Hosea 1:8 - Meaning and Application

Here we have a prediction, first, of Israel’s rejection for a time. This is shown by the name of another child born to Hosea by his unfaithful wife, in Hosea 1:8-9. We should also notice that the children whose names carried these dark warnings were all children of whoredom (Hosea 1:2), born of the woman Hosea married to show that Israel’s ruin grew out of Israel’s own sin. If Israel had not first turned away from God, God would never have rejected them. He never leaves people until they first leave him.

This child’s birth is noted carefully: when his sister was weaned, she conceived and bore a son. The delay in this birth, since his name would point to Israel’s complete rejection, shows God’s patience and his reluctance to bring matters to the harshest end. Some think this also pictures people continuing in wickedness, with lust still conceiving and bringing forth sin. They kept adding sin to sin, as the Chaldee paraphrase says, and they had become hardened in adultery and stubbornness.

The child’s name was Lo-ammi, which means, “Not my people.” When they were warned that God would no longer show them mercy, they did not take it seriously. They still comforted themselves with the idea that they were God’s people, and that he could not help but be merciful to them. So he takes away that false support and denies the close relationship they had presumed on: “You are not my people, and I will not be your God.”

The meaning is plain: “I will not be yours. I will no longer stand in relation to you. I will not be your king, your father, your protector, or your defender.” We can understand this fully as, “I will not be your God.” That means he would no longer be to them what he had been, what they wrongly expected him to be, or what he would have been if they had kept close to him. They were not acting like his people, obedient and faithful to him. Instead, they were serving worthless idols, and so he would not own them as his people, protect them, or claim them when enemies seized them.

Our being brought into God’s covenant, that is, his binding promise of relationship and favor, depends entirely on his grace. It begins with him: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” We love him because he first loved us. But being cast out of that covenant is our own fault. The break comes from man’s side: “You are not my people, and therefore I will not be your God.” If God hates anyone, it is because they first hated him.

This was fulfilled in Israel when they were carried away into Assyria, and their own land no longer knew them. They were no longer God’s people, because they lost the knowledge and worship of him. No prophets were sent to them, and no promises were given to them as were given to the two tribes in captivity. In fact, they were no longer a distinct people at all, but seem to have been mixed among the nations where they were taken and lost among them.

Second, we have here the reduction and later restoration of Israel in the fullness of time. Even in wrath, mercy is remembered. Their rejection would not be total, and it would not be final, as Hosea 1:10-11 says: “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea.” See how the same hand that wounded is stretched out to heal, and how gently he who has torn also binds up. Though God causes grief through his warnings, he will have compassion and gather his people with everlasting kindness.

These are very precious promises about the Israel of God, and they can still help us today. Some think these promises were partly fulfilled when the Jews returned from Babylon. Then many of the ten tribes joined themselves to Judah, shared in the freedom Cyrus proclaimed, and came back in large numbers from the lands where they had been scattered. They appointed Zerubbabel as their leader and became one people again, though before they had been two separate nations. In their own land, where God had once rejected them through his prophets, he would again own them through his prophets and appear for them as his children. They would also come from all parts of the land up to the temple to worship.

We have reason to think this promise also comforted the captives in Babylon. It gave them a general assurance that God had mercy stored up for them and for their land. Their nation could not be destroyed while such a blessing remained reserved for it. Others think these promises will not be fully completed until the later conversion of the Jews, when their large dispersed number, now like the sand of the sea, will come to believe in Christ and be joined to the gospel church. Then, and not before, God will own them as his people and children, even where they had once shown the signs of rejection. The Jewish teachers themselves think this promise has not yet been fully fulfilled.

But it is certain that this promise was fulfilled in the setting up of Christ’s kingdom through the preaching of the gospel, when both Jews and Gentiles were brought into it. Paul applies these words to that work in Romans 9:25-26, and Peter does the same when writing to the scattered Jews in 1 Peter 2:10. Here, Israel means the gospel church, the spiritual Israel (Galatians 6:16), all believers who follow Abraham’s faith and share his blessing. Abraham is the father of all who believe, whether they are Jews or Gentiles (Romans 4:11-12).

What is promised about this Israel is, first, that it will greatly increase in number. It will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. Though Israel according to the flesh, that is, physical Israel, is reduced and made few, spiritual Israel will be very large, even beyond counting. This promise has been fulfilled in the great crowds brought to Christ through the preaching of the gospel, both in the early church and ever since. Thousands from every tribe in Israel, and from other nations too, have become part of it, a crowd no one can number (Revelation 7:4, Revelation 7:9; Galatians 4:27). In this way the promise made to Abraham, when God called him the father of a multitude, reached its full meaning (Genesis 17:5; Genesis 22:17).

Some note that God compares Israel to the sand of the sea, not only because of their large number, but also because sand can act as a boundary against the waters. In that sense, Israel is also a kind of wall of defense for the land where they live, holding back judgment. God could not bring judgment on Sodom while Lot was there (Genesis 19).

God will also renew his covenant with gospel Israel, the people gathered to him through the gospel. He will receive them into his church with privileges as full as those given to the Old Testament church, and in some ways greater. “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called sons of the living God.” The Gentiles who had been left out, and the Jews who had been rejected, will each be welcomed and blessed where they are.

Where the fathers were cast off because of unbelief, the children, when they believe, will be taken in. This is a blessed kind of resurrection, when people who were once not God’s people are made his people. And the privilege is even greater: now they are not only called God’s people, as before, but sons of the living God, whether they were born Jews or Gentiles. Israel under the law was God’s son, his firstborn, but then they were like children under age. Under the gospel, they have grown into greater understanding and greater freedom (Galatians 4:1-2).

It is the great privilege of all believers that they have the living God for their Father, the ever-living God, and can think of themselves as his children by grace and adoption. The sonship of believers will also be openly recognized. It will be said to them for their comfort, and for their honor before the world, “You are the sons of the living God.” So let the saints not trouble themselves, and let others not despise them. In time, God will reveal who his children are, and the world will see their worth and the love God has for them.

It will add much to their comfort and honor when God marks them with his favor in the very place where they once carried the marks of his displeasure. This gives comfort to believing Gentiles. They do not need to go up to Jerusalem to be received as God’s children. No, they may stay where they are, even in the farthest corners of the earth, in the very place where they once were kept at a distance and were told, “You are not my people” (Isaiah 56:3, Isaiah 56:6). There, without leaving their country or family, they may by faith receive the Spirit of adoption, who assures their spirits that they are children of God.

Those who were once at odds will also be brought together in peace (Hosea 1:11). Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together. This joining of Judah and Israel, those two kingdoms that were then fighting and harming each other, is only one example of the good effect Christ’s kingdom has in the world. It shows how people who were once deeply hostile can come to understand and love one another. This was literally fulfilled when the Galileans, who lived in the part of the land that had belonged to the ten tribes and likely came from them, joined with those called Jews from Judea in following Christ and receiving his gospel. His first disciples included both Jews and Galileans. The first people blessed with the light of the gospel were from the land of Zebulun and Naphtali (Matthew 4:15).

Though there was no goodwill at all between Jews and Galileans, their faith in Christ brought them together. The former bitterness disappeared. Even when the Samaritans believed, and there had been even greater hostility between them and the Jews, they were made one in Christ (Acts 8:14). In that way, Judah and Israel were gathered together. Yet this was only a picture of the far greater union between Jews and Gentiles, when Christ’s death broke down the dividing wall of the ceremonial law, the Old Testament system of outward rituals (Ephesians 2:14-16). Christ died to gather into one all the children of God who were scattered abroad (John 11:51; Ephesians 1:10).

Jesus Christ will be the center of unity for all God’s spiritual Israel, that is, all his true people. They will agree to appoint one head for themselves, and that can be no one except the one God has appointed, Christ. Jesus Christ is the head of the church, and the only head of it. He is not only a ruler over it, like the head of a political body, but also the source of life and strength for it, like the head of the human body. To believe in Christ is to accept him as our head, meaning we agree with God’s choice and willingly place ourselves under his guidance and rule. We do this together with all true Christians who also own him as their head. So even though they are many, in him they are one, and therefore one with each other. Those who agree with a third thing agree with one another.

Having accepted Christ as their head, they will come up out of the land. Some will come from every kind of place and background to join the church, just as under the Jewish law people came from all parts of Israel up to Jerusalem to worship (Psalm 122:4). There the tribes went up, and this also points ahead to the Gentiles coming into the church: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:3). This does not mean a change of location, for they are said to be in the same place in Hosea 1:10. It means a change of heart, a spiritual rising toward Christ. They shall come up from the earth, if we read it that way. Those who give themselves to Christ as their head turn their hearts away from this world and its things, and set them on things above (Colossians 3:1-2). They are not of the world (John 15:19), but their life is in heaven. They come up out of the land, even if it is the land where they were born, because in their affections they leave it behind to follow the Lamb wherever he goes. This is how Dr. Pocock understands it.

When all this happens, great will be the day of Jezreel. Some understand that the day of Jezreel’s trouble is great, but here the meaning is that Jezreel’s glory will be great. This will be Israel’s day, their own day, after their enemies have long enjoyed their day. Israel is called Jezreel here, meaning the seed of God, the holy seed (Isaiah 6:13), the substance of the land. This seed is now sown in the earth and hidden under the clods, but its day will be great when the harvest comes.

The church had a great day when people were being added to it every day, those who were being saved. At that time, the Almighty did great things for his people.