Hosea

Those addressed are Israelites who, the prophet hopes, will respond to his promise. The verse begins with an imperative, Say to your brothers, as does the following verse. Both serve as an enticement for Israel to return to her God. Israel is entreated to anticipate a change in names when unity is restored. No longer will they be “No Mercy” and “Not My People.”

By contemporary Western standards the rough language of vv. 2-7 might seem abusive, casting the prophet, as the Lord’s spokesman, in an unfavorable light. However, Hosea’s marriage was a prophetic dramatization of the Lord’s relationship with Israel, and the language of this section reflects that relationship, not the prophet’s domestic situation. The Lord spoke with the voice of a husband whose wife has been consorting with other men. Whether Hosea ever said anything like this to his own wife and children is impossible to determine. That Hosea did not physically abuse Gomer seems clear from the fact that he later rescued her from the abuse of her lovers (3:1-2). Hosea’s description concerned Israel’s violation of her covenant with the Lord.

Adultery and prostitution were serious violations of God’s law and were treated as such by the judicial system. The penalty for adultery was death for both the offending woman and the man (Lv 20:10). Therefore, it would be an act of grace on Hosea’s part to receive Gomer back as his wife (Hs 3:2-3), and in the same way the Lord would mercifully receive Israel because of his hesed (2:19), his “love” or faithfulness to the covenant.

Plead … plead. The plea for repentance is repeated twice for emphasis. As commonly understood, she is not my wife, and I am not her husband is a repudiation of the marriage bond, which would parallel God’s right to repudiate his covenant bond with Israel. But perhaps it should be read as a threat, rather than an actual divorce. Otherwise, Hosea would have no right to issue the warnings and threats that follow. Isaiah likewise expressed God’s reluctance to turn finally away from his people (Isa. 50:1). The marriage between God and Israel has not ended; the covenant made with Israel contains provision for restoration, and Israel is urged to respond to that provision: that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts.

The sufferings that Israel would have to endure were punishment for sin, and the Lord’s warning was intended to turn Israel back to him. When the Lord said “I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day of her birth,” he was referring to the Assyrians who would destroy the land and exile its inhabitants before not many years had passed. Israel would be “exposed” to all that the enemy would want to do to her with no protection from the Lord. She might think that her prosperity had come from other gods, but it was the Lord who had supplied her abundance (vv. 8-9).

lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born. Public humiliation of an unfaithful wife was not exceptional during this time. Similar language was used to describe retributions for breaking treaties. Some commentators see this “stripping” as the retrieval of everything a husband had provided for his bride (Ex. 21:10–11; cf. Hos. 2:9).

The Lord not only directed Hosea to marry “a woman of promiscuity,” but he also told him to acquire “children of promiscuity.” Characterizing the children this way, in effect as”bastards,” seems unfair to them since they had no say in the circumstances of their birth. But vv. 8-13 make it clear that the speaker here is the Lord, not the prophet speaking about his personal family situation. The language of the passage moves beyond the literal circumstances to a metaphorical application. Additionally, it is not clear whether all the children were Hosea’s. The text indicates that Jezreel was Hosea’s child (1:3), but the text is more ambiguous about the others. They were called “children of promiscuity” not because of anything they did but because of the character and behavior of their mother (vv. 4-5). The children of the unfaithful wife, Israel, were thereby children of Israel’s false gods, not children of the Lord.

they are children of whoredom. For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them … shamefully. Here is a clear disclaimer of fatherhood. The Lord, like Hosea, proceeds as a husband not only wronged, but injured, by infidelity. For she said, “I will go after my lovers.” This suggests that it was Gomer/Israel who pursued the lovers, rather than the other way around (cf. Jer. 2:23–24). Israel’s “lovers” are other gods.

Therefore. This is the first of three “therefores” in this chapter (cf. vv. 9, 14). It is spoken in response to the mother’s unbridled lust. The eighth-century prophets (including Hosea) truly believed that Israel’s sins could be forgiven and the nation restored. The jealous Husband of Israel will put a hedge around his wife so that she is prevented from straying (i.e., making pilgrimages to pagan shrines). The intention is redemptive.

By the obstruction of thorns and a wall, the wayward wife will not be able to find her lovers, though she diligently seeks them. Left in limbo, without a husband to provide for her needs, she repeats the same words she said in v. 5: I will go. She decides that she should return to her first husband. She acknowledges him as her husband and that there was a time in her marriage when things went well.

In retrospect, she did not know. Israel’s failure to “know” the Lord and his provision, and the Lord’s plan to remedy this, is a key idea in the book (vv. 8, 20; 4:1, 6; 5:3, 4; 6:3; 7:9; 8:2; 11:3; 13:4, 5). The prosperity lavished upon Israel was due to the generosity not of Baal but of the Lord. Particularly hurtful is that the prosperity was used in heathen worship, a slap in God’s face. I who gave her continues the dominance of the first-person pronoun “I” in the rest of the chapter.

This second therefore is in response to Israel’s blind stubbornness in the face of God’s goodness. Like Hosea, who threatens to strip his adulterous wife of what he has bestowed upon her, the Lord will strip the land completely bare. Wool, flax, and linen were the primary sources for weaving cloth for apparel. Thus, the use of these in pagan feasts will come to an end. Verses 9–10 and what follows complement v. 6 as additional descriptions of the Lord’s discipline. The disciplines work in tandem, and the condition of the land throughout the OT serves as a barometer of Israel’s relationship to the Lord.

The Lord will expose the Baals’ impotency so that Israel will know that no one shall rescue her out of my hand, for there is no other god (Deut. 32:39).

These are my wages. Sacrifices presented to the Baals are likened to a fee given to a shrine prostitute (9:1). Adulterous behavior applies literally to the woman, and figuratively to the nation. It is also clear that the lovers are the Baals (2:13).

Covenant Relationship Reestablished. Hosea indicates God’s plan to restore his “marriage” with Israel.

With this third therefore, the reason for the punishments for Israel’s roaming becomes clear—to bring Israel to repentance. The verb allure can have the idea “to entice or seduce” (Judg. 14:15; 16:5), but here it is paralleled with speak tenderly to her. The Lord will woo his estranged wife away from her lovers with the language of courtship (Ruth 2:13; Isa. 40:2; cf. 2 Sam. 19:7). Bring her into the wilderness depicts the wilderness (see Ex. 19:1–2) as if it were a brighter time in the marriage.

The Valley of Achor, where Achan was cursed (Josh. 7:25–26), will become a place for hope.

And in that day. This is not a reference to a particular time but a description of what the day will be like when God lures Israel back. The act of changing names continues: you will call me “My Husband,” and no longer will you call me “My Baal.” The Israelites had fused the name of the Lord with Baal as though doing so made no difference. In earlier times the Hebrew for “my husband” sounded like “my Baal” (cf. Ex. 21:22; 24:4; 2 Sam. 11:26; Prov. 12:4; 30:23; 31:11, 23, 28), but now Israel must use a different word in order to make clear her exclusive devotion to the Lord, and not to Baal.

For them refers to the Israelites who are recipients of the covenant announced in 1:10–11. The terms for the animals here evoke Genesis 1–2, where man in his created condition had a proper dominion over them; hence Israel is in its restored condition living out the creational ideal, which was the goal of God’s redemption. To lie down in safety is the ultimate blessing in a world fraught with persistent threats of aggression.

Recovery is described as a renewed betrothal. The betrothal, a marriage agreement, is established by the payment of a bride price to the bride’s father (2 Sam. 3:14), a practice still found in the Arab world. The bride price paid is righteousness, justice, steadfast love, and mercy. These attributes come only from the Lord (Ex. 34:6–7) and are precisely what Israel desperately lacks. This is in harmony with the divine initiative represented by the many “I wills” in Hosea.

And in that day. That is, when the marriage is again consummated. Former adversities suffered by Israel will be reversed; grain, wine, and oil will be replenished (cf. vv. 5, 8–9). No Mercy will receive mercy (cf. 1:6; 2:4), and Not My People will again be God’s people (cf. 1:9).