Hosea

Hosea 2

23 verses · Minor Prophets · Old Testament

1“Say to your brothers, ‘My people!’

and to your sisters, ‘My loved one!’ 2Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts; 3Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst. 4Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness; 5For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ 6Therefore behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way. 7She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.’ 8For she didn’t know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. 9Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my new wine in its season, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness. 10Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of my hand. 11I will also cause all her celebrations to cease: her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies. 12I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, about which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me; and I will make them a forest,’ and the animals of the field shall eat them. 13I will visit on her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me,” says Yahweh. 14“Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. 15I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. 16It will be in that day,” says Yahweh, “that you will call me ‘my husband,’ and no longer call me ‘my master.’ 17For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they will no longer be mentioned by name. 18In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, and will make them lie down safely. 19I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion. 20I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know Yahweh. 21It will happen in that day, I will respond,” says Yahweh, “I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth; 22and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine, and the oil; and they will respond to Jezreel. 23I will sow her to me in the earth; and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, ‘You are my people;’ and they will say, ‘My God!’ ”

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What others are saying

4 commentators · 61 notes on this chapter

Matthew HenryEnglish Puritan / Nonconformist · 1708–17143

Writes as a pastor rather than a critic. Expect devotional and practical application over historical or linguistic analysis, read through a Reformed covenantal frame — and expect the Old Testament to be read forward toward Christ throughout.

Why this voice is here: The most widely read English commentary for three centuries. Included as a baseline: where Henry and a modern voice diverge, the divergence itself is usually the interesting part.

v. 1–5

The first words of this chapter some make the close of the foregoing chapter, and add them to the promises which we have here of the great things God would do for them. When they shall have appointed Christ their head, and centered in him, then let them say…

v. 6–13

God here goes on to threaten what he would do with this treacherous idolatrous people; and he warns that he may not wound, he threatens that he may not strike. If he turn not, he will whet his sword (Psa 7:12); but, if he turn, he will sheathe it. They did…

v. 14–23

The state of Israel ruined by their own sin did not look so black and dismal in the former part of the chapter, but that the state of Israel, restrained by the divine grace, looks as bright and pleasant here in the latter part of the chapter, and the more…

John GillParticular Baptist / High Calvinist · 1746–176323

The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.

Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.

v. 1

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah. These words are to be considered either in connection with the latter part of the preceding chapter, and as directed to the sons of the living God, who had not been, but now were, "Ammi", the…

v. 2

Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel, as the Targum; the body of the Jewish nation, which, with respect to individuals, was as a mother to her children; see Matthew 21:37, that is, lay before her, her sin in rejecting the Messiah, the…

v. 3

Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born,.... Alluding to the case of an infant when born, which comes naked into the world; and referring to the state and condition of the Israelites in Egypt, which was the time of their nativity…

Keil & DelitzschGerman Lutheran, conservative-critical · 1861–187515

The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.

Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.

v. 1

To confirm the certainty of this most joyful turn of events, the promise closes with the summons in Hosea 2;Hos 1:1-11 : "Say ye to your brethren: My people; and to your sisters, Favoured." The prophet "sees the favoured nation of the Lord (in spirit) before…

v. 2–3

What the prophet announced in Hosea 1:2-2:1, partly by a symbolical act, and partly also in a direct address, is carried out still further in the section before us. The close connection between the contents of the two sections is formally indicated by the…

v. 4

"And I will not have compassion upon her children, for they are children of whoredom." This verse is also dependent, so far as the meaning is concerned, upon the pen (lest) in Hos 2:3; but in form it constitutes an independent sentence. Benē zenūnı̄m (sons…

Jamieson, Fausset & BrownScottish Presbyterian / Reformed · 187120

The concise option. Three authors split the canon, so the voice shifts between sections. Expect brief, sober, conservative notes that resolve difficulties rather than dwelling on them — useful for orientation, thinner than Gill or Clarke where a passage is genuinely contested.

Why this voice is here: The quickest way to see what the mainstream Reformed reading of a passage is. Start here, then go to Gill or Clarke when it matters.

v. 2

Plead--expostulate. mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to "her children," that is, to the individual citizens of the state (compare Isa 50:1). for she is not my wife--She has deprived herself of her high privilege by spiritual adultery…

v. 3

set her as in the day . . . born-- (Eze 16:4; Eze 23:25-26, Eze 23:28-29). The day of her political "birth" was when God delivered her from the bondage of Egypt, and set up the theocracy. make her as a wilderness-- (Jer 6:8; Zep 2:13). Translate, "make her as…

v. 4

her children--Not even her individual members shall escape the doom of the nation collectively, for they are individually guilty.

World English Bible — Public domain