Hosea · chapter 2 of 14
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Hosea 2 presents God as a wronged husband who charges Israel, his unfaithful wife, with chasing other lovers, the Baals, and temporarily takes away her gifts. Then he decides to allure her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, and promises to betroth her to himself forever in righteousness, love and faithfulness. The chapter reverses the names of the children: Lo-ammi will be called my people.
Hosea 2 develops in poetic images what Hosea 1 presented through names: Israel as the unfaithful wife of the Lord. The chapter moves from reproach to discipline and from discipline to one of the most tender promises of the prophets. It shows how God combines justice and love: he does not ignore unfaithfulness, but his goal is to restore the relationship.
The chapter begins with an invitation to the brothers and sisters of Israel: call your brothers my people and your sisters shown mercy. Then God summons the children to plead with their mother, because she is not his wife nor he her husband. She must put away from her face the marks of her whoring, or he will strip her and leave her like a desert. Israel has said that she will go after her lovers, who give her bread, water, wool, flax, oil and drink.
God responds by blocking her path with thorns and building a wall, so that she cannot find her lovers. Then she will say she will go back to her first husband, for it was better for her then. She did not know that it was he who gave her the grain, the wine and the oil, and the silver and gold they used for Baal. So he will take back his gifts, lay waste her vines and fig trees, and put an end to her feasts, because she forgot him.
Then the tone changes: God will allure her, bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. He will give her vineyards back and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will answer as in the days of her youth, when she came up out of Egypt. She will no longer call him my Baal but my husband. The Lord will make a covenant with the animals and remove bow and sword from the land, so that all may live in safety. He will betroth her to himself forever, in righteousness, justice, steadfast love and mercy, and in faithfulness, and she will know the Lord. There will be an answer from heaven to the earth, and from the earth to the grain, wine and oil, and these to Jezreel. God will sow Israel for himself, have mercy on Lo-ruhamah and say to Lo-ammi that he is his people, and he will answer that God is his God.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Israel did not know that it was the Lord who gave her the grain, the wine and the oil, and that the silver and gold they used for Baal also came from him. The root of idolatry is forgetting where what we have comes from.
God decides to allure Israel, bring her into the wilderness and speak to her heart. After the reproach comes tenderness: the wilderness, a place of judgment, becomes a place of new beginning.
God promises to betroth Israel forever, in righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy and faithfulness, so that she will know the Lord. The new marriage rests on God's faithfulness, not on hers.
God will have mercy on the one not shown mercy and say to not my people that they are his people, and they will answer that God is their God. The names of judgment in Hosea 1 are reversed by grace.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: That she would go after them, because they gave her bread, water, wool, flax, oil and drink. — Hosea 2:5
Answer: He blocked her way with thorns and built a wall so she could not find her paths. — Hosea 2:6-7
Answer: That it was the Lord who gave her the grain, wine, oil, silver and gold that they used for Baal. — Hosea 2:8
Answer: Allure her and speak tenderly to her. — Hosea 2:14
Answer: My husband, and no longer my Baal. — Hosea 2:16
Answer: That he is his people, and he will answer that the Lord is his God. — Hosea 2:23
Hosea 2 shows that God's discipline is not an end but a road back. When Israel chases her lovers, God blocks the paths so that she will discover that what she was seeking could never give her what she needed. In a class or small group you can reflect on what has taken God's place in our lives and what he has done to draw us back.
The chapter is also a promise for anyone who feels far away: God speaks tenderly in the wilderness. His faithfulness does not depend on ours. When reading it carefully in a church, remember that the language of marriage and unfaithfulness is a picture of the covenant between God and his people, not a model for judging particular people.
Hosea 2 ends with a promise of a wedding and of restored names. In Hosea 3 the prophet is told to make a personal gesture that shows that same love: to go and love a woman loved by another and an adulteress, as the Lord loves Israel.
Baal was the Canaanite god of rain and fertility, and the Baals were the various local forms of his worship. Israel believed they gave the harvests, and Hosea shows that it was the Lord who gave them. That is why the charge centers on bread, wine and oil.
Achor means trouble and recalls the sin of Achan in Joshua 7, which brought defeat to Israel. God promises to turn it into a door of hope, that is, to make a place of judgment the beginning of restoration.
The word baal also means lord or husband, and the people had mixed God with the customs of the Canaanite gods. God promises a relationship in which they call him by a name of love, my husband, with no trace of idolatry.