Hosea 6:1 - Meaning and Application

These words may be taken either as the prophet speaking to the people and calling them to repent, or as the people speaking to one another and urging each other to seek the Lord. In either case, they are meant to awaken mercy by stirring up repentance. God had already said, “In their trouble they will seek me,” and now the prophet, with his better-minded friends, would act while their neighbors still felt the weight of conviction.

The lesson is clear: if we are willing to turn to God ourselves, we should also try to move others to return to him. Their promise is simple and direct: “Come, let us return to the Lord” (Hosea 6:1). They mean to stop running after Assyria, or sending help-seeking messages to King Jareb, probably a foreign ruler they had trusted instead of God. They have had enough of that, and now they want to return to the Lord, back to his worship from their idols, and back to their hope in him from all their trust in human help.

This is the great duty of those who have turned away from God. And if they have gone astray together, drawing one another into sin, then they should also return together. That will honor God and help one another grow.

They also give each other strong reasons to do this. First, they remember God’s displeasure: “He has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.” We were torn apart, and he did it. We were struck, and he sent the blow. So we should return to him, because our rebellion against him is what brought this pain, and we cannot expect peace with him until we come back. He has afflicted us for this very purpose, to bring us home. If people do not turn to the One who strikes them, his hand will remain stretched out against them (Isaiah 9:12-13).

So the judgments of God on us, especially when they are severe and tearing, should wake us up to repentance, prayer, and reform. But they also speak of hope. The same God who wounds can heal, and the same God who convicts can comfort. What first feels like a spirit of bondage, meaning fear and distress under sin, later becomes a spirit of adoption, meaning the assurance of being received as God’s children.

This also shows both God’s power and his mercy. He can heal even when the wound is deep, and he will do it. Indeed, he has torn in order that he may heal. Some think these words point especially to the Jews returning from Babylon, when they sought the Lord with the hope that he would graciously return to them in mercy.

That hope is then described in several ways. First, their deliverance from trouble will be like life from the dead (Hosea 6:2). “After two days he will revive us, and on the third day he will raise us up.” The meaning is that God’s help will come soon, after only a short delay. Even when things seem dead and beyond hope, he can raise them up. Though he may leave his people for a little while, he will not leave them forever.

There is also a deeper meaning here, pointing to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The words “after two days” and “on the third day” fit well with Christ rising on the third day, as Scripture said he would. The prophets spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow. It is wise to admire God’s goodness and wisdom in arranging the prophet’s words so that they spoke at once of the church’s deliverance and of our salvation through Christ. The earlier deliverances were both pictures of that greater salvation and fruits that came from it.

Even if the people first heard these words without seeing that mystery, their fulfillment in Christ’s resurrection now strengthens our faith that he is the one who was to come. We should expect no other. It also fits well to say, “He will raise us up, and we shall live,” because Christ rose as the firstfruits, and believers live through him. He rose for our justification, that is, to put us right with God, and believers are said to have risen with Christ. See Isaiah 26:19. This is a comfort to the church and a promise that God will lift his people out of low and troubled conditions, because in due time he would also raise his Son from the grave, and he would be the life and glory of his people Israel.

For a suffering Christian, faith in the risen Christ is a strong support. For a sinner returning to God, it gives rich encouragement. Christ has said, “Because I live, you also will live.”

Second, they expect to grow in the knowledge of God (Hosea 6:3). “Then we will know, if we follow on to know the Lord.” When God returns in mercy to his people and means to bless them, he gives them more knowledge of himself as both a gift and a sign of his favor. The earth will be full of that knowledge (Isaiah 11:9). Knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4). All will know the Lord (Jeremiah 31:34).

The words can also be read, “We will know, we will go on to know the Lord.” This may be taken as the fruit of Christ’s resurrection and of the life we have in God’s sight through him. We do not only receive better chances to learn, but also grace to make use of those chances. When God plans mercy for a people, he gives them a heart to know him (Jeremiah 24:7). Those who have risen with Christ receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.

If we take “living in his sight” as the old paraphrase does, meaning the resurrection of the dead, then the verse still fits well. In that day we shall know the Lord, and our knowledge of him will be full and yet always growing. Or, as the verse reads plainly, if we follow on to know him, then those who come to God will be brought into real acquaintance with him.

When we are meant to live in God’s presence, he also lets us know him. This is life eternal, to know God (John 17:3). The way to this blessing is to go on knowing him more and more. We must value the knowledge of God as the best kind of knowledge, cry out for it, and search for it as for treasure (Proverbs 2:3, 4). We must seek wisdom and keep pressing forward in our desire to understand God better (Proverbs 18:1). If we do what God asks, we have good reason to expect his mercy, that we will know him more fully, and in the end know him perfectly.

Then they will also have rich comfort from God. His coming to help is sure, like the morning that follows the night. He had withdrawn himself, but his return is as certain as daylight after darkness. We may wait for him with confidence, just as people wait for morning after a long night, knowing it will come at the right time and will not fail. His favor will be welcome, and it will keep growing brighter until the perfect day, like the light of dawn.

He will come to us like rain, like the spring and autumn rains that refresh the earth and make it fruitful. This reaches beyond their release from captivity, and it surely finds its full meaning in Christ and the grace of the gospel. The Old Testament believers kept going on to know God and longed for redemption in Jerusalem. In the end, the gifts of God’s grace in Christ, when he came into the world, were like morning light to a dark earth. He came as the Sun of righteousness, and in him the rising light from heaven visited us. His coming was prepared as the morning, because he came when the right time had fully arrived. John the Baptist went before him, and Christ himself is the bright and morning star.

His coming was also like rain to a dry earth. He came down like rain on mown grass (Psalm 72:6). In him, showers of blessing fall on this world. They give seed to the sower and bread to the eater (Isaiah 55:10). The favor of God in Christ is like the cloud of the latter rain, the rain that comes late in the season and refreshes the land (Proverbs 16:15). God’s grace in Christ is both the early rain and the late rain, because it begins our fruitfulness and carries it on.