Hoseachapter 2
23 verses · Hosea · 755 to 715 BC · The Twelve
So I will betroth you to Me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in loving devotion and compassion.
Introduction
Hosea, The Twelve, Hosea Overview.
Hosea wrote this chapter for Israelites who kept the LORD's festivals and still thanked Baal, the rain god, for their grain and oil. He had lived its picture at home, a husband wronged by his wife. The chapter is cast as a lawsuit in a family court, brought by the husband against the mother of his children. Its hearers knew the legal forms of divorce and the penalty for adultery. Listen for the three turns that each begin with the word therefore, and for how the third changes the direction of the case. Listen as well for the children's names from chapter 1, spoken again at the end.
Context
- Who
- Israelites who thanked Baal for the harvest and the LORD for the nation
- What
- A lawsuit in which the LORD, as a wronged husband, charges Israel with unfaithfulness, sentences her, and then promises to win her back and renew the covenant.
- Where
- The farmland of the northern kingdom and its Baal shrines, with the wilderness and the Valley of Achor named as the places of the new beginning.
- When
- About 755 to 750 BC, in the last prosperous years of the northern kingdom; the date is approximate.
- Why
- To expose Israel's habit of crediting Baal with the harvest the LORD gave, and to announce that judgment would lead to a renewed marriage.
Historical context
The chapter opens with a legal formula. In the ancient Near East a husband ending a marriage declared before witnesses, in words very like these, that she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Hearers recognised the sentence the way we would recognise the wording of a court summons.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
The penalty described was also real law, not invention. Documents from Mesopotamia and the surrounding cultures prescribe stripping an adulterous wife and putting her out with nothing, she had brought nothing legally her own into the marriage, so she left with nothing. It was public, deliberate humiliation.
Baal was a rain god, and that is the whole quarrel. In a land with no great river to irrigate from, the harvest depended entirely on rain falling at the right weeks, and Baal was advertised as the one who supplied it. Worship at his shrines involved sexual acts believed to prompt the god to fertilise the land. So the list of what the lovers supposedly gave, grain, new wine, oil, wool, flax, is exactly what a Canaanite farmer thought he was buying.
Two of the promises at the end turn painful place names inside out. The Valley of Achor was where Achan was executed after the failure at Ai, remembered ever after as the valley of trouble; it becomes a door of hope. And the two Hebrew words for husband are set against each other, Israel will call God my husband instead of my master, because the second word is also the name Baal.
Significance
The charge was not that Israel had stopped sacrificing to the LORD. It was that they credited the crops to somebody else while keeping up the appearance of covenant loyalty, and they had never noticed that the grain and the wine and the oil all came from the God they were cheating on.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The ending would have been almost shocking to the first hearers. After the stripping and the wilderness comes a courtship, she is led out and spoken to tenderly, and the covenant is renewed with the animals and the sky as parties to it. Judgment is the road, not the destination.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts sets this chapter in one prophetic reading of the annual cycle. It is read as the Haftarah of Bamidbar, Hosea 2:1 to 2:22, in both rites, on the Sabbath of the portion Numbers 1:1 to 4:20. A congregation keeping that cycle hears the verses of the reference read aloud after the Torah portion of its Sabbath. That table carries nothing for the special Sabbaths or the fast days, so any further public reading of this chapter is left to a source that holds those readings.
The table's own notes say that its verse numbers are the Hebrew ones, which part from an English Bible in several places. They give this book as the example. The Haftarah of Bamidbar runs Hosea 2:1 to 2:22 in Hebrew and Hosea 1:10 to 2:20 in English. So this chapter in an English Bible falls almost whole inside that Haftarah.
The corpus joins the chapter to the weeks of the Torah portions through the works arranged by portion. Under the fifteenth verse it carries Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 36. Under the sixteenth verse it carries Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayetze 51.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries. He is quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY, and every quotation of it is held to fifty words or fewer because the translation is modern. His lemmas, which carry the verse in that translation's wording, are never quoted.
Rashi opens the chapter by asking why judgment and comfort stand in one speech, and he gives two answers. From Pesachim 87b he reports that "Hosea felt that he had sinned" by his word against Israel, and that "He stood and begged mercy for them". From the Sifrei he gives a parable. A king angry with his wife sent for a scribe to write a bill of divorce, and was reconciled with her before the scribe arrived. So the king told him, "Come and write that I am doubling her kethubah" (Rashi on Hosea 2:1:1). The one head of the second verse he names in three words, "David their king" (Rashi on Hosea 2:2:1).
The mother under judgment is the nation, "the mother of future generations" (Rashi on Hosea 2:4:1). The day of her birth is the day God found her in Egypt, which Rashi reads through Ezekiel 16 (Rashi on Hosea 2:5:1). At the twelfth verse he reports Shabbat 55a in one line: "Even the merits of the Patriarchs have been depleted" (Rashi on Hosea 2:12:1).
The turn of the chapter comes at the sixteenth verse. Rashi reads the wilderness as exile, "which is to her like a desert and a wasteland". There she learns "that it was better for her when she performed My will than when she rebelled against Me" (Rashi on Hosea 2:16:1). A second reading, from Ruth Rabbah and the Pesikta, takes the wilderness as the desert of Sihon and Og, and joins it to Ezekiel 20 (Rashi on Hosea 2:17:1).
The name Ishi he reads as a change in the heart of the worshipper: "You shall worship Me out of love and not out of fear" (Rashi on Hosea 2:18:1). The betrothal in faithfulness is a reward. It is given "for, while in exile, you believed in the promises through My prophets", and he names the Mechilta as his source (Rashi on Hosea 2:22:1). Jezreel at the close of the chapter he reads as the exiles, scattered and then gathered in (Rashi on Hosea 2:24:1).
The corpus carries two further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Hosea 2:6:1 and 2:13:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. On the first verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 19:3 and Bamidbar Rabbah 2:12. On the second verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 64:2 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Pesakhim 8:8. On the fifth verse it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 22:20 and Midrash Lekach Tov on Ruth 1:1:3. On the seventh verse it holds Devarim Rabbah 2:19 and Ein Yaakov, Ketubbot 5:15. On the eighth verse it holds Eikhah Rabbah 1:52 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Ketubot 7:1.
On the ninth verse it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Berakhot 1:33 and Ein Yaakov, Berakhot 1:43. On the tenth verse it holds Berakhot 32a:13 and Bereshit Rabbah 28:7. On the eleventh verse it holds Berakhot 35b:4 and Berakhot 7a:22. On the twelfth verse it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Shabbat 5:3 and Ein Yaakov, Shabbat 5:7. On the thirteenth verse it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Shabbat 22:1 and Ein Yaakov, Shabbat 22:1. On the fourteenth verse it holds Shemot Rabbah 19:1 and Shemot Rabbah 2:4. On the fifteenth verse it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 36 and Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 21.
On the sixteenth verse it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayetze 51 and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:9:21. On the seventeenth verse it holds Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:133 and Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Vayera 22:1. On the eighteenth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 9:45 and Ein Yaakov, Ketubbot 7:1. On the nineteenth verse it holds Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:1:2 and Shemot Rabbah 33:7. On the twenty-first verse it holds Avot DeRabbi Natan 37:8 and Devarim Rabbah 3:7. On the twenty-second verse it holds Midrash Lekach Tov on Lamentations 1:1:2 and Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 14:31:24.
On the twenty-third verse it holds Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 32:1:14 and Midrash Tehillim 4:9. On the twenty-fifth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 23:8 and Bamidbar Rabbah 9:48. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Hosea 2:1:1 to 2:24:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Hosea 2:6:1 and 2:13:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/hosea/2.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, the Haftarah table and its note on Hebrew verse numbers.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Plead with your mother, for she is not my wife
The chapter opens by reversing the names chapter 1 closed on, for brothers are called "My people", Ammi, and sisters "My loved one", Ruhamah. The promise of 1:10 becomes words the people are told to speak. Restoration is named in the first verse, before the charge is even brought.
Hosea 2:1
"Tell your brothers and sisters, my people, that they have attained mercy." LXX: "Say to your brother, my people, and to your sister, having obtained mercy." Because the day of Jezrael is great, on which Judas and Israel will have one prince, and it will not be said of Israel, "you are not my people," but on the contrary they will be called the children of the living God.
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:1patristic
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Hosea 2:1
“Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi - that is, “My people, and to your sisters, Ruhamah,” i. e., “beloved or tenderly pitied.” The words form a climax of the love of God. First, the people scattered , unpitied , and disowned by God , is re-born of God; then it is declared to be in continued relation to God, “My people;” then to be the object of his yearning love.”
Hosea 2:2-3
Rebuke your mother, rebuke her: The LORD opens a legal case against Israel, pictured as an unfaithful wife, with "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her". The words "she is not My wife, and I am not her husband" state a break already in force through her adulteries. The threat to "strip her naked" anticipates Ezekiel 16.
Hosea 2:2
"Judge your mother, judge her, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband: let her remove her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts: lest perhaps I strip her naked, and make her as on the day of her birth." This is a message directed towards the Israelite people, that is, the ten tribes.
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:2-3patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:2
“Plead with your mother - People of Judah, accuse your mother, (Jerusalem), who has abandoned my worship, and is become idolatrous, convince her of her folly and wickedness, and let her return to him from whom she has so deeply revolted.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 2:2
“Every sinful course, persisted in, is an adulterous departure from God. And here we may see what it is truly to repent of it and turn from it. True penitents will forsake both open sins, will put away not only the whoredoms that lie in sight, but those that lie in secret between their breasts, the sin that is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
strip her naked and expose her: Barnes saw two kinds of nakedness in the threat. The first is the loss of the grain, wool and linen God gave, and the second is a soul stripped of the grace of God. Israel prized the outward gifts and despised the inward.
Hosea 2:3
“Lest I strip her naked - “There is an outward visible nakedness and an inward, which is invisible. The invisible nakedness is, when the soul within is bared of the glory and the grace of God.” The visible nakedness is the privation of God’s temporal and visible gifts, the goods of this world, or outward distinction. God’s inward gifts the sinful soul or nation despises, while those outward gifts she prizes.”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:3
“It is hard to say when this had its accomplishment in the kingdom of the ten tribes; but it principally aims, no doubt, at the bringing in both of Jews and Gentiles into the church by the gospel of Christ; and it is applicable, nay, we have reason to think it was designed that it should be applied, to the conversion of particular souls to God.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hosea 2:4-5
no compassion on her children: The children share the mother's charge, called "the children of adultery" because she "conceived them in disgrace". Her own words are quoted against her, "I will go after my lovers, who give me bread and water, wool and linen". She credits the plain goods of a household to her lovers.
Hosea 2:4
“I will not have mercy upon her children - God visits the sins of the parents upon the children, until the entailed curse be cut off by repentance. God enforces His own word “lo-ruhamah, Unpitied,” by repeating it here, “lo-arahem,” “I will not pity.” Reproaches, which fall upon the mother, are ever felt with special keenness.”
The Hebrew for lovers marks a burning love, and Barnes took the plural as a sign of sinful loves. Henry records the Chaldee read the lovers as the nations Israel courted, and he read them as the idols she credited with her bread. Every word, Barnes said, deepens her disgrace.
Hosea 2:5
“She that conceived them hath done shamefully, literally, hath made shameful - The silence as to “what” she “made shameful” is more emphatic than any words. She “made shameful” everything which she could “make shameful,” her acts, her children, and herself. I will go after my lovers - (:iterally let me go, I would go). The Hebrew word “Meahabim” denotes intense passionate love; the plural form implies that they were sinful loves. Every word aggravates the shamelessness.”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:5
“The Chaldee understands it of the nations whose alliance Israel courted and depended upon, who supplied them with what they needed. But it is rather to be understood of the idols they worshipped, to justify their love of which they called them their lovers. See who do shamefully; those that are wilful and resolute in sin, and those that openly profess and own their resolution to go on in it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hedged with thorns; she never knew who gave the grain
Hosea 2:6-7
hedge up her path with thorns: The thorn hedge and the wall are discipline aimed at her return. They block the way until "she will seek them but not find them", and she says, "I will return to my first husband". Her own words supply the turning point.
Hosea 2:6
“I will hedge up thy way with thorns - I will put it out of your power to escape the judgments I have threatened; and, in spite of all your attachment to your idols, you shall find that they can give you neither bread, nor water, nor wool, nor flax, nor oil, nor drink. And ye shall be brought into such circumstances, that the pursuit of your expensive idolatry shall be impossible. And she shall be led so deep into captivity, as never to find the road back to her own land.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:6
“Hedge up - I will compass thee in with wars, and calamities, that tho' thou love thy sinful courses, thou shalt have little pleasure in them. Make a wall - Yea, I will make the calamities of this people as a strong wall, which they cannot break.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Hosea 2:6
“The way of duty is hedged about with thorns; it is the way of sin that is hedged up with thorns. Crosses in an evil course are God's hedges to turn us from it. Restraining grace and restraining providences (even sicknesses and trials) are great blessings when they stop us in a course of sin.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
return to my first husband: The hedge of verse 6 keeps her lovers out of reach, so her pursuit ends empty. Origen applied the verse to the soul, seduced by many lovers, that comes at last to say it will return to its first husband. Her first motive is that life was better with him.
Hosea 2:7
“So, therefore, understand that there were also many lovers of your soul who have been seduced by its splendor with whom it has been a prostitute. It was also said of these, "I will go after my lovers, who give me my wine and my oil." But the soul has now come to that time that it should say, "I will return to my first husband because it was better for me than now." You have returned, therefore, to your first husband. You have doubtless displeased your lovers with whom you used to commit adultery.”
Origen of Alexandria · written before 253 · Homilies on Exodus 8:4patristic
Hosea 2:8-9
she does not acknowledge: The charge is ignorance of the giver: "she does not acknowledge that it was I who gave her grain, new wine, and oil". So the LORD says, "I will take back My grain in its time", words of ownership that answer any claim that Baal gave the harvest.
Hosea 2:8
“Their land was plenteous. How graciously their plenty was given to them. God gave them not only corn for necessity, but wine for delight, and oil for ornament.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:8
“For she did not know that I gave her corn - How often are the gifts of God’s immediate bounty attributed to fortuitous causes - to any cause but the right one! Which they prepared for Baal - And how often are the gifts of God’s bounty perverted into means of dishonoring him! God gives us wisdom, strength, and property; and we use them to sin against him with the greater skill, power, and effect! Were the goods those of the enemy, in whose service they are employed, the crime would be the less.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
take back My grain: God takes back the grain and new wine at harvest, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown name the means: storms, locusts and Assyrian armies. The loss falls in its time and season. Jerome called that the heavier punishment, the grain lost just when the wine was expected.
Hosea 2:9
"Therefore, I will return and take my grain in its time, and my wine in its time, and I will free my wool, and my flax, which covered her disgrace." LXX: "Therefore I will return and take my wheat in its time, and my wine in its time, and I will take away my garments, and my coverings, not to cover her nakedness." A heavier punishment is when, in the time of harvest and the expected vintage, the crops are taken and the wine, and in a sense the tried ones are taken from the hands.
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:9patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:9
"Return, and take away," is equivalent to, "I will take back again," namely, by sending storms, locusts, Assyrian enemies, &c. "Therefore," that is, because she did not acknowledge Me as the Giver. in the time thereof--in the harvest-time.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Hosea 2:9
“Therefore I will return - God is, as it were, absent from men, when He lets them go on in their abuse of His gifts. “His judgments are far above out of their sight.” He returns to them, and His presence is felt in chastisements, as it might have been in mercies. He is not out of sight or out of mind, then. Others render it, “I will turn, i. e.”
Hosea 2:10-13
expose her lewdness: The judgment widens from provision to worship itself. The LORD ends "her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths", and the vines and fig trees become a thicket for the beasts of the field. The section closes on the root of them all, "But Me she forgot".
all her exultation: Israel kept her feasts, New Moons and Sabbaths while serving Baal, and Wesley notes that the three appointed feasts ended when Shalmaneser took her captive. Barnes adds that Jeroboam had changed at least one feast and kept them all in places God had forbidden. The LORD calls them her feasts.
Hosea 2:11
“I will also cause her mirth to cease, her feast days ... - Israel had forsaken the temple of God; despised His priests; received from Jeroboam others whom God had not chosen; altered, at least, one of the festivals; celebrated all, where God had forbidden; and worshiped the Creator under the form of a brute creature (see Introduction).”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:11
“Her feast days - Though apostate, Israel was fallen to idolatry, yet they retained many of the Mosaic rites and ceremonies. Her solemn feasts - The three annual feasts of tabernacles, weeks, and passover, all which ceased when they were carried captive, by Salmaneser.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
the wages paid by her lovers: Adam Clarke notes that Israel credited every gift of providence to the idols as payment for her service. The word wages carries on the harlot figure of verse 5, where she named what her lovers gave her. Verse 15 reverses this loss when God gives back her vineyards.
Hosea 2:12
“These are my rewards - They attributed all the blessings of Providence as rewards received from the idols which they worshipped.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
the days of the Baals: The plural covers many idols, which John Wesley notes were all called by the one name Baal. Albert Barnes saw a people dividing the one God's powers among many gods, one for fruitfulness, another for destruction, another for providence. Her jewelry was dress for those rites.
Hosea 2:13
“I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, or Baals - When men leave the one true God, they make to themselves many idols. They act, as if they could make up a god piece-meal out of the many attributes of the One God, and create their Creator. His power of production becomes one God; His power of destroying, another; His providence, a third; and so on, down to the very least acts.”
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:13
“The days - The sins of those days. Of Baalim - Baal was the great idol of the ten tribes; here it is plural Baalim, to denote the multitude of idols which they worshipped, all called by this one name.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Allured into the wilderness and spoken to tenderly
Hosea 2:14-15
I will allure her: The chapter turns to courtship, "I will allure her and lead her to the wilderness, and speak to her tenderly". The Valley of Achor, meaning trouble, becomes "a gateway of hope". Her answer "as in the day she came up out of Egypt" makes the restoration a new exodus.
Hosea 2:14
"Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope." LXX: "Therefore, behold, I will seduce her, and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart." Because we have said "to open hope," and the Septuagint translated "to open his understanding," Symmachus interpreted it "into the door of hope," that is, "into the gateway of hope," Theodotion "to renew her patience," that is, "to open her expectation."
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:14patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:14
“I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her - After inflicting many judgments upon her, I will restore her again. I will deal with her as a very affectionate husband would do to an unfaithful wife. Instead of making her a public example, he takes her in private, talks to and reasons with her; puts her on her good behavior; promises to pass by all, and forgive all, if she will now amend her ways.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 2:14
“So obstinate is she that God has to "allure her," that is, so to temper judgment with unlooked-for grace as to win her to His ways.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
a gateway of hope: The vineyards destroyed at verse 12 are given back. Barnes reads them as given from the wilderness itself, the place of trouble made the gateway of joy. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown place the Valley of Achor near Jericho, a fruitful land, citing Isaiah 65:10.
Hosea 2:15
“The valley of Achor, near Jericho, was specially fruitful (Isa 65:10); so "trouble" and "hope" are rightly blended in connection with it. sing . . . as . . . when she came . . . out of . . .”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:15
“Or, if the allusion be to the name, it intimates that trouble for sin, if it be sincere, opens a door of hope; for that sin which truly troubles us shall not ruin us. The valley of Achor was a very fruitful pleasant valley, some think the same with the valley of Engedi, famous for vineyards, Cant. i.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Hosea 2:16-17
The new address marks the new relation, Ishi, "my Husband", in place of Baali, "my Master". A wife could rightly call her husband by either word, yet Baali was too close to the false god's name. He will "remove from her lips the names of the Baals".
Hosea 2:16
“And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord, I will call my servant, and I will not call him any more Baalim: and I will take away the names of Baalim out of his mouth, and he shall no more remember their names." Similarly the LXX.”
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:16-17patristic
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:16
“Thou shalt call me Ishi - That is, my man, or my husband; a title of love and affection; and not Baali, my master, a title exciting fear and apprehension; which, howsoever good in itself, was now rendered improper to be applied to Jehovah, having been prostituted to false gods. This intimated that they should scrupulously avoid idolatry; and they had such a full proof of the inefficacy of their idolatrous worship that, after their captivity, they never more served idols.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 2:16
“Note, The surest pledge and token of God's favour to any people is his effectual parting between them and their beloved sins. The worship of Baal was the sin that did most easily beset the people of Israel; it was their own iniquity, the sin that had dominion over them; but now that idolatry shall be quite abolished, and there shall not be the least remains of it among them.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
remove from her lips the names: God himself removes the names, and Barnes read the end of Baal worship as the fruit of his grace. Barnes set it beside Zechariah 13, where the names of the idols are cut off from the land. The change reaches her lips.
Betrothed forever, and Jezreel sown in the land
make a covenant for them: The covenant widens from the marriage to creation itself, made "with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air". The LORD will "abolish bow and sword and weapons of war", the same horizon as Isaiah's picture of the wolf and the lamb.
Hosea 2:18
“Will I make a covenant for them - I will make an agreement between them and the birds, beasts, and reptiles, so that they shall not be injured by those; their flocks shall not be destroyed, nor their crops spoiled. I will also prevent every species of war, that they may no more have the calamities that arise from that source. They shall also be safe from robbers and nightly alarms; for I will make them to lie down in safety.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:18
“It is a full and gracious promise of abundance of peace, safety, and love, through the creation. Safely - This was in some measure made good to the Jews returning out of captivity. But the full accomplishment will be to the church of Christ.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Hosea 2:19-20
betroth you to Me forever: The divorce words are answered by a betrothal said three times: "righteousness and justice", "loving devotion and compassion", and "faithfulness". It is made "forever", as final as the break it answers. The list closes with "you will know the LORD", knowing in the Hebrew sense of close relation.
Hosea 2:19
"And I will espouse thee to me forever: and I will espouse thee to me in justice, and judgment, and in mercy, and in compassion. And I will espouse thee to me in faith: and thou shalt know that I am the Lord." Similarly in the Septuagint. Oh, what great mercy of God! The prostitute who has fornicated with many lovers, and was handed over to the beasts because of her crime; after she returns to her husband, though she is not reconciled to him, she is betrothed.
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Hosea 2:19patristic
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:19
“And I will betroth her unto Me forever - God does not say here, “I will forgive her;” “I will restore her;” “I will receive her back again;” “I will again shew her love and tenderness.” Much as these would have been, He says here much more. He so blots out, forgets, abolishes all memory of the past, that He speaks only of the future, of the new betrothal, as if it were the first espousal of a virgin.”
betroth you in faithfulness: The third promise to betroth her rests on faithfulness, and Clarke read it as the wife keeping faith with her husband. To know the LORD, in Clarke's reading, is to find him the one lasting good. Idol worship ends where that knowledge takes root.
Hosea 2:20
“In faithfulness - Thou shalt no more prostitute thyself to idols, but be faithful to him who calls himself thy husband. Thou shalt know the Lord - There shall be no more infidelity on thy part nor divorce on mine; and thou shalt experience me to be the sole, present, and eternal good of thy immortal spirit: and when this conviction is fully rooted then there can be no more idolatry, for it shall be seen that an idol is nothing in the world.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Hosea 2:21-22
The chain runs from heaven to the ground, the LORD answering the heavens, the heavens the earth, and the earth the grain. It restores the very provision taken back in verses 8 and 9. Jezreel, meaning God sows, is answered by the things it needs to grow.
Hosea 2:21
“In that day - In the day of gospel-grace. I will hear - God the first and universal cause will influence the heavens, he will command their dew, and showers.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Hosea 2:21
“I will hear the heavens ... - As all nature is closed, and would refuse her office to those who rebel against her God, so, when He hath withdrawn His curse and is reconciled to man all shall combine together for man’s good, and, by a kind of harmony, all parts thereof join their ministries for the service of those who are at unity with Him. And, as an image of love, all, from lowest to highest, are bound together, each depending on the ministry of that beyond it, and the highest on God.”
respond to the grain: Adam Clarke pictured the grain, wine and oil as eager to supply human need, and he took Jezreel as the destitute people waiting on them. Clarke saw here the harmony God built into created nature.
Hosea 2:22
“Shall hear the corn, and the wine - When they seem to express a desire to supply the wants of man. And they shall hear Jezreel - The destitute people who are in want of the necessaries of life. This most elegant gradation in the exertion of the influences of nature, for the supply of the wants of man, may be considered thus: - 1. There is a concord, harmony, and mutual influence, which God has established in the parts of created nature, in reference to the support and preservation of the human race.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
sow her as My own: The chapter ends with compassion for No Compassion, and to Not My People the LORD says, "You are My people". Paul quotes this verse with 1:10 at Romans 9:25-26. Jezreel, meaning God sows, is fulfilled in "I will sow her as My own", the name of judgment bearing its harvest.
Hosea 2:23
“And I will sow her unto me in the earth,.... That is, Jezreel, or the people of God, the church betrothed; this is another blessing following upon the marriage relation between Christ and his people, both Jews and Gentiles, in the latter day, a multiplication of a spiritual seed and offspring. So Kimchi and Aben Ezra observe, that the words signify that the people of Israel shall increase and be fruitful as the seed of the earth.”
2 more voices on this verse
Hosea 2:23
“And I will sow her unto Me in the earth - She whom God sows, is the Church, of whom God speaks as her, because she is the Mother of the faithful. After the example of her Lord, and by virtue of His Death, every suffering is to increase her. “The blood of Christians was their harvest-seed” . “The Church was not diminished by persecutions, but increased and the field of the Lord was even clothed with the richer harvest, in that the seeds, which fell singly, arose multiplied” .”
Hosea 2:23
“I will sow - I will bless them with a wonderful increase of people, exprest with allusion to seed sown in the earth. So the Jews multiplied after the Babylonish captivity, but much more are the numbers increased since the preaching of the gospel.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Cross references
Hosea 2:23
- Quoted inRomans 9:25As He says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘My People’ who are not My people, and I will call her ‘My Beloved’ who is not My beloved,”
'I will call them my people, which were not my people' ('as he saith also in Osee')
ConnectionsRevelation 21:3
Keep studying
Studies13
Words12
Subjects1
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, Commentary on Hosea 2:9; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Origen of Alexandria, HOMILIES ON EXODUS 8:4 and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.