Commentari biblici

II.

(1-23) Gives the explanation of the strange enigma of the first chapter. Hosea’s domestic misery and his symbolically named children pass out of sight, and Jehovah is represented as taking up the language of the prophet, and uttering His terrible and yearning cry over Israel, who had been unfaithful to Him, and who, by her idolatries, had forfeited all claim to His covenanted love.

(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” (Hosea 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.

(3) Set her . . .—Reduce Israel to the destitute exposed condition in which she struggled into being in Egyptian bondage, and endured the wanderings and terrors of the wilderness. Probably we have here an allusion to the custom of female infanticide, which still prevails very widely in the East, as it did in the ancient world, the child being simply abandoned to death on the day that she was born. (Comp. Ezekiel 16:4.)

(4) Her children.—The children are like their mother: not only are they born of doubtful parentage, but are personally defiled. Not only is idolatry enshrined in the national sanctuary and the royal palace, but the people love to have it so. They endorse the degradation of their mother.

(5) For their mother hath played . . .—We might render, with Ewald, yea, their mother hath played . . . This would more easily account for the change of person (“your “. . . “their “), which is, however, very frequent in Hebrew prophecy. The next “for” introduces a parenthetical clause—“her lovers”—a word used in a bad sense. The aggravation of her shame is that she seeks them, and not they her. She attributes to these idol-gods all those temporal benefits which theocratic history shows to have been Jehovah’s gift, and the consequence of loyalty to Him. The modern analogue of this sin of Israel is the use of “Fortune,” “Nature,” “Destiny,” “Impersonal Law,” and even “Humanity,” as the giver of all good things, as though it were superstitious or heretical to speak of God as the giver.

(6-7) Contains a brief introductory prelude, summarizing the general contents of Hosea 2:8-23. Jehovah addresses the adulterous wife: “I will erect impassable barriers that shall pierce and mangle her flesh. The path of evil shall be a path of thorns.”

Hedge up . . . and make a wall.—In accordance with most Hebrew texts, the literal rendering is, wall up her wall. Here, again, we have a sudden change of person.

She shall . . .—She may anticipate in her exile closer proximity to her idol-lovers, but in respect of national prosperity or religious satisfaction she will make complete mistake.

(8) Translate in the present tense: and she knows not that it is I who gave, &c. This yearning of Jehovah over the results of his chastisements is a wonderful anticipation of Luke 15.

Corn, and wine . . .—Corn, wine, and oil are here mentioned as the chief indigenous products of Canaan (Genesis 27:28; Deuteronomy 33:28, &c.). Gold was largely imported from Ophir (probably the west coast of India, where Tamil is spoken: Delitzsch, Genesis, pp. 258-9. On the other hand, Fried. Delitzsch, in his work on the Site of Paradise, p. 99, holds that Ophir was a coast or island between the north end of the Persian Gulf and the south-west corner of Arabia). Silver was obtained from Tarshish, through Phœnician markets. Observe that Israel at this time abounded in the possession of precious metals. (Comp. Isaiah 2:7; Wilkins, Phœnicia and Israel, pp. 111-116.)

Which they . . . Baal.—They have transformed Jehovah’s gift into an image of Baal. Baal-worship was anterior to calf-worship (Judges 2, 3, 8), and was diametrically opposed to Jehovah-worship, as gross Pantheism is to pure and stern Monotheism.

(9) Therefore will I return, and take . . .—The Hebrew form of saying, “Therefore I will take back.” Jehovah resumes all that had been misappropriated. The king of Assyria (Tiglath-pileser, 734 B.C.) was the agency whereby this was to be accomplished. (Comp. Isaiah 10:5.) The raiment (wool and flax) was Jehovah’s gift to cover her nakedness, i.e., to meet the actual necessities of Israel. This He will tear away, and the idol-gods whom she has courted shall see her prostration, and their own helplessness to deliver or relieve.