolatry than they had in their native land. Hence we can think of an internal obstacle only, and then again, only of an absolute incapacity of the idols to grant to the people consolation and relief in their sufferings. If this incapacity is first ascertained by experience, men lose their confidence in them, and seek help where alone it is to found.”—M.]
Hos_2:10-12. She knew not, etc. The reference is to Hos_2:7. Israel had shamefully ascribed to the idols what they owed to God. That God was the Giver they must have been inwardly conscious, in fact could have known it from the Law; but they ignored this truth, denied it, and naturally so, because they had departed from their God. The abundance of the natural productions of the country then led to an abundance of silver and gold, but—cutting reproach—that which they owed to God עָשוּ לַבַּעַל, probably; they employed it for Baal, not: they made it a Baal, as the article especially shows. “Employed,” partly in making idol images, partly in the service of idols. Baal may be taken here for idols generally, since the actual Baal-worship was done away with by Jehu, though not entirely, comp. 2Ki_13:6 (Keil).
Hos_2:11. Now the punishment is expressed which was in Hos_2:8-9, only hinted at, the withdrawal of the good things which had been so enjoyed. My corn = the corn which they received from me. In its time, that is, the season when corn and wine are expected. Hence the absence of them was the more distressing, but also more significant and striking, showing itself to be a punishment from God. Since He was not acknowledged as the Giver when He gave them, He will manifest Himself more clearly as such in taking them away. Which was to cover her nakedness. The resulting want should be complete, its consequence ignominious bareness=utter destitution. And then will I uncover her shame. = her lovers (idols) shall also look upon her nakedness to her disgrace. She would become so miserable, that even they shall despise her, though she once held herself so highly with them.
Hos_2:13-15. And I will bring to an end all her joy, etc. A still more definite indication of the punishment before threatened. All joy must cease. But joy culminates, and has its purest expression in the festivals, the yearly feasts, strictly speaking. חַג. Upon these follows the monthly feast, that of the new moon, and the weekly one, that of the Sabbath. כָל־מוֹעֲדָהּ then gathers all these up in one general expression. Even during the prevalence of idolatry the feast-days probably remained outwardly the same as before.
Hos_2:14. The devastation mentioned here is probably intended to follow up the cessation of joy; for the vine and the fig tree are the finest productions of Canaan, not necessary to the support of life, but affording the choicest delicacies (comp. Joe_1:7-12). [Henderson: “These nouns are to be taken as collectives, or rather, as Horsley suggests, as plantations of vines and fig trees. These should be left uncultivated on the removal of the inhabitants to a foreign region, comp. Isa_5:6; Isa_7:23-24.—M.]
Hos_2:15. And will visit upon her the days of Baal, that is, the feast-days just mentioned, for they were celebrated in honor of Baal, and not of Jehovah. And put on her ring, etc. This is an expression which in its strictness belongs only to the image; for Israel is compared to a coquettish prostitute, who is in the habit of thus adorning herself. Yet there may be allusion to the festal attire worn at the idol-feasts. And forgot me. A sharp and mournful contrast to the vain adornments of the prostitute. For the sake of the paramours she was never weary of decking herself out; but no more thought of Jehovah. It is plain how completely this whole threatening was fulfilled by the Assyrian invasion. Yet it is to be observed that this itself is not threatened here, and still less banishment. In general, no enemy is yet named, at least none definitely, but only the laying waste of the land. [Henderson: “Their entirely abandoning themselves to the service of idols, and their dereliction from the God of their fathers, are brought forward at the conclusion of this description of their conduct, in order to heighten the aggravation of their guilt, and render the announcement of the kindly disposition of Jehovah toward them, at the beginning of the following verse, the more surprising.”—M.]
B. Announcement of the Conversion of Israel and the beneficent Renewal of the Covenant.
Hos_2:16-19. Therefore behold I will allure her, etc. לָכֵן. We have had this word twice already in a similar construction (Hos_2:8; Hos_2:11) with the sense: because Israel has transgressed, therefore God will punish them. לכן also here naturally means: therefore. Every other explanation, such as veruntamen, or profecto, is arbitrary, and has arisen from the embarrassment occasioned by the difficulty which a “therefore” causes in this connection; for it is not clear from what a conclusion is drawn, whether from their sin or from their punishment or from their sudden desire to return (Hos_2:9). Nor is it clear what conclusion is drawn, whether punishment or a display of love. As regards the first question it is to be observed that the mention of Israel’s sin immediately precedes (Hos_2:15 at the end), while their punishment had been previously described, whose converting influence Hos_2:9 had already indicated. The expression: I will allure her, might certainly form a contrast to the words: she forgot me=while she forgets me, I am mindful of her and recall her to my thoughts. But the whole can hardly be merely an inference from what is said at the close of Hos_2:15, for the reference to the sin is there only incidental and subordinate to the description of the punishment. לכן therefore draws an inference not from Israel’s sin in itself, but from that sin as being punished, and punished not without severity, as was before plainly stated. Hence we find that לכן introduces a conclusion drawn from the contents of the whole preceding section=therefore because Israel has been punished for her sin and forgetfulness of me, and has been so reduced to a condition of distress that she longs after happiness in communion with me, I will allure her, etc. This reference to the whole of the preceding is certainly justified in our verse, since the discourse evidently takes here a new direction. if this is the sense of לכן, the conclusion which is drawn is not an announcement of punishment, against which the expression, “I will allure her” is decisive, but an exhibition of love, and yet such a display as is virtually determined by the sin that is punished, and which is connected immediately with the punishment, in order to foster those first motions of longing into a steadfast resolution to return. [Pocock, Newcome, Noyes, and Henderson translate: nevertheless, notwithstanding. They failed to discern the inner connection between the passages divided by this particle, which, in fact, never has the meaning they assign to it. Cowles reaches the right conclusion, though not upon exegetical grounds: “Some have found a difficulty here, inasmuch as the grievous sins of Israel seem to be no natural reason for giving the blessings hereafter promised. But the reasons, viewed fundamentally, lie deeper than the sins of Israel, even in God’s covenant love and faithfulness. He cannot bear that his own Israel should sink hopelessly under her sins into ruin. Therefore his pity moves Him to discipline and to mercy.” So also Pusey with most of the German Expositors—M.] And lead her into the desert: not as a punishment, for the allusion is to the leading of the children of Israel into the desert by Moses (comp. Hos_2:17). But this was really a deliverance, namely, from the afflictions of Egypt. At first it is such only negatively, implying that they will no longer continue in such distress. They are not yet in Canaan. Even the desert brought want and destitution with it: and this is brought first into view here. In so far the situation indicated by the leading into the desert coincides actually and outwardly with the punishment by affliction and calamity pictured in Hos_2:11 (the “wilderness” is the realization of that which is threatened in Hos_2:11 ff.). But this situation is presented here also under another point of view, namely (as being compared with the wanderers in the desert under Moses), that of a situation while surrounded with affliction yet leading in truth to deliverance, and the idea of punishment is thereby converted into that of chastisement. For the destitution felt in the desert meant here had its definite disciplinary aim,—to shut up the people to the discovery of their need of help, and to lead them to faith in God through the help and gracious guidance which they then experienced. Thus they in the desert, even though encompassed with need, were still upon the way to Canaan, the land of blessings, and salvation. This is made plain from what follows: And speak to her heart = comfort her (comp. e. g.Gen_34:3; Gen_50:21; Isa_40:2). These words imply an inward consolation by manifestations of love which immediately follow—the blessings that were withdrawn are again supplied.
Hos_2:17. And I will give her her vineyards from thence = from the desert, so that they, as soon as they shall have passed the limits of Canaan, shall receive them, that is, the vineyards which Israel once possessed but had lost (Hos_2:14), therefore: her vineyards. What happened once is a type of that which shall happen again. And the Valley of Achor for a door of hope. The Valley of Achor here comes into view: (1) on account of its appellative signification: valley of trouble, affliction (Isa_7:25). This shall be made a gate of hope (a valley=a natural gate): therefore a transformation of mourning into joy; (2) but also on account of its position near the border of Canaan. For Israel is conceived of as marching out of the desert into Canaan. It remains a question whether the occasion of the name is also to be taken into account. In this valley the anger of God was appeased by the stoning of Achan, and was removed from Israel to give place to renewed favor. Through that which then happened to Achan, this valley became a door of hope to Israel, which lay exposed to the anger of God. And this again sets forth the thought that punishment, affliction, shall become to them the way to renewed favor. The conception is more profound than if it merely set forth a change from one situation to another. But the image and the thing represented are not exact counterparts. Here Israel is the party who is punished and is again to find favor. But there Israel finds favor through the punishment of a single individual. [Hengstenberg: “The people when they entered into Canaan were immediately deprived of the favor of God by the transgression of an individual—Achan,—which was only a single fruit from the tree of the sin which was common to all. But God himself in his mercy made known the means by which his lost favor might be regained; and thus the place which seemed to be the door of destruction became the door of hope.… This particular dealing of God, however, is based upon his nature, and must therefore repeat itself when Israel again comes into similar circumstances.”—M.]
And she shall shout aloud thither. The Lord comes to meet Israel (comp. Hos_2:16 : shall comfort her); and Israel cries out towards the plaee whence he comes forth, looking back to the מִשָׁם. The meaning is, that with thankful acknowledgments she accepts these tokens of his love; not only receives them but answers to them by suitable conduct. Others suppose that עָנָה means here: to be afflicted, or to be humbled. But such a sense is unsuitable in this verse. Besides, שָׁמָּה would be equal to simple שָׁם. [The view given above as to the meaning of this clause, and adopted by most of the German expositors, is defended at length by Hengstenberg, and is probably the correct one. All the English expositors, on the other hand, follow the old explanation which translates the verb: to sing, and see a special allusion to the song of Miriam and the Israelites after the crossing of the Red Sea. The chief arguments in favor of the former view are, (1.) The greater fitness of the idea of “answering,” as exhibiting a change of character in the Israelites and their readiness to turn to God. Singing would merely indicate that their distress was removed, which was not the ultimate object of God’s dealing with them. (2.) The meaning, “answering,” is the leading usage of the Kal; that of singing is proper to the Piel. (3.) שָׁמָּה ought to be rendered “thither,” which suits the idea of answering, especially as explained above, but not that of singing.—M.] As on the day, etc. Perhaps there is an allusion here to the song of Moses (Exodus 15), in which Israel gave a grateful answer to the deliverance which God had wrought for them. ענה would then be rendered directly: sing. So the Vulgate and Luther (comp. 1Sa_18:7; 1Sa_21:11; 1Sa_29:5, to strike up a responsive song). Yet the general signification is probably to be preferred.
Hos_2:18 is then attached to this ענה. My husband. That is, she will recognize in Jehovah her true spouse, regard Baal no longer as combined with God, thus (by a convenient escamotage so natural to the human heart which becomes inwardly apostate from God) to all appearance calling upon Jehovah, but really putting Baal in his place and thus dispossessing Him.
Hos_2:19. And I will remove the name of Baal from her mouth = I will so act that thou shalt not take the name of the idols into thy mouth any longer, that is, shalt not honor them (for as long as they are honored they are taken into the mouth, are thought of), but wilt depart from them entirely, have nothing more to do with them. The promise is a literal fulfillment of Exo_23:13; (comp. also Zec_13:2), and expressed in the same words.
Hos_2:20-22. And I will mate a covenant for them in that day, etc. A covenant for them, in their interest, so that they shall suffer no injury. Observe here how the figure of the woman as addressed is here departed from, only to be returned to in the next verse. The covenant with the wild beasts lays upon them the obligation not to injure mankind, and especially not to lay waste the land. That punishment was threatened for the immediate future (comp Hos_2:14). Just for that reason it is now promised to the converted and favored people that they shall be defended from it. [Keil: “The three classes of animals that are dangerous to men are mentioned here, as in Gen_9:2. Beasts of the field as distinguished from the domestic animals (behemoth are beasts that live in freedom in the fields, either wild beasts, or game that devours or injures the fruits of the field). By the fowls of heaven, we are to understand chiefly the birds of prey. Remes does not mean reptiles, but active creatures, the smaller animals of the earth which move about swiftly.”—M.] And I will break bow and sword and war. To break the weapons of war means to cause war to cease forever. This is expressly intimated in what is attached here by a zeugma. To break war in pieces,—to break bow and sword, and so to put an end to war. The whole is the fulfillment of Lev_26:3 ff.; comp. Isa_2:4; Isa_11:6 ff; Isa_35:9; Zec_9:10; Eze_34:25 ff. And not merely will a condition of security and peace be afforded, but also that after which Israel longs (Hos_2:18) will be given, namely, intercourse with God. Upon this alone is Israel’s renewed prosperity based.
And I will betroth thee to me forever. A new marriage-contract is to be signed. Israel now converted, becomes altogether different, is regarded again as an unstained virgin, and is betrothed by God to Himself. What formerly existed, that she was once a faithless spouse, is left quite out of sight. For אֵרֵשׂ means: to woo a maiden, to betroth her. The words, “I will betroth her,” are thrice repeated, to take all doubt away from the statement. This covenant is now to last forever without any interruption—in righteousness and justice, in mercy and compassion. We are evidently to understand here the righteousness which is displayed in Jehovah’s appearing to favor his people and defending their cause against their enemies, from whose power he delivers them. Such righteousness and judgment are, with relation to the enemies, only negative, that is, they are displayed in punishing them; but, with relation to God’s people, positive, so that righteousness really bears the sense of salvation, deliverance. In so far Luther is right, when he holds that such righteousness is the imputed righteousness of Christ. For there is certainly presented the notion of God’s intervention to bestow favor upon man, and therefore of an act of justification, only not at first as connected with the accusings of conscience by reason of guilt, but in relation to God’s punitive judgments against sin. These, so to speak, lose the right to destroy God’s people any longer, because they are accepted by Him as converted. Keil explains the words as meaning, the righteous judgment by which God purifies his people, in order to eradicate everything which, on the side of the Church, could do prejudice to the covenant. But the discourse has already passed beyond this. The judgment has been already inflicted, and we are now upon the ground of the complete promises of salvation, when God no more appears against his people, but interferes in their behalf in accordance with the purification which has been effected. The disposition of mind in God represented by this righteousness and judgment is still further brought out by the two words: in mercy and compassion. Every idea of an intervention of God in his people’s behalf upon the ground of their merit is thus excluded. What God exercises towards them is purely favor and compassion.
Hos_2:22. But these shall never cease. Hence the addition: in faithfulness. Only thus does this engagement receive the pledge of its eternal duration, while by the preceding generally the possibility of its ratification is set forth. Righteousness and judgment, favor and compassion, are the conditio sine qua non and causa efficiens; faithfulness is the essential modus of the engagement. The end then is: And thou shalt know Jehovah. No interruption of such relation shall ever intervene between Jehovah and Israel; upon the establishment of such intercourse, a true knowledge of God will be imparted. This naturally does not mean a mere cognition of God, least of all a mere logical conception of Him,—in general, not a mere intellectual relation to Him based upon the operations of the understanding, but a personal living relation, that deeper notion which is certainly sometimes conveyed by יָדַע.
Hos_2:23-23. And it will be on that day that I will answer, etc. The consequence of the covenant newly ratified is the readiness of God to bless his people most richly. The betrothal having been accomplished, the marriage presents are not wanting, and heaven and earth, standing in the service of the bridegroom and husband, must contribute their share. The heavens, etc., in a descending series, are represented as earnestly asking the personified objects above them respectively whether the blessing which they expect is to be dispensed. The heavens ask Jehovah, the earth the heavens, etc., or they look towards them with longing. And now this questioning, this earnest request (in the time of Israel’s rejection) is “answered” cordially and assuringly. In how far, however, this original sense of ענה is carried out, or whether it does not pass over into the signification of our “agree with”=comply, listen to, cannot be definitely shown. It is, however, in accordance with the largely poetical conception to assume here a strict prosopopœia. The first object of the representation is Jehovah; therefore the sense of the whole naturally is, that Jehovah, upon whom all blessing depends, will confer upon his Church the blessings He had withdrawn from it (comp. Deu_28:12 and the contrast, Deu_28:23 f.; Lev_26:19). [Keil: “By prosopopæia the prophet represents the heavens as praying to God, to allow it to give to the earth that which will insure its fertility, whereupon the heavens fulfill the desires of the earth, and the earth yields its produce to the nation.” Umbreit: “It is as though we heard the exalted harmonies of the united powers of creation sending forth their notes as they are sustained and moved by the eternal key-note of the creative and moulding Spirit.” Henderson compares the personification in Tibullus, I., Eleg. vii. 25. The extreme beauty of the figure here has often been praised.—M.] Will answer Jezreel. The name Jezreel is here used unexpectedly instead of Israel. The same name which symbolized the judgment upon Israel (Hos_1:4) is here employed directly to designate the favored people according to its appellative significance: God will sow, especially as in Hos_2:2 the hope of victory was connected with Jezreel. Israel appears as the sowing of God, because planted anew by divine grace, as Hosea 2:25 shows immediately. Thus the first name of evil omen is taken away and converted into its opposite. The same is true of the other two names. Israel will again be called “Favored,” and the “People of God,” because it is his. It is therefore said, beautifully completing the picture, that the people again know God as their God. Thus God’s renewed favor, and the people’s new heart, go hand in hand. On the fulfillment of the promise, see the Doctrinal Section, No. 4.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The whole tenor of our chapter presupposes that Jehovah’s relation to Israel as his people is compared to a marriage. If we seek the tertium comparationis in this comparison, it is manifest upon a general view, that everything of an accidental or external nature is denied of this relation, that it is presented as a union inward, sacred, and indissoluble, involving indefeasible rights and obligations. But, more especially, there are two elements entering into the nature of marriage, which form the points of comparison, namely, love, by which the husband is bound to the wife, and its correlative the requirement of fidelity, or of exclusive reciprocal affection, which He makes of her. Hence the relation of Jehovah to his people is compared to a marriage because his love to Israel is as strong and intimate as that of a husband to his wife. As the husband chooses the wife from love, and perhaps, urged by love, takes a poor maiden and raises her to himself, and in his married life attests his affection by being her protector and benefactor who cannot show her too many evidences of his devotion, so is it with Jehovah towards his people (comp. Hosea 2:10, 23, 24). Such love on the part of the husband must have as its correlative on the part of the wife, fidelity, undivided, exclusive affection. As certainly as the husband should expect this fidelity from his wife, so certainly shall Jehovah expect it from Israel; as strongly as the wife is bound to love him to the exclusion of all others, and as she does basely violate this duty by attaching herself to another, the same is true of the relation of Israel, God’s people, to Jehovah. But if unfaithfulness on the part of the wife is a violation of duty, it is also worthy of punishment. And if the punishment (rejection) of an unfaithful, adulterous wife is justifiable, so also is the punishment (rejection) of God’s faithless people. But this is only a chastisement wrung from love, and the source of deep anguish to the loving husband. Therefore the husband who loves his wife truly, with a love answering to the idea of marriage, while angry at her infidelity and employing the most severe means to punish it, only does so in order if possible to bring her back to her duty and as the only way to continue the alliance. Thus is it with Jehovah towards Israel. As his love has established the covenant with Israel, and displayed itself in it, so does it seek with its whole strength to preserve it unbroken through all interruptions,—in other words, to restore it.
2. The exhibition of God’s relation to his people under the figure of a marriage permits us, on the other hand, to draw an inference as to the nature of the marriage itself. Such an exalted and sacred relation could only be thus represented under an exalted view of marriage. The lively, strong, unchangeable love of God to his people, and the demand of an unchangeable fidelity answering to such love, and turning aside to no other object, is the subject of the representation. This marriage is necessarily conceived of as a relation constituted by such love on the part of the husband and such fidelity on the part of the wife. Without these it is not contracted; where these are wanting or cease to exist, it is shaken to its foundation. The husband cleaves in love to his wife and to none other: true marriage is in its very nature monogamic; the wife must in fidelity belong to this husband and to none other.
How severe is thus the condemnation of all actual adultery, and of all unchastity as the source of adultery, as read in the strong complaints against Israel as the unfaithful wife! What a spirit of moral purity and of chastity is expressed here! We find here already just the view of marriage, and, on the other side, of adultery and whoredom, which meets us in the New Testament, e. g., in the writings of Paul. The prophet know no better image than that of marriage to set forth the depth and sacredness of Jehovah’s relation to Israel, and the Apostle knows no better image than the relation of Christ to his Church to set forth the depth and sacredness of the marriage union.
3. “She knew not that I gave her,” etc. This is perpetually repeated. God blesses men with good things—undeservedly, even when they do not serve Him but “idols.” But they do not know that it is his hand from which they receive everything. It is just the superabundance of his gifts, that makes them so self-exalted and completely forgetful of Him. God must then change this abundance into want, and make presumptuous men feel their own impotence. And how deeply God can humble men! Such visitations are then the means by which God draws them again to Himself, teaches them to know Him, how unjust and at the same time how foolish is their apostasy from Him, how little their “idols” can help them, rather how ill they reward them; and how good it is, on the other hand, to abide by the service of the true God (“it was better with me then than now”). The fruit of such knowledge by humiliation is then the abandonment of idols and a turning to God.
4. That Hosea reverts with special fondness to the ancient history of Israel was already remarked in § 2 of the Introduction, and there shown to be connected with the fundamental idea of his prophetic discourses. In the later chapters (from the ninth onwards) this is specially apparent: but it is also found in our chapter, and thus in the earlier portion of his writings. In this he chiefly takes up the great deeds by which God manifested Himself to the fathers,—the exodus from Egypt, the journey through the Desert, the entrance into the Promised Land. These were the great fundamental acts of God in behalf of Israel, and were most deeply impressed upon the consciousness of the people; for they owed to these their very existence as his people, so that they could never forget them, not even in the season of their greatest decline. Prophetic discourse has in them therefore a sure, unassailable foundation upon which to take its stand. It can point out to the present, in a manner not to be resisted, the dealings of God in his specific relation to Israel his people, can draw from thence its most forcible arguments for its warning and chastening, as well as for its comfort and promises. It has been an advantage which it well understands and knows well how to use.
Special stress is in our chapter laid upon the journey through the desert as upon a season of great significance for Israel. Israel was in the wilderness: the milk and honey of the Promised Land were not yet; the flesh-pots of Egypt were no more. In the latter respect this season was one of deprivation and of want, and apparently of loss. But this was only apparent; for in reality it was not only a deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, which had both outwardly and inwardly injured the people, but God could draw so much nearer to the people spiritually as they were now reduced to corporeal distress, and attest and reveal Himself to them by his helpful and blessed mercy. It was just here that God concluded his covenant with Israel and made them his people, so that their real gain outweighed their apparent loss; and the people to whom God betrothed Himself was or became the people which found itself upon the way to the Promised Land. So the Prophet sees in the profound and fruitful significance of this journey, or rather of this leading through the Desert, a type of the blessing which a removal into the desert as a chastening would convey to the people who had become unfaithful to their God. They are deprived of their possessions, but so only stripped of the prosperity which had made them forgetful of God, and which was therefore an evil. And now when they have these no longer, and are thus freed from the fetters which have bound them spiritually, when, by foreign influences, so to speak, they are brought face to face with God, He has again free access to them; the time has come when God can again betroth Himself to the people who again return to Him, lead them again into the Promised Land, and restore them to a state of renewed prosperity and of richest blessing.
Those then who were led forth into the Desert did not realize the object of that experience. Nor was it individuals whom it was to profit, but the people as such. For them the journey through the wilderness was a season of trial in which they were being prepared to become God’s people, who should take possession of the Promised Land. And so in the sense of the prophetic promise the individuals who should suffer the judgment of devastation were not the same as those for whom the day of the new salvation was to break forth. That was to be a new generation. But the people were still the same, in the sense to be stated more clearly immediately.
5. With regard to the promise of our chapter and its fulfillment, the remark made in chap. 1 applies, namely, (a.) The fulfillment is not to be seen in the return of the Jews from the exile. This was, to be sure, a fulfillment, but only a small and feeble beginning. For the promise is to be regarded as essentially Messianic. And therefore we Christians, if to us the truth is fully and differently realized that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, must hold that this promise has found its fulfillment in Christ, and still finds it in Him; that is, in Christ the new “betrothal” of God to his people has already taken place; but the great salvation which is involved in this is as yet only partially realized, the completion is yet to come. The people of God are still marching through the desert; in Christ we are upon the sure way to the Promised Land, but that goal is not yet reached. (b.) Israel, to whom salvation is here promised by the Prophet, comes into view, not according to its natural nationality, but according to its divine destiny, or according to its typical significance as the People of God. They cannot perish beneath any judgment: for them a new day of salvation is waiting. But as this salvation is conditioned upon the coming of the Messiah, and we know clearly that the Messianic salvation is and shall be universal, so we are forbidden to restrict this great promised day of salvation to the external Israel, although the Prophet undeniably speaks of it,—Israel and God’s people being as yet to him essentially one,—and must extend it to the people of God generally, therefore to all believers, believers of Israel together with those of the Gentiles incorporated into the ancient Churchy, which must ever remain the parent stem. To Israel, who had become “Not-my-people,” many of the heathen who had been “Not-my-people” will unite themselves, and to them, to this whole complex “Not-my-people,” will God say: “Thou art my people:” and they will say: “My God.” So clearly and truly has Paul shown that the Gentiles must first become what Israel was, and that they shall and will really become so, that they shall actually overshadow Israel and so repair what they had lost. If these promises have not found and still do not find their fulfillment in the literal interpretation of what is said of Israel, it is clear that it is not a literal fulfillment of their contents, which speak of temporal blessings in the Holy Land, that is to be expected. Such limited blessings are inseparably connected with the limited range of application; but if the latter, the restriction to Israel, is only the shell and not the kernel, so is it with the former.
When the people of God were embodied in a nation, under the Old Testament, the possession of a definite country as the inheritance assigned them by God was something essential, and therefore, as the desolation of the country was a token of the Divine anger, so its fruitfulness, or in general a state of temporal prosperity, was necessarily an indication of the Divine favor. And so the temporal blessings predicted by the Prophet are the tokens of acceptance, of the returning favor of God. The latter, however, the return of favor, is the main element, the kernel which remains after the husk is stripped off. Yet the favor of God manifests itself still under the New Covenant in temporal blessings, while his wrath is declared in temporal punishments. But it does not need to be shown that the complete abandonment of the notion of a national and local settlement in a definite country, as belonging to the conception of a people of God, went further than this; that the New Covenant opens up a prospect of spiritual and inward blessings and enjoyments of which the former were only a thin shadow; and, in spite of this, to insist upon the literal sense is to beat in the face of the New Covenant, and to deny to the prophetic promises generally their lasting significance. For the legitimate consequence of such a theory is to declare that these are not and never shall be fulfilled; it is not simply to dream of a fulfillment expected still in the millennium, and to transfer to this epoch, which is not described any more definitely in the Apocalypse, conditions for which it is felt that room can be found nowhere else.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
God’s testimony against this apostate people: (1) threatening them with severe judgment; (2) and yet alluring them back with glorious promises.—The judgments of God, (1) invoked only by faithless apostasy from Him and base disowning of his favor; (2) aiming only at the complete conversion of the apostate and the joyful acceptance of the converted.
Hos_2:4. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Believers are bound to warn in love their brothers, sisters, or parents, who are remiss in the practice of true religion, and to bring them to the right way.
Hos_2:7. God is the real Giver of all temporal and spiritual blessings. If, therefore, thou hast any want, seek its supply from God.
Lange: It is much more easy and pleasant for a true child of God to serve Him in the enjoyment of his favor and with inward peace, than it is for an untaught child of the world to cleave to it with its restless service of sin.
[Matthew Henry: Crosses and obstacles in an even course are great blessings, and are so to be accounted; they are God’s hedges to keep us from transgressing, to restrain us from wandering out of the green pastures, to “withdraw man from his purpose” (Job_33:17), to make the way of sin difficult that we may not go on in it, and to keep us from it whether we will or not. We have reason to bless God for restraining grace and for restraining judgment. God is a bountiful benefactor even to those whom He foresees will be ungrateful and unthankful to Him.—M.]
Hos_2:10. God ever remains the Possessor of the gifts He bestows. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: It is a shameful and inexcusable sin to misuse the gifts of God, in order to serve our evil desires or to promote evil ends. It is a great sin to devote the riches, which God bestows, to the service of idolatry or superstition.
[Pusey: Since “men have as many strange gods as they have sins,” what do they who seek pleasure or gain greatness or praise in forbidden ways or from forbidden sources, than make their pleasure or gain or ambition their god, and offer their time and understanding and ingenuity and intellect, yea their whole lives and their whole selves, their souls and bodies, all the gifts of God, in sacrifice to the idols they have made?—M.]
Hos_2:11. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: God takes his gifts from us when we misuse them. He demands a heavy reckoning.
[Matthew Henry: Those that abuse the mercies God gives them to his dishonor cannot expect to enjoy them long.—M.]
Hos_2:12. Hengstenberg: Him who forsakes God for the world, God puts to shame before the world, and that all the more, the nearer he formerly stood to Him.
[Matthew Henry: Those who will not deliver themselves into the hand of God’s mercy cannot be delivered out of the hand of his justice.—M.]
Hos_2:14. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Thus on account of false worship of God and impious doctrine, are whole countries destroyed by the Lord. O, that true zeal would animate the great ones of this world to destroy the kingdom of Satan everywhere powerfully, so that the hand of the Lord may not smite them.
[Hengstenberg: The sacred writers are not ashamed to use a base word for such base traffic. They speak throughout of common things in a common manner; for the vulgar word is the most suitable for a vulgar thing. The morality of a people or of an age may be measured by their speaking of a vulgar thing in a vulgar manner, or the reverse.—M.]
Hos_2:15. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: This is the way of the gracious and merciful God: if He does first lead us into the desert and make us feel the rod of his wrath, He speaks kindly to us afterwards when we repent, and applies his mercy to our stricken hearts, which are thus made more capable of using it aright.
[Matthew Henry: 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.
Pusey: God has mercy, not because we deserve it, but because we need it. He draws us because we are so deeply sunken. He prepares the soul by these harder means, and thus the depths of her misery cry to the depths of his compassion: and because chastisement alone would stupefy her, not melt her, He changes his wrath into mercy, and speaks to the heart which, for her salvation, He has broken.—M.]
Hos_2:17. Strife and tribulation are to believers by God’s grace a door of hope (Rom_5:4). It is a peculiar and special work for God’s children to praise Him with mouth, heart, and life, for so many blessings received.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: Behold, O soul, the consequence of thy true repentance. Thou hast new hope, new joy, new faith in Jesus the Bridegroom of our souls, the abandonment of all false and hypocritical worship, new blessings from God, security, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost!
[Pusey: To each returning soul, the valley of trouble, or the lowliness of repentance, becometh a door of patient longing, not in itself but because God giveth it so; a longing which reacheth on, awaiteth on, entering within the vail, and bound fast to the throne of God.—M.]
Hos_2:19. Keil: The abandonment of idolatry and mixed religion is a work of divine grace which renews the heart and fills it with abhorrence of idolatry in its gross or refined forms.
Hos_2:20. Only then can men live with full enjoyment and security in the world, when they feel assured that they have a merciful God.
[Matthew Henry: Tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia.—M.]
Hos_2:21. Rieger: When the kind alluring of God finds entrance into us, when it educes an answer of humble penitence, how the faithful God becomes inclined to make all his covenant good to us, and to let no good thing fail of all that He has spoken.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: How highly are the souls of believers esteemed by God that He should betroth Himself to them, and that to eternity, and present Himself and his love to them literally as their own! For in this He presents to them his dear righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, which is of infinite worth; He acquits them in judgment; He displays toward them mercy and compassion by the forgiveness of sins. He even betroths Himself to them in faithfulness, and thus implants the true knowledge of Him in their souls. Prove, O soul, whether thou art as intimate with Him: Dost thou enjoy with Him a blessed and true communion of love? Why is it then that thou dost still love so much the world and sin, and that thy mind is ever occupied with other objects than Jesus?
[Saint Bernard: How can it be that so mighty a king should become a Bridegroom, that the Church should be exalted into a bride? That alone which is all-powerful hath power for this, Love that is strong as death. How should that not raise her up, which has already made Him to stoop? If He hath not acted as a spouse, if He hath not loved as a spouse, been jealous as a spouse, then hesitate thou to think thyself espoused.—M.]
Hosea 2:23, 24. If God be for us, who can be against us. Faith will assuredly gain a hearing. Behold, all creatures are ready to serve believers. Everything must drop blessings upon them.
Pfaff. Bibelwerk: God pours down upon believers from the lofty heaven of his mercy a shower of spiritual gifts, yes, even the oil of the Holy Spirit Himself. It is our part to open the mouths of our heart, and most eagerly receive those blessing which God’s mercy vouchsafes to us.
[Matthew Henry: 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 run up all the streams to the fountain, and taste covenant love in common mercies, which makes them doubly sweet.—M.]
Hosea 2:25. Pfaff. Bibelwerk: There is thus always time left for repentance, and the Lord still preserves a seed for Himself, which He makes fruitful and increases. If He then is so rich in mercy, O let us become ready to receive it by a true repentance and conversion, and not suppose that this great work can be accomplished in a life-less spirit or with a hypocritical behavior.
Cramer: True faith knows God not only as God, but as its God.
Rieger: All in this life that is truly good is included in this: My God! if said not from habit, but with a full title to its use. This is a word of faith, by which we place our whole reliance upon the almighty, true, and compassionate God; it is a word of hope by which we provide ourselves with all good perpetually in God, who is a Rock of Eternity, a word of love and fellowship by which we delight ourselves in the goodness of God, and give ourselves wholly up to Him.
[Pusey: To say my God, is to own an exclusive relation to God alone. It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and my Salvation, in whom alone I will hope, whom alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, and obey, and serve, with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, my God and my All!—M.]
Footnotes:
[1]Hos_2:4.—נַאֲפוּפִים, ἅπ. λεγ.= נִאֻפִיכ. Fürst regards it as signifying objects of idolatrous worship, there fore: little images, which are represented as being carried upon the breast. [But this is opposed to the parallel expression, זְנוּכִים, which, as Hengstenberg says, is evidently to be taken as the species (adultery) of which the other (whoredoms, acts of unchastity) is the genus. As illustrating the fitness of this picture, Manger compares Eze_23:3, and Horace, Od., i., 19, 7, 8.—M.]
[2][Hos_2:8—גְּדֵיָה. J. H. Michaelis and Jahn point in their editions נְּדֵרָהּ, her wall, and this reading, Hengstenberg assumes, without any discussion, to be correct. But there is an obvious unsuitableness in this. The wall could not be represented as being “her” wall unless it were conceived of as existing before the action on the part of Jehovah, which action was to make the wall.—M.]
[3][Hos_2:11.—לְכַסּוֹת, (which were) to cover. Such an ellipsis is quite common. The rendering of the LXX. γοῦ μὴ καλύπτειν, conveys the sense, but is not a translation. It was quite unnecessary for Newcome, Horsley, Boothroyd, and others following Houbigant, who was misled by the LXX., to change the לְ into מְ.—M.]
[4]Hos_2:14.—אֶתְנָה. This is usually derived from תנה, as also is the usual synonym, אֶתְנָן. Hengstenberg labors to prove the derivation of both words from נתן and its 1st fut.: a “I-will-give-thee,” similar to our “forget-me-not.” The absence of daghesh-forte in both nouns would seem to prove the untenableness of this hypothesis.—M.]
[5]Hos_2:17.—עָנְתָה. Some take this from ענה, to be bowed down, here: to be humble. But this does not suit the sense of the verse. Besides, שָׁמָּהּ would then = שָׁם.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–5 mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to…
Plead--expostulate.
mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to "her children," that is, to the individual citizens of the state (compare Isa 50:1).
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for she is not my wife--She has deprived herself of her high privilege by spiritual adultery.
out of her sight--rather, "from her face." Her very countenance unblushingly betrayed her lust, as did also her exposed "breasts."
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 v2 APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLIC ACTS AND NAMES IN Hosea…
APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLIC ACTS AND NAMES IN Hosea 1, 3 — Hos_2:2-23
Chapters 1-3 are not arranged in what appears to be the logical order: chapter 3 attaches itself to Hos_1:9; Hos_3:1, continues the story of Hosea’s domestic life. He is told to go and “love a woman beloved of her friend, and an adulteress.” Marti thinks, but without good reason, that this act is entirely independent of chapter 1. The symbolism would be destroyed if the woman of Hos_3:1, were any other than Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim (Hos_1:3). Lo-ammi (Hos_1:9) suggests the step in the domestic drama which is left unrecorded. The woman had fled from her home to give herself more freely to her shameful practices; Hos_3:2 seems to imply that she had become the slave concubine of another. Hosea, impelled by love and adivine impulse, buys her back, though for a while he does not restore her to the full privileges of wifehood (Hos_3:3).
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This entire history is presupposed in Hos_2:2-23; Hos_3:4-5, which sections contain the application of the prophet’s own experience to the history of Israel. The historical persons in Hos_1:2-9, and Hos_3:1-3. the prophet, his wife, his children, here become allegorical figures. Israel is the adulterous wife, Jehovah the deceived but still loving husband; the individual Israelites are the children. Some of the latter have remained free from the sins of their mother. To these Jehovah addresses himself, that they should attempt the restoration of the faithless wife and mother, Israel, to the wronged but yearning husband, Jehovah. The utterance opens with a description of Israel’s whoredom (Hos_2:5), which is followed by an announcement of the evil consequences of the faithlessness (Hos_2:6-13); it closes with a delineation of the efforts to be put forth by Jehovah to win back the faithless wife, and of the glories awaiting her when she comes to her senses (Hos_2:14-23).
The faithlessness of Israel, Hos_2:2-5.
2. Plead [“Contend”] — The urgency of the appeal is indicated by its repetition. The individual Israelites who are still sensitive to the divine influence are addressed; they are urged to “exert a corrective, reforming influence on the corrupt aggregate” in order to avoid more serious consequences. The nation is called their mother — Out of love to her they should work for her best interests.
She is not my wife, neither am I her husband — The marriage tie is already dissolved through her whoredom; and unless she repents there is no reason why she should not be utterly cast off.
Out of her sight — Literally from her face; as the next clause shows, to be understood literally. The expression of the countenance reveals the character (Jer_3:3).
Adulteries from between her breasts — Interpreted by some as referring to the wearing of amulets between the breasts in honor of the deities with whom the Israelites committed adultery; but of such a custom we have no knowledge. It is better understood as another bold expression of her adulterous character, the shameless uncovering of the breast. Another possible interpretation is to regard the abstract adultery used for the concrete adulterer, a usage not uncommon in Hebrew. The adulterer who lies between the breasts (Son_1:13) is to be driven away. 3. If this is not done she must suffer the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Lest I strip her naked — Seems to have been one way of punishing an adulteress (Eze_16:38-39).
As in the day that she was born — At the time of the Exodus; then Israel had nothing. All she acquired subsequently she owed to Jehovah; but if she continues in her disloyalty to him he will withdraw his support, and she will relapse into a state of complete destitution.
Wilderness — In punishment for Israel’s adulteries the land will be robbed of its glory and fertility; the fruitful fields will be turned into a dreary desert. The same thought is expressed in the next clause: as a result of drought the land will become utterly desolate. People and land are not kept apart; both will suffer.
The last clause of Hos_2:3 should be combined with the first clause of Hos_2:4.
And slay her with thirst — The final punishment of an adulteress was death (Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22; Eze_16:40). In this case Israel, or rather the land, will perish of thirst, that is, drought.
Her children — The inhabitants of the land must share in the punishment of the mother, because they are children of whoredoms. As said above, the children are the individual Israelites; in their individual capacity they manifest the same tendencies as the nation as a whole. The phrase, therefore, means not simply children born of a mother with unchaste tendencies, but children possessing such tendencies, and indulging in unchaste practices.
The guilt of Israel is described further in Hos_2:5; the verse thus supplies the ground for the earnest appeal in Hos_2:2.
Played the harlot — Openly she violated her obligations to Jehovah; such conduct is rightly called shameful. It was also premeditated; deaf to all exhortations, she declared firmly,
I will go after my lovers — Or, paramours. By these are meant not the surrounding nations, but the Baalim (Hos_2:13), the gods of the native Canaanites. Among the latter no supreme deity seems to have been worshiped; separate districts each had its own deity. The worship of these probably arose in connection with agriculture. “The local Baals fertilized each his own district by his streams and springs, and hence they were the owners — this is the meaning of the term Baal — of these naturally fertile spots.” In time they were regarded also as the spenders of rain; and the Baals were worshiped as the givers of fertility and prosperity. When the Israelites came into the land they, though nominally continuing to worship Jehovah, were to some extent influenced by the natives, so that they came to see in these Baalim the givers of “every good and perfect gift,” and to pay them the homage belonging exclusively to Jehovah. Herein consisted their whoredom which the prophet condemns. The Baal against whom Elijah fought was an entirely different deity. Several products are enumerated as being ascribed to the power of the Baalim. These, the most important, are only samples; everything else was thought to come from them.
Bread — Food.
Water — Because of its scarcity prized very highly by an agricultural people.
Wool and flax — From which clothing was made.
Oil — See on Joe_1:10.
Drink — Literally, drinks. Wine and other drinks made of fruit, such as dates, figs, raisins. Food, clothing, and articles of luxury were all traced to the Baalim. For this disloyalty to Jehovah, Israel must be punished. Jehovah must vindicate himself.
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 vv2–5 2. Plead with your mother, plead] The repetition of…
2. Plead with your mother, plead] The repetition of the appeal shews its urgency. ‘Do not murmur against me’, Jehovah seems to say, ‘plead your cause against your own mother: Israel is the author of her own calamities.’
for she is not my wife …] A parenthetical explanation of the expression ‘your mother’. Adultery has destroyed the relation of the wife to the husband, but not of the mother to the children. Comp. Isa_50:1.
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her whoredoms out of her sight] Rather, from her face, the index of obstinacy (comp. Jer_3:3), as the breasts of shamelessness.
2–7. The prophecy begins with a solemn admonition on the faithless conduct of Israel towards her Divine Bridegroom. The dramatis personæ are the same as in chap. 1; only, whereas in chap. 1 the husband, wife, and children, are both historical persons and significant symbols, in chap. 2 they are obviously pure allegories. Israel becomes the adulterous wife, and Jehovah the aggrieved husband. The individual Israelites are the children. The appeal of Jehovah to the latter implies that they have not altogether given way to their inherited propensities; they can still be expected, at least in some cases, to cooperate for the extinction of a corrupt worship. Comp. 1Ki_19:18 ‘seven thousand in Israel … which have not bowed unto the Baal’.
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 vv2–5 (2) Plead with your mother . . .—Contend, or…
(2) Plead with your mother . . .—Contend, or plead in judgment. Let the awakened conscience of the present generation rise up in judgment with the nation as a whole. By “mother” we are to understand the nation Israel, viewed as a collective abstract; and by the “children” (Hos_2:4) the inhabitants who are units in the total aggregate. Ammi and Ruhamah without the negative prefix, show that this awakening of conscience has given them back their privileges.
Render, That she may put away her whoredoms from her face: i.e., her meretricious guiles, her unblushing idolatry, her voluptuous service of gods that are no God. This strong image was constantly on the lips of the prophets, and had been burned by cruel sorrow into the very heart of Hosea. It acquired portentous meaning in the hideous impurities of the worship of Baal-peor and Ashtoreth, against which the Jehovah worship was a tremendous protest.
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 vv2–5 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not…
Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not thy wife, neither am I her husband. In this second chapter the same cycle of events recurs as in the first, with this difference, that what is expressed by symbol in the one is simply narrated in the other. The cycle is the common one of sin: its usual consequences of suffering and sorrow; then succor and sympathy in case of repentance. The persons addressed in the verse before us are those individuals in Israel who had still retained their integrity, and who, notwithstanding surrounding defection and abounding ungodliness, had continued steadfast in their loyalty and love to the Lord. They might be few in number, widely scattered, perhaps unknown to each other, and of comparatively little note; yet they are here called on to raise their voice in solemn warning and earnest protest against the national defection and wickedness. The congregation in its totality, or whole people taken conjointly, is compared to the mother, but individual members to the children, and the sense is that they are to plead with each other to bring them back to the way of goodness" (Kimchi). The nation as such, and in its impiety, is the mother; the pious persons still found in it are here required to testify for God both by exhortation and example. "The congregation of Israel is compared to an adulteress, and the children of the different generations to the children of whoredoms. Before them the prophet says, "Plead with your mother (Kimchi). Adultery per se is a virtual dissolution of the marriage-tie; idolatry is spiritual adultery; the close and tender relationship into which God has graciously condescended to take Israel is rendered null and void, and that through Israel"s own fault. God threatens the renunciation of it, unless perchance the pleading of the still faithful children might recall the erring mother to penitence and purity. A case the converse of this is that presented in Isa_1:1, where the mother"s divorce is attributed to the unfaithfulness of the children. Where," asks the Lord in that passage, is the bill of your mother"s divorcement, whom I have put away?... for your transgressions is your mother put away." Ki before the second clause is either recitative, introducing the words of pleading, or assigns a reason; the latter seems preferable. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts. The word mippaneyha is rather to be rendered "from her face" than "out of her sight." The expression is to be taken literally, as the word "breasts" in the parallel clause proves. Thus Kimchi rightly explains it, saying, "Since he compares her to harlot, he attributes to her the ways of harlots; for the harlot"s way is to adorn her face with various kinds of colors, that she may appear fair in the eyes of her paramours." But in addition to ornaments as earrings or nose-rings, and other ways of decking herself, as by painting, the expression may imply lascivious looks and wanton expressions of countenance; while the mention of breasts may indicate the making of them bare for the purpose of meretricious blandishments, or as indicating the place of the adulterer. (comp. Eze_23:3 and Son_1:13) The Jewish commentators adopt the latter sense. Aben Ezra comments on the grammatical form of the words teuncha and naaphupheha (the former by duplication of the second radical, and the latter by that of the third) as intensive; while Rashi and Kimchi refer to the pressure of the breasts. But others understand them figuratively, the countenance indicating boldness, and the breasts shamelessness. Thus Horace speaks of the brilliant beauty (nixor) and coquettishness (protervitas) of Glyeera.
Vers. 2-5. The prophet exhibits the gross sin of idolatry.
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The prophet in this section exposes the shame as well as sin of idolatry. It is a mistaken notion to suppose, with some, that the tribe of Judah is here urged to plead with the tribes of Israel; for Israel cannot, with any propriety of speech or figure, be spoken of as the mother in this case, however possibly they may be addressed as brethren and sisters. The Church or nation is the mother, and the individual members, as nursed and brought up by her, are the children. The doctrines symbolized in the preceding chapter are here more fully developed and plainly set forth.
I PLEADING COMMANDED. The explanation which Calvin gives of the first clause of this second verse is ingenious, yet we must regard it as rather specious than sound. Instead of "plead," he employs the word "contend;" and interprets the contention to imply that Israel, instead of censuring the seeming severity of God"s dealings with them, should rather condemn their mother"s sin as the guilty cause of that severity, and thus cast the blame of their sufferings, not on God, as though he had falsified his covenant, but upon their mother, the Israelitish Church or kingdoms that had fallen away and fallen far from fulfilling the conditions of the covenant. After referring to the mark of disgrace fixed on the children born by a marriage with a wife who has been repudiated by her husband, he says, "When a husband repudiates his wife through waywardness, the children justly regard him with hatred. Why? "Because he loved not our mother as he ought to have done; he has not honored the bond of marriage." It is, therefore, usually the case that the children"s affections are alienated from their father, when he treats their mother with too little humanity or entire contempt. So the Israelites, when they saw themselves rejected, wished to throw the blame on God. For by the name mother are the people here called; it is transferred to the whole body of the people, or the race of Abraham. God had espoused that people to himself, and wished them to be like a with to him. Since, then, God was a Husband to the people, the Israelites were as sons born by that marriage. But when they were repudiated, the Israelites said that God dealt cruelly with them, for he had cast them away for no fault. The prophet now undertakes the defense of God"s cause, and speaks also in his person. Contend, contend,"he says, with your mother your dispute is not with me." He brings this charge against the Israelites, that they had been repudiated for the flagitious conduct of their mother, and had ceased to be counted the children of God... the blame of their rejection belonged to the whole race of Abraham (i.e. the mother); but no blame could be imputed to God." We rather understand the pleading mentioned as that which the pious remnant of the nation, who had still kept themselves separate from idolatry and the general degeneracy, are exhorted to address to their mother, that is to say, to the bulk of the people with the heads of the congregation and rulers of the nation. It is the duty of believers to plead for God and his truth, even though the great body of Church or nation should be opposed to them. This is specially the case in times of spiritual leanness, and in days of deep declension or entire apostasy. Thus our Lord and his apostles plod with the people of the Jews in their days, charging their rulers, the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees, with the gravest dereliction of duty. Yet there must be tenderness in this pleading. It is remarkable that, as Jerome remarks, he commands "the sons (children) to speak not at all to the wife of their father whom she forsook, but to their mother who bare them." Neither is there, on the other hand, any impropriety in thus pleading with an erring parent, for we find that Jonathan thus pleaded with his father, Saul, on behalf of David. Humble and modest, yet firm and faithful pleading, is not only lawful, but dutiful even on the part of private persons against national corruptions or public profanations, as of God"s Name, or Word, or day, or worship.
II PENITENCE ENJOINED. Though Israel had forfeited her right to the name or privilege of wife since she had so grievously fallen away from faithfulness and affection, and though God disowned the relationship as she had virtually dissolved her marriage union by her unfaithfulness, yet she had not actually and formally received the bill of divorce parting her away; in other words, her outward and public rejection. There was thus still left space for repentance, and room for hope in case of repentance. So great is the mercy of God, that if she lent an ear to the pleadings of her children orphaned through her misconduct, and put away her whoredoms or defilements with many lovers, and her adulteries or departures from her rightful Husband and Lord, she might hope for restoration. Thus God deals with sinners in general, if they will only hearken to the admonitions and invitations of his Word, and put away from them the objects, one or many, of their sinful attachment, which withdraw their affection from him who is their true and proper Object. There is a practical comment by Matthew Henry on the close of this verse which appears to us well worth quoting. He says, "Every sinful course persisted in is an adulterous departure from God; and here we may see what it is truly to repent of it and turn from it.
(1) True penitents will forsake both open sins and secret sins; will put away, not only the whoredoms that lie in sight, but those that lie in secret between their breasts the sin that is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel.
(2) They will both avoid the outward occasions of sin and mortify the inward disposition to it.
III PUNISHMENT THREATENED. The punishment threatened in case of impenitence consists of several particulars.
1. There is destitution of the extremest kind. Israel would be stripped of all the favors, temporal and spiritual, which God had bestowed, and be so situated that she could not help herself. The idea is more fully developed by Ezekiel, who in Hosea 16 presents us with a most pitiable picture that of an infant exposed, neglected, nude, and helpless: "As for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born.
2. Next to destitution is desolation. In this particular the representation is that of a wilderness and a dry land, or rather of a traveler in such a district. The nature of the wilderness or of the way through it is easily inferred from other Scriptures; thus we read of Israel"s departure from Horeb: "We went through all that great and terrible wilderness;" again it is written, "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness." A traveler, in journeying through that waste and howling and terrible wilderness, would meet with many a rough road, many a rugged way, many a rocky ascent, many an uncultivated waste, many a harsh sound, many a scaresome sight, many a tangled spot, many a thorny place, many a toil, and many a trial. Travelers passing through such a scene of desolation are said to wander "in the wilderness in a solitary way.
3. The dangers of the wilderness are manifold. There is the place of lions" dens. and of the mountains el the leopards. There, too, the Israelites of old encountered the fiery serpents that infested it. For a time they had been restrained, but afterwards they were uncontrolled, and even commissioned to chastise the erring Israelites.
4. Death itself is included in the threatened punishment:" And slay her with thirst." There is no water to cleanse, no thirst-satisfying fountain, no life-giving spring. Of wayfarers in such a region it is written," They were hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted in them.
IV POSTERITY INVOLVED IN THE THREATENED PUNISHMENT. The repetition of" lest" at the beginning of ver. 4 is needed to make the meaning plain and carry on the connection. Particular members of a Church or nation too oten share the sins of the general body or rulers of the people; so too children, frequently following in the footsteps of godless parents, suffer by the sad heritage of those parents" guilt; for God "visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate him." It has been well said that "God visits the sins of the parents upon the children until the entailed curse be cut off by repentance.
V PERSISTENCE IN SIN. The harlotry and shameful conduct of the libidinous woman, who represents Israel in this passage, evidence the greatest perversity. In spite of warnings ant threatenings, in spite of entreaties and exhortations, and in spite of inducements and invitations, Israel persists in her iniquitous idolatry and perseveres in her shameless conduct. Like an abandoned woman, who has renounced all the instinctive modesty of womanhood, and who, instead of waiting for the addresses of paramours, actually takes the initiative, and pursues them with her unwomanly appeals, Israel goes after her lovers, that is, her idols, or, as some think, her idolatrous allies We may not, however, overlook the fact that, besides the gross idolatry of Israel, there is a spiritual idolatry, to which all are exposed, and to which many are addicted. Anything that draws away our thoughts and affections from God, or that occupies that place in our heart that belongs to him, is an idol not so rude as the image of wood, or stone, or metal, but not less perilous, not less pernicious, not less insidious. Let us beware of following such lovers; let us beware of spiritual harlotry, and of shamefully pursuing wealth, or fame, or power, or pleasure, anti of turning aside from God!
VI PROSPERITY REGARDED AS THE BESTOWMENT OF IDOLS. Israel in time of plenty forgot the important lesson that her prosperity came from God. Her clottish stupidity was only equaled by her ingratitude, when she attributed all she had to those miserable idols on which her heart was fixed, and of which she showed herself so dotingly fond. Put by Jehovah into the possession of such a lifesome land, of food in abundance, of raiment garments tinier and outer and of the luxuries as well as the comforts of life, she forgot basely forgot that she continued a pensioner on his providence and blessed by his bounties. Bad enough and base enough as such ingratitude was, it was still worse to transfer her love and her gratitude to idols dumb such as blinded nations fear. How unspeakably mean it was on Israel to form such a low estimate of religion as to value it according to the worldly advantages to be derived from it, or in proportion to the selfish interests served by it! How much worse stilt to depend on idols for such advantages, and in hope of furthering those interests!
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN Vers. 2-7. Jehovah"s condemnation of faithless Israel.
In Hosea 1. the prophet has Fainted a "vigorous fresco" (Ewald) illustrative of his domestic sorrows. And now he presents an explanation of the sad picture in its prophetic meaning. The supreme thought of the Book of Hosea is that of Jehovah"s conjugal love for Israel, which she by her unfaithfulness had so foully dishonored. Here, in Hosea 2., accordingly, we have an allegory suggested by the prophet"s symbolic marriage with Gomer; which depicts the deep sorrow of Jehovah on account of Israel"s fall, and his long-suffering tenderness towards her. The first strophe (vers. 2-7) is occupied chiefly with words of solemn condemnation.
I THE DIVINE, REPROACH. Jehovah charges Israel with:
1. Spiritual adultery. (Vers. 2, 4, 5) He was himself the rightful Husband of the nation, but she had slighted and rejected his love. With infatuated determination she kept saying, "I will go after my lovers." There was the calf-worship; and the calves were simply idols. (Hos_13:2) There was the Baal-worship, with its shameful impurities. There was the infidelity which had shown itself in separation from the dynasty of David. These were spurious, carnal loves; and the people who cherished them were guilty of spiritual harlotry.
2. Ascribing her material prosperity to their idols. (Ver. 5) Jeroboam I had done so: "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up cut of the land of Egypt". (1Ki_12:28) Jeroboam II was still doing so; during these gala-days of his reign Israel trusted in her own might, and boasted of her military glory. The calf-worship meant virtually the deification of nature. The Baal-worship was the idolatry of mere power, apart altogether from righteousness. Among Hosea"s fellow-countrymen, as by so many in our own days, the worship of the living God was neglected amidst the deification of the popular will, reverence for physical law, and the idolatry of worldly success. These were the powers Israel judged in her blindness that made her land prosperous.
3. The guilt of an outrage upon the Divine honor. (Ver. 2) In degrading herself, Israel had foully dishonored her rightful Husband. For two centuries now her infidelity had been one long agony to Jehovah"s heart. And how often, since the days of Hosea, has God been similarly grieved!
He was so with Judah before her captivity, (Jer_3:8-11) and with the Jewish Church in the time of our Lord. Of how many Christian communities also has the Lord been constrained to say, "She is not my wife e.g., the Churches at Ephesus and Thyatira; (Rev_2:4, Rev_2:20) the Church of the dark ages before the Reformation; every Church that remains in Erastian bondage; every one that is grossly impure in doctrine or communion.
II THE DIVINE THREATENING. The word "lest" was fitted to remind Israel that, guilty and fallen though she was, it was still possible for her, by timely repentance, to avert the impending judgments. Should she, however, stop her ears to the Lord"s reproaches:
1. He will take away her temporal prosperity. (Ver. 3) At the time of her birth as a nation, Israel was in a low condition indeed. In Egypt she had to struggle for life, like a castaway child. The very continuance of her existence seemed a miracle. (Eze_16:3-6) But God now threatens to chastise her for her faithlessness by making her again a castaway. He will strip her of her material resources, bring to the ground her national pride, and cause her to become like a parched and desolate desert. The Almighty will touch with his finger her choicest possessions, and consign to destruction everything which has become tainted with the Baal-spirit.
2. He will involve in this distress the individual children of the nation. (Ver. 4) The ten tribes had been unanimous in their apostasy. Each citizen had brought his own contribution to the universal guilt. There was meantime no godly remnant who could be thought of with comfort as still the Lord"s people. So all must suffer in one common punishment. And what a dreadful doom to become "Lo-ruhamah to be shut out even from the very "mercy" of God!
III THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE. The condemnation is not, after all, with a view to "a bill of divorcement;" rather it is the first step of a course of gracious discipline. The discipline consists of:
1. Restraining words. (Ver. 2) Jehovah"s heart is so full of relenting towards Ephraim that he summons individual citizens, who may have become themselves penitent, to reason with the nation at large about its sin. The children are to share in the mother"s punishment; and it is right that they should expostulate with her regarding her manifold idolatry.
2. Restraining providences. (Vers. 6, 7) God will effect a forcible separation between Israel and her idols. The seventy years" captivity of Judah would be as it were a "hedge" of thorns." The perpetual exile of Ephraim would be a solid wall interposed between the northern tribes and their "Baalim." Such methods of restraint God had often employed heretofore. The Book of Judges tells us of no fewer than six thorn-fences which God planted in succession, to break off the seductive alliances formed from time to time with the idolatrous Canaanites. The long drought during Ahab"s reign was a wail thrown up between him and his Baal-worship. But none of these obstructions had been permanently effectual. Only the Assyrian and Babylonish captivities were so. By their long exile the Jews were at length forever weaned from all gross idolatry. They could not forget that their false gods had given them no aid against the thundering advance of the Assyrian, or during the last agonies of Samaria and Jerusalem.
3. Restraining grace. (Ver. 7) It is here predicted that the distresses of the protracted exile shall induce repentance, and awaken a longing desire to return to Jehovah. By the moral discipline of sorrow he will operate upon the hearts of his erring people, and sweetly draw them back to himself. As the "mighty famine" became the means of convincing the prodigal that he had wandered from his true well-being in leaving his father"s house; (Luk_15:14-19) so Israel, in her days of sad adversity, shall resolve to return to the home of her Divine Husband, to whom she has for so long been unfaithful. This glorious consummation is still future. We think of it as belonging to "the last things." But it shall most surely be accomplished. There will be a national conversion of the Jews to the Christian faith. Israel shall "go and return to her first Husband;" "for the Lord delighteth in her, and her land shall be married". (Isa_62:4)
LESSONS.
1. The exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is whoredom and adultery. How it debases and brutifies man"s noble nature! It also blinds the mind to the true source of blessing (ver. 5). And what an agony it must be to the pure and loving heart of God!
2. The unprofitableness of a sinful life. Even from the sinner"s point of view, such a life never pays. What expenditure of time and toil, of health and substance, a career of vice entails I How precarious, too, are all merely temporal blessings, and how utterly unsatisfying to those who choose them as their soul"s portion!
3. The goodness of God in the restraints which he imposes upon the sinner. He has many "hedges" and "wails public opinion, conscience, temporal loss, personal sickness, family bereavement, etc. These become inestimable blessings to a man when they hinder him in a course of sin, and constrain him, not only to confess his folly (ver. 7), but to turn from it to the Lord. C.J.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Vers. 2-5. Spiritual adultery.
The individuals of the nation are exhorted to plead with their mother Israel, that she may turn from her adulterous courses, and so avert the doom which is otherwise certain to overtake her. Consider
I ISRAEL"S SHAMELESS PROFLIGACY. (Vers. 2, 5) The sin charged against Israel is that of adultery, in her relations with Jehovah. Owing to the peculiarity of these relations, the sin was of a specially aggravated kind.
1. The people had withdrawn from Jehovah that undivided allegiance which, as the one living and true God, he demanded of them.
2. They had set up idol images (the calves), and had changed God in their thoughts to a mere nature-deity, like the heathen Baals.
3. They had gone after the heathen Baals as well. In form, the worship of Jehovah was kept up; in reality, idolatry had the sole dominion. This was their adultery. It was public and unblushing. Even in the eyes of the heathen, Israel was guilty of great wantonness, for the heathen were not wont thus lightly to change their gods. (Jer_2:11) The crime for which Israel is indicted, however, is not peculiar to that nation. In a deeper regard, it is the fundamental sin of the race. The soul made by God for himself has left him, and gone after other lovers. It has turned to the creature. It lusts for illicit satisfactions. Its dispositions are "evil and adulterous". (Mat_12:39) Especially is this sin committed by those who, entering into a new covenant with God by grace, afterwards go back to the world.
II HER CERTAIN PUNISHMENT. (Vers. 3, 4) Israel"s adultery dissolved de facto the marriage relation between the nation and Jehovah. Ver. 2 is the Divine deed of separation. Separation is followed by punishment. Under the Law, adultery was punished by death. This doom also, as respects corporate existence, was about to overtake Israel. But the figure in the text alludes rather to the withdrawal of God"s good gifts the gifts bestowed on Israel in her relation of spouse with its result in the reduction of the nation to a condition of utter wretchedness and want. The "slaying with thirst" (ver. 3) is not absolute, since recovery is predicted (ver. 7), but denotes a state of extreme anguish, in which multitudes would actually perish. (Deu_28:33, Deu_28:34, Deu_28:48, Deu_28:65-68) There is here:
1. A reminder of the source of natural blessings. God could take away, because it was he who at first gave. It was he who gave Israel all she had. Hence the destitution to which the withdrawal of his gifts reduced her. "If God withdraws his gifts, the consequences are infinitely awful, because, altogether unlike the natural husband, he has everything in his possession; if he does not give anything to drink, he then slays by thirst" (Hengstenberg).
2. A correspondence between sin and punishment. What Israel possessed, she received in virtue of the marriage covenant. At first she had nothing. God had given her all. Answerably to this, she is punished by being reduced to her original destitute condition. Marriage unfaithfulness leads to the withdrawal of the marriage gifts. "The eternal and universal truth which, in the verse before us, is expressed with a special reference to Israel, is, that all the gifts of God are bestowed on individuals as well as upon whole nations, only in order to lead them to the communion of life with him, or because this communion already exists. If we fail to see that the gifts of God have this object, if they be not received and enjoyed as the gifts of God, if the spiritual marriage be refused, or if, having been already entered into, it be broken, sooner or later the gifts will be withdrawn" (Hengstenberg).
3. A picture of the state of the soul from which God has withdrawn himself. The outward is the image of the inward. The soul which has forsaken God which God has forsaken is solitary and desolate, burnt with hunger, parched with intolerable thirst, a desert. God"s design in withdrawing the outward gifts is that the soul may be led to feel the deeper misery and disgrace within.
III THE ONE WAY OF ESCAPE. (Ver. 2) Repentance-turning from the evil courses. God is unwilling to proceed to extremities, though, if the sin be persisted in, he must. He gives here a final warning, a last opportunity. There is thus a limit to the Divine forbearance. The last appeal will come some day. Often, by the time it comes, we are so sunk in sin as to be past attending to it, While, however, mercy lasts, the moat abandoned may return.
IV THE DUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. "Plead with your mother, plead" (ver. 2). Individuals are implicated in the guilt of the community. They have a stake in the general well-being (ver. 4). They have, accordingly, a responsibility in connection with national backslidings. It is their duty
(1) to separate themselves from the prevailing wickedness;
(2) to testify against it;
(3) to use every means to try to bring about repentance and reformation. 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 vv3–5 Lest I strip her naked.
Hos_2:3
Lest I strip her naked.
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Eastern divorce custom
It was the custom among the Jews when any married that what dowry they brought their husbands was written down in a table; and if afterwards the husband should divorce his wife, except there could be proved some gross and vile thing against the woman, she was to go away with her table, with her dowry; she must not go away empty, or naked. But if there could be proved some notorious villainy which she had committed, then she was sent away naked, without her tables, her dowry. Thus God threatens this people. She is not My wife. She shall be sent away without any tables, naked and wholly destitute. Observe--
1. The beginnings of great excellences are sometimes very low and mean. Set her as in the day that she was born.
2. Gods mercy is a peoples beauty and glory. When we have any excellency, any beauty upon us, it is Gods mercy that is all our beauty.
3. Though sinners deserve great evils, to be stripped of all comforts, yet God, in patience and clemency continues them a long time.
4. The mercies that God bestows upon a nation, are but common favours, not spiritual graces, they are such ornaments as a people may be stripped of. The great mercies a people have, they may wholly lose.
5. Continuance in sin, and especially the sin of spiritual whoredom, is that which will strip a nation from all their excellences, from all their ornaments and beauty.
6. It is time for a people to plead, when there is danger of desolation.
7. Those who will not be convinced by the Word, God has other means to convince them besides the Word. If pleading and convincing arguments will not do it, well then, stripping naked shall do it.
8. Whatever are the means of stripping a nation, it is really God that does it.
9. It is a grievous judgment for one that is advanced from a low to a high degree to be brought down again.
10. When God has delivered a people out of misery, and bestowed upon them great mercies, it is their duty often to think of the poor condition in which they were, and to use all the means they can that they may not be brought thither again. God loves this, that we should remember and seriously take to heart what once we were. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)
Spiritual chastity
It is not enough that God should choose any people for Himself, except the people themselves persevere in the obedience of faith; for this is the spiritual chastity which the Lord requires from all His people. But when is a wife, whom God hath bound to Himself by a sacred marriage, said to become wanton? When she falls away from pure and sound faith. Then it follows that the marriage between God and men so long endures as they who have been adopted continue in pure faith. Apostasy in a manner frees God from us, so that He may justly repudiate us. (John Calvin.)
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 v5 Hos_2:6. Hedge and make] Build a wall, a double…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Hos_2:6. Hedge and make] Build a wall, a double enclosure of stones and thorns. In the East cattle are fenced with thorns and closes. God with determined purpose will interpose between Israel and her idols. Behold, I will hedge] Exile and distress, and the inability of her gods to help, would prove the folly of her conduct (Job_19:18; Lam_3:7-9).
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Hos_2:7. Follow after and seek] In eager pursuit and diligent search. “They express together a pursuit, whose minuteness is not hindered by its vehemence, nor its extent and wideness by its exactness. She shall seek far and wide, minutely and carefully, everywhere and in all things, and shall fail in all” [Pusey]. Not find] deliverance from calamity.
HOMILETICS
THE UNSUCCESSFUL PURSUIT.—Hos_2:6-7
Though Israel is dishonoured and fallen, she is not left to herself. God’s mercy yearns over and seeks to check her in sin and recall her to himself. God even now has not written a bill of divorcement, nor cast away the people whom he did foreknow. Through eighteen hundred years they have been wandering without a dwelling-place and a temple; but the day will come, when she will “no more be termed Forsaken,” nor “the land be termed Desolate; but she will be called Hephzi-bah and the land Beulah.” Men are prone to wander. They are disappointed in their wanderings, and God rouses, instructs, and restores his backsliding people.
I. A pursuit after wrong objects. Man is a creature of strong affections. His feelings cling round the objects of his choice like ivy round a tree. Through sin these affections are misplaced. He loves the things which he should hate, and hates the things which he should love; forsakes the true God, and pursues lovers of his own. He must love, he will worship, something; “that I may win” is the desire of every soul. Wealth, honour, position, and learning are eagerly sought, loved for their own sake and for the sake of what they are thought to give. Thus men are seeking happiness where it cannot be found; committing two evils, forsaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns which will hold no water. “Who will show us any good?” is the cry of the many. “Lord, lift thou upon us the light of thy countenance,” is the prayer of the few.
II. A pursuit with intense anxiety. Man’s spiritual desires are insatiable, yet ever seek gratification. They forbid him to rest, and compel him to seek supply. Inward sense of want, incapacity for alliance with sin, and instinctive longing for God, the “first good, first perfect, and first fair”—of whom all created beauty and good are mere shadows—make men restless and discontented. But instead of lifting the soul to God, they look to the creature for satisfaction; “seek” and “follow after” in eager pursuit of what they love; labour harder in sin, and seeking pleasure, than in serving God. They weary themselves in pursuit, rendered more eager by thorn-hedges and hindrances. Vexation and disappointment excite to desperate tenacity; affliction and remorse are often no check to the sinner; fuel is added to the fire, and with renewed ardour onward he goes to ruin and despair. “I will go after my lovers.” The impenitent struggle on after that which God is taking from them, and will not give up, until the pursuit is found hopeless and exhaustive, and God in preserving mercy brings him back. “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
III. A pursuit under Divine restraint. God governs the world, and seeks the good of his creatures. The way of transgressors is rendered hard “through much tribulation.” It is a warfare against conscience, reason, and revelation. In consciousness of guilt we may discern our relationship to God. The trouble and anguish of spirit springing from this consciousness, “the inward unrest which sometimes seizes the slave of sin are proofs that he has not quite broken away from God.” God works within by his Spirit and without by his providences. Hedges and walls are fixed up to restrain men in sin.
1. The restraints of God’s providence are various in their nature. God sought to cut off Israel from idolatry by solitude and affliction. Like a thorn-hedge, affliction is painful. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” Conscience, the Divine officer, warns and checks the sinner. Disappointments in pursuits, pains attending pleasures, Divine judgments, and special manifestations, turn men from their purpose. Saul was overcome by light from heaven; Balaam was met by an angel, and David by Abigail (1Sa_25:32).
2. The restraints of God’s providence are merciful in their design, “that she shall not find her paths.” (a) Given to withdraw men from sinful pursuits. “She shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them.” (b) Given to restore men to God. “Then shall she say, I will go and return.” Strong barriers and painful providences are not sufficient. If God did not mercifully interfere we should all go astray. Let us repent of sin, be thankful for correction, and admire the wondrous grace of God. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.”
IV. A pursuit ending in failure. “She shall not overtake” what she follows; “she shall not find” what she seeks. Failure and disappointment after all her eagerness and effort! Egypt and Assyria were trusted in vain. Worldly alliances were of no service; did not give the anticipated deliverance. Idols were impotent; foreign nations were a broken reed, a source of sorrow and bitterness of spirit. Israel was obliged to confess, “it was better with me than now.” The sinner gains nothing, but loses everything, by forsaking God. He pursues phantoms of bliss. The pursuit will disgust, and end in failure. “Why did the cannon-balls spare me to die in this manner? I am no longer the Great Napoleon. How fallen and disappointed I am!” cried Napoleon in his latter end. Nothing can take the place of God—nothing can satisfy but bread. A sinful life can never give peace of conscience and peace with God. The beast may be satisfied with what it finds on earth, for its nature aspires no higher; but man is linked to God, longs for him, and cannot be contented without him. Though the heart once alienated from him turns further away, and moves not towards him until renewed, yet even in its wandering it retains its nature and necessities. God is its centre, and it is restless and void till it meets with him again. Men go here and there, do this and that, in quest of good, as moments dictate and circumstances call forth, but all in vain. They faint in mind and fail in hope. God never created man to find rest and happiness in utter rejection of himself. “Thou madest us for thyself, and our heart is restless until it repose in thee” [Augustine]. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”
THE BACKSLIDER’S WAY HEDGED UP.—Hos_2:5-7
Consider the text, and seek to arouse and restore backsliders, who have left their first love, and may have forsaken the Church of God, given up their profession and all attendance upon Divine worship.
I. While sinful men are in prosperity they pervert the mercies of God to their own injury, making them instruments of sin and weapons of warfare against God. While Israel enjoyed abundance of temporal comforts they ascribed all these blessings to false gods. Prosperous sinners make three great mistakes. At the outset they give their temporal mercies the first place in their hearts. Business prospers, but they consider not their soul. They say, “We must live,” but they forget that they must die. Such folly most shameful, base ingratitude, in one who has known, or professed to have known, better. One error leads to another, and hence such people hold their temporal things upon a wrong tenure. Observe how many times the word “my” is found in the text. “Give me my bread,” &c. They were not hers, but God’s, who expressly claims them, and threatens to take them all away (Hos_2:9). The backslider once professed himself to be God’s servant; nothing is his now—houses, lands, profits, and children, only lent for a season. He is but God’s under-bailiff, possesses only as tenant-at-will, or as a borrower, holding a loan. Then, further, backsliders are apt to ascribe their prosperity and their mercies to their sins. I have even heard one say, “Ever since I gave up a profession of religion I have made more headway in business than I did before.” Some apostates have boasted, “Since I broke through puritanical restraint, and went out into worldly company, I have been better in spirits, and better in purse than ever I was before.” Thus they ascribe the mercies which God has given them to their sins, and wickedly bow down to their lusts, as Israel did before the golden calf, and cry, “These be thy gods, O Israel!” These things are given to try you, to see how far you will go, and to what extravagances of ingratitude you will descend.
II. Turn from the gloomy side, and observe that the Lord interposes adversity in order to bring back his wandering children. Consider the hindrances which a God of love puts in the way. You see an unexpected hindrance, for it is placed right in the man’s way. “I will hedge up thy way”—it was his way, his habit; he had fallen into it, and he meant to keep on; but suddenly he met with an unlooked-for obstacle. This hedge is placed in your way in different shapes. Business grows slack; bad debts multiply; bankruptcy stares you in the face; and where you had enough to lavish on pleasure you have not enough to supply your need. You thought you would live a millionnaire; more likely now to die a pauper. Or sudden sickness falls upon a strong healthy person. Possibly the hedge is of other thorns. The first-born son, the expected heir, the joy of the father’s heart, falls like a withered flower; his wife is cut off as a lily snapped from its stalk. These are walls across the way of those whom God ordains to bless. Observe, it has a very disappointing impediment. The prosperous sinner is stopped when securely pursuing his way. “Why,” says the man, “if it had not been for that I should have made a fortune.” “Why did death come just when my fair girl looked so lovely, and when my dear boy had grown so engaging? Ah! this is trouble indeed. To meet with misfortune just when I built that new house, and held my head so high, and expected to see my daughters so respectably married; this is very disappointing.” The man kicks, and though once professed to be a child of God, he is ready to curse God and die. If he knew the Divine nature, he would thank God for his troubles on bended knees. What painful hindrances our heavenly Father often uses. He hedges the sinner’s path, not with rhododendrons and azaleas, not with roses and laurels, but with thorns—prickly thorns, which curse the soil and tear the flesh, are God’s instruments of restraint. Furthermore, the fence is effectual; if the thorn hedge will not suffice, it is written, “I will make a wall.” Some are so desperate in sin that they break through ordinary restraints; then a wall shall be tried, through which there is no breaking, over which there is no climbing.
III. You would think that the sinner would now stop, but instead of that, according to the text, even though God walls up the way of sin, men will try to follow it, but this resolve shall be in vain. He is desperately set on destruction, as though it were to be desired. What a creature is man, though he knows that sin will be his ruin, yet he hugs it as though it were his chief mercy; heaps to himself destruction as though it were gold. If the righteous were half as intent in seeking after goodness as the wicked are in hunting sin, how much more active would they be. Truly this love is so strange, that if we did not see it in ourselves we should wonder at it. It is in you, Christians, as in the worst of men, and but for Divine mercy you would have plunged on from bad to worse.
IV. Consider that the backslider’s failure is followed by a blessed result. Observe, here is repentance attended with sorrow. The poor creature deeply feels to the very soul the wretchedness of her condition. It is an active repentance. It is not merely “I will return,” but, “I will go and return.” There is much earnestness in a sinner seeking Christ; but more, if possible, in a backslider returning from the error of his ways; for he has not only the guilt of sin to mourn over, but the double guilt of having despised the Saviour, of having known the way of righteousness and turned from it. The confession which this poor soul makes of folly is one which is sustained by the best of reasons. “Then was it better with me than now.” Backslider, what have you gained? Have you gained anything more comfortable than the light of your Father’s face? Before, you had the privilege of going to the throne of grace, you could tell your wants before God, and spread your sorrows there; but now you have no throne of grace to go to. Then you had God’s promises to fall back upon. Once you had communion with Christ. What can the world afford you comparable to this? There is no room to entertain a comparison for a moment. Lastly, this repentance was acceptable. It is not often that a husband is willing to take back his wife when she has so grossly sinned, as the metaphor here implies; yet God is willing to receive the sinner, though his sin is even more aggravated. “Return unto me, for I am married unto thee.”
V. Observe that there is an awful contrast to all this. Some prosper until, like a wide-spread tree, they are cut down and cast into the fire. There are backsliders who, never having had the root of the matter in them, go back unto their own ways and continue there for ever. Never trifle with backsliding. Chosen vessels, notwithstanding their backslidings, are brought back; but, ah! remember that nine out of ten of those who backslide never were God’s people. You must be born again, and only the man who continues to the end shall be saved.
VI. We conclude with this—is not this subject a very solemn warning to the people of God? If one man falls, another may. If one professor turns out to be a hypocrite, another may. There must be the continual keeping and anointing of the Holy Spirit. No man backslides at once. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Wake up your coldness in private prayer. If love to Christ has grown cold, pray to the Master to inflame your heart again. Let us trust the Saviour. There is the sinner’s hope; there is the saint’s strength [Spurgeon].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Hos_2:6. Subject:—Divine Restraints. I. These restraints are manifold. “I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall.” The first metaphor is from a husbandman who plants a prickly hedge to prevent cattle from breaking away. The other from architecture. If thorns are insufficient, high and massive walls must be built.
1. There is the restraint of affliction. When the wicked purpose some great crime, affliction comes, breaks their plans, and strikes them down.
2. There is the restraint of public sentiment. Public opinion, as it gets enlightened and strong, is a tremendous check to the wicked. The most daring cower before the public voice.
3. There is the restraint of conscience. Conscience is a Divine officer holding the sinner.
II. These restraints are necessary. It is necessary that God should plant thorny hedges and build massive walls around the sinner.
1. It is necessary for the sinner himself. Were it not for these he would go galloping to perdition. “O, unhappy men,” says Luther, “when God leaves them to themselves, and does not resist them in their lusts. You bless yourselves many times that in the way of sin you find no difficulty. Bless thyself! Thou hast cause to howl and wring thy hands, thou hast the curse of God on thee. A dreadful curse to make pleasant the way of sin.”
2. It is necessary for the world. What would become of the world if the wicked were not reined in? Were it not for restraints the Cæsars, the Alexanders, and the Napoleons would soon turn it into a Pandemonium.
3. It is necessary for the Church. Had wicked men their full fling, how long would the Church last? The flames of martyrdom would soon blaze to heaven and consume Zion to ashes. Thank God for thorny hedges and massive walls, for all the restraints he puts on sinful men [The Homilist].
The Danger of outward Prosperity—sufferings a specific against apostasy.
Divine Chastisements.
1. Love, their source.
2. Sorrow, their means.
3. Good, their end. “Crosses and obstacles in an evil course are a great blessing, and are so to be accounted. They are God’s hedges, to keep us from transgressing, to restrain us from wandering out of the green pastures, to withdraw man from his purpose (Job_33:17), to make the way of sin difficult, that we may not go on in it, and to keep us from it whether we will or not. We have reason to bless God both for restraining grace and for restraining providences” [Matt. Henry].
Hos_2:7. The Course of Sin.
1. A course of labour—unrequited toil—vexation of spirit and bitter bondage. Sinners labour harder than saints, and receive nothing but exhaustion and fatigue.
2. A course of failure. Loss of health and peace—all loss and no gain.
3. The service of God the only true gain. “It was better with me.” Godliness is profitable to all things—body and soul, this world and the next. Sin suicidal. God’s service real advantage. Those who embrace God, would take him up as the best of choices, and his way as the shortest cut to do well and to be well: they are sensible of their own disadvantage in forsaking him: for so much is imported as the reason for her return, “for then was it better with me than now” [Hutcheson].
I will go and return.
1. The sinner’s wandering.
2. The sinner’s penitence.
3. The sinner’s return to God. “By this text we may gather what true repentance is: namely, when a sinner not only confesseth himself guilty and worthy of punishment, but truly displeaseth himself and seriously returns to God. Here we have two essential parts of true repentance—namely, contrition and conversion; or humiliation and reformation. The former is called in Scripture repentance for sin, the latter repentance from sin: and the one without the other is to no purpose or profit” [Trapp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Hos_2:6-7. Affliction. The hedge stops or gives a turn. God, in pursuance of his covenant, and with a gracious meaning to a revolting people, hedges them up by affliction to stop them from undoing. It is a mercy to be kept out of the pond, though it be by a thorn hedge, sharpest troubles. This stop the Lord doth often give, though not always to sinners; he sometimes lets them run on to fill up their measure of sin and to receive their full measure of punishment. Reproof for sin is a great favour. Though God is angry for what we have done, yet it is a mercy that he will not let us do more, and so make ourselves vile and miserable [Caryl].
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.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v2 The Discipline and Restoration of Faithless Israel
The Discipline and Restoration of Faithless Israel
The unfaithful conduct of Gomer and the prophet's gentle treatment of her are regarded as an analogue of the nation's faithlessness and God's gentle correction, a proof of the love which will triumph in the end. But the acted parable and its interpretation are so blended that they cannot always be separated; and frequently the prophet's personal experience is overshadowed by the larger thought of God's dealings with His people.
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2. Plead] addressed to Gomer's sons. The people Israel in this acted allegory are sometimes the sons, as in Hos_2:1, but more generally the wife. When as here distinguished we may suppose that the prophet is appealing to those willing to hear to remonstrate with the faithless majority. There is a somewhat similar mixture of figure in Isa_62:5. She is not my wife] The people by their idolatry had put themselves into a false relation with Jehovah. He was no longer their God, nor they His people: cp. Hos_1:9.
3, 4. As a punishment for her faithlessness, the country would be made desolate by an invading enemy, and the inhabitants slain with the sword. So would she be put to shame.
Children of whoredoms] By their idolatries the people had proved themselves to be children of other gods, the lovers of Hos_2:5.
5. They worshipped the gods of the land—the local deities who were supposed to give abundant crops if propitiated. See Intro. They did not ascribe the fertility of the land to Jehovah, but to the local Baalim, who were personifications of the reproductive powers of nature, and in whose worship they had practically merged the worship of Jehovah.
6, 7. Through the disasters brought by a foreign enemy, including the siege of their cities, the people would discover the impotence of their idols, and seek Jehovah in earnest: cp. Hos_14:3, etc. Make a wall] RV 'make a fence against her.'
7. Lovers] i.e. the Baalim.
8. They prepared for Baal] RM 'made into the image of Baal.' How absurd and how insulting to use God's gift in this way!
9. Will I.. take away] RV 'will I take back.' In the time thereof] i.e. when it should be ripe, the crop would fail. God would thus punish them for the abuse of His gift.
10. Her lovers] The idols would be ashamed, unable to help their devotees, when the land was laid waste. 11. Jehovah would put an end to her religious feasts of all kinds. New moons and sabbaths were the most distinctive feasts in connexion with the worship of Jehovah in the N. (1Sa_20:5; 2Ki_4:23).
12. Rewards] RV 'hire': the bribe for which Israel had worshipped the idols (lovers) under the mistaken belief that they gave them these things: see on Hos_2:5.
13. Baalim] RV 'the Baalim,' i.e. the images of Baal: cp. Hos_2:8. The allusion here is to heathen or heathenish festivals looked upon as acts of faithlessness to Jehovah. They are spoken of as past in relation to the future judgment which Hosea has in mind, or because idolatry had from the first been the besetting sin of the northern kingdom.
14. Therefore, etc.] 'This being her miserable condition, I will entice her to repent by gentle discipline.' The key to such expressions lies in the tenderness felt by Hosea for his sinning wife (see Intro.). The wilderness] either the land of captivity in which she realises her sin and turns to God, or the land wasted by the enemy. Men allure to destruction: God allures to punishment, to make the outpouring of love possible. Comfortably] Heb. 'to her heart,' as in Isa_40:1, etc.
15. I will give] The vineyards destroyed by the enemy (Hos_2:12) would be restored. Achor] i.e. trouble. Achor was the valley where Achan was stoned for his sin (Jos_7:26). It was on this account called the valley of Achor, or trouble. What is meant by its use here is that, while the Israelites would find that as of old sin would be followed by punishment, the punishment was meant to purify and discipline, and the 'trouble' was thus the 'door of hope.' Though Israel had been again unfaithful, God was still 'plenteous in mercy.' Sing] RV 'make answer,' i.e. listen to the call of God.
16. Ishi.. Baali] Both words were used by a wife to her husband. The first, 'my man,' implied a relation of intimacy: the second, 'my lord,' that of servitude, or at least ownership. But the passage seems to imply that Baal, a common name for all heathen gods, had in common practice been used also of Jehovah. This would account for its appearing in several place-names, such as Baal-Hamon, Baal-Shalisha.
17. Baalim] RV 'the Baalim.' Whether they represented Jehovah or heathen gods, the names with their debasing associations would be utterly discarded.
18. Make a covenant] Jehovah is here represented poetically as making an agreement with, or laying a command upon, noxious animals, that they will not, it may be supposed, hurt either man or the fruits of his labours: cp. Isa_11:9. Break the bow, etc.] destroy the weapons of warfare no longer needed in a land of security: cp. Isa_9:5 (RV).
19, 20. The idols had hired Israel's love with gifts of worldly prosperity, and even these they could not really give (Hos_2:12). Jehovah would woo Israel in the first place with much higher gifts, righteousness, judgment, etc.
21, 22. I will hear, etc.] The natural order of thought is reversed, because Jehovah (through the prophet) is speaking of His work. The whole thought is highly poetical. Jezreel ('God-soweth,' used for Israel, for the sake of the play on the word) cries for the com and wine and oil. These cry to the earth to produce them. The earth in its turn cries to the heaven for rain, and the rain cries to Jehovah to send it. Jehovah hears the cry, and so the heart's desire of the people is granted, even without their expressly asking Jehovah for it.
23. I will sow] With reference to the name Jezreel see on Hos_1:4. Jehovah promises the renewed increase of the population: cp. Jer_31:27.
I will have mercy] a repetition of the promises of Hos_1:10; Hos_2:1.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v2 She is not my wife
She is not my wife
That Israel is the wife of Jehovah Hos 2:16-23, now disowned but yet to be restored, is the clear teaching of the passages. This relationship is not to be confounded with that of the Church of Christ. (See Scofield "Joh 3:29"). In the mystery of the Divine tri-unity both are true. The N.T. speaks of the Church as a virgin espoused to one husband 2Co 11:1; 2Co 11:2 which could never be said of an adulterous wife, restored in grace. Israel is, then, to be the restored and forgiven wife of Jehovah, the Church the virgin wife of the Lamb; Joh 3:29; Rev 19:6-8. Israel Jehovah’s earthly wife Hos 2:23, the Church the Lamb’s heavenly bride, Rev 19:7.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv2, 4 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh is speaking to Hosea.
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lawsuit
This is a complaint by one person against another person in a court of law.
your mother
Here "mother" refers to the nation of Israel. (See: Metaphor)
for she is not my wife
Yahweh is stating that Israel, spoken of here as a woman, is no longer acting like a wife to Yahweh. Instead Israel has turned away from following and worshiping him. (See: Metaphor)
neither am I her husband
Yahweh can no longer be in relationship with the nation of Israel as a husband would be to his wife. (See: Metaphor)
her acts of adultery
A wife who is adulterous leaves her husband to sleep with another man. This is how Israel was acting toward Yahweh. (See: Metaphor)
from between her breasts
This imagery suggests that Israel is relying on the idols and not Yahweh. (See: Metaphor)
I will strip her naked and show her nakedness as on the day that she was born
Yahweh will no longer protect and provide for Israel because the nation has turned away from him. In Israel, husbands were obliged by law to provide clothes for their wives. Not to do so was a sign that a man was rejecting his wife. The full meaning of this may be made clear. (See: Metaphor and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
I will make her like the wilderness
Yahweh will change Israel to resemble the wilderness, which is a region that is bare and unproductive. (See: Simile)
I will make her die from thirst
Here "thirst" refers to the need to worship and rely on Yahweh, not idols, or Israel will not be able to survive as a nation. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
prostitute
adultery
desert
die
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 vv2, 3, 5 2:2-23 bring charges against Israel: At first glance, the…
2:2-23 bring charges against Israel: At first glance, the Lord, as the aggrieved husband, appears to be issuing a bill of divorce against his unfaithful spouse, Israel (see Deut 24:1). As the passage continues, however, it becomes clear that God’s purpose in this lawsuit is not divorce, but reconciliation (Hos 2:14-23). God’s case against Israel is intended to awaken Israel to her sin and offer her a chance to return to her true husband. The Lord’s desire for reconciliation with Israel is all the more surprising inasmuch as the law stipulated the death penalty for an adulterous spouse (Deut 22:22; see also Gen 38:24; Lev 21:9).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.