Bible Commentary

Expositor's Bible Commentary Hosea 3:1 Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine. 1 THE STORY OF THE PRODIGAL WIFE Hosea 1:1-11 ; Hosea 2:1-23 ; Hosea 3:1-5 IT has often been remarked that, unlike the first Doomster of Israel, Israel’s first Evangelist was one of themselves, a native and citizen, perhaps even a priest, of the land to which he was sent. This appears even in his treatment of the stage and soil of his ministry. Contrast him in this respect with Amos. In the Book of Amos we have few glimpses of the scenery of Israel, and these always by flashes of the lightnings of judgment: the towns in drought or earthquake or siege; the vineyards and orchards under locusts or mildew; Carmel itself desolate, or as a hiding-place from God’s wrath. But Hosea’s love steals across his whole land like the dew, provoking every separate scent and color, till all Galilee lies before us lustrous and fragrant as nowhere else outside the parables of Jesus. The Book of Amos, when it would praise God’s works, looks to the stars. But the poetry of Hosea clings about his native soil like its trailing vines. If he appeals to the heavens, it is only that they may speak to the earth, and the earth to the corn and the wine, and the corn and the wine to Jezreel ( Hosea 2:23 ) Even the wild beasts-and Hosea tells us of their cruelty almost as much as Amos-he cannot shut out of the hope of his love: "I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground." ( Hosea 2:20 ) God’s love-gifts to His people are corn and wool, flax and oil; while spiritual blessings are figured in the joys of them who sow and reap. With Hosea we feel all the seasons of the Syrian year: early rain and latter rain, the first flush of the young corn, the scent of the vine blossom, the "first ripe fig of the fig-tree in her first season," the bursting of the lily; the wild vine trailing on the hedge, the field of tares, the beauty of the full olive in sunshine and breeze; the mists and heavy dews of a summer morning in Ephraim, the night winds laden with the air of the mountains, "the scent of Lebanon." { Hosea 6:3-4 ; Hosea 7:8 ; Hosea 9:10 ; Hosea 14:6 ; Hosea 7:7-8 } Or it is the dearer human sights in valley and field: the smoke from the chimney, the chaff from the threshing-floor, the doves startled to their towers, the fowler and his net; the breaking up of the fallow ground, the harrowing of the clods, the reapers, the heifer that treadeth out the corn; the team of draught oxen surmounting the steep road, and at the top the kindly driver setting in food to their jaws. { Hosea 7:11-12 ; Hosea 10:11 ; Hosea 11:4 etc.} Where, I say, do we find anything like this save in the parables of Jesus? For the love of Hosea was as the love of that greater Galilean: however high, however lonely it soared, it was yet rooted in the common life below, and fed with the unfailing grace of a thousand homely sources. But just as the Love which first showed itself in the sunny Parables of Galilee passed onward to Gethsemane and the Cross, so the love of Hosea, that had wakened with the spring lilies and dewy summer mornings of the North, had also, ere his youth was spent, to meet its agony and shame. These came upon the prophet in his home, and in her in whom so loyal and tender a heart had hoped to find his chieftest sanctuary next to God. There are, it is true, some of the ugliest facts of human life about this prophet’s experience; but the message is one very suited to our own hearts and times. Let us read this story of the Prodigal Wife as we do that other Galilean tale of the Prodigal Son. There as well as here are harlots; but here as well as there is the clear mirror of the Divine Love. For the Bible never shuns realism when it would expose the exceeding hatefulness of sin or magnify the power of God’s love to redeem. To an age which is always treating conjugal infidelity either as a matter of comedy or as a problem of despair, the tale of Hosea and his wife may still become what it proved to his own generation, a gospel full of love and hope. The story, and how it led Hosea to understand God’s relations to sinful men, is told in the first three chapters of his book. It opens with the very startling sentence: "The beginning of the word of Jehovah to Hosea:-And Jehovah said to Hosea, Go, take thee a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry: for the Land hath committed great harlotry in departing from Jehovah." The command was obeyed. "And he went and took Gomer, daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bare to him a son. And Jehovah said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little and I shall visit, the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel; and it shall be on that day that I shall break the bow of Israel in the Vale of Jezreel"-the classic battlefield of Israel. "And she conceived again, and bare a daughter; and He said to him, Call her name Unloved," or "That-never-knew-a-Father’s-Pity; for I will not again have pity"-such pity as a Father hath-"on the house of Israel, that I should fully forgive them. And she weaned Unpitied, and conceived, and bare a son. And He said, Call his name Not-My-People; for ye are not My people, and I-I am not yours." It is not surprising that divers interpretations have been put upon this troubled tale. The words which introduce it are so startling that very many have held it to be an allegory, or parable, invented by the prophet to illustrate, by familiar human figures, what was at that period the still difficult conception of the Love of God for sinful men. But to this well-intended argument there are insuperable objections. It implies that Hosea had first awakened to the relations of Jehovah and Israel-He faithful and full of affection, she unfaithful and thankless-and that then, in order to illustrate the relations, he had invented the story. To that we have an adequate reply. In the first place, though it were possible, it is extremely improbable, that such a man should have invented such a tale about his wife, or, if he was unmarried, about himself. But, in the second place, he says expressly that his domestic experience was the "beginning of Jehovah’s word to him." That is, he passed through it first, and only afterwards, with the sympathy and insight thus acquired, he came to appreciate Jehovah’s relation to Israel. Finally, the style betrays narrative rather than parable. The simple facts are told; there is an absence of elaboration; there is no effort to make every detail symbolic; the names Gomer and Diblaim are apparently those of real persons; every attempt to attach a symbolic value to them has failed. She was, therefore, no dream, this woman, but flesh and blood: the sorrow, the despair, the sphinx of the prophet’s life; yet a sphinx who in the end yielded her riddle to love. Accordingly a large number of other interpreters have taken the story throughout as the literal account of actual facts. This is the theory of many of the Latin and Greek Fathers, of many of the Puritans and of Dr. Pusey-by one of those agreements into which, from such opposite schools, all these commentators are not infrequently drawn by their common captivity to the letter of Scripture. When you ask them, How then do you justify that first strange word of God to Hosea, { Hosea 1:2 } if you take it literally and believe that Hoses was charged to marry a woman of public shame? They answer either that such an evil may be justified by the bare word of God, or that it was well worth the end, the salvation of a lost soul. And indeed this tragedy would be invested with an even greater pathos if it were true that the human hero had passed through a self-sacrifice so unusual, had incurred such a shame for such an end. The interpretation, however, seems forbidden by the essence of the story. Had not Hosea’s wife been pure when he married her she could not have served as a type of the Israel whose earliest relations to Jehovah he describes as innocent. And this is confirmed by other features of the book: by the high ideal which Hosea has of marriage, and by that sense of early goodness and early beauty passing away like morning mist, which is so often and so pathetically expressed that we cannot but catch in it the echo of his own experience. As one has said to whom we owe, more than to any other, the exposition of the gospel in Hosea, "The struggle of Hosea’s shame and grief when he found his wife unfaithful is altogether inconceivable unless his first love had been pure and full of trust in the purity of its object." How then are we to reconcile with this the statement of that command to take a wife of the character so frankly described? In this way-and we owe the interpretation to the same lamented scholar. When, some years after his marriage, Hosea at last began to be aware of the character of her whom he had taken to his home, and while he still brooded upon it, God revealed to him why He who knoweth all things from the beginning had suffered His servant to marry such a woman; and Hosea, by a very natural anticipation, in which he is imitated by other prophets, pushed back his own knowledge of God’s purpose to the date when that purpose began actually to be fulfilled, the day of his betrothal. This, though he was all unconscious of its fatal future, had been to Hosea the beginning of the word of the Lord. On that uncertain voyage he had sailed with sealed orders. Now this is true to nature, and may be matched from our own experience. "The beginning of God’s word" to any of us-where does it lie? Does it lie in the first time the meaning of our life became articulate, and we are able to utter it to others? Ah, no; it always lies far behind that, in facts and in relationships, of the Divine meaning of which we are at the time unconscious, though now we know. How familiar this is in respect to the sorrows and adversities of life: dumb, deadening things that fall on us at the time with no more voice than clods falling on coffins of dead men, we have been able to read them afterwards as the clear call of God to our souls. But what we thus so readily admit about the sorrows of life may be equally true of any of those relations which we enter with light and unawed hearts, conscious only of the novelty and the joy of them. It is most true of the love which meets a man as it met Hoses in his opening manhood. How long Hosea took to discover his shame he indicates by a few hints which he suffers to break from the delicate reserve of his story. He calls the first child his own; and the boy’s name, though ominous of the nation’s fate, has no trace of shame upon it. Hosea’s Jezreel was as Isaiah’s Shear-Jashub or Maher-shalal-hash-baz. But Hoses does not claim the second child; and in the name of this little lass, Lo-Ruhamah, " she-that-never-knew-a-father’s-love, " orphan not by death but by her mother’s sin, we find proof of the prophet’s awakening to the tragedy of his home. Nor does he own the third child, named " Not-my-people ," that could also mean " No-kin-of-mine ." The three births must have taken at least six years; and once at least, but probably oftener, Hosea had forgiven the woman, and till the sixth year she stayed in his house. Then either he put her from him or she went her own way. She sold herself for money and finally drifted, like all of her class, into slavery. { Hosea 3:2 } Such were the facts of Hosea’s grief, and we have now to attempt to understand how that grief became his gospel. We may regard the stages of the process as two: first, when he was led to feel that his sorrow was the sorrow of the whole nation; and, second, when he comprehended that it was of similar kind to the sorrow of God Himself. While Hosea brooded upon his pain one of the first things he would remember would be the fact, which he so frequently illustrates, that the case of his home was not singular, but common and characteristic of his day. Take the evidence of his book, and there must have been in Israel many such wives as his own. He describes their sin as the besetting sin of the nation, and the plague of Israel’s life. But to lose your own sorrow in the vaster sense of national trouble-that is the first consciousness of a duty and a mission. In the analogous vice of intemperance among ourselves we have seen the same experience operate again and again. How many a man has joined the public warfare against that sin, because he was aroused to its national consequences by the ruin it had brought to his own house! And one remembers from recent years a more illustrious instance, where a domestic grief-it is true of a very different kind-became not dissimilarly the opening of a great career of service to the people:- "I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden called on me. I was then in the depths of grief-I may almost say of despair, for the light and sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and a too brief happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden called on me as his friend, and addressed me, as you may suppose, with words of condolence. After a time he looked up and said: ‘There are thousands and thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives and mothers and children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest until the Corn Laws are repealed.’" {from a speech by John Bright} Not dissimilarly was Hosea’s pain overwhelmed by the pain of his people. He remembered that there were in Israel thousands of homes like his own. Anguish gave way to sympathy. The mystery became the stimulus to a mission. But, again, Hosea traces this sin of his day to the worship of strange gods. He tells the fathers of Israel, for instance, that they need not be surprised at the corruption of their wives and daughters when they themselves bring home from the heathen rites the infection of light views of love. { Hosea 4:13-14 } That is to say, the many sins against human love in Israel, the wrong done to his own heart in his own home, Hosea connects with the wrong done to the Love of God by His people’s desertion of Him for foreign and impure rites. Hosea’s own sorrow thus became a key to the sorrow of God. Had he loved this woman, cherished and honored her, borne with and forgiven her, only to find at the last his love spurned and hers turned to sinful men: so also had the Love of God been treated by His chosen people, and they had fallen to the loose worship of idols. Hosea was the more naturally led to compare his relations to his wife with Jehovah’s to Israel, by certain religious beliefs current among the Semitic peoples. It was common to nearly all Semitic religions to express the ration of a god with his land or with his people by the figure of marriage. The title which Hosea so often applies to the heathen deities, Ba’al , meant originally not "lord" of his worshippers, but "possessor" and endower of his land, its husband and fertilizer. A fertile land was "a land of Ba’al," or " Be’ulah ," that is, "possessed" or "blessed by a Ba’al." Under the fertility was counted not only the increase of field and flock, but the human increase as well; and thus a nation could speak of themselves as the children of the Land, their mother, and of her Ba’al, their father. When Hosea, then, called Jehovah the husband of Israel, it was not an entirely new symbol which he invented. Up to his time, however, the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of a god and his people, seems to have been conceived in a physical form which ever tended to become more gross; and was expressed, as Hosea points out, by rites of a sensual and debasing nature, with the most disastrous effects on the domestic morals of the people. By an inspiration, whose ethical character is very conspicuous, Hosea breaks the physical connection altogether. Jehovah’s Bride is not the Land, but the People, and His marriage with her is conceived wholly as a moral relation. Not that He has no connection with the physical fruits of the land: corn, wine, oil, wool, and flax. But these are represented only as the signs and ornaments of the marriage, love-gifts from the husband to the wife. { Hosea 2:8 } The marriage itself is purely moral: "I will betroth her to Me in righteousness and justice, in leal love and tender mercies." From her in return are demanded faithfulness and growing knowledge of her Lord. It is the re-creation of an Idea. Slain and made carrion by the heathen religions, the figure is restored to life by Hosea. And this is a life everlasting. Prophet and apostle, the Israel of Jehovah, the Church of Christ, have alike found in Hosea’s figure an unfailing significance and charm. Here we cannot trace the history of the figure; but at least we ought to emphasize the creative power which its recovery to life proves to have been inherent in prophecy. This is one of those triumphs of which the God of Israel said: "Behold, I make all things new." Having dug his figure from the mire and set it upon the rock, Hosea sends it on its way with all boldness. If Jehovah be thus the husband of Israel, "her first husband, the husband of her youth," then all her pursuit of the Ba’alim is unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. But she is worse than an adulteress; she is a harlot. She has fallen for gifts. Here the historical facts wonderfully assisted the prophet’s metaphor. It was a fact that Israel and Jehovah were first wedded in the wilderness upon conditions, which by the very circumstances of desert life could have little or no reference to the fertility of the earth, but were purely personal and moral. And it was also a fact that Israel’s declension from Jehovah came after her settlement in Canaan, and was due to her discovery of other deities, in possession of the soil, and adored by the natives as the dispensers of its fertility. Israel fell under these superstitions, and, although she still formally acknowledged her bond to Jehovah, yet in order to get her fields blessed and her flocks made fertile, her orchards protected from blight and her fleeces from scab, she went after the local Ba’alim. { Hosea 2:13 } With bitter scorn Hosea points out that there was no true love in this: it was the mercenariness of a harlot, selling herself for gifts. { Hosea 2:5 ; Hosea 2:13 } And it had the usual results. The children whom Israel bore were not her husband’s. { Hosea 2:5 } The new generation in Israel grew up in ignorance of Jehovah, with characters and lives strange to His Spirit. They were Lo-Ruhamah : He could not feel towards them such pity as a father hath. They were Lo-Ammi: not at all His people. All was in exact parallel to Hosea’s own experience with his wife; and only the real pain of that experience could have made the man brave enough to use it as a figure of his God’s treatment by Israel. Following out the human analogy, the next step should have been for Jehovah to divorce His erring spouse. But Jehovah reveals to the prophet that this is not His way. For He is "God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of thee. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I surrender thee, O Israel? My heart is turned within Me, My compassions are kindled together!" Jehovah will seek, find, and bring back the wanderer. Yet the process shall not be easy. The gospel which Hosea here preaches is matched in its great tenderness by its full recognition of the ethical requirements of the case. Israel may not be restored without repentance, and cannot repent without disillusion and chastisement. God will therefore show her that her lovers, the Ba’alim, are unable to assure to her the gifts for which she followed them. These are His corn, His wine, His wool, and His flax, and He will take them away for a time. Nay more, as if mere drought and blight might still be regarded as some Baal’s work, He who has always manifested Himself by great historic deeds will do so again. He will remove herself from the land, and leave it a waste and a desolation. The whole passage runs as follows, introduced by the initial "Therefore" of judgment:- "Therefore, behold, I am going to hedge up her way with thorns, and build her a wall, so that she find not her paths. And she shall pursue her paramours and shall not come upon them, seek them and shall not find them; and she shall say, Let me go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now. She knew not, then, that it was I who gave her the corn and the wine and the oil; yea, silver I heaped upon her and gold-they worked it up for the Ba’al!" Israel had deserted the religion that was historical and moral for the religion that was physical. But the historical religion was the physical one. Jehovah who had brought Israel to the land was also the God of the Land. He would prove this by taking away its blessings. "Therefore I will turn and take away My corn in its time and My wine in its season, and I will withdraw My wool and My flax that should have covered her nakedness. And now"-the other initial of judgment-"I will lay bare her shame to the eyes of her lovers, and no man shall rescue her from My hand. And I will make an end of all her joyance, her pilgrimages, her New-Moons and her Sabbaths, with every festival; and I will destroy her vines and her figs of which she said, ‘They are a gift, mine own, which my lovers gave me,’ and I will turn them to jungle and the wild beast shall devour them. So shall I visit upon her the days of the Ba’alim, when she used to offer incense to them, and decked herself with her rings and her jewels and went after her paramours, but Me she forgat-‘tis the oracle of Jehovah." All this implies something more than such natural disasters as those in which Amos saw the first chastisements of the Lord. Each of the verses suggests, not only a devastation of the land by war, but the removal of the people into captivity. Evidently, therefore, Hosea, writing about 745, had in view a speedy invasion by Assyria, an invasion which was always followed up by the exile of the people subdued. This is next described, with all plainness, under the figure of Israel’s early wanderings in the wilderness, but is emphasized as happening only for the end of the people’s penitence and restoration. The new hope is so melodious that it carries the language into meter. "Therefore, lo! I am to woo her, and I will bring her to the wilderness, And I will speak home to her heart. And from there I will give to her vineyards And the Valley of Achor for a doorway of hope. And there she shall answer Me as in the days of her youth, And as the day when she came up from the land of Misraim." To us the terms of this passage may seem formal and theological. But to every Israelite some of these terms must have brought back the days of his own wooing. "I will speak home to her heart" is a forcible expression, like the German " an-das Herz " or the sweet Scottish " it cam’ up roond my heart ," and was used in Israel as from man to woman when he won her. But the other terms have an equal charm. The prophet, of course, does not mean that Israel shall be literally taken back to the desert. But he describes her coming exile under that ancient figure, in order to surround her penitence with the associations of her innocency and her youth. By the grace of God, everything shall begin again as at first. The old terms "wilderness," "the giving of vineyards," "Valley of Achor," are, as it were, the wedding ring restored. As a result of all this (whether the words be by Hosea or another), "It shall be in that day-‘tis Jehovah’s oracle-that thou shalt call Me, My husband, And thou shalt not again call Me, My Ba’al: For I will take away the names of the Ba’alim from her mouth, And they shall no more be remembered by their names." There follows a picture of the ideal future, in which-how unlike the vision that now closes the Book of Amos!-moral and spiritual beauty, the peace of the land and the redemption of the people, are wonderfully mingled together, in a style so characteristic of Hosea’s heart. It is hard to tell where the rhythmical prose passes into actual meter. "And I will make for them a covenant in that day with the wild beasts, and with the birds of the heavens, and with the creeping things of the ground; and the bow and the sword and battle will I break from the land, and I will make you to dwell in safety. And I will betroth thee to Me for ever, and I will betroth thee to Me in righteousness and in justice, in leal love and in tender mercies; and I will betroth thee to Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know Jehovah." "And it shall be on that day I will speak-‘tis the oracle of Jehovah-I will speak to the heavens, and they shall speak to the earth; the earth shall speak to the corn and the wine and the oil, and they shall speak to Jezreel," the "scattered like seed across many lands"; but I will sow him for Myself in the land: and I will have a father’s pity upon Un-Pitied; and to Not-My-People I will say, "My people thou art! and he shall say, My God!" The circle is thus completed on the terms from which we started. The three names which Hosea gave to the children, evil omens of Israel’s fate, are reversed, and the people restored to the favor and love of their God. We might expect this glory to form the culmination of the prophecy. What fuller prospect could be imagined than that we see in the close of the second chapter? With a wonderful grace, however, the prophecy turns back from this sure vision of the restoration of the people as a whole, to pick up again the individual from whom it had started, and whose unclean rag of a life had fluttered out of sight before the national fortunes sweeping in upon the scene. This was needed to crown the story-this return to the individual. "And Jehovah said unto me, Once more go, love a wife that is loved of a paramour and is an adulteress, as Jehovah loveth the children of Israel," the "while they are turning to other gods, and love raisin-cakes"-probably some element in the feasts of the gods of the land, the givers of the grape. "Then I bought her to me for fifteen "pieces" of silver and a homer of barley and a lethech of wine. And I said to her, For many days shalt thou abide for me alone; thou shalt not play the harlot, thou shalt not be for any husband; and I for my part also shall be so towards thee. For the days are many that the children of Israel shall abide without a king and without a prince, without sacrifice and without maccebah, and without ephod and teraphim. Afterwards the children of Israel shall turn and seek Jehovah their God and David their king, and shall be in awe of Jehovah and towards His goodness in the end of the days." Do not let us miss the fact that the story of the wife’s restoration follows that of Israel’s, although the story of the wife’s unfaithfulness had come before that of Israel’s apostasy. For this order means that, while the prophet’s private pain preceded his sympathy with God’s pain, it was not he who set God, but God who set him, the example of forgiveness. The man learned the God’s sorrow out of his own sorrow; but conversely he was taught to forgive and redeem his wife only by seeing God forgive and redeem the people. In other words, the Divine was suggested by the human pain; yet the Divine Grace was not started by any previous human grace, but, on the contrary, was itself the precedent and origin of the latter. This is in harmony with all Hosea’s teaching. God forgives because "He is God and not man." ( Hosea 9:9 ) Our pain with those we love helps us to understand God’s pain; but it is not our love that leads us to believe in His love. On the contrary, all human grace is but the reflex of the Divine. So St. Paul: "Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." So St. John: "We love Him," and one another, "because He first loved us." But this return from the nation to the individual has another interest. Gomer’s redemption is not the mere formal completion of the parallel between her and her people. It is, as the story says, an impulse of the Divine Love, recognized even then in Israel as seeking the individual. He who followed Hagar into the wilderness, who met Jacob at Bethel and forgat not the slave Joseph in prison, remembers also Hosea’s wife. His love is not satisfied with His Nation-Bride: He remembers this single outcast. It is the Shepherd leaving the ninety-and-nine in the fold to seek the one lost sheep. For Hosea himself his home could never be the same as it was at the first. "And I said to her, For many days shalt thou abide, as far as I am concerned, alone. Thou shalt not play the harlot. Thou shalt not be for a husband: and I on my side also shall be so towards thee." Discipline was needed there; and abroad the nation’s troubles called the prophet to an anguish and a toil which left no room for the sweet love or hope of his youth. He steps at once to his hard warfare for his people; and through the rest of his book we never again hear him speak of home, or of children, or of wife. So Arthur passed from Guinevere to his last battle for his land:- "Lo! I forgive thee, as Eternal God Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest. But how to take last leave of all I loved? I cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine I cannot take thy hand; that too is flesh, And in the flesh thou hast sinned; and mine own flesh, Here looking down on thine polluted, cries ‘I loathe thee’; yet not less, O Guinevere, For I was ever virgin save for thee, My love thro’ flesh hath wrought into my life So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know I am thine husband, not a smaller soul Leave me that, I charge thee my last hope. Now must I hence. Thro the thick night I hear the trumpet blow." 1; Hosea 2:1-23 ; Hosea 3:1-5 THE SIN AGAINST LOVE Hosea 1:1-11 ; Hosea 2:1-23 ; Hosea 3:1-5 ; Hosea 4:11 ff.; Hosea 9:10 ff.; Hosea 11:8 f. The Love of God is a terrible thing-that is the last lesson of the Book of Hosea. "My God will cast them away." { Hosea 10:1-15 } "My God"-let us remember the right which Hosea had to use these words. Of all the prophets he was the first to break into the full aspect of the Divine Mercy to learn and to proclaim that God is Love. But he was worthy to do so, by the patient love of his own heart towards another who for years had outraged all his trust and tenderness. He had loved, believed and been betrayed; pardoned and waited and yearned, and sorrowed and pardoned again. It is in this long-suffering that his breast beats upon the breast of God with the cry "My God." As He had loved Gomer, so had God loved Israel, past hope, against hate, through ages of ingratitude and apostasy. Quivering with his own pain, Hosea has exhausted all human care and affection for figures to express the Divine tenderness, and he declares God’s love to be deeper than all the passion of men, and broader than all their patience: "How can I give thee up, Ephraim? How can I let thee go, Israel? I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger. For I am God, and not man." And yet, like poor human affection, this Love of God, too, confesses its failure-"My God shall cast them away." It is God’s sentence of relinquishment upon those who sin against His Love, but the poor human lips which deliver it quiver with an agony of their own, and here, as more explicitly in twenty other passages of the book, declare it to be equally, the doom of those who outrage the love of their fellow men and women. We have heard it said: "The lives of men are never the same after they have loved; if they are not better, they must be worse." "Be afraid of the love that loves you: it is either your heaven or your hell." "All the discipline of men springs from their love-if they take it not so, then all their sorrow must spring from the same source." "There is a depth of sorrow, which can only be known to a soul that has loved the most perfect thing and beholds itself fallen." These things are true of the Love, both of our brother and of our God. And the eternal interest of the life of Hosea is that he learned how, for strength and weakness

According to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel. Hosea 3:1 Love in chastisement The substance of this chapter is, that it was God's purpose to keep in firm hope the minds of the faithful during the Exile, lest being overwhelmed with despair they should wholly faint. The prophet had before spoken of God's reconciliation with His people; and He magnificently extolled that favour when He said, "Ye shall be as in the valley of Achor, I will restore to you the abundance of all blessings; in a word, ye shall be in all respects happy." But, in the meantime, the daily misery of the people continued. God had indeed determined to remove them into Babylon. They might therefore have despaired under that calamity, as though every hope of deliverance were wholly taken from them. Hence the prophet now shows that God would so restore the people to favour, as not immediately to blot out every remembrance of His wrath, but that His purpose was to continue for a time some measure of His severity. We hence see that this prediction occupies a middle place between the denunciation the prophet previously pronounced and the promise of pardon. It was a dreadful thing that God should divorce His people, and cast away the Israelites as spurious children; but a consolation was afterwards added. But lest the Israelites should think that God would immediately, as on the first day, be so propitious to them as to visit them with no chastisement, it was the prophet's design expressly to correct the mistake, as though he had said, "God will indeed receive you again, but in the meantime a chastisement is prepared for you, which by its intenseness would break down your spirits, were it not that this comfort will case you, and that is, that God, though He punishes you for your sins, yet continues to provide for your salvation, and to be, as it were, your husband." When God humbles us by adversities, when He shows to us some tokens of severity and wrath, we cannot but instantly fail, were not this thought to occur to us, that God loves us, even when He is severe towards us, and that though He seems to east us away, we are not yet altogether aliens, for He retains some affection, even in the midst of His wrath; so that He is to us as a husband, though He admits us not immediately into conjugal honour, nor restores us to our former rank. So we see how the doctrine is to be applied to ourselves. ( John Calvin . ) God's forgiving love T. G. Selby. I once visited the ruins of a noble city on a desert oasis. Mighty columns of roofless temples stood in file. Gateways of carved stone led to a paradise of bats and owls. All was ruin. But past the dismantled city, brooks, which had once flowed through gorgeous flower gardens, still swept on in undying music and freshness. The waters were just as sweet as when queens quaffed them two thousand years ago. And so God's forgiving love flows in ever-renewed form through the wreck of the past. ( T. G. Selby. ) The love of God Dean Farrar, D. D. The dark sad story which Hosea pathetically shadows forth in his first three chapters taught him the chief lesson of his life. For he accepted God's dealings with him, and found that though the chastening was grievous, it brought forth the peaceable fruit of righteousness in his soul. By virtue of his holy sub missiveness he became one of the greatest of the prophets, and in the fall, the punishment, and the amendment of an adulterous wife, he saw a symbol of God's ways with sinful men. For the lesson which he learnt was this. If the love of man can be so deep, how unfathomable, how eternal must be the love of God! First of all the prophets he rises to the sublime height of calling the affection with which Jehovah regards His people "love." In Amos God is beneficent, and knows Israel; in Joel God is glorious and merciful; but Hosea introduces a new theological idea into Hebrew prophecy when he ventures to name the love of God. Hence, Prof. Davidson, referring to Duhm, says: "Amos is the prophet of morality, of human right, of the ethical order in human life; but Hosea is a prophet of religion." And to what unknown depths cannot God's love pierce! Agonising experience had taught him that human love, so poor, so frail, so mixed with selfishness — human love, whose wings are torn and soiled so easily, and which droops before wrong like a flower at the breath of a sirocco, — even human love, though disgraced by faithlessness, though dragged through the mire of shame, can still survive. Must not this then be so with the unchangeable love of God? If Hosea could still love the guilty and thankless woman, would not God still love the guilty and thankless nation, and by analogy the guilty and thankless soul? That is why, again and again, the voice of menace breaks into sobs, and the funeral anthem is drowned, as it were, in angel melodies. He saw the decadence and doom of Ephraim; he saw king after king perish by war and murder; he heard the thundering march of the Assyrian shake the ground from far; he knew that the fate of Samaria should be the fate of Beth-arbel; and yet, in spite of all, in his last chapter his style ceases to be obscure, rugged, enigmatical, oppressed with heavy thoughts; and to this doomed people he still can say, as the message of Jehovah, "I will love them freely, for Mine anger is turned away." It is so intolerable to the prophet to regard God's alienation from His people as final, that from the first he intimates the belief that they would repent and be forgiven, and become numberless as the sands of the sea, and that Judah — of whom at first he thought more favourably than at a later time — shall be joined with them under a single king. ( Dean Farrar, D. D. ) Who Idolatry and self-indulgence Robert Tuck, B. A. The connection here pointed out between the idolatry of heart that seeks after other gods, and the self-indulgence in life that seeks after flagons — large quantities — of wine, is so truly universal, through all the ages it has been in evidence, and even now it constantly reappears, so that it may be regarded as necessary and essential. All nature religions, all pagan religions, all heathen religions are sensuous and sensual. All philosophical religions are, though in more subtle forms, sensuous, as may be illustrated in the personal history of Comte the positivist. It would be possible very widely to illustrate this fact. But when it is established, and the strongly marked contrast of the Jehovah and the Christian religions is pointed out, it remains to be considered why this connection between two apparently unrelated things should have become established. Two reasons may be suggested. I. ALL OTHER RELIGIONS SAVE THE JEHOVAH RELIGION ARE HUMAN INVENTIONS. They therefore tend to foster the pride of man, to strengthen his self-will, and encourage him in doing what he likes. Jehovah religion, being authoritative revelation, brings man's will into subjection and obedience. II. ALL OTHER RELIGIONS ARE, IN ONE FORM OR ANOTHER, NATURE RELIGIONS. And the root idea of nature religions is the glorifying of sexual relations. The worship is virtual sensual indulgence, and thus all forms of sensual indulgence are encouraged. The Jehovah religion alone requires righteousness and purity. ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ) And for an homer of barley. Hosea 3:2 Barley a mean food Jeremiah Burroughs. Why an "homer of barley"? Because it was a mean food, and in those times rather the food of beasts than of men. God promised to feed His people with the finest of the wheat. Feeding with barley signifies the mean condition in which the Ten Tribes, and afterwards the Jews, should be, till Christ came to marry them to Himself. 1. They should be in a contemptible condition, they should be valued at but half the price of a slave. 2. They should be fed but meanly and basely, even as slaves, or rather as beasts; this homer and a half of barley should be for their sustenance. This not only referred to the time of their captivity before Christ, but to all their captivity ever since, and that which they shall endure until their calling.Observe — 1. A people who have been high in outward glory, when they depart from God, make themselves vile and contemptible. God casts contempt on the wicked who corrupt His worship. 2. Though a people be under contempt, yet God's heart may be towards them to do them good in the latter end. The love of God's election is still on this people; God remembers them, and yet intends good to them. If there be any of you whom God has so depressed as to render you contemptible, humble yourselves before God, but do not despair. Who knows but this was the only way that God had to bow your hearts? God puts His own people under contempt, and yet it is all from love to them, and with an intent to do them good at the last. 3. After many promises of God's mercy and of a glorious condition, which He intends for His people, He may yet hold a very hard hand over them for a great while. God takes supreme care that His people shall not grow wanton with His mercy. 4. Those who will delight their flesh to the full in a sensual use of the creature, it is just with God that they should be cut short, and made to live meanly and basely, made to feed on coarse fare. 5. If God will not utterly destroy a people, as He might, but reserve mercy for them at last, yet they have cause to bless God, though their subsistence for the present be most mean. It was wont to be a phrase, brown bread and the Gospel are good fare. 6. It is the way of God to humble those to whom He intends good, to prepare them for mercy by cutting them short of outward comforts. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) God's dominion over Israel George Hutcheson. The prophet's purchasing the adulteress for so much money is not to be strained to signify the Lord's redeeming of His Church, for the price is given to herself for maintenance and to purchase her goodwill, though she be His own, in order to a second marriage. but it teacheth that as a slave bought with money is at the buyer's disposal, so however Israel followed many idols, yet the Lord would prove that He alone had dominion over her, to set her in what condition He pleased. The price given for her, being but half a servant's worth, and half the estimation of a woman, may teach how little worth they are who despise the Lord and corrupt His worship. The small price, with the barley joined to it, being little and unfit food, may teach that sensuality provokes God to send pinching poverty, and that we must be stripped of all things before we become sensible, and are weaned from our idols. ( George Hutcheson. ) For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king. Hosea 3:4 Present condition of the Jews E. B. Pusey, D. D. Into the state here described the Ten Tribes were brought upon their captivity, and (those only excepted who joined the Two Tribes, or have been converted to the Gospel) they have ever since remained in it. Into that same condition the two tribes were brought, after that, by "killing the Son," they had "filled up the measure of their father's" sins, and the second temple, which His presence had hallowed, was destroyed by the Romans. In that condition they have ever since remained; free from idolatry, and in a state of waiting for God, yet looking in vain for a Messias, since they had not and would not receive Him who came unto them. Praying to God, yet without sacrifice for sin. Not owned by God, yet kept distinct and apart by His providence for a future yet to be revealed. "No one of their own nation has been able to gather them together, or to become their king." Julian the apostate attempted in vain to rebuild their temple. God interposed by miracles to hinder the effort which challenged His omnipotence. David's temporal kingdom has perished, and his line is lost, because Shiloh, the Peacemaker, is come. The typical priesthood ceased, in presence of the true "Priest after the order of Melchizedek." The line Of Aaron is forgotten, unknown, and cannot be recovered. Sacrifice, the centre of their religion, has ceased and become unlawful. Still their characteristic has been to wait. Their prayer as to the Christ has been, "May He soon be revealed." Eighteen centuries have flowed by. Their eyes have failed with looking for God's promise, whence it is not to be found. Nothing has changed this character in the mass of the people. Oppressed, released, favoured, despised, or aggrandised; in East or West; hating Christians, loving to blaspheme Christ, forced (as they would remain Jews) to explain away the prophecies which speak of Him, deprived of the sacrifices which, to their forefathers, spoke of Him and His atonement; — still, as a mass, they blindly wait for Him, the true knowledge of whom, His offices, His priesthood, and His kingdom, they have laid aside. And God has been towards them. He has preserved them from mingling with idolaters or Mahommedans. Oppression has not extinguished them, favour has not bribed them. He has kept them from abandoning their mangled worship, or the Scripture which they understand not, and whose true meaning they believe not; they have fed on the raisin-husks of a barren ritual and unspiritual legalism, since the Holy Spirit they have grieved away. Yet they exist still, a monument to Us, of God's abiding wrath on sin, as Lot's wife was to them, encrusted, stiff, lifeless, only that we know "the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ) And shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days. Hosea 3:5 Goodness producing fear Caleb Morris. There are three points here peculiarly worthy of our notice. The designation which is given to the Gospel dispensation — the "goodness of the Lord." The first stage of its development — "in the latter days." The peculiar effect which this development was to produce on the feelings and passions of men — "They shall fear the Lord." The Gospel dispensation is in itself the essence, the consummation, the perfection of excellence. It deserves that appellation because it is the supreme gift, the supreme evidence, and the supreme instrument of Divine love. Goodness generally excites admiration and gratitude and obedience, but here it is said that the exhibition of goodness produces fear. In the first establishment of the Christian dispensation there was everything calculated to produce fear. The astonishing fall of the Jews. A most splendid exhibition of Divine power. Expectation that the end of the world was at hand. The general principle which we consider is — that the goodness of God in the Gospel is calculated to produce fear. Why? I. BECAUSE THIS GOODNESS THROWS FRESH LIGHT ON THE TERRORS OF SIN. Fear, philosophically defined, is this, a painful sensation produced by the apprehension of imminent danger, and that danger may be the loss of present enjoyment, the fear of future disappointment, or the infliction of positive injury. But this is not the fear of our text. There is in it a holy, reverential, and even pleasing awe, produced in the mind by the sight of those visions which the goodness of God in the Gospels unfolds to the mind. When Divine light pierces the darkness of the soul, the mind sees its guilt, feels its pollution, apprehends its terrific and awful doom. I much question whether any man has ever been converted without, first of all, feeling the sensation of fear. It is impossible for any man to be impressed with the depravity of his own mind unless he is impressed with the excellence of the Gospel. II. BY THE EXHIBITION OF THE GOODNESS OF THE GOSPEL WE SEE THE TERRORS OF SIN IN THE WORLD. Who is the man that detects, mourns over, and attempts by God's help to remove the sin that is in the world? Surely it is the man who has received this light. Let us be alive to the real state of things in the world. III. THE GOODNESS OF GOD IN THE GOSPEL PRODUCES FEAR BECAUSE IT IS AN EXTRAORDINARY ACT OF JEHOVAH, AND ARISES FROM ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY. If our salvation were in our own hands why should we fear? If we had a power superior to any power hostile to our salvation, why should we fear? Or if our salvation depended upon the absolute justice of God — if God could not have been just without saving us, why should we fear? But the fact is that God saves us purely and exclusively because He wishes to do it. The very perfections of the Deity qualify Him to act as a sovereign. He acts from His own spontaneousness. God might not have exercised any sovereignty in the way of mercy. The sovereignty of God does real and positive good. But while it does this good, it leaves the sinner just where he was. There is a real exercise of the sovereignty in the salvation of man. Let us fear, then, because our responsibility is awfully augmented. Our gratitude to God ought to correspond to the character of the blessings which we have received. And our exertions for the good of others ought to correspond to the value of the blessings that we enjoy. ( Caleb Morris. ) True and worthy fear E. B. Pusey, D. D. It is not a servile fear, not even, as elsewhere, a fear which makes them shrink back from His awful majesty. It is a fear most opposed to this; a fear whereby "they shall flee to Him for help, from all that is to be feared"; a reverent holy awe, which should even impel them to Him; a fear of losing Him, which should make them hasten to Him. "They shall fear, and wonder exceedingly, astonied, at the greatness of God's dealing, or of their now joy." Yet they should "hasten tremblingly," as bearing in memory their past unfaithfulness and ill deserts, and fearing to approach but for the greater fear of turning away. Nor do they hasten with this reverent awe and awful joy to God only, but to His goodness also. His goodness draws them, and to it they betake themselves, away from all cause of fear, their sins, themselves, the evil One. Yet even His goodness is a source of awe. How much it contains! All whereby God is good in Himself, all whereby He is good to us. ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ) Fear to the Lord Jeremiah Burroughs. I shall speak of the fear of God here only as it concerns this place. It is introduced here to show that when this glorious Church shall be formed, when God shall call home His own people the Jews, and bring in the fulness of the Gentiles, then shall the fear of God mightily prevail upon the hearts of the people; and the greater God's goodness shall be, the more shall the fear of God be on their hearts. It is remarkable that almost all the prophecies which speak of the glorious condition of the Church ever make mention of the fear of God that should rest then on the hearts of the people. One would rather think that there should be a reference to the joy they would have. But why fear the Lord in these times? 1. Because of the glory of Christ their King. They shall behold their King in glory that shall cause fear. 2. Because of the great works of God that shall then take place. 3. Because the holiness and purity of the worship of God and of His ordinances shall cause fear. 4. Because the holiness of the saints, appearing brightly in their very faces and conversations, shall Strike great fear. Surely when the saints shall be exalted in their holiness, when every one of them shall have their souls filled with God, it will cause abundance of fear in the hearts of all those who shall even converse with them. But the wicked shall fear too, as well as the saints. "Men's hearts shall fail them for fear," shall be verified in these days, as it was in the destruction of Jerusalem. The saints shall fear the Lord and His goodness. The goodness of God which in that day they shall fear, shall be this —(1) That ever He should regard such a wretched people as this, and pardon all their sins.(2) Because God shall then make the difference between him that feareth God, and him that feareth Him not. Then shall God take away all the reproach of His saints. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Israel's conversion George Hutcheson. 1. Albeit that Israel as a nation hath been, and yet is, rejected and lost, yet they will certainly return to God. This we should long and pray for. 2. As true repentance and conversion will appear in men's being sensible of their great distance from God, and in their seeking to make up this distance, so all this is a sweet and blessed fruit of affliction. 3. The covenant standeth still to be forthcoming for apostates, when they repent and turn to God, renouncing false ways and worship. 4. There is no right seeking of God, nor finding Him, or the comforts of the Covenant, but through Christ, whom converted Israel shall acknowledge and embrace. 5. The conversion will appear in its constancy and perseverance, and particularly in the converts entertaining a holy fear and awe of God. 6. As God is always good to His own people, whatever they may think to the contrary, so much of His goodness will be manifested in the time of that life from the dead, when all Israel shall be saved. 7. The goodness of God will not make a true convert presumptuous, but will be unto him matter of reverence and holy fear and trembling. 8. Albeit Israel be long in gathering and converting, yet we are firmly to believe that, before time end, it will certainly come to pass; for all this shall be in the latter days. ( George Hutcheson. ) Fearing the Lord's goodness Robert Tuck, B. A. "Not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." I. THERE IS MUCH THAT MEN DO NOT KNOW. II. ONE THING THAT MEN DO NOT KNOW IS THE GOODNESS OF GOD. Goodness is a comprehensive term. God saw creation, and pronounced it "good." Goodness includes beneficence, forbearance, patience. It may be likened to a rich flowing river, or to the sun shedding light and warmth all around. But goodness is not the thing that most strikes men in God. But it should be. It may be seen everywhere. 1. Trace it in Scripture story. Life of Jacob. Tale of the wanderings. Time of captivity. Life of Jesus. 2. See it in gracious providences. Winter snows. Summer storms. Autumn harvests. 3. See it in individual experiences. If we read the story of our lives aright, we shall be able to trace everywhere upon us the "good hand of our God for good." But is this man's chief thought of God? Is it not rather the Gospel which has to be declared? Is not this the surprising, melting, persuading Gospel, whose chief rays fall from Christ crucified? III. IF MEN DID BUT KNOW THE GOODNESS OF GOD THEY WOULD FEEL THE HOLY FEAR AND HEAR THE CALL TO REPENTANCE. Men either find a sort of excuse in persisting that God is a God of wrath and judgment, or they presume on His goodness, and say that He will take no notice of sin. Spite of this, the mightiest of all moral forces is goodness. It is mother's power. It is Christ's power. It melts, draws, wins. But it is goodness not in the abstract. It is goodness brought home to us. "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Goodness says, "Repent." Is that hard? Nay, it is but the first step on the way to trust, love, and life eternal. God's new goodness seems to freshen the sense of His lifelong goodness, and of His saving goodness, until the cords of God seem to be all about us, and it becomes evident that He is graciously leading us to Himself. ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ).

3:1-3 The dislike of men to true religion is because they love objects and forms, which allow them to indulge, instead of mortifying their lusts. How wonderful that a holy God should have good-will to those whose carnal mind is enmity against Him! Here is represented God's gracious dealings with the fallen race of mankind, that had gone from him. This is the covenant of grace he is willing to enter into with them, they must be to him a people, and he will be to them a God. They must accept the punishment of their sin, and must not return to folly. And it is a certain sign that our afflictions are means of good to us, when we are kept from being overcome by the temptations of an afflicted state. 3:4-5 Here is the application of the parable to Israel. They must long sit like a widow, stripped of all joys and honours; but shall at length be received again. Those that would seek the Lord so as to find him, must apply to Christ, and become his willing people. Not only are we to fear the Lord and his greatness, but the Lord and his goodness; not only his majesty, but his mercy. Even Jewish writers apply this passage to the promised Messiah; doubtless it foretold their future conversion to Christ, for which they are kept a separate people. Though the first fear of God arise from a view of his holy majesty and righteous vengeance, yet the experience of mercy and grace through Jesus Christ, will lead the heart to reverence so kind and glorious a Friend and Father, and to fear offending him.