BIG IDEA:
FORSAKING GOD CREATES A VACUUM FILLED BY SYNCRETISTIC WORSHIP THAT HAS SHAMEFUL AND DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES
INTRODUCTION:
H. D. Beeby: In Israel’s state of rebellion as depicted here all the great biblical sins are comprehended and all the virtues excluded. Here are lust, apostasy, disobedience, errors of mind, distorted emotions, perverted instincts. Here are harlotry of body, mind, and soul. Here are materialism, idolatry, faithlessness, thanklessness—a life wholly and totally misdirected and willfully disoriented. Excluded from Israel’s life are all the virtues that God speaks of in vv. 19–20: righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, faithfulness, and knowledge of the LORD. The vignette of the prostitute who does not just stand and solicit, but who actively pursues her lovers omits nothing. Before the sin of the crucifixion there is no more full and fearsome description of mankind’s turning away from God than this.
The evils and errors envisioned are not only moral, mental, emotional, political, and religious; there is a deep theological falsity hinted at which is to occupy the writer later in the chapter. In ch. 1 the harlotry protested against belongs largely within the doctrine of redemption. Israel is castigated because she has rebelled against the God of the Covenant, the God who has revealed himself in her history and has continued to be active redemptively in that history. The errors in the present chapter also begin in the context of the Covenant (i.e., within “redemption”), but in v. 5 we have clearly entered into the area of “creation.” Israel’s apostasy is now closely linked with creation and the promise of nature, and her breaking of God’s covenant of salvation is tied to the simple but disastrous fact that she does not know who is in charge of the heavens and the earth.
J. Andrew Dearman: The bulk of chapter 2 (vv. 2–23; MT 25) is comprised of two sections or panels, with the portrayal of Hosea’s family in promiscuous infidelity in its first part (vv. 2–13), and its promised future restoration in its second part (vv. 14–23). These two panels are fundamentally a rehearsal of 1:2 – 2:1 (MT 3), which also portrays in two panels the family in infidelity and in restoration. . .
Verses 2–13 contain the indictment of faithless Gomer (= Israel) by an angry and anguished Hosea (= YHWH), using the children to address their mother with his words. He describes a scenario based on her past and continuing infidelities and her seeming inability to comprehend the perilousness of her situation. Judgment will come upon her for her adulteries with her lovers (= Canaanite deities).
John Goldingay: This adroit and sustained piece of rhetoric, the most elaborate in the scroll, is a reprise of 1:2b – 2:1 [3] in the form of prophecy rather than story. Yahweh confronts Ephraim about its whoring, warns it of the action he intends to take, but promises that he will then take further action to reestablish their relationship. . .
Western readers also have to be aware of another way in which assumptions about marriage in their culture are different from those in a traditional culture. Marriage in a traditional culture is an economic and work arrangement (though not solely that), but its patriarchalizing can lead to a skewing of this aspect as the man gains authority over the woman and controls the family’s economy. Marriage breakdown thus has significant implications for the practical position of a wife.
Lloyd Ogilvie: With that brief introduction about the historical and contemporary problem of syncretism, we are able to appreciate the severity of God’s judgment of Israel’s spiritual adultery in Hosea 2:2–13. Israel’s primary relationship with God was at stake. If the passage seems harsh, we need only remember the depths of defection and degradation to which Israel had fallen. God’s patience had been tried; His exasperation was acute. But He will not go back on His marriage vows to be Israel’s God and to keep them as His bride/people. Again, the judgment is meant to lead to the desired reconciliation described in verses 14–23. . .
In preaching and teaching this section, I have often found it effective to begin at the end, with the poignant verse, “‘Then she forgot Me’ says the LORD” (Hos. 2:13). That provides an excellent focus for four major points on contemporary syncretism:
(1) How Israel forgot God as a result of losing the conviction that God is the source, sustainer, and sovereign of all;
(2) how we can forget God today in our worship of false gods;
(3) how God jogs us with judgment because He will not tolerate other gods before Him; and,
(4) how to keep a vivid awareness that God is our ultimate strength and hope through consistent repentance and daily renewal.
(:1) TRANSITION – ANTICIPATION OF ESCHATOLOGICAL RENEWAL
Duane Garrett: This verse looks both backward and forward. It is optimistic in tone and concludes the reversal of the three names. Just as Jezreel would become a name of salvation, so Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ammi would be transformed into “My loved one” (rûḥāmâ) and “My people” (‘āmmî). On the other hand, it also looks ahead to the next verse in that it begins with an imperative and directly addresses Hosea’s children. The transitional, Janus-nature of this verse binds what precedes to what follows. It is impossible to sever chap. 2 [Hb. 2:3–25] from the Lo-Ammi oracle.
A. Confession of Israel as God’s People
“Say to your brothers, ‘Ammi,’”
J. Andrew Dearman: Ammi (My People) reverses the judgment portrayed in the name of the second son, and Ruhamah (Mercy) is the emphatic reversal of the daughter’s name. YHWH intends to save, and the voice of siblings crying out “mercy” is an emphatic affirmation that YHWH intends to overcome his people’s failures.
James Mays: The imperatives of the attached verse call upon Israel to reverse the symbolic names of judgment (‘Unpitieď in 1.6 and ‘Not-my-people’ in 1.9) so that they became confessions that salvation will occur. In the light of what will happen on the day of Jezreel, the beleaguered folk can call one another (note the plural ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’) the people of Yahweh to whom he will show his compassion. The eschatological renewal (2.23) must be anticipated in the very speech of the people who are to know one another in terms of what they yet shall be.
B. Confession of Israel as Pitied and Loved by God (Shown Mercy)
“and to your sisters, ‘Ruhamah.’”
H. D. Beeby: Perhaps v. 1 provided the transfer from Hosea’s children to the children of Israel, for clearly we have moved from the particular harlotry spoken of in ch. 1 to the national harlotry.
John Goldingay: The imperative and the suffixes are plural. Hosea and/or Yahweh are bidding Ephraimite men to take on their lips the words that Yahweh had previously outlawed, “my people” (picking up the second promise). They are also bidding Ephraimite women to take on the other outlawed expression, “shown compassion.”
I. (:2-5) DIVINE ACCUSATION OF INFIDELITY LEADING TO SEVERE JUDGMENT
A. (:2a) Point of Contention
“Contend with your mother, contend,
For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband;”
J. Andrew Dearman: The verb rîb, translated as Contend here, typically refers to contentions and struggles that surface in the public arena, where the issue of right and wrong is to be adjudicated in one way or another, rather than to private disagreements and rebukes. When employed as a noun it can mean “quarrel” or “struggle” (Gen. 13:7) and refer also to a legal dispute or something akin to a lawsuit (Exod. 23:2–3, 6; Deut. 17:8; 21:5). As a verb it can even depict a physical struggle, perhaps based on a disagreement (Exod. 21:18), or an argument based on a dispute (Num. 20:3; cf. Hos. 4:4). Both noun and verb are associated with representing the cause of widows who otherwise lack protectors and advocates (Isa. 1:17, 23). In the prophets God contends with the failures of his people by charging or indicting them with wrongdoing (Isa. 3:13; Jer. 2:9; Mic. 6:1–2). It is thus a term that fits with the prophetic task. Elsewhere Hosea preserves similar usage (4:1; 12:2 [MT 3]).
What the children do in contending with their mother is to charge her with a breach of family integrity, namely infidelity to her husband, their father. Why the children are employed in this role is not known. Perhaps it is part of a shaming mechanism, whereby members of a family represent its honor and the offender is humiliated by those closest to him or her. They represent “Israel” indicting Israel, and so the shaming mechanism may be a twice-wounding. It is also the case that the children represent the unfaithfulness with which their mother is charged, and there is something to be said for self-interest. Her condemnation would adversely affect them just as her restoration would impinge on their own restoration. . .
The goal of the children’s contention is that Gomer put away the signs of her infidelity. Both harlotry and adultery describe her activities, which are symbolized with her countenance and between her breasts. The language of putting things away has suggested to some that jewelry, clothing, perfume, or something tangible is in mind (cf. 2:13). In the harlotry motif elsewhere, there are references to the “forehead of a harlot” (Jer. 3:3) and to details of physical appearance intended to attract lovers (Jer. 4:30). Perhaps jewelry or ornaments depicted fertility rituals and devotion to the cults of the Baals, or cultural markers in dress and appearance denoted a harlot. Apart from more explicit evidence, it is probably better to see the phrase as metaphorical, commanding Gomer to put aside all things that prompt or feed her infidelities.
Duane Garrett: The word is at most quasi judicial here. Hosea is not calling upon the children to testify against their mother in a trial; rather, they are to repudiate her behavior. Not every accusation is a courtroom accusation, even metaphorically; people often accuse one another of misdeeds outside courts of law. Thus rîbû here means to “find fault with,” to “contend against,” or to “denounce.” In saying that the children must denounce their mother, Hosea is not calling on them to testify formally. He is saying that they must set themselves apart from their mother lest they suffer the same fate she does.
“For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband” explains why they must denounce their mother. The Israelites believed that they were God’s people solely because they were Israelites. God was in covenant with this nation, and their identity as Israelites assured them of their special place before God. Now God declares that the bond between himself and their “mother” is void. Israelites can become God’s people only by renouncing Israel! The identity in which they trusted had become the greatest impediment between them and God. This is as great a blow to their religious underpinnings as is John the Baptist’s claim that God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones (Matt 3:9).
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The words “she is not my wife, and I am not her husband” echo the doubly negative statement of 1:9. Do they represent a legal divorce proceeding? This scenario is doubtful. There is no imaginary court scene, no call to witnesses, and no challenge to respond to the charges. The fact that Yahweh warns Israel in the next verse of potential punishment, later judges her, and then woos her reveals that the marriage relationship is still in place. This situation is a far cry from the most severe sentence for adultery in the law: death by stoning (Dt 22:22–24).
Robin Routledge: Rebuke translates the imperative of the Hebrew verb rîb, which, like the corresponding noun, may suggest a judicial setting. However, though the statement is similar to some found in the Ancient Near East in connection with formal divorce proceedings, there is little evidence that this was used in Israel (Mays 1969: 37–38; Macintosh 1997: 41; Kelle 2005: 54–55; Dearman 2010: 109–11024). Also, because the intention of the accusation here appears to be to open the way for reconciliation, an actual divorce seems unlikely. However, echoing the name of Gomer’s third child, Lo-Ammi, this does signal a significant breakdown in the marriage and in the covenant relationship between Yahweh and his people.
Jeremy Thomas: [Role of sex in the institution of marriage and how that relates to idolatry] Marriage is a relationship created by God between one man and one woman. When God did that He made man with a role and He made woman with a role, two distinct roles. Male and female have distinct functions in the plan of God and so together they complement one another. This is why one man + one man won’t work, two men don’t complement, they have the same roles and there’s no complement. So, if you distort marriage that way you’ll be lopsided. Now the way God designed man: He made him first, He made him the leader, He made man the initiator in the relationship. The woman He took out of the man. He made her the follower, He made her the responder in the relationship. And when these two roles are handled correctly it’s a beautiful thing. But in the fallen world here’s the problem. The woman is the responder. If she marries her man but she goes negative to her husband then a vacuum is created. She doesn’t cease to be who she is, she’s still made to respond and what will happen is she’ll begin to respond to other men. Now that’s what’s happened here. In the marriage of Hosea his wife Gomer has gone negative toward him, she’s left the house, but she can’t be something she’s not. She’s still a woman and she’s still designed to respond to a man and so she begins to respond to other men. In the analog with the nation Israel the nation had gone negative toward God but they can’t be something they are not, they cannot become non-man, they are still designed to worship and so they begin to worship Baal. That’s the link between sex and idolatry; they both play off the original design at creation. A woman was made to respond to a man and man was made to worship.
So, verse 2 communicates a very graphic picture of what was going on. Gomer was responding to a man in sexual intercourse but it was the wrong man. By parallel the nation Israel was worshipping a god, but it was the wrong God. And they should stop this.
https://storage.sermonaudio.com/com-sermonaudio-text/1018212132281.pdf?ts=1634681808
B. (:2b-3a) Plea for Reform Reinforced by Strong Warning
“And let her put away her harlotry from her face,
And her adultery from between her breasts,
Lest I strip her naked
And expose her as on the day when she was born.”
Allen Guenther: Apparently the unfaithful wife bejeweled herself with a nose ring (before her face) and a necklace or pendant (between her breasts) before committing adultery. Were these a prostitute’s symbols (cf. Jer. 4:30; Ezek. 23:40) or were they distinctive jewelry used in the worship of Baal? We lack the data to decide.
Duane Garrett: “Face” suggests intent and personality, and “breasts” by metonymy represents the body with particular emphasis on sexuality. In short, the woman is called upon to turn her whole person away from lewd and faithless behavior. She must abandon her old ways and everything that went along with them. . .
“As on the day she was born” connotes not just nakedness but also helplessness (cf. Ezek 16:4–5). The denuded land is incapable of supporting life and is deserted by those who once dwelt there. God will leave the people to their fate, and the land will revert to wilderness.
James Mays: The use of marriage as an analogy for the covenant provides a concentrated emphasis on the personal dimension, on the relation itself, which transcends the cultic and legal. This husband is not preoccupied with his legal rights to separation or the punishment of his guilty wife. He wants her back. He demands that the wife strip from herself the embellishments of her unfaithfulness as a sign that she forswears her desertion. Let her take off her ‘harlot-marks’ and ‘adultery-signs’. ‘Harlot-marks’ and ‘adultery-signs’ (abstract plurals in Hebrew) are probably pejorative names for jewelry worn in the Baal cult (cf. v. 13). The wife’s adultery is in fact the cult of Baal. The wife can put it away from her, if she only will!
M. Daniel Carroll R.: The “stripping” that Yahweh will perform is agricultural: the land will be laid waste from lack of water, one of the curses for failure to obey the covenantal obligations (Lev 26:19–20; Dt 28:22–24). Uncovering is a metaphor for arid barrenness, not the imitation of a hypothetical, abusive cultural practice.
J. Andrew Dearman: The stripping of Gomer is likely a metaphor for the humiliating punishment that Israel will suffer in the historical process rather than her literally being forced naked from the home.
Jeremy Thomas: Spiritual Significance of Being Clothed vs. Being Stripped Naked
There are some hints at why we wear clothes. Originally God made man naked. It says God made them naked and they were not ashamed. It wasn’t a problem at all. After the Fall something happened and they became aware of their nakedness. And their nakedness bothered them to the point they went and made clothes; they took fig leaves and covered up. Now, no animal did that. Animals run around naked all the time and never have a problem with it. So obviously there’s a difference there between man and animals. And the Bible points out that the reason man is ashamed is because of his sin. When man sinned it affected the way he looked at the human body. Now it was something he was ashamed of. We don’t know what the body looked like before the Fall, but it did look different. The Fall brought about physical changes to the human body. We don’t know all that changed but we do know that when they looked at the body they were ashamed of it. It probably was more because of what sin did to distort the way they saw the body. But whatever all the factors were now there was shame whereas before there was not. And they wanted to cover up so they made designer clothes. Now that’s physical clothing to cover physical nakedness but the Fall affected spiritually too and there was a spiritual nakedness now due to the sin problem. So there’s a deeper problem being shown to us in why man wanted clothes. Man has a sin problem and he’s trying to cover that up, he’s embarrassed. Remember that the spiritual always finds it’s analog in the physical. So when we talk about physical circumcision, for example, there’s a spiritual parallel in the need for a circumcised heart. Always the spiritual mirrors the physical. It’s part of the way God built into creation revelation of spiritual truths. You may not see them at first but when you do you say, aha, I always knew there was something to that. So man is also embarrassed spiritually in analog to the physical embarrassment and he wants to cover that up. So the clothing he puts on are good works – if I do enough good works God will look down at me and say, I accept you. It’s always about man clothing himself. But just as Adam and Eve couldn’t clothe their physical bodies properly so they couldn’t clothe their spiritual bodies properly. And so the spiritual truth is that because we’re sinners we need spiritual clothing and that spiritual clothing can’t be supplied by us, it’s got to be supplied by God. It’s the clothing of God’s perfect righteousness. Clothing is a theological statement that man is in need of righteousness. And so what is God saying about Israel? I’m going to strip you naked, I’m going to expose you, that is, I’m going to show the world your spiritually destitute, I’m going to make you a mockery before the nations. I’ve protected you so far, I’ve sheltered you; I’ve blessed you but no more. I’m going to strip you of all that. And the way I’m going to do that is v 4; I’m going to remove all blessing.
C. (:3b) Punishment Promised
“I will also make her like a wilderness,
Make her like desert land,
And slay her with thirst.”
David Thompson: Dying of thirst is a horrible way to die. When water goes out of your body the cells in the body shrink. Your tongue swells, typically your kidneys shut down first. Your brain cells do not operate normally. You become very confused and ultimately you slip into a coma and die. It is a horrible way to die. God says to His own family members, if you do not turn to Me and start being faithful to Me, this is what I will permit to happen to you.
Gary Smith: This call for change is accompanied by a threat that God will bring shame on the nation and dry up the land so that there is no fertility (2:3). Like a dishonored husband who uncovers the nakedness of his wife, God will humiliate his people and turn their fertile farmlands into bare deserts, which produce nothing. This is another way of predicting the coming humiliation of Israel through the exile of the nation. God warns of a divine curse on the land and the removal of life-giving rain. Since Baal was the god of rain and fertility, this would be a clear sign of his powerlessness and the extreme consequences of unfaithful prostitution with other gods.
D. (:4-5) Prostitution Involves Shameful Behavior and Perverted Perspective
“Also, I will have no compassion on her children,
Because they are children of harlotry.
For their mother has played the harlot;
She who conceived them has acted 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.’”
H. Ronald Vandermey: Just in case the individuals to whom these words were addressed, “the children of harlotry” thought they would escape the punishment for the corporate nation, the Lord straightened them out (v. 4). Because they were children of harlotry, the corrupt tendencies of the nation had infected every individual to the extent that each one had endorsed and enjoyed the sinful practices of his mother. Hosea’s generation was deaf to the pleadings of Jehovah. Through years of degeneration, the people had trained themselves to respond only on a physical level. A sensual religion devoid of spirituality was all they could understand. Truly, there was no knowledge of God in the land (4:1).
David Thompson: As one commentator said, her prostitution brought her tremendous “agricultural prosperity.” Her lovers paid her well. Gomer was a prostitute because of what it got her. But what she didn’t realize is what this would ultimately get her is the judgment of God.
J. Andrew Dearman: The lovers are those who gave her life-sustaining commodities, those things that a cultivated land blessed by the divine world can produce for its inhabitants. This implies that the “lovers” here are the Baals of the Canaanite world.
Duane Garrett: Once again we face the questions about the paternity of Hosea’s children; here suspicions arise from the assertion that their mother “conceived them in disgrace.” Again we do not know; the verse only tells us that she was in the status of disgrace when she conceived the children, and the Israelite people are again the focus of the message. However, we should not miss the rhetorical effect of these accumulated doubts over the paternity of Hosea’s family. Just as neighbors must have asked themselves if these children could possibly be Hosea’s, so Hosea sowed doubt about Israel’s spiritual paternity—Is Yahweh really our God, or are we the children of Baal?
John Goldingay: “Lovers” suggests promiscuity (several partners) rather than simply one sexual relationship outside marriage. The plural also links with the implicit allegory. The lovers are the entities whom the children’s mother believed were givers of her everyday physical needs, bread and water, wool and flax (for making linen), olive oil and drink (in the context, “drink” will carry the same connotations as the word does in English). Yahweh is the giver of the crops. He “plainly shows that the whole order of nature . . . is in his hand.” If he does not make things grow, people have nothing to eat.
David Allan Hubbard: The participial style with which she chants the lists of gifts virtually makes her words a hymn to the Baals (a close parallel in a hymn to Yahweh is Ps. 136:25: ‘he who gives [is giving] bread to all flesh’). Graspingly, she has claimed all this beneficence as her own, with the Hebrew suffix my attached to every noun. A two-fold error this: credit to the wrong giver; possessiveness by a selfish recipient. Part of the threatened judgment will be God’s correction of the double error, when he takes back what is ever and rightly his (vv. 8–9).
II. (:6-8) DIVINE CONSEQUENCES OF SYNCRETISTIC WORSHIP
Duane Garrett: Structure of this section:
A Sin = going after lovers for agricultural bounty (2:5b)
B Punishment = walling her in (2:6–7a)
C Anticipated redemption = she will seek her husband (2:7b)
A´ Sin = refusal to acknowledge Yahweh as source of bounty and fertility (2:8)
B´´ Punishment = she will be destitute (2:9–12)
A´´ Summary of sin = devotion to Baal and to decadence (2:13)
C´ Redemption = Yahweh will draw her back and restore her (2:14–23)
H. Ronald Vandermey: Verses 6-8 summarize God’s initiation of the process of punishment, the isolation of Israel from her illicit lovers.
A. (:6) Opposition and Frustration
“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.”
Trent Butler: “Therefore”, when used by the prophets, should always catch our attention. God’s pronouncement of judgment, his declaration of guilt and its consequences, generally follow “therefore.”
Jason Van Bemmel: Why does God use the word “therefore” and not the word “but” here in Hosea 2? Because the Lord is telling Israel why He is being harsh to them. He wants them to know the reason for His discipline. He takes away what is precious to them so He can fill their emptiness with Himself. He wants to break them of their love for the Baals so He can replace that love with His own love.
M. Daniel Carroll R.: This pericope is the first of three “therefore” passages. The punishment is described as Yahweh’s obstructing wayward Israel from going where it should not go—that is, on the well-worn paths leading to other gods.
Jeremy Thomas: When you see the word thorns you should immediately think of the curse upon nature in Gen 3. Thorns in Scripture are always associated with the curse of sin and its effects on nature. There were certain deleterious effects we know because of sin on both man and nature. And one of the effects on the plant kingdom was thorns. Thorns weren’t originally produced by plants. We don’t know all the mechanics of how the change took place, but obviously some genetic manipulation was involved such that whatever the plant originally produced it no longer produces. And now in place of its original produce we have thorns. Thorns are a reminder that the kind of production we had before the Fall we no longer enjoy. So after the Fall there are plants that produce thorns and that’s a reminder of inefficiency, lost produce, the world we live in now is not the original world. So when he says I will hedge up her way with thorns He’s saying I will now let sin’s effect upon nature run its course. Israel has enjoyed agricultural blessing, economic blessing, land blessing and now God is saying I’m going to take that away, I’m going to remove My hand of grace and I’m going to let the effects of sin on nature run their course.
H. D. Beeby: Israel is to be severely restricted; hedges, walls, and other limitations will imprison her. Her frantic, obsessive religiosity with all its attendant dangers is to be given no opportunity to find satisfaction. Against her will she will be compelled to live prudently and soberly.
Duane Garrett: The imagery here implies entrapment and frustration.
B. (:7a) Desperation and Futility
“And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not find them.”
David Allan Hubbard: The judgment (introduced by therefore; cf. vv. 9, 14; 13:3) appropriate to Israel’s lustful chase is to cut her off from her lovers – a case of judgment by frustration (cf. 5:6). Its purposes are positive and gracious, no matter how vexing it may have seemed to Israel:
(1) it sought to protect her from her wanton urges which could only produce further harm for her and her children (v. 6); and
(2) it was aimed so to thwart her heated pursuits of the Baals that she would change her mind and return to Yahweh (v. 7).
The enforced chastity, described in the thorn bushes and stone walls (cf. the firm hand that God has to keep on ‘the stubborn heifer’ of 4:16) that block the paths to the shrines and cut her off from the Baals, anticipates the period of discipline and sexual continence in the second part of action V (3:3–4). Yahweh’s assertiveness in confining Israel and personally seeing to her discipline is seen in the ‘Behold I’ with which the first clause begins and in the fact that he is the subject of the wall-building as well.
Jeremy Thomas: Now there’s a problem we see right off. Why is the woman chasing after her lovers? If the woman was created to do the responding why is she doing the initiating? She’s not supposed to go after men. The man is to go after the woman. So we see role reversal. This woman is chasing after all her lovers because she thinks they provide all her needs. Now transfer to the nation Israel. Who are they chasing? They’re chasing Baal because they think Baal provides all their needs. . .
When the sin nature gets stuck in idolatry it’s misplaced it’s allegiance, it’s responding toward the wrong object and it thinks that to get satisfied I’ve got to have this object and I’ve just got to have it and if I don’t have it I’m just going to die. That’s the way the sin nature works: it just feeds and feeds and feeds off these idols and so here you can see her, and this is the second thing, she’s pursuing them but she can’t get satisfaction. It’s all in the piel stem, very intensive search, all I can liken it to is when you’ve lost something that is extremely valuable and you start getting frantic, that’s the picture of this woman and the nation Israel. It’s a picture of desperation, she’s coming apart at the seams because she thinks my lovers provided all my needs and now I can’t find them. And your sin nature will always react like this when it gets cut off from what you think is providing all your needs. This is the picture of every one of us when we have misplaced our allegiance.
Lloyd Ogilvie: The restriction of the wife’s movement has one goal in mind: to bring her to her senses so that she returns to her husband (Hos. 2:7b). This expresses a hope, not an accomplished fact or even a certain outcome.
Here Hosea introduces the term return, which is sometimes translated “repent” and which plays a prominent role in the book. The people are called to return to Yahweh and are rebuked for their failure to return (i.e., renounce their disobedience and seek to follow Yahweh’s word again; Hos. 6:1; 7:10, 16; 11:5; 14:1). Because of Israel’s failure to return, Yahweh will return in judgment (2:9), threatening the people with a return to captivity in Egypt (8:13; 9:3; cf. 11:5). But beyond the discipline of judgment, there is hope that Israel will return (3:5).
C. (:7b-8) Expedient Decisions Based on Perverted Thinking
“Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,
For it was better for me then than now!’
For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, And lavished on her silver and gold, Which they used for Baal.”
Lloyd Ogilvie: Hos. 2:8 is poignant with irony. Israel failed to acknowledge Yahweh as the true source of sustenance and instead used Yahweh’s gifts for Baal worship. This irony is true of apostasy in any age or circumstance—we use the very gifts of God as tools of resistance against Him.
David Thompson: What Gomer did not realize is that God was the One who gives all good things to His people. His people don’t have to pursue sin to get them; they need to pursue Him to get them.
J. Andrew Dearman: Gomer’s pursuit of her lovers will not bear the success she desires; therefore, she considers another option to attain security for herself: a return to a previous husband. In interpreting v. 7, we are better off concentrating from the outset on the relationship between Israel and God rather than seeking clues to the sequence of events in the marriage of Gomer and Hosea. The prophet confronts Israel through the symbolic depiction of a wayward spouse who now finds that she has very limited options. What she thought was a better arrangement, namely dependence upon her lovers, has proven illusory. There are no overt indications of remorse or repentance, only that a return to her first husband would be better. Such reasoning may also imply that Israel believed that her first husband (YHWH) had previously done a substandard job of supporting his own. Perhaps Israel’s move into polytheism (and the related field of international diplomacy?) was based on the logic of safety in numbers or hedging one’s bets. . .
Israel is in a bad way. After seeking security through polytheism and international deals, a return to YHWH and covenant fidelity seems like a quick fix. Once a marriage or covenant had been violated, however, there were no means to restore it from the violator’s side. Indeed, it would be an exceptional move from the side of the one offended to restore the prior relationship. It is, nevertheless, part of the fundamental message of the book as a whole that such matters can be healed from the side of the offended, if that party is YHWH. But it will be a painful process all the way around.
Grace Emmerson: Cut off from her lovers and their gifts, the woman in her desperation will be driven back to her “first husband,” albeit in self-interest, not repentance.
Allen Guenther: Marriage documents from other Near Eastern cultures describe the husband’s obligations toward his wife to consist of generous provisions of grain, oil, and wool (cf. 2:8). The addition of water (drink) and flax (linen) suggest luxury (2:5). Linen is not everyday cloth. The provision of water constitutes a luxury in that the wife does not need to share the daily toil of drawing and carrying water from the local well. The oil mentioned here is identified in the marriage documents as cosmetic oil, not cooking oil. Gomer and Israel claim that Baal has truly blessed them. . .
Reconciliation between estranged marriage partners is always appropriate. No legal barrier stands in the way of reconciliation since Gomer has not married the baals; they have been her lovers.
James Mays: The blessings of agricultural life are viewed as the continuation of Yahweh’s action in history on Israel’s behalf. It is from this theology that the profound conflict between the ‘lovers who gave’ and ‘Yahweh who gives’ derives. Israel’s turning to the Baals as the source of the land’s produce was not merely a matter of divided loyalty. It was a denial of the whole Yahwist theology and the frustration of the contemporaneity of Yahweh’s ongoing history with his people – a failure to acknowledge Yahweh himself.
Jeremy Thomas: One of the signs you want to look for, just a sign of good spiritual health is the thankfulness barometer. Are you thankful for your life? If you’re thankful to God everything’s probably alright, but if you’re having real trouble being thankful that’s a sign something is wrong. One of the first things to go in spiritual difficulty is thankfulness.
III. (:9-12) DETAILED PUNISHMENTS
A. (:9a) Removal of Grain and Wine
“Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time
And My new wine in its season.”
Robin Routledge: Because Israel has not acknowledged Yahweh’s provision, he will take it back (v. 9), in order to make the nation’s dependence on him clear. I will take back reads, literally, ‘I will return [šûb] and take’. This again plays on the word šûb. Yahweh’s ‘return’ in judgment is intended to bring about Israel’s ‘return’ in repentance. The repeated my emphasizes the divine source, and the reference to my wool and my linen contrasts with 2:5, where the same expressions are linked with gifts from Israel’s lovers. These were intended to cover Israel’s nakedness; withdrawing them will expose the nation to public shame (v. 10; cf. 2:3).
B. (:9b) Removal of Wool and Flax – Leaving Israel Exposed
“I will also take away My wool and My flax Given to cover her nakedness.”
J. Andrew Dearman: Nakedness is much more titillating than shameful in modern society, hence the popularity of revealing clothes and the appeal of nudity in pornography. Nakedness could have its erotic side in antiquity as well, but in Semitic society public displays of it were considered shameful (as is still the case in Orthodox Judaism and Islamic society). God’s judgment on Israel will expose the people shamefully to observers.
C. (:10a) Naked Exposure
“And then I will uncover her lewdness In the sight of her lovers,”
J. Andrew Dearman: The noun nĕbālâ refers to something foolish, which may be sexual in nature (Gen. 34:7; Deut. 22:21; Judg. 19:23; 2 Sam. 13:12), but the term is not limited to that. Translations that render nablût as “lewdness” do so because of the context, and perhaps because of the verb uncover (gālâ). In any case, Gomer’s exposure is a public one with shameful consequences, indeed, life-threatening ones.
Duane Garrett: The most telling detail is the nature of the exposure in Hos 2:10 and Ezek 16:37–39. Yahweh does something that no injured husband would do—he arranges for a private showing of his naked wife before her lovers, before the very men who made him a cuckold! Clearly, the imagery has moved out of the realm of actual Israelite customs for dealing with an adulteress and into an artificial, parabolic world in which metaphors are molded to suit the prophet’s message. The “lovers” are the foreign nations and their gods, and the exposure of the woman is the abandonment of Israel to foreign domination. The irony in the image is that one willingly strips naked in order to commit adultery. Israel once voluntarily committed adultery through reliance on foreign powers and their gods, but now she would be forcibly stripped by these same powers in conquest.
D. (:10b) No Hope of Rescue
“And no one will rescue her out of My hand.”
E. (:11) No More Celebrations and Feasts
“I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons,
her sabbaths, And all her festal assemblies.”
Trent Butler: Worshippers of God as well as Baal celebrated agricultural festivals, thanking the god for the fertile crops and seeking to ensure that the plentiful harvest would be repeated. Israel linked these celebrations to God’s great saving actions in their history, particularly the deliverance from Egypt. The Canaanite Baal worshippers linked everything to mystical rituals filled with explicit sexual activities. Israel had begun celebrating the Lord’s worship times in rituals borrowed from the Canaanites. He would put a stop to this (Isa. 1:13).
The Lord listed the specific times of celebrations when Israel expressed their joy. The hag (yearly festivals) designated the three annual Jewish festivals (Passover, Weeks or Firstfruits, and Booths or Tabernacles) for which God required Israel to undertake a pilgrimage to the central sanctuary (Deut. 16:16). Each festival was tied to a particular harvest time: Passover for the spring barley harvest, Weeks for the summer wheat harvest, and Booths for the fall grape harvest. Israel assumed they would celebrate these festivals forever. God called a halt when celebration developed into sexual homage to Baal rather than memory of the Lord’s great acts in Israel’s history. . .
God summarized his joy-stoppage order: it will affect all her appointed feasts. The term referred to any agreed-upon time (Ps. 75:2), but it came to designate specifically Israel’s times of festival observance and national assemblies (Lev. 23:2). God thus puts an end to Israel’s chief worship occasions. He preferred no worship to false worship.
David Allan Hubbard: All these God-given occasions were co-opted by Israel for her (note the repetition of the pronouns) pagan purposes. The agricultural character of the pilgrimage feasts made them readily adaptable to the fertility cult whose purpose was to assure regularity of harvest and abundance of produce. The new moon and sabbath, which had counterparts in other Middle Eastern religions, may well have become corrupted by the astrological practices of Israel’s neighbours as well as by the sexual rites against which Hosea inveighs.
F. (:12) Destruction of Vines and Fig Trees
“And I will destroy her vines and fig trees, Of which she said, ‘These are my wages Which my lovers have given me.’
And I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field will devour them.”
Jeremy Thomas: The vines and fig trees were not your run of the mill crops. Run of the mill agriculture was sow one season reaping the next. Vine and fig tree groves take years of development; they take a tremendous amount of capital investment up front and then you have to wait years to harvest the produce. What this is saying is I’m not going to take your vines and fig trees while they’re under development, I’m going to wait till their in production and then I’m going to wipe them out. And you’re going to watch in horror as all your capital disappears overnight.
John Goldingay: Vine and fig tree are key fruit sources (the olive is the third). The vine means wine; the fig is the chief source of sweetness. The collocation of these two also recalls the image of an ideal secure and happy life as sitting under one’s vine and fig tree. Wasting them restates the warning about turning the town into a wilderness in v. 3 [5].
J. Andrew Dearman: Cultic practices associated with fertility had as their goal the increase of crops and flocks. The Canaanite deities, the Baals, were considered the masters of the fertility cycle, and in Israel’s mind had provided them with needed produce. In 2:12 the produce of the land is represented more specifically as the payment from Gomer’s lovers. Here the metaphor in the foreground is not marriage and covenant, but prostitution and payment. The term rendered payment (ʾetnâ) is unique, but it is almost certainly a variant of the term ʾetnan, which is specifically the hire of a prostitute and is also used in Hos. 9:1. Perhaps the variant form here in 2:12 is for assonance with the other words in context ending in -â.
The judgment is that the inhabited and cultivated land will become forest and the habitation of wild animals. This reversion of inhabited land to forest and wild animals is an image shared with other prophets and the curses of covenant disobedience in Leviticus (26:6, 22). Micah, for example, envisions Jerusalem as a heap of ruins and the Temple Mount a forest (3:12; cf. Jer. 26:18). Amos depicts the roar of a lion in the forest as the announcement that the animal has found prey (3:4). In the postjudgment reconciliation, land and animals are brought back into harmony with the larger environment and the human community (Hos. 2:18).
David Thompson:
Punishment #1 – God will take back His grain . 2:9a
Punishment #2 – God will take back His new wine . 2:9b
Punishment #3 – God will take away His wool and flax . 2:9c
Now these were commodities that the people needed to live and survive. These things were critical to their economy. God could take them back in a couple of ways. He could allow someone to come to dominate them who would take these things away from them or He could withhold rain so that these things could not flourish.
Punishment #4 – God will completely expose her. 2:9d-10a
In fact, all of her lovers would see that the hand of God was completely against her. This idea of completely uncovering her pictures four things:
1) Coming captivity in which the people would be stripped of everything;
2) Coming destitution in which the people are left with nothing;
3) Coming humiliation;
4) Public disgrace. God would do this to His own family.
Punishment #5 – God will make it so that no one can rescue her. 2:10b
When God permits someone to be rescued out of sin, He is the one who permitted the rescue. Most people want to credit man, but the credit goes to God.
Punishment #6 – God will put an end to all of her gaiety and religious ceremonies. 2:11 Do not miss what is said here, there are people who are deep in sin who go to some church and totally enjoy it. They are happy, backslapping people who never are convicted about anything. God says, “I’ll put an end to that.” “I’ll stop them dead in their tracks.”
Punishment #7 – God will destroy the vines and fig trees given to her for immoral payment. 2:12
Israel believed that by practicing her religious stuff she was guaranteeing herself great prosperity and rewards. God says, “I’ll stop it all and destroy it all. I will destroy your agriculture and I will permit the beasts of the field to devour everything.”
IV. (:13) DAMNING INDICTMENT SUMMARIZED
A. Syncretistic Idolatry
“And I will punish her for the days of the Baals
When she used to offer sacrifices to them”
Duane Garrett: The idea is that Yahweh will turn his back on Israel just as she has turned her back on him. Yahweh, the jilted husband, will jilt desperate Israel when they call to him. It is in this sense that they will experience the “days of the Baals,” which the text has here defined as the time when she turns from her husband to flirt with paramours.
B. Splashy Adornment
“And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry,”
David Allan Hubbard: The use of ornamenting (cf. the bride in Isa. 61:10) jewelry seems to connect verse 13 with verse 5. Here Israel is pictured preening herself with her ring, probably of gold (Gen. 24:22; Judg. 8:24–26) and worn in either the nose (Gen. 24:47; Isa. 3:21) or ears (Gen. 35:4; Exod. 32:2–3, where the form is plural), and her jewelry (a similar Heb. word is used with erotic connotations in Song 7:2), which may have resembled the bands worn by the goddesses Ishtar and Anat which draped their torsos so as to emphasize the breasts and the pubic area (see Andersen, pp. 260–262 for a detailed description).
C. Spiritual Harlotry
“And follow her lovers,”
D. Shameful Apostasy
“’so that she forgot Me,’ declares the LORD.”
H. D. Beeby: In Hebrew “remembering” and “knowing” are life commitments. They describe activities, a movement—from an attitude, a disposition, a judgment—to action, to a behavior pattern. “To know” (this is very important when studying Hosea) is the same verb as “to have sex with,” that is, to relate to another not only with the mind but with the whole person: to identify with, to become at one with. When Hosea speaks of Israel’s forgetting Yahweh in v. 13, the meaning is not far removed from divorce or apostasy.
J. Andrew Dearman: Forgetting has the sense of not bringing into conscious thought and thus not allowing something to shape a response.
David Allan Hubbard: To forget God is to act as though he had never made himself known, never redeemed his people in the exodus, never provided for them in the land, or laid his gracious and constraining claims upon them.