Hosea 2:1 - Meaning and Application

Some people take the first words of this chapter as the close of the chapter before it. They join them to the promises of the great things God would do for his people. When they have appointed Christ as their head and centered their life in him, let them say to one another with joy and praise, “You are my people” and “You have received mercy” again. The prophets are to say this to them, as the Chaldee version suggests, like a message of comfort to God’s people.

God’s spiritual Israel, made up of Jews and Gentiles together, should call one another brothers and sisters. They should recognize one another as God’s people and as those he loves. For that reason, they should welcome one another and stir each other up to thank God and live in a way that fits this shared salvation.

But the next verses seem to fit better with a call to conviction and humility. The “mother” in (Hosea 2:2) seems to be the same as the “brethren and sisters” in (Hosea 2:1), the ten-tribe kingdom, that is, the whole body of the people. In a special sense, it also includes the leaders, who were like the mother who raised and cared for the rest.

Who, then, are the children who must plead with their mother? It may be the godly people among them, those who testified against the sins of the day. Let them boldly keep warning against the idol worship and deep corruption that were spreading through the nation. Those who had not bowed to Baal could reason with those who had, using the arguments given here.

Private people may, and should, in their own place, speak against public dishonor of God’s name and worship. Children may humbly and respectfully reason with their parents when they do wrong. They should plead with their mother, as Jonathan reasoned with Saul about David.

Or it may mean the sufferers among them, those sharing in the nation’s troubles. Let them not complain about God or blame him as if he had treated them unfairly and without a father’s care. No, let them plead with their mother and place the blame where it belongs, as in (Isaiah 50:1). Her sins have led to her being put away. She may thank herself, and they may thank her, for their misery.

Now we see how they must plead with her. First, they must remind her of her former relation to God, the kindness he showed her, the many favors he gave her, and the further favors he planned for her. They must tell their brothers and sisters that they had once been “my people” and “shown mercy,” that is, God’s people and recipients of his mercy, and they might have remained so if they had not brought it on themselves, as in (Hosea 2:1).

Our relation to God, and our dependence on him, make our rebellion against him far worse. When people turn away from the one they belong to, their sin becomes more serious.

Second, they must, in God’s name, charge her with breaking the marriage covenant between her and God. They must tell her that God no longer regards her as his wife, and he no longer regards himself as her husband. They must tell her, as in (Hosea 2:2), that she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. By her spiritual unfaithfulness, she has lost all the honor and comfort of that relation and has driven God to give her a bill of divorce.

Nothing should move us to repentance more strongly than seeing that our sin has provoked God to reject us. It is time to wake up and think carefully about our path when God threatens to cast us off. We are in terrible danger if he is not our husband.

They must press this charge home on her, as in (Hosea 2:5): “Their mother has acted like a prostitute.” The Chaldee takes this to mean their gathered people have run after false prophets, but it is more likely speaking of idols, supported by false prophets. She who gave them birth has acted shamefully by making and worshiping idols. An idol is called a shame in (Hosea 9:10), and idol worship is a shameful thing.

This is not only an insult to God, but also a disgrace to people, to bow before a piece of wood, as the prophet says. It may also mean that the sinner had become shameless, bold in sin, and unable to blush, as in (Jeremiah 6:15). Or it means she has made others ashamed of her, and even her own children are ashamed of being connected to her.

Third, they must rebuke her for her awful ingratitude toward God, her benefactor. She gave the credit for God’s gifts to her idols, and then used those gifts as a reason for worshiping them alone, as in (Hosea 2:5). This was truly shameful, when she said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water.”

Notice, first, her sinful determination to keep practicing idolatry, even after all that God had said through his prophets and through events in her life to turn her away from it. She said, in effect, “No matter what is said against it, I will keep following my lovers,” that is, those she had come to love and could not bear to leave.

The Chaldee understands this of the nations whose help Israel sought and depended on, because they supplied what she needed. But it is more likely speaking of the idols she worshiped, and she called them her lovers to excuse her attachment to them. This shows who acts shamefully, those who are set on sin and openly declare that they will continue in it.

See the folly of idolaters. They call their lovers those who have no life at all. Yet we should learn to call our God our Lover, to think well of him, and to value our share in him and in his love.

Second, notice the false idea behind this resolve: “I will go after my lovers, because they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, and my oil and my drink.” These are the things needed to support the body, clothe the body, and please the body.

The things of the senses are the best things for a worldly heart, and the strongest attractions. People will chase after them without asking what else they lose. The God of Israel had set before them his laws and judgments, as in (Deuteronomy 4:8), things more desirable than gold and sweeter than honey, as in (Psalm 119:10). He had also promised them his favor, which would fill their hearts with more joy than grain, wine, and oil, as in (Psalm 4:7). But they had no taste for those things.

They turned back to where they thought their oil and drink came from, and there they gave their best affections. What a low and ruined state for the soul, bent down to earth and empty of anything heavenly.

It is a great insult to God when people chase the pleasures of sense and leave him, since he gives them better gifts and even gives them those earthly things too.

The idolaters made Ceres the goddess of their grain and Bacchus the god of their wine, and then foolishly thought they got their grain and wine from them. In doing that, they forgot the Lord their God, who gave them the good land in the first place and also gave them the power to make wealth from it. Many people are hardened in sin by earthly success. When they had plenty while serving their idols, they imagined the idols had given them that good supply, and that kept them loyal to false worship (Jeremiah 44:17-18).

God now tells Hosea to plead with Israel to repent and change. If she keeps going in spiritual adultery, God will reject her, so she must put away her unfaithfulness (Hosea 2:2). She must be shown that reform is still possible, and that even dear idols can be given up. It will surely be better for her if she does turn back. Our aim with sinners should be to lead them to repentance, not to drive them into despair.

She must put away her whoredoms and adulteries. The repeated words and the use of the plural show how many forms of idolatry they had embraced, and all of it had to be abandoned before God would be reconciled to them. She must put them out of her sight, as things she cannot bear to look at. She must say to them, "Get away" (Isaiah 30:22). She must remove them from her face and from between her breasts, meaning she must not do what prostitutes do, showing off wickedness and drawing others into it by beauty and display. She must put away every such thing.

Every sinful path that is kept up is a kind of adultery against God. Here we can see what true repentance really means. Genuine repenters leave behind open sins, but they also give up secret sins hidden close to the heart. They do not just avoid outward occasions of sin, they also deal with the inward pull toward it. Idolaters had followed their own eyes, and their eyes had gone after idols (Ezekiel 6:9; Deuteronomy 4:19), so they had to remove those temptations from view. But that is not enough. The root itself must be cut off, the heart’s corrupt bent must be changed, and Christ alone must have the deepest and highest place in the heart (Song of Songs 1:13).

God also warns them of the ruin that will surely follow if they do not repent and change (Hosea 2:3). "Lest I strip her naked" is not just a sentence, but a warning meant to keep her from that end. In effect, God says, "Let her put away her whoredoms, so that I may not strip her naked." This shows that God is ready to show mercy to sinners if they will only prepare themselves for it. If they refuse, he will treat them like a just husband who finally puts away an unfaithful wife who has filled his house with children not his own and will not turn back. He will cast her and her children out, and he says, "I will have no mercy on her children" (Hosea 2:4).

This means that the people and the rising generation who share in the nation’s guilt will share in its ruin. They are children of whoredom, and they keep on in the same empty ways handed down from their fathers. They thought their idols gave them bread, water, wool, and flax, but God will take those things away so they may learn the truth. He gave them all of it.

First, she will be stripped. God will take away all the ornaments she is proud of and uses to attract her lovers. He will strip her and leave her as she was on the day she was born, as naked as when she came into the world. Death does that to every person (Job 1:21). He will leave her exposed to cold and to shame, and shame is fitting for one who has acted shamefully (Hosea 2:5). The day God brought them out of Egypt, where they were no better than slaves and beggars, was like the day of their birth. Now he threatens to bring them back down to that same low and miserable condition. Everything that gave them honor or protected them from contempt among their neighbors would be taken away (Ezekiel 16:4, Ezekiel 16:39).

Second, she will be starved. She will lose not only her honor, but also her comfort and her necessary support. She will be famished, turned into a wilderness and dry land, and killed by thirst. The one who boasted so much about the bread and water, oil and drinks that her lovers had given her will not even have enough food to live on. The land will not support its people because of a lack of rain from heaven, or if it does produce, enemies will seize it so that the rightful owners perish from hunger. Some understand this to mean, "I will make her as she was in the wilderness, and set her where she once was in the desert land," where Israel had often nearly died of thirst. That explains the earlier line, "I will set her as in the day she was born," because Israel was first formed into a people in the great wilderness. They will be in as sad a condition as their fathers, whose bodies fell in the wilderness. In one way, it will be worse, because then the children were spared to inherit the promised land, but now God says, "I will have no mercy on her children," because their mother has acted like a prostitute.