Hosea 2:6 - Meaning and Application

God here continues to warn what he will do with this unfaithful, idolatrous people. He warns so that he may not have to wound them, and he threatens so that he may not have to strike them. If people do not turn back, he will sharpen his sword (Psalm 7:12), but if they do turn, he will put it away. They did not turn, so all these things came on them. Because God warned them beforehand, it is clear that this was the carrying out of a divine sentence against their sin, and it is written for our warning too.

I. They will be confused and blocked in every plan, and disappointed in every hope. This is threatened in Hosea 2:6, Hosea 2:7. Yet the threat is joined to a promise, because this trouble will help convince them of their folly and bring them back to their duty. In that way, good will come out of evil, as a sign that God still has mercy in reserve for them. Because distress becomes a happy means of their return, it is hard to say whether this prediction, or the distress itself, should be called a threat or a promise.

God will put difficulties in their path so that their public plans and affairs will fail, and they will not be able to move ahead. “I will hedge up your way with thorns,” meaning he will place painful obstacles in their path, like thorns and briars that grow out of sin and the curse. These things scratch, tear, and trouble us, and when our path is hedged in with them, they stop our progress and force us to turn back. She said, “I will go after my lovers, I will pursue my alliances with foreign powers, and depend on them.” But God says, “She will be frustrated in these plans and unable to carry them out.”

If smaller troubles do not stop her, God will raise greater ones, because when he judges, he will overcome. It will be such a hedge, and such a wall, that she will not find her paths. The change in person here, “I will hedge up your way,” and then, “She will not find her paths,” is common in Scripture, especially when it speaks earnestly. It is as if God says, “Sinner, take notice, I will hedge up your way, and all bystanders take notice of the result, you will see that she cannot find her paths.”

She will be like a traveler who does not merely face several roads and not know which one to take, but finds no road at all to move forward. Then she will follow after her lovers, but she will not overtake them. She will try to gain favor with the Assyrians and Egyptians, and to have them as protectors, but she will not succeed. They will either refuse to ally with her or fail to help her, so their aid will be empty and useless, like a broken reed. She will seek them, and not find them. She will seek her idols, and not find the satisfaction she expected in them. The gods she trusted and chased after can do nothing for her, and they have nothing to say to comfort her.

This is a just judgment, like the one that came on the men of Sodom, who were struck with blindness and wore themselves out trying to find the door (Genesis 19:11), and like the Syrians (2 Kings 6:18). Those who are most set on sinful paths are often most blocked in them. There are thorns and snares in the way of the stubborn person (Proverbs 22:5), and in that way God shows himself stubborn too, walking against those who walk against him (Leviticus 26:23, Leviticus 26:24). The mourning prophet says, “He has enclosed my ways” (Lamentations 3:7, Lamentations 3:9). The way of God and duty is often hedged with thorns, but when a way is hedged with thorns, we have reason to think it is a sinful one.

This is also a kind correction, and truly a mercy, like the one Balaam met with, when the angel stood in his way to stop him from going on to curse Israel (Numbers 22:22). Crosses and obstacles in an evil course are great blessings, and we should count them that way. They are God’s hedges, to keep us from sinning, to keep us from wandering out of the green pastures, to turn people away from their purpose (Job 33:17), to make the path of sin hard, so that we do not keep going in it, and to keep us from it whether we want to or not. We have reason to thank God both for restraining grace and for restraining providence.

These troubles in their path will also stir up thoughts of turning back. Then she will say, “Since I cannot overtake my lovers, I will go back to my first husband.” That means she will return to God, humble herself before him, and ask him to take her back. She will remember that when she stayed close to him, life was better in every way than it is now.

Two things are forced out of this fallen, rebellious people. First, they must admit the folly of their turning away. They are brought to see that it was better with them while they stayed near their God than it has been since they left him. Anyone who has traded the service of God for the service of the world and the flesh has, sooner or later, been made to admit that they changed for the worse. While they were living carefully, keeping close to good company, walking in good duties, and watching what they said and did, it was better with them. They had more real comfort and more true enjoyment than they have had since they went astray.

Second, they are brought to form a good resolve to return to duty: “I will go and return to my first husband.” She knows enough of God’s goodness and willingness to forgive to speak with confidence that he will receive her again and restore her condition. When the disappointments of created things do not move us, they should at least drive us at last to the Creator, where satisfaction is found. When Moab is tired of the high place, he will go to the sanctuary (Isaiah 16:12). When the prodigal son is reduced to husks, with barely enough to live on, and remembers that there is bread enough in his father’s house, he says, “I will arise and go to my father” (Luke 15:17, Luke 15:18).

II. The needed supports and comforts of life will be taken away from them, because they had dishonored God with them, in Hosea 2:8, Hosea 2:9. Their land had been full. Now see, first, how graciously their plenty was given to them. God gave them not only grain for necessity, but wine for gladness and oil for use and beauty. He even multiplied their silver and gold, which they could use to trade with other nations and bring home what they needed, and which they could store up for later generations. Silver and gold last longer than grain, wine, and oil. He also gave them wool and flax, to cover their nakedness and to provide decent clothing and ornament (Ezekiel 16:10). God is a generous giver even to those he knows will be ungrateful to him.

Second, see how shamefully they abused their plenty. They robbed God of the honor due to his gifts: “She did not know that I gave her grain and wine,” she did not remember it.

The law and the prophets had told them again and again that all their comforts came from God’s generous care. But their false prophets and idol priests kept saying that their grain came from one idol and their wine from another, until they forgot their great Benefactor and their duty to him. She did not think about it. She would not admit it. They were willing to remain ignorant, and more foolish than the ox that knows its owner, and the donkey that knows its master’s feeding trough.

She did not know it in the sense that she gave God no thanks for his gifts and did not think about what she should give back. She did not give him what was due from those gifts. She acted as if she did not know who had given them. They also served God’s enemies with these gifts. They prepared them for Baal, that is, they used them for the worship of that false god. They decorated his images with gold and silver (Jer 10:4), and they even dressed themselves up for the worship of those images (Hos 2:13). See also (Eze 16:17-19).

It is a very great insult to the God of heaven to turn the gifts of his care into food and fuel for our own lusts. He gave them to support us in his service, and to strengthen our obedience. Yet they used them to serve idols. “Therefore I will return,” God says. That is, “I will change how I deal with them. I will take another course, and I will take away the grain and other good things I gave her.” He says, “I will recover them,” using a law term. It is like a landowner recovering what someone has wrongly held, or recovering land that has been wasted and ruined.

Notice that God calls their abundance my grain and my wine, my wool and my flax. They called them theirs, saying, “my bread and my water” (Hos 2:5), but God tells them they are not truly theirs. He only let them use them as tenants, and trusted them with them as stewards, but he kept the property right for himself. God wants us to know not only that every good thing we enjoy comes from him, but also that he still has the clear right to it. It is more his than ours, so we must use it for him and answer to him for it.

He will take their plenty away because they have lost it by denying his right to it. That is like a tenant who holds land only at his lord’s will and loses it if he acts as if he owned it outright. He will recover it, take it back, and set it free from abuse, like creation itself being delivered from corruption (Rom 8:21). He will take it away at the right time, just when they expected it and thought it was safe. It will fail in the harbor, and the harvest will come to nothing. He may take it away through bad weather or through violent people. Those who use God’s gifts to dishonor him cannot expect to enjoy those gifts for long.

They will also lose all their honor and be put to shame (Hos 2:10). “I will uncover her lewdness,” God says. He will bring their secret sins into the open and make them public in order to shame them. He will show by the punishment how hateful and offensive those sins are. The sin had been denied, but now it will be seen. It had been softened in speech, but now it will appear to be very sinful.

This will happen in front of her lovers, the nearby nations with whom she sought alliances and on whom she depended. They will despise her and be ashamed of her because of her weakness, poverty, and bad conduct. They will no longer think she is worth their friendship. See this fulfilled in (Lam 1:8), “All who honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness.” Or it may mean before the sun and moon, which she worshiped as her lovers. Her shame will be exposed right before them. Compare this with (Jer 7:1, Jer 7:2), where the bones of kings and princes are brought out and spread before the sun and moon, whom they loved and served.

Sin will end in shame. Those who do shameful things should expect shame. What else can this bold adulteress expect except the treatment of a common prostitute, dragged through the streets? And when God deals with her this way, no one will be able to rescue her, neither the idols nor the men she trusted. Those who will not place themselves in the hands of God’s mercy cannot be saved from the hand of his justice.

They will also lose all their pleasure and be left in sorrow (Hos 2:11). “I will stop her joy,” God says. It seems that even though they had turned away from their God, they still found a way to be cheerful like other people, which was forbidden (Hos 9:1). Many people who live under guilt and judgment still laugh and live merrily. But even if their hearts are sad while they laugh, one thing is sure, the end of their joy will be sorrow, because God will end it.

As Mr. Burroughs said, sin and joy cannot stay together for long. If people will not remove sin from their joy, God will remove joy from their sin. God will first take away the occasions of their religious joy, their feast days, new moons, sabbaths, and solemn feasts. He had appointed these to be kept in a holy way, and to be kept with gladness. It seems that even after they turned from true worship, they still kept these observances, not at the temple in Jerusalem, which they had already left, but likely at Dan and Bethel, where the calves were, or at some other meeting places they had set up.

They kept them not for God’s honor and not with true devotion, but because they were times for feasting, music, dancing, and seeing friends. They kept them by tradition from their fathers. So, while they had lost the power of godliness and denied it, they still kept up the form of it to please a vain and worldly mind. In this way their new moons and sabbaths became something God could not bear (Isa 1:13).

Notice two things. First, God calls them their new moons and their sabbaths, not his, because he disowns them. Second, he says he will make them stop. When people have caused the life and meaning of ordinances to stop by their sins, it is right for God to make even the outward show and shadow of them stop by his judgments.

He will also take away the support of their worldly-mindedness. They loved the new moons and sabbaths only because of the food and drink they enjoyed then, not because of any worship they offered. They had long since given up the worship itself. Now God says he will take away the supplies for those celebrations: “I will destroy her vines and her fig trees” (Hos 2:12).

If people tear down God’s words and commands, the very things by which he should be honored on their feast days, it is right for him to tear down their vines and fig trees, the things they enjoy in their feasts. While they enjoyed those gifts, they gave the praise to their lovers, meaning their idols or false allies. They said, in effect, “These are the rewards my lovers have given me. I owe these things to my idols, or to my own efforts and alliances.”

So God will destroy those gifts. He may dry them up with a scorching wind, or he may bring a foreign enemy who will lay the land waste. Then their vineyards will become like a forest, their walls and fences will be broken down, as happens in war, and everything will be left open. The wild animals will eat their grapes and figs. Or the trees may be so damaged by the east wind that they are worth no more than trees in a forest, and whatever fruit remains will be left for the beasts of the field. Or their enemies, cruel as wild animals, will devour it.

This will ruin their joy. God says he will make all her mirth stop. How will he do it? Taking away the new moons and Sabbaths will not touch them deeply, because they can give those up with little pain. But if he destroys her vines and fig trees, and takes away her comforts and pleasures, then she will know she is truly undone. The destruction of vines and fig trees makes the pleasure of a worldly heart end. Then a person says, like Micah, “You have taken my gods away, and what do I still have?” (Judges 18:24)

This will also be the punishment for her idolatry (Hosea 2:13). God says, “I will punish her for the days of the Baals.” He will call her to account for all the worship she has given to all the Baals, from the time of her fathers until then. Israel had been worshiping Baal since the days of the Judges, and this sin had grown old through long practice. But idolatry is named in the second commandment, where God warns that he visits the sins of the fathers on the children. That is especially fitting here, because this sin often protects itself by custom and long use.

When Israel’s guilt became full, all her earlier sins were added to the account and required from that generation. Or the “days of Baalim” may mean the special feast days they kept in honor of their idols. Days of sinful joy will be answered with days of sorrow. On those days, she burned incense to idols and dressed herself in her earrings and jewels to make the celebration look grand and to honor Baal more highly.

Or she was like a wife who wears the earrings and jewels her husband gave her so she can please the lovers she is chasing after and always thinking about. But she forgot me, says the Lord. Our unfaithfulness to God grows out of forgetfulness, forgetfulness of who he is, what he has done, how he stands toward us, and what we owe him. Many people say they have weak memories about God, yet they can remember other things well enough. In truth, they are so busy with lying empty things that they forget their own mercies.