The Word of the Lord that came to Hosea. Hosea 1:1 The prophet Hosea William Jay. I. HE WAS DIVINELY COMMISSIONED. Holy men of old spake not of their own wisdom or of their own will; they spake the Word of God. In what a contemptuous light their conduct places those who in the present day quote the sayings of the Fathers, the Church, or Tradition, or suggest modern innovations, and strange interpretations. We have the Word of God, and the prompting of the Spirit; and is not that enough? II. HE HAD WORTHY ANCESTRY. His father's name would not have been mentioned had it not been to honour the son. How the father can strengthen and establish the son, or the son ruin and crush the father! III. He prophesied at a critical period. 1. It was a long time. Probably eighty years. 2. It was a changeable time. Various scenes. Different characters of kings and peoples. He lived in the reigns of one good king and four bad ones. He saw plenty and famine. He saw one revival and much sin. 3. It was a tentative time. Upon the conduct of the Jews depended their ultimate existence. IV. PRACTICAL THOUGHTS. 1. Hosea must have begun his ministry very young. 2. How very little we have of his prophesyings. His chief work was directly relative to his age. God has preserved what was of permanent interest. 3. How long a man of God may labour, and yet how little good he may accomplish. He did not prevent the Captivity. We arc not answerable for our success, but we are for our duty. We are not to relax our efforts because men am blind or fools. ( William Jay. ) The prophet Hosea Jeremiah Burroughs. I. WHO HE WAS. His name means a saviour, one who brings salvation, and many saving and savoury truths this prophet brings to us. The Jews say that when a prophet's father's name is given, the father was a prophet as well as the son. "Beeri" means a well that has springing water in it, freely and clearly running. II. To where WAS THE PROPHET SENT? Especially to the Ten Tribes. The Ten Tribes, rending themselves from the house of David, separated themselves also from the true worship of God, and horrible wickedness and all manner of abominations grew up amongst them. III. WHAT WAS HOSEA'S ERRAND TO THEM? To convince them of their abominable idolatry, and those other wickednesses in which they lived, and to denounce severe threatenings, yea, most fearful destruction. His threatening is more severe than any given before, Yet he, too, has a message of mercy. IV. WHAT WAS HIS COMMISSION? He had the "Word of Jehovah." Hosea did not go for the Word of the Lord, but the Word came to him. The knowledge of a call to a work will help a man through the difficulties of the work. V. THE TIME WHEN HOSEA PROPHESIED. About the time that the city of Rome was built. The beginning of the Olympiads. During the reign of four kings, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. A lengthened prophesying of nearly fourscore years. See what of God's mind will spring from this. 1. It pleases God sometimes that some men's labours shall abide more full to posterity than others, though the labours of those others are greater and as excellent as theirs. 2. It appears that Hosea began to prophesy very young. 3. Hosea prophesying thus long it appears he lived to grow old in his work. 4. By Hosea s continuance m so many kings reigns, it is evident he must have gone through a variety of conditions. He preserved a constancy of spirit, however varied might be the difficulties of his work. 5. God may continue a prophet a long time amongst a people, and yet they may never be converted. 6. It is an honour to the ministers of God, who meet with many difficulties and discouragements in their, way, yet continue fresh and lively to the very end. 7. It pleases God many times to let His prophets see the fulfilling of their threatenings upon the people against whom they have denounced them. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Scripture, kings, and truth Homilist. I. THE ESSENCE OF SCRIPTURE. What is the essence of the Bible? It is here called "The Word of the Lord." Analyse the expression. 1. It is a "Word." A word fulfils two functions; it is a revelation and an instrument. The Bible is the manifestation of God, it shows His intellect and heart, and is His instrument as well; by which He accomplishes His purpose on the human mind. By it He is said to enlighten, — quicken, — cleanse, — conquer, etc. 2. It is a Divine Word. "The Word of the Lord." Words are always powerful and important according to the nature and character of the speaker. Because the Lord is all-mighty and holy, His Word is all-powerful and pure. 3. It is a Divine Word concerning men. The prophecy came to Hosea in relation to Israel. The Bible is a Word to man. 4. It is a Divine Word concerning man coming through men. In the Bible God speaks to man through man. This gives the charm of an imperishable humanity to the Bible. II. THE MORTALITY OF KINGS. Several kings are here mentioned who appeared and passed away during the ministry of Hosea. Uzziah was the eleventh king of Judah. His example was holy, and his reign peaceful and prosperous. Ahaz was a son of Jotham: at the age of twenty he succeeded his royal sire. He gave himself up to idolatry, and sacrificed even his own children to the gods of the heathen. Hezekiah, the son and successor of Ahaz, was a man of distinguished virtue and religion, animated by true piety and patriotism. Jeroboam was the son of Joash, and great grandson of Jehu, and followed the former Jeroboam, the man who made Israel to sin, and, like him, sank into the lowest idolatry and corruption. Some of these kings had come and gone during the ministry of Hosea; — kings die, etc. 1. This fact is a blessing. When we think of such kings as those of which Ahaz and Jeroboam were types, we thank God for death, and rejoice in the "king of terrors," who comes to strike the despots down. 2. This fact is a lesson. What does the death of kings teach?(1) The rigorous impartiality of death. Death is no respecter of persons, it treats the pauper and the prince alike.(2) The utter powerlessness of wealth.(3) The sad hollowness of worldly glory. Death strips sovereigns of all their pageantry and reduces them.to common dust. III. THE PERPETUITY OF TRUTH. Although these kings successively appeared and passed away, the ministry of Hosea kept on. 1. The "Word of the Lord" is adapted to all generations. It is congruous with all intellects, it chimes in with all hearts, it provides for the common wants of all. 2. The "Word of the Lord" is necessary for all generations. ( Homilist. ) Trouble a teacher Joseph Parker, D. D. A wonderful book is this prophecy of Hosea ( B.C. 800-725 ). The man himself at once attracts our sympathy and regard by his personal sufferings. There is no teacher of Divine truth to be compared for one moment for excellence so deep and great as trouble. Hosea had an infinite sorrow at home; therefore he was so great and tender a teacher of Divine truth. He read everything through his tears; hence the enlargement, the colour, the variety, the striking beauty of his visions. When the sorrow is home grief it assumes a tenderer quality. Hosea had children, but they had evil names; their very names were millstones round the prophet's neck. If one of them had a name historically and ideally beautiful, it was to be used for the expression of judgment and vengeance. As for the others, one represented the vanished mercy of God, and the other represented the alienation of the people from God, and the alienation of God from the people. Only sorrow should read some parts of the Bible, because only sorrow could have written them. You cannot properly sing a man's music until you know the man himself. Hosea will have a tone of his own; he will talk like nobody else; he will be an eccentric, peculiar individual; he will begin when he pleases, and he will take a circuit marked out for him by an invisible guide; but now and again he will come down to the road we travel, and will present us with flowers and fruits, and will say little sweet sentences to us that shall be as angels, covered with light, and tremulous with music. The sorrow of Hosea was symbolic. All sorrow is meant to be symbolic. Whoso has sorrow is meant to be a teacher. You have no right to the exclusive use of your own sorrow. Sorrow should only be silent for a time; by and by it should find all its words, refine, enlarge, and dignify them, and pass them on as messages, bright as Gospels. But for his own sorrow, he never could have understood God's grief. Again and again God asks us to look at Him through ourselves. Happy they who come up out of household trouble, public disappointment, and social criticism, and loss and desolation, to pray larger prayers, and offer to those who are outside a larger hospitality of love and rest. If sorrow makes us narrower in thought and purpose, then sorrow has failed to convey God's meaning to the soul. ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) The beginning Of the Wold of the Lord by Hosea. Hosea 1:2 The prophet Hosea Dean Stanley. The prophet Hosea is the only individual character that stands out amidst the darkness of this period — the Jeremiah, as he may be called, of Israel. His life had extended over nearly the whole of the last century of the northern kingdom. In early youth, whilst the great Jeroboam was still on the throne, he had been called to the prophetic office. In his own personal history he shared in the misery brought on his country by the profligacy of the age. In early youth he had been united in marriage with a woman who had fallen into the vices which surrounded her. He had loved her with a tender love; she had borne to him two sons and a daughter; she had then deserted him, wandered from her home, fallen again into wild licentiousness, and been carried off as a slave. From this wretched state, with all the tenderness of his nature, he bought her, and gave her one more chance of recovery, by living with him, though apart. No one who has observed the manner in which individual experience often colours the general religious doctrine of a gifted teacher can be surprised at the close con nection that exists between the life of Hosea and the mission to which he was called. In his own grief for his own great calamity — the greatest that can befall a tender human soul — he was taught to feel for the Divine grief over the lost opportunities of the nation once so full of hope. ( Dean Stanley. ) Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms God's strange command to Hosea E. B. Pusey, D. D. Holy Scripture relates that all this was done, and tells us the birth and names of the children, as real history. As such, then, we must receive it. We must not imagine things to be unworthy of God, because they do not commend themselves to us. God does not dispense with the moral law, because the moral law has its source in the mind of God Himself. To dispense with it would be to contradict Himself. But God, who is the absolute Lord of all things which He made, may, at His sovereign will, dispose of the lives or things which He created. Thus, as Sovereign Judge, He commanded the lives of the Canaanites to be taken away by Israel, as, in His ordinary providence, He has ordained that the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain, but has made him His "minister, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." So, again, He, whose are all things, willed to repay to the Israelites their hard and unjust servitude, by commanding them to "spoil the Egyptians." He who created marriage, commanded to Hosea whom he should marry. The prophet was not defiled, by taking as his lawful wife, at God's bidding, one defiled, however hard a thing this was. "He who remains good, is not defiled by coming in contact with one evil; but the evil, following his example, is turned into good." But through his simple obedience, he foreshadowed Him, God the Word, who was culled the "friend of publicans and sinners"; who warned the Pharisees, that "the publicans and harlots should enter into the kingdom of God before them"; and who now vouchsafes to espouse, dwell in, and unite Himself with, and so to hallow, our sinful souls. The acts which God enjoined to the prophets, and which to us seem strange, must have had an impressiveness to the people, in proportion to their strangeness. The life of the prophet became a sermon to the people. Sight impresses more than words. ( E. B. Pusey, D. D. ) Scripture picture -- teaching J. Burroughs. in modern times picture-teaching is almost confined to work among children, because education and culture have made adults capable of apprehending plain statements, and even elaborate arguments. In child-conditions of nations child methods of instruction were wisely employed. And it is well for preachers to bear in mind that a large proportion of those whom they address are as incapable of following argument as children, and therefore need the pictorial, dramatic, and illustrative methods of instruction. It is even more to the point to observe that the dramatic acting out of representative and suggestive scenes, has always been, and still is, one of the most effective methods of moral instruction. What we have in Hosea, whether what is stated concerning him be regarded as history or vision, is a dramatising of the history of the nation of the Ten Tribes in its relation to God figured as its husband. The facts of individual experience are these. Hosea takes as wife a woman who had gone astray. All his love and care fail to recover her and settle her in her home-life. Presently the old wilfulness revives, and she breaks away from home, to live again a life of sinful indulgence, and come under burdens of pain and slavery. Spite of it all, Hosea is willing, if she will give up her sins, to receive her back, and give her the old place in home and love. The individual represents the national. The Ten Tribes wilfully broke away under Jeroboam I. determined to live an independent life of self-willedness, which always means a life of sin. God graciously took this nation as His, and strove with tending, patience, gentleness, and love to win it as His own. But it was in vain. The nation again and again broke away from God, dishonoured Him, and at last in its seemingly outward prosperity, under Jeroboam II., broke away entirely from Him. Nevertheless, patient mercy still pleads. Only now there is the intimation that it is the nation s last chance. Hosea, then, in his ways with his wife is to represent God's ways with the nation. In telling how he thought and felt, and what he did, and was willing to do, Hosea revealed to the people the thought and hope and anxiety of God concerning them. I. IN TAKING THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL AS HIS, GOD DID NOT TAKE A CHASTE NATION. Under Jeroboam I. the nation broke away from its home, and duty, and right relations. It was a soiled, wilful nation. Nevertheless, and as such God took it for His own. II. WHILE CALLING IT HIS OWN, GOD DID EVERYTHING THAT LOVE AND CARE COULD DO TO WIN THE NATION WHOLLY FOR HIMSELF AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. Pathetic is the tender love of Hosea, as representing the patience, gentleness, and love of God. III. THE OLD WILFULNESS WILL NOT BE SUBDUED, AND AT LAST IT BROKE OUT AGAIN, LEADING TO WORSE SINS THAN AT FIRST. Compare the moral and social life of Israel under Jeroboam I. and Jeroboam II. IV. DIVINE SEVERITIES MUST ATTEND ON DIVINE LOVE WHEN MORAL CONDITIONS BECOME SO UTTERLY HOPELESS. And yet how evident it becomes, that judgment is God's strange work, and mercy His delight! ( J. Burroughs. ) Mysterious commands Christian Age. In the Memorial Hall at Harvard University there is a wonderful array of beautiful sentences frescoed on the walls in various colours, but they are all in Latin. And it is said that some of the workmen did not know the meaning of the sentences they painted, but could only put the letters and the colours on the walls as they were told, without understanding the wondrous meaning wrapped up in them. So we are often writing our lives in an unknown tongue; we can only do as we are bidden. ( Christian Age. ) Call his name Jezreel. Hosea 1:4 Judgment on the house of Ahab T. K. Cheyne, D. D. Jezreel means, the child of guilt; therefore not Israel, but Jezreel (or more exactly, Izreel). The name is referred to for its historical associations. It points both backwards and forwards — backward to the massacre of Ahab's family by Jehu ( 2 Kings 9:10 ), and forward to the punishment for that wild and cruel act. Hosea (in whom natural peculiarities have been purified and not extinguished by the spirit of prophecy) regards the conduct of Jehu in a different light from the writer of 2 Kings 10:30 . The latter praises Jehu for having "done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in My mind"; he speaks on the assumption that Jehu had the interests of Jehovah's worship at heart, and that he destroyed the house of Ahab as the only effectual means of advancing them. The former blames Jehu apparently on the high moral ground that Jehovah desires mercy (love) and not sacrifice ( Hosea 6:6 ). He speaks as the Israelites of his time doubtless felt. They no more recognised Jehu as a champion of Jehovah than did the priests of Baal whom he basely entrapped. But Hosea doubtless felt in addition that the idolatry to which the house of Jehu was addicted rendered a permanent religious reform hopeless. Image-worship could not be suppressed by such half-hearted worshippers of Jehovah, and hence, Jehovah's moral government of His people must have made it certain to Hosea that even on this ground alone the dynasty of Jehu could not escape an overthrow. ( T. K. Cheyne, D. D. ) And I will avenge the blood of Jezreel God as the family God, or Avenger Robert Tuck, B. A. We have no such associations with the word "avenge" as were familiar to ancient Eastern people, and are familiar in tribal life to-day. In the East the avenger is the vindicator of a family wrong by securing the adequate punishment of the wrong-doer. In a rude state of society, the nearest relative of a person slain was conceived as under obligation to put the slayer to death. He had to be the "avenger of blood." Dr. S. Cox tells us that the main functions of the Goel were three, or rather that there were three tragic contingencies in which the legal redeemer and avenger was bound to interpose. 1. If any Hebrew had fallen into such penury as that he was compelled to part with his ancestral estate, the Goel was bound to purchase it, and, after certain conditions had been observed, to restore it to his impoverished kinsman. 2. If any Hebrew had been taken captive, or had sold himself for a slave, the Goel was bound to pay the price of his redemption, to unloose and set him free. 3. If any Hebrew had suffered grievous wrong, or had been slain, the Goel was bound to exact compensation for the wrong, or to avenge his murder. In the case introduced by the text, we are to understand that the slaughter of the house of Ahab had not yet been avenged, though three generations had passed. There seemed to be no one left of the house of Ahab to do the duty of the avenger. So God took it directly upon Himself. "I will avenge the blood of Jezreel." This must be regarded as a striking instance of representing God as feeling, and then doing, as a man would feel and do under such circumstances. The case occasions difficulty to us, because no private and personal avengements of wrongs done are now permitted. All wrongs are judicially treated. But in revealing Himself and His will, God must always speak in the range of knowledge, sentiment, and association of those whom He addresses, or He could not be understood by them. To those who knew about avengers He could present Himself as the great Avenger. And if there are bad sides to the avenger's work, we must not fail to see that there are also good sides, add that we may take the good sides to represent God. The idea that can be helpfully worked out for a modern congregation is, that God never neglects wrongs that are done to His people. He may seem to delay, He may even wait for generations; but His injured people are always vindicated at last. The wrong-doer may seem to escape punishment, he never really does. He may seem to prosper, but there is surely a worm whose work is spoiling his prosperity. The Lord is the Avenger of all His injured ones; and the woes that eventually come upon all wrong-doers vindicate His people and vindicate Him. God's avenging is always only a part of His redeeming. ( Robert Tuck, B. A. ) The blood of Jezreel Jeremiah Burroughs. The name signifies the "scattered of the Lord." Five reasons why the son of Hosea was to be called by this name. 1. That hereby God might show that He intended to avenge that blood which was shed in Jezreel. 2. To show that Israel had lost the honour of His name, and was no more Israel, but Jezreel. (Israel is one that prevails by the "strength of the Lord." Jezreel is one that is "scattered by the Lord.") 3. To show the way that God intended to bring judgment upon these ten tribes. 4. To note that the Lord would scatter them in that very place wherein they most gloried. ( says the Israelite army was defeated in the valley of Jezreel before Samaria was taken.) 5. The Lord would hereby show that He would turn these conceits and apprehensions that they might have of themselves quite the contrary way. I. WHAT IS THIS "BLOOD OF JEZREEL" THAT GOD WILL AVENGE? ( 2 Kings 9:10, 11 ). It was the blood of the house of Ahab. II. WHY WILL GOD "AVENGE THE BLOOD OF JEZREEL UPON THE HOUSE OF JEHU"? Because — 1. Jehu looked to his own ends, rather than to God. 2. Because he did his work but by halves. 3. Because be proved Ahab's successor in his idolatry.A man may do that which God commands, and yet not really obey God. And God knows how to make use of men's parts and abilities, and yet to punish them for their wickedness notwithstanding. III. WHY IS IT CALLED "THE HOUSE OF JEHU"? The house of Jehu is his posterity, or family, who were to succeed. The posterity of the ungodly shall suffer for their father's sin. Only the second commandment threatens the sin of the fathers upon the children. IV. WHAT IS THIS "LITTLE WHILE" GOD SPEAKS OF? It was a long time — three generations — before God came upon the house of Jehu, still He saith, yet but a little while, or, I will stay but a little longer, ere I avenge the blood of Jezreel. 1. God sometimes comes upon sinners for their sins. It is likely that these sins of Jehu were forgotten, 'yet God comes now at last to avenge the sins of Jehu upon his house. Youthful sins may prove to be the terror of age. 2. A long time after the flourishing of a nation God may reckon with it in ways of judgment. 3. Seventy-six years are but a little while in God's account. 4. The apprehension of a judgment just at hand is that which will stir the heart and work upon it most. 5. God suffers some sinners to continue long, others He cuts off speedily. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Scattered by God George Hutcheson. 1. Whatever present fruits men may seem to reap by sin, yet at last, being continued in, it will ripen to a height, and fit for strokes. 2. Notwithstanding that sinners in the Church do conceit of their privileges, God will plague them, and make their judgment conspicuous. 3. Men may not only be doing what God in His providence will permit to succeed, but even that which is in itself just, and yet be guilty before God, and justly punished for it, when either they do not the Lord's work sincerely, but for their own base ends and interests, or when they do it not thoroughly, but only in so far as may serve their own turn. ( George Hutcheson. ) I will break the bow. Hosea 1:5 A nation's humiliation through its army This verse was intentionally added; for the Israelites were so inflated with their present good fortune, that they laughed at the judgment denounced. They indeed knew that they were well furnished with arms, men, and money; they thought themselves in every way unassailable. Hence the prophet declares that all this could not prevent God from punishing them. "Ye are," he says, "inflated with pride; ye set up your valour against God, thinking yourselves strong in arms and power; and because ye are military men, ye think that God can do nothing, and yet your bows cannot restrain His hand from destroying you." When He says, "I will break the bow," He mentions a part for the whole; for under one sort He comprehends every kind of arms. As to what the prophet had in view, we see that his only object was to break down their false confidence; for the Israelites thought that they should not be exposed to the destruction which Hosea had "predicted; for they were dazzled by their own power, and thought themselves beyond the reach of any danger, while they were so well fortified on every side. Hence the prophet says that all their fortresses would be nothing against God; for in that day, when the ripe time for vengeance shall come, the Lord will break all their bows, He will tear in pieces all their arms, and reduce to nothing their power. We are here warned ever to take heed, lest anything should lead us to a torpid state when God threatens us. Though we may have strength, though fortune (so to speak) may smile on us, though, in a word, the whole world should combine to secure our safety, yet there is no reason why we should felicitate ourselves, when God declares Himself opposed to and angry with us. Why so? Because, as He can preserve us when unarmed whenever He pleases, so He can spoil us of all our arms, and reduce our power to nothing. Let this verse then come to our minds whenever God terrifies us by His threatenings; and what it teaches us is, that He can take away all the defences in which we vainly trust. ( John Calvin . ) Jehu's bow Jeremiah Burroughs. ( 2 Kings 9:24 ): — Observe — 1. In those things wherein wicked men have been most successful, God will curse them and let out His wrath upon them. 2. Carnal hearts trust much in their warlike weapons. 3. Fortified cities cannot help when God comes out against a people. 4. Even in the place in which a kingdom most glories, and seems to trust most in, God many times comes, and breaks the kingdom in that very place. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) Retribution Homilist. The word Jezreel means God's seed, or sowing. Jezreel was the plain between Tabor and Carmel, called by the Greeks, Esdraelon. The royal city was in it. Here the Eternal threatens to break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. I. GOD'S RETRIBUTION TAKES AWAY THE POWER OF ITS VICTIM. The bow of Israel is to be broken. The language means the utter destruction of all their military power. When justice comes to deal out suffering to the sinner, it strips him entirely of his power. Thus he is left to the mercies of his enemies. What are the great enemies of the soul? Carnality, prejudice, selfishness, corrupt impulses and habits, II. GOD'S RETRIBUTION DESPISES THE PRESTIGE OF ITS VICTIM. The bow is to be broken in the valley of Jezreel, which had been the scene of Israel's grandest military exploits. It was to Israel what Marathon was to Greece, and Waterloo to England. In this very scene the punishment should come. The place of their glory should be the place of their ruin and shame. Thus it is ever. III. GOD'S RETRIBUTION DEFIES THE OPPOSITION OF ITS VICTIMS. Jezreel was well fortified. Retribution will strike the sinner in his strongest place. Notwithstanding Jezreel, the kingdom of Israel was broken. Conclusion. Retribution must always follow sin. It may move slowly and silently, but its pace is steady, resolute, and increasing. Swifter and swifter it moves towards the victim. " Be sure your sins will find you out." ( Homilist. ) I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel. Hosea 1:6 Mercy put in the background Jeremiah Burroughs. There is a time when God will not have mercy upon a kingdom, or upon a particular people. There is a time for the decree to come forth against a kingdom; a time when, though Noah, Job, and Daniel should stand before Him, yet He will not be entreated; though they cry, cry early, cry aloud, cry with tears, cry with fasting, yet God will not be entreated. God's mercy is precious, and He will not let it run out to waste; He will not be prodigal of it; a time wherein God will say, Now I have done, I have done with this people, mercy has had her turn. Men best know what the worth of mercy is, when mercy is taken away from them. Well, saith God, you shall have no more; you have taken no notice that it was My mercy that helped you before, but when My mercy is gone, then you will know it; but then I win not add more. God usually takes not away His mercy fully from a people, or from a soul, until after much mercy has been received and abused. It is just with God, when mercy is abused, that we should never know further what mercy meant. Mercy as it is a precious thing, so it is a tender thing, and a dangerous thing to abuse. There is nothing that more quickly works the ruin of a people, or of a soul, than abused mercy. ( Jeremiah Burroughs. ) God's mercy Homilist. Mercy is a modification of goodness. God is good to all, but is only merciful to the suffering sinner. Mercy not only implies suffering, but suffering arising from sin. I. MERCY WITHHELD FROM SOME. Burroughs says, There are three estates of the people, signified by the three children of Hosea: first, their scattered estate, and that was signified by Jezreel, the first son. Their low and weak condition, signified by the daughter. Their being rejected and carried away, signified by the third child. God now threatened to withhold mercy from Israel, and we know that when He did so the consequence was national ruin. "My Spirit shall not always strive with men." II. Mercy bestowed upon others. "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah." This mercy was signally shown to Judah. When the Assyrian armies had destroyed Samaria, and carried the Ten Tribes away into captivity, they proceeded to besiege Jerusalem; but God had mercy on the house of Judah, and saved them; they were saved by the Lord their God immediately, and not by sword or "bow." When the Ten Tribes were contained in captivity, and their land was possessed by others, they being utterly taken away, god had mercy on the house of Judah and saved them, and after seventy years brought them back, not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts. And truly most signal was the mercy shown to Judah, when in one night one hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrian warriors were slain. Looking at the words in their spiritual application they suggest two remarks in relation to man's deliverance. 1. It is of mercy. "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God." The deliverance of man from the guilt, the power and consequence of sin is entirely of God's mercy, free, sovereign, boundless mercy. It is suggested that man's deliverance is — 2. By moral means. Will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." No material force can deliver the soul from its spiritual difficulties and perils. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith, the Lord." Conclusion.. Use mercy rightly while you have it. Its grand design is to produce reformation of character and meetness for the high service and lofty fellowship with the great God, here and yonder, now and for ever. ( Homilist. ) The sin against love Geo. Adam Smith, D. D. Men say they cannot believe in hell, because they cannot conceive how God may sentence men to misery for the breaking of laws they were born without power to keep. And one would agree with the inference if God had done any such thing. But for them which are under the law and the sentence of death, Christ died once; for all, that He might redeem them. Yet this does not make a hell less believable. When we see how almighty was that love of God in Christ Jesus, lifting our whole race and sending them forward with a freedom and a power of growth nothing else in history has won for them; when we prove again how weak it is, so that it is possible for millions of characters that have felt it to refuse its eternal influence for the sake of some base and transient passion; nay, when I myself know this power and this weakness of Christ's love, so that one day being loyal I am raised beyond the reach of fear and of doubt, beyond the desire of sin and the habit of evil, and the next day finds me capable of putting it aside in preference for some slight enjoyment or ambition — then I know the peril and the terror of this love, that it may be to a man either

Benson Commentary Hosea 1:1 The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. Hosea 1:1 . The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea — The name of the prophet is the same with the original name of Joshua, and signifies a Saviour. The son of Beeri — This was the prophet’s surname; for in those days they had their surnames either from their parents, as we have, or from the places of their abode. Beeri signifies a well. In the days of Uzziah, &c. — “If we suppose,” says Archbishop Newcome, “that Hosea prophesied during the course of sixty-six years, and place him from the year 790 before Christ, to the year 724, he will have exercised his office eight years in the reign of Jeroboam the Second, thirty-three years in the reign of Uzziah, the entire reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, and three years in the reign of Hezekiah; but will not have survived the taking of Samaria.” It is probable, however, that he begun his ministry as early as the year 785; and therefore that he prophesied at least seventy, if not more, years. The Jews, indeed, suppose him to have prophesied near ninety years, and that he uttered much more than he wrote. If he exercised his office such a number of years, many of the other prophets, as Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Micah, must have lived and prophesied during his time. Hosea 1:2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD. Hosea 1:2 . The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea — Or, as some render it, to Hosea; phrases however of different import; for to speak to a person, expresses that the discourse was immediately addressed to him. To speak by him, that through him it was addressed to others. And that the speech so addressed to others was not the person’s own, but God’s; God using him as his organ of speech to the people. This latter is evidently the meaning of the Hebrew phrase here used, which is not ?? ????? , but ?????? , and has been judiciously attended to by our translators, as it was also by the LXX., the Vulgate, the Chaldee, Luther’s Latin translation, Calvin’s, and Archbishop Newcome’s. And the Lord said, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms — Commentators differ much with respect to the meaning of this command. Maimonides, a noted Jewish writer, supposes, that what was enjoined was only to be transacted in a vision; and many learned men, both ancient and modern, have been of his opinion. Archbishop Newcome supposes, that the command refers to the spiritual fornication, or idolatry, of the Israelites: and that its meaning is only, “Go, join thyself in marriage to one of those who have committed fornication against me; and raise up children, who, by the power of example, will themselves swerve to idolatry:” see Hosea 5:7 . Some others suppose, that God only enjoins the prophet to marry one, who, he foresaw, would afterward be unfaithful to him, and become a harlot. Others again, and persons of great eminence for learning and Biblical knowledge, suppose the command implied, that he was to marry one who actually was at the time, or had been, a harlot. These different opinions, Bishop Horsley, in a preface to his translation of this prophecy, examines at large; and seems to have clearly proved, that the last-mentioned sense of the words is the true one. His train of reasoning on the subject is too long to find a place in these notes; a very short extract is all that can be inserted. “Here two questions arise, upon which expositors have been much divided; 1st, What is the character intended of the woman? What are the fornications by which she is characterized? Are they acts of incontinence, in the literal sense of the word, or something figuratively so called? And, 2d, This guilt of literal or figurative incontinence, was it previous to the woman’s marriage with the prophet, or contracted after it? The Hebrew phrase, a wife of fornications, taken literally, certainly describes a prostitute; and children of fornications are the offspring of a promiscuous commerce. Some, however, have thought, that the expression may signify nothing worse ‘than a wife taken from among the Israelites, who were remarkable for spiritual fornication, or idolatry.’ And that children of fornications may signify children born of such a mother, in such a country, and likely to grow up in the habit of idolatry themselves, by the force of ill example. But the words thus interpreted contain a description only of public manners, without immediate application to the character of any individual; and the command to the prophet will be nothing more than to take a wife. It is evident, that a wife of fornications describes the sort of woman with whom the prophet is required to form the matrimonial connection. It expresses some quality in the woman, actually belonging to the prophet’s wife in her individual character. And this quality was no other than gross incontinence, in the literal meaning of the word. The prophet’s wife was, by the express declaration of the Spirit, to be the type, or emblem, of the Jewish nation, considered as the wife of God. The sin of the Jewish nation was idolatry, and the Scriptural type of idolatry is carnal fornication; the woman, therefore, to typify the nation, must be guilty of the typical crime; and the only question that remains is, whether the stain upon her character was previous to her connection with the prophet, or afterward? I should much incline to the opinion of Diodati, that the expression may be understood of a woman that was innocent at the time of her marriage, and proved false to the nuptial vow afterward, could I agree to what is alleged in favour of that interpretation by Dr. Wells and Mr. Lowth, that it makes the parallel more exact between God and his blacksliding people, than the contrary supposition of the woman’s previous impurity; especially if we make the further supposition, that the prophet had previous warning of his wife’s irregularities. But it seems to me, on the contrary, that the prophet’s marriage would be a more accurate type of the peculiar connection which God vouchsafed to form between himself and the Israelites, upon the admission of the woman’s previous incontinence. God’s marriage with Israel was the institution of the Mosaic covenant, at the time of the exodus, Jeremiah 2:2 ; but it is most certain that the Israelites were previously tainted, in a very great degree, with the idolatry of Egypt, Leviticus 17:7 ; Leviticus 18:3 ; Joshua 24:14 ; and they are repeatedly taxed with this by the prophets, under the image of the incontinence of a young unmarried woman: see Ezekiel 23. To make the parallel, therefore, exact in every circumstance between the prophet and his wife, God and Israel, the woman should have been addicted to vice before her marriage. The prophet, not ignorant of her numerous criminal intrigues, and of the general levity of her character, should nevertheless offer her marriage, upon condition that she should renounce her follies, and attach herself, with fidelity, to him as her husband; she should accept the unexpected offer, and make the fairest promises, Exodus 19:8 ; Exodus 24:3-7 ; Joshua 24:24 . The prophet should complete the marriage contract, ( Deuteronomy 7:6 ; Deuteronomy 26:17-19 ,) and take the reformed harlot with a numerous bastard offspring to his own house. There she should bear children to the prophet; (as the ancient Jewish Church, amidst all her corruptions, bore many true sons of God;) but in a little time she should relapse to her former courses, and incur her husband’s displeasure, who yet should neither put her to death according to the rigour of the law, nor finally and totally divorce her. Accordingly, I am persuaded, the phrases ???? ?????? , and ???? ?????? , are to be taken literally, a wife of prostitution, and children of promiscuous intercourse; so taken, and only so taken, they produce the admirable parallel we have described. “If any one imagines, that the marriage of a prophet with a harlot is something so contrary to moral purity as in no case whatever to be justified; let him recollect the case of Salmon the Just, as he is styled in the Targum upon Ruth, and Rahab the harlot. If that instance will not remove his scruples, he is at liberty to adopt the opinion, which I indeed reject, but many learned expositors have approved, that the whole was a transaction in vision only, or in trance. I reject it, conceiving that whatever was unfit to be really commanded, or really done, was not very fit to be presented, as commanded, or as done, to the imagination of a prophet in his holy trance. Since this, therefore, was fit to be imagined, which is the least that can be granted, it was fit, (in my judgment,) under all the circumstances of the case, to be done. The greatness of the occasion, the importance of the end, as I conceive, justified the command in this extraordinary instance. The command, if it was given, surely sanctified the action: and, upon these grounds, till I can meet with some other exposition, which may render this typical wedding equally significant of the thing to be typified by it in all its circumstances, I am content to take the fact plainly, as it is related, according to the natural import of the words of the narration; especially as this way of taking it will lead to the true meaning of the emblematical act, even if it was commanded and done only in vision. In taking it as a reality, I have with me the authority, not certainly of the majority, but of some of the most learned and cautious expositors; which I mention, not so much to sustain the truth of the opinion, as to protect myself, in the avowal of it, from injurious imputations.” Hosea 1:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son. Hosea 1:3 . So he went and took Gomer, &c. — The word Gomer signifies failing, or consuming, (see Psalm 12:1 ,) so that the very name of the harlot, whom Hosea took, was symbolical, signifying that the kingdom of Israel would experience a great failing, consumption, or decrease of its people; which indeed it did, through the Assyrian kings’ carrying away vast numbers of them, from time to time, into captivity. The daughter of Diblaim — Diblaim signifies heaps of figs; this name, therefore, may be considered as expressing symbolically, that, as some figs are good, others bad, (see Jeremiah 24.,) so there were some good people, although the major part were bad, among the Israelites. Which conceived, and bare him a son — This, it seems, was a legitimate son born to the prophet. Hosea 1:4 And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while , and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. Hosea 1:4 . And the Lord said, Call his name Jezreel — This name, compounded of the nouns ??? seed, and ?? , God, signifies the seed of God. The names, it must be observed, imposed upon the woman’s children by God’s direction, sufficiently declare what particular parts of the Jewish nation were severally represented by them. The persons signified by this the prophet’s proper son, says Bishop Horsley, “were all those true servants of God, scattered among all the twelve tribes of Israel, who, in the times of the nation’s greatest depravity, worshipped the everlasting God in the hope of the Redeemer to come. These were a holy seed, the genuine sons of God, begotten of him to a lively hope, and the early seed of that church which shall at last embrace all the families of the earth. These are Jezreel, typified by the prophet’s own son, and rightful heir, as the children of God, and heirs of the promises. For yet a little while — And yet this little was a long while, through God’s gracious forbearance. As bad as this people were, they should not perish without warning. ????? ? ???? ???????????? , God loves to premonish, or forewarn, says the heathen historian, Herodotus. I will avenge the blood — Hebrew, bloods of Jezreel: that is, says Bishop Horsley, “the blood of the holy seed, the faithful servants of God, shed by the idolatrous princes of Jehu’s family in persecution, and the blood of the children shed in their horrible rites upon the altars of their idols.” It must be observed further here, that this mystical name of the prophet’s son, Jezreel, was the name of a city in the tribe of Issachar, and of a valley, or plain, in which the city stood: the city famous for its vineyard, which cost its rightful owner Naboth his life; and, by the righteous judgment of God, gave occasion to the downfall of the royal house of Ahab: the plain, one of the finest parts of the whole land of Canaan. As it was here that Jehu shed the blood of Ahab’s family with unsparing hand, many modern expositors, “forgetting the prophet’s son, have thought of nothing in this passage but the place, the city or the plain.” And by the blood of Jezreel, which God here threatens to avenge upon the house of Jehu, they have understood the blood of Ahab’s posterity; because though, in shedding that blood, Jehu executed the judgment which God had denounced by Elijah against the house of Ahab, for the cruel murder of Naboth; yet, in doing that, he acted from a principle of ambition and cruelty, without any regard to God’s glory, whose worship he forsook, maintaining in the country the idolatry which Jeroboam had first set up. Upon this exposition, Bishop Horsley remarks as follows: “It is true, that when the purposes of God are accomplished by the hand of man, the very same act may be just and good as it proceeds from God, and makes a part of the scheme of providence, and criminal in the highest degree as it is performed by the man, who is the immediate agent. The man may act from sinful motives of his own, without any consideration, or knowledge, of the end to which God directs the action. In many cases the man may be incited, by enmity to God and the true religion, to the very act in which he accomplishes God’s secret, or even revealed purpose. The man, therefore, may justly incur wrath and punishment for those very deeds in which, with much evil intention of his own, he is the instrument of God’s good providence. But these distinctions will not apply to the case of Jehu, in such manner as to solve the difficulty arising from this interpretation of the text. Jehu was specially commissioned by a prophet to smite the house of Ahab his master, to avenge the blood of the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of Jehovah, at the hand of Jezebel, 2 Kings 9:7 . And however the general corruption of human nature, and the recorded imperfections of Jehu’s character, might give room to suspect, that in the excision of Ahab’s family, and of the whole faction of Baal’s worshippers, he might be instigated by motives of private ambition, and by a cruel, sanguinary disposition, the fact appears from the history to have been otherwise; that he acted, through the whole business, with a conscientious regard to God’s commands, and a zeal for his service, insomuch that, when the work was completed, he received the express approbation of God; and the continuance of the sceptre of Israel in his family, to the fourth generation, was promised as the reward of this good and accepted service: see 2 Kings 10:30 . And it cannot be conceived, that the very same deed, which was commanded, approved, and rewarded in Jehu, who performed it, should be punished as a crime in Jehu’s posterity, who had no share in the transaction. For these reasons, I am persuaded that Jezreel is to be taken in this passage in its mystical meaning; and is to be understood of the persons typified by the prophet’s son — the holy seed — the true servants and worshippers of God. It is threatened that their blood is to be visited upon the house of Jehu, by which it had been shed. The princes descended from Jehu were all idolaters; and idolaters have always been persecutors of the true religion. In all ages, and in all countries, they have persecuted the Jezreel unto death, whenever they have had the power of doing it. The blood of Jezreel, therefore, which was to be visited on the house of Jehu, was the blood of God’s servants, shed in persecution, and of infants shed upon the altars of their idols, by the idolatrous princes of the line of Jehu. And so the expression was understood by St. Jerome and by Luther.” This threatening, denounced against the house of Jehu, was executed in the days of his great-grandson, the son of Jeroboam II., during whose reign Hosea received this prophecy from the Lord. For Zechariah, as we find 2 Kings 15:10 , was killed by a conspiracy of Shallum, who made himself king in his stead; and, no doubt, many of his kindred, who were of the house of Jehu, were slain with him. And will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel — In the family of Jehu. Or rather, this is a prophecy of the destruction of the whole kingdom of Israel, which was in a declining condition from the death of Jeroboam, and the history of which, from the usurpation of Shallum, is little else than an account of conspiracies, murders, and usurpations, till it was entirely subverted by the Assyrians; and the people were carried captives into Assyria, and were dispersed through the various provinces of that empire. Hosea 1:5 And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Hosea 1:5 . And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break, &c. — This entire abolition of the kingdom of the ten tribes shall take effect at the time when I break the bow, &c. Here the breaking of the bow in the valley of Jezreel is the event that marks the date; and to that date, so marked, the threatened excision of the kingdom of the ten tribes is referred. And it was of moment to give the people warning, that the advantages, which the enemy would gain over them in that part of the country, would end in the utter subversion of the kingdom. For had this timely warning produced repentance and reformation, the judgment, no doubt, would have been averted. St. Jerome says, the Israelites were overthrown by the Assyrians, in a pitched battle, in the plain of Jezreel. But of any such battle we have no mention in history, sacred or profane. But Tiglath-pileser took several of the principal cities in that plain, in the reign of Pekah. And afterward in the reign of Hoshea, Samaria was taken by Shalmaneser, after a siege of three years; and this put an end to the kingdom of the ten tribes. And the taking of these cities successively, and, at last, of the capital itself, was a breaking of the bow of Israel, a demolition of the whole military strength of the kingdom, in the valley of Jezreel, where all those cities were situated. For the breaking of a bow was a natural image for the overthrow of military strength in general, at a time when the bow was one of the principal weapons. “Although the valley of Jezreel is here to be understood literally of the tract of country so named, yet perhaps there is an indirect allusion to the mystical import of the name. This being the finest spot of the whole land of promise, the name, the vale of Jezreel, describes it as the property of the holy seed, by whom it is at last to be possessed. So that, in the very terms of the denunciation against the kingdom of Israel, an oblique promise is contained, of the restoration of the converted Israelites. The Israel which possessed it, in the time of this prophecy, were not the rightful owners of the soil. It is part of the domain of the Jezreel, the seed of God, for whom it is reserved.” — Bishop Horsley. Hosea 1:6 And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Loruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away. Hosea 1:6 . And she conceived again — It has been observed, that the children which the prophet’s wife bore represent certain distinct parts, or descriptions, of the Jewish nation, of the whole of which the mother was the emblem. Of her three children here mentioned, the eldest and the youngest were sons, the intermediate child was a daughter. “The eldest,” says Bishop Horsley, “I think, was the prophet’s son; but the last two were both bastards. In this I have the concurrence of Dr. Wells, acutely remarking, that whereas it is said, Hosea 1:3 , that the prophet’s wife conceived and bare a son to him, it is said of the other two children, only that she conceived and bare them; implying that the children she then bare, not being born, like the first, to the prophet, were not begotten by him.” Now, as the name imposed, by God’s direction, upon the eldest child, the prophet’s own son, typified the true children of God, and heirs of the promises among the Israelites; so the two bastard children, the bishop thinks, typified those parts of the Jewish people that were not Jezreel, or the seed of God. The first of these, the daughter, whose sex was the emblem of weakness, was called Lo-ruhamah, which signifies, unbeloved, or unpitied, or, as it is in the margin, in conformity with all the ancient visions, not having obtained mercy. “This daughter typified the people of the ten tribes, in the enfeebled state of their declining monarchy, torn by their intestine commotions and perpetual revolutions, harassed by powerful invaders, empoverished by their tyrannical exactions, and condemned by the just sentence of God to utter excision as a distinct kingdom, without hope of restoration: for so the type is explained by God himself,” declaring, I will utterly take them away — That is, I will cause them to be carried into captivity, never to return again in a body; and will utterly put an end to them, considered as a kingdom, or people distinct from Judah. Hosea 1:7 But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. Hosea 1:7 . But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah — Including Benjamin, and such of the Levites as adhered to God’s law and worship, and as many of the other tribes as renounced the calves, Baal, and all idolatrous worship, and worshipped God alone as he required. On Judah, including all these, God had mercy in various respects, in which he had not mercy on Israel, prolonging that kingdom 132 years after Israel ceased to be a kingdom, preserving them from the combined powers of the king of Syria and the king of Israel, who united to destroy them, raising them up to greatness and glory in the reign of Hezekiah, in whose days the house of Judah was saved, by a wonderful miracle, from the power of Sennacherib the Assyrian king. Add to this, that Judah’s captivity was only for seventy years, whereas Israel’s continues to this day; Judah was restored to their own land, but Israel was not. By this, as the prophet would debase the pride of Israel, so possibly he intended to direct the well-disposed among them whither to go to find mercy. And will save them by the Lord their God, and not by bow, nor by sword, &c. — “These expressions,” Bishop Horsley thinks, “are too magnificent to be understood of any thing but the final rescue of the Jews from the power of antichrist in the latter ages, by the incarnate God destroying the enemy with the brightness of his coming, ( 2 Thessalonians 2:8 ,) of which the destruction of Sennacherib’s army in the days of Hezekiah might be a type, but it was nothing more.” Hosea 1:8 Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son. Hosea 1:8 . Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived, &c. — The last child is a son, and the daughter was weaned before the woman conceived him. “A child, when it is weaned,” says St. Jerome, “leaves the mother; is not nourished with the parent’s milk; is sustained with extraneous ailments.” “This aptly represents the condition of the ten tribes, expelled from their own country, dispersed in foreign lands, no longer nourished with the spiritual food of divine truth by the ministry of the prophets, and destitute of any better guide than natural reason and heathen philosophy. The deportation of the ten tribes, by which they were reduced to this miserable condition, and deprived of what remained to them, in their worst state, of the spiritual privileges of the chosen race, was, in St. Jerome’s notion of the prophecy, the weaning of Lo-ruhamah. The child, conceived after Lo-ruhamah was thus weaned, must typify the people of the kingdom of Judah, in the subsequent periods of their history. Or rather, this child typifies the whole nation of the children of Israel, reduced, in its external form, by the captivity of the ten tribes, to that single kingdom. The sex represents a considerable degree of national strength and vigour, remaining in this branch of the Jewish people, very different from the exhausted state of the other kingdom previous to its fall. Nor have the two tribes ever suffered so total an excision. The ten were absolutely lost in the world soon after their captivity. They have been nowhere to be found for many ages, and know not where to find themselves; though we are assured they will be found of God, in the day when he shall make up his jewels. But the people of Judah have never ceased totally to be. In captivity at Babylon they lived a separate race, respected by their conquerors. From that captivity they returned. They became an opulent and powerful state; formidable at times to the rival powers of Syria and Egypt; and held in no small consideration by the Roman people, and the first emperors of Rome. And even in their present state of ruin and degradation, without territory, and without a polity of their own, such is the masculine strength of suffering with which they are endued, they are still extant in the world as a separate race, but not as God’s people, otherwise than as they are reserved for signal mercy. God grant it may be in no very distant period! But at present they are ?? ??? , Lo-ammi, not my people. And so they have actually been more than seventeen centuries and a half; and to this condition they were condemned, when this prophecy was delivered. That these are typified by the child Lo-ammi, appears from the application of that name, in the tenth verse, to the children of Israel generally; whence it seems to follow, that the degenerate people of Judah were implicated in the threatenings contained in the former part of the chapter. But in those threatenings they cannot be implicated, unless they are typified in some one, or more, of the typical children. But they are not typified in Jezreel; for the Jezreel is no object of wrath or threatening: not in Lo-ruhamah; for Lo-ruhamah typifies the kingdom of the ten tribes exclusively: of necessity, therefore, in Lo-ammi.” — Bishop Horsley. Hosea 1:9 Then said God , Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God . Hosea 1:10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Hosea 1:10 . Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea — Though God casts off the ten tribes, yet he will, in due time, supply their loss, by bringing in great numbers of true Israelites into the church, not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles, and making them, who before were strangers to the covenants of promise, fellow-heirs with the Jews, Romans 9:25-26 ; 1 Peter 2:10 . “I think,” says Bishop Horsley, “this is to be understood of the mystical Israel; their numbers, consisting of myriads of converts, both of the natural Israel, and their adopted brethren of the Gentiles, shall be immeasurably great.” And in the place where it was said, Ye are not my people, &c. — “That is, at Jerusalem, or at least in Judea, where this prophecy was delivered, and where the execution of the sentence took place: there, in that very place, they, to whom it was said, Ye are no people of mine, shall be called, the sons of the living God. This must relate, at least principally, to the natural Israel of the house of Judah; for to them it was said, Ye are no people of mine. And since they are to be acknowledged again as the children of the living God, in the same place where this sentence was pronounced and executed, the prophecy clearly promises their restoration to their own land.” Hosea 1:11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Hosea 1:11 . Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together — When the fulness of the Gentiles is come in, this will be a means of converting the Jews, and bringing them into the church. And when converts of the house of Judah shall have obtained a resettlement in the holy land, then a general conversion shall take place of the race of Judah, and the race of the ten tribes. They shall unite in one confession, and in one polity; and appoint themselves one head — The Lord Christ, called David their king, ( Hosea 3:5 ,) shall become the chief and head of his church, composed of Judah and Israel, of Jews and Gentiles. This head is indeed appointed and set up over the church by God, Psalm 2:6 ; Ephesians 1:22 . But the saints are said to appoint Christ their head, when they choose him and embrace him for their sovereign; when, with the highest estimation, most vigorous affections, and utmost endeavours of unfeigned obedience, they set him up in their hearts, and serve him in their lives, giving him the pre-eminence in all things. And they shall come up out of the land, &c. — That is, from all parts of the earth, to Jerusalem, there to join in the same way of worship (as once the twelve tribes did, before the schism under Jeroboam) with the Christian Church, and so proceed on the way to the kingdom of heaven. Jerusalem being situated upon an eminence, and in the heart of a mountainous region, which rose greatly above the general level of the country to a great distance on all sides, the sacred writers always speak of persons going to Jerusalem, as going up. For great shall be the day of Jezreel — That is, of the seed of God: see note on Hosea 1:4 . “Great and happy shall be the day, when the holy seed of both branches of the natural Israel shall be publicly acknowledged of their God, united under one head, their King Messiah, and restored to the possession of the promised land, and to a situation of high pre-eminence among the kingdoms of the earth.” It must be observed here, that although this is an express prophecy of the final conversion and restoration of the Jews, it contains also a manifest allusion to the call of the Gentiles. For, “the word Jezreel, though applied in this passage to the devout part of the natural Israel, by its etymology is capable of a larger meaning, comprehending all, of every race and nation, who, by the preaching of the gospel, are made members of Christ, and the children of God. All these are a seed of God, begotten of him by the Spirit to a holy life, and to the inheritance of immortality. The words Ammi and Ruhamah, ( my people and beloved, ) and their opposites, Lo-ammi and Lo- ruhamah, ( not my people and not beloved, ) are capable of the same extension; the two former to comprehend the converted, the two latter the unconverted, Gentiles. In this extent they seem to be used chap. Hosea 2:23 , which appears to be a prophecy of the call of the Gentiles, with manifest allusion to the restoration of the Jews.” Accordingly we find these prophecies of Hosea cited by St. Paul, to prove the indiscriminate call to salvation both of Gentiles and Jews. He affirms, that God has called us [that is, Christians] vessels of mercy afore prepared unto glory, ?? ????? ?? ???????? ???? ??? ?? ????? , not of the Jews only, but moreover of the Gentiles too, Romans 9:24 .” “The allusion which is made to these prophecies by St. Peter, in his first epistle, ( 1 Peter 2:10 ,) is not properly a citation of any part of them, but merely an accommodation of the expressions, not my people, my people, not having obtained mercy, having obtained mercy, to the case of the Hebrews of the Asiat

Expositor's Bible Commentary Hosea 1:1 The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. 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." ; 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, for better or for