Bible Commentaries

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

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

Say; declare, own, or publish.

Ye; who of no people are made a people, who were once unpitied and unregarded, but now have obtained mercy; you that are the sons of the living God, whether Jews or Gentiles. You Christians, as the apostle applies the words, Romans 9:24,25; and so in the ant, type no doubt they are to be understood; but in the letter and type, the persons here mentioned are those who among this people were pious, feared God, and kept his law; some such there were among them.

Unto your brethren; to those of the ten tribes who are, and will be these forty years, your brethren.

Ammi; let them know that yet they are the people of God, and repentance may remedy all; they are still within the covenant of their father Abraham; if they will, as their father. walk with God, all shall be well.

And to your sisters, Ruhamah: in a decorum, to (what before was made an emblem of Israel) the prophet’s daughter, Lo-ruhamah, some are here directed to reason (as it is Hosea 2:2) with her, i.e. with Israel, whose name is yet Ruhamah, and it may be so still, if Israel will retain it by returning to God.

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.

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, Isaiah 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will not have mercy: see Hosea 1:6.

Upon her children: by this expression particular persons are severally, as by mother the whole nation was, threatened, that none might flatter themselves with hope of better: it is observable they are called her children, not God’s.

For they be the children of whoredoms; born in whoredom, and, like the mother, addicted to whoredom; as if God had said, They are none of mine by birth, nor any whit like me in disposition, but a spurious and hateful brood, and as such I will use them.

For: this demonstrates the truth of the charge, and justifieth the severity of the punishment.

Their mother: see Hosea 2:2.

Played the harlot; doted on idols, worshipped them, and brought forth and educated children for diem.

She hath done shamefully: this practice, in the best circumstances it can be put, was dishonourable as well as dishonest; but here is an aggravation of it, it was done with shameless impudence, and openly avowed, with a whore’s forehead, Jeremiah 3:3.

She said; she took lip resolutions, declared them, stood to them, none could alter her course.

I will go after: when they came not to her, she will go to them. Impudent adulteress! forsaken, thou courtest and wooest.

My lovers: this spoken as if they loved her better than her Husband loved her; a high degree of impudence. These are the idols she worshipped, and the idolaters she associated and traded with.

That give me my bread, & c.: whereas every mercy she enjoyed was God’s gift to her, and a fruit of his covenant love and faithfulness towards her; yet she denies (like an impudent strumpet) all his kindness, and in a manner chargeth him with such hardness and ill usage, that she had starved if her idols and idolatrous friends had not maintained her, and gives out, the bread she ate, and water she drank, and the clothes she wore, all was of their kindness. This is shameful indeed, and the prophet hath set it forth to the life: and now is there not good reason why a Husband so abused should without pity cast off such a mother, such children, and leave them to live on their chosen lovers, or to perish under the hatred of their despised God?

Therefore; because she is so impetuous and shameless in her idolatrous courses, nothing hath, and she resolves nothing shall, hinder her, but she will follow them.

Behold; take notice of it, thou lewd woman, and all that stand by.

I will hedge up thy way with thorns: thou wilt set no bounds to thy lusts, and thy wanderings to satisfy them; I will deal with thee as men do with unruly and rambling beasts, set a hedge of thorns about thee, i.e. compass thee in with wars and other calamities, which shall wound and pierce thee, that though thou love thy sinful courses, and wilt follow them, thou shalt have little pleasure in them.

And make a wall; another allusion to the method men take to keep in the wildest cattle, which would break through hedges, but cannot break through walls. God will make the calamities of this people as a strong and high wall, over which they cannot leap, nor through which they cannot break. So was the Assyrian army under Shalmaneser, which cooped them up in a long siege of Samaria, and at last took them, and carried them into a long captivity, which now lasteth.

That she shall not find her paths; wherein then didst go when thou wentest to Egypt or Syria for help; but by my judgments, and thine enemies’ power and watchfulness, always shall be watched and guarded, thou shalt not find how to send to them for relief. These were her paths, whereas a chaste wife would have gone to her husband for relief.

And she, hedged in with many and great distresses, when under the judgments of God, shall follow after her lovers; with earnest travel, and with wearisome toil, she shall attempt every way to get to them, but to no purpose: afflictions and sorrows surround Israel; these Israel can by no means break out of to these lovers, and they, like false lovers, hasten as fast and as far from this adulteress as they can.

Her lovers, idols and idolaters, her false friends, and falser gods.

She shall not overtake them; they which hasten after such strange gods and helps, as this shameless harlot, shall meet with sorrow, but never overtake their desired help.

She shall seek them; as is the manner of immodest strumpets; it speaks also her obstinate resolution in her way: so Israel forsook a God that would have sought him to do him good, and by no disappointments would be (for a long time) taken off from this frantic wildness, of seeking to idols that could do him no good.

But shall not find them; the final issue of all is at last, she is wearied in her folly, tired with fruitless labour, and sits down hopeless of ever finding help from idols and idolaters.

Then shall she say; as the prodigal, first think well on it, next resolve with herself.

I will go and return; restless, she will try one way more; happy she if she had tried this sooner, this would have been successful; she will return, come back, and seek to her Husband.

To my first Husband, i.e. God, who had married Israel to himself, who was her Husband indeed: all others were as adulterers, as deceivers and seducers, who abuse the credulity of wanton women first, and next abuse their husbands’ beds.

For then was it better with me than now: how much the tune is changed! In Hosea 2:5, all her gallantry, her feasts, her rich apparel, these are gifts of her lovers; not a word of her Husband’s greatest kindnesses. But now she sees and confesseth the least of her Husband’s kindnesses was better than the greatest kindness of these her paramours, and at worst with her Husband she was better than at best with adulterers.

For; this unexampled ignorance, or inconsiderateness, was the cause of all this lost labour, and unthankfulness to God.

She, in her rayons and prosperity, as were the days of Jeroboam, in which much of this lewdness was committed, and in which the prophet calls them to repentance,

did not know; considered not, but carried it toward God as if indeed she did not know; nor did she own it or acknowledge it by any suitable obedience and thankfulness to the God of her mercies.

That I gave, without desert or worthiness; it was mercy, and this free, from whence all she had came.

Corn; which is the stay and strength of our life; one necessary corn fort put for all the rest.

Wine and oil: these cheer the heart, and include all provision for delight and sweetness.

And multiplied her silver and gold: the treasures of gold and silver, and all precious things brought in by trade, and increased among them, were the effect of mine undiscerned and unacknowledged bounty and goodness.

Which they, the generality or body of the Jews, these idolatrous Jews,

prepared for Baal; first made the idol with the gold and silver, and next dedicated it to the service of the idol. Sottish ignorance, that with one part of the gold and silver make a god, with the other part provide for sacrifices to be offered to it. Thus one part is advanced to be a deity, the other part of the same mass consecrated to the service of its fellow lump. What absurdities will not down with such fools and sots?