Hosea 2:2 Komentář

The scope of this chapter seems to be much the same with that of the foregoing chapter, and to point at the same events, and the causes of them. As there, so here, I. God, by the prophet, discovers sin to them, and charges it home upon them, the sin of their idolatry, their spiritual whoredom, their serving idols and forgetting God and their obligations to him (Hos 2:1, Hos 2:2, Hos 2:5, Hos 2:8). II. He threatens to take away from them that plenty of all good things with which they had served their idols, and to abandon them to ruin without remedy (Hos 2:3, Hos 2:4, Hos 2:6, Hos 2:7, Hos 2:9-13). III. Yet he promises at last to return in ways of mercy to them for his own sake (Hos 2:14), to restore them to their former plenty (Hos 2:15), to cure them of their inclination to idolatry (Hos 2:16, Hos 2:17), to renew his covenant with them (Hos 2:18-20), and to bless them with all good things (Hos 2:21-23).

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 2 This chapter is an explanation of the former, proceeding upon the same argument in more express words. The godly Israelites are here called upon to lay before the body of the people their idolatry, ingratitude, obstinacy, and ignorance of the God of their mercies; and to exhort them to repentance, lest they should be stripped of all their good things, and be brought into great distress and difficulties; all their joy and comfort cease, and be exposed to shame and contempt, Hos 2:1, yet, notwithstanding, many gracious promises are made unto them, of their having the alluring and comfortable word of the Gospel; of a door of hope; of salvation being opened to them; of faith in the Lord, and affection to him as their husband; of the removal of all idolatry from them; of safety from all enemies; of their open espousal to Christ; of his hearing of their prayers, and giving them plenty of all good things; and of their multiplication, conversion, and covenant relation to God, Hos 2:14.

Plead with your mother, plead,.... The congregation of Israel, as the Targum; the body of the Jewish nation, which, with respect to individuals, was as a mother to her children; see Mat 21:37, that is, lay before her, her sin in rejecting the Messiah, the Head and Husband of his true church and people; endeavour to convince her of it; reprove her for it; expostulate with her about it; argue the case with her, and show her the danger of persisting in such an evil, as the apostles did, Act 2:23 for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; for though there had been such a relation between them, yet it was now dissolved; she had broken the marriage covenant and contract, and God had given her a bill of divorce, Jer 31:32 or, however, as she behaved not as a wife towards him, showing love and affection, honour and reverence, and performing duty, and yielding obedience; so he would not carry it as a husband towards her, nourishing and cherishing her, providing for her, and protecting and defending her; but leave her to shift for herself, and to the insults and abuses of others; having been guilty of idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, as the Israelites before the captivity were; and as the Jews in Christ's time were guilty of rejecting the word of God, and preferring their own traditions to it: hence it follows, let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, or "from her face" (e), and her adulteries from between her breasts; alluding to the custom of harlots, who used to paint their faces, and to allure with their looks, words, and actions, and to make bare their breasts, or adorn them, or carry in them what were enticing and alluring. These adulteries and whoredoms, which are the same thing, may signify the many idolatries of the people of Israel before their captivity, and which were the cause of it; or the sins of the Jews before their dispersion; or their evil works, as the Targum, by which they departed from God and the true Messiah, and went a whoring after other lovers: thus they rejected, transgressed, and made of none effect the commandments of God by their traditions; paid tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and neglected the weighty matters of the law; sought not the honour of God, but that which comes from men; and therefore confessed not the true Messiah, though under convictions of him, and went about to establish their own righteousness, and submitted not to his; these were the idols of their hearts, and the whoredoms and adulteries the Jewish converts, that truly believed in Christ, are ordered to exhort them to put away. The Septuagint and Arabic versions are, "I will take away her whoredoms &c.", (e) "a facie sua", Calvin, Pagninus, Piscator, Cocceius; "a faciebus suis", Montanus, Schmidt.

"Judge your mother, judge her, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband: let her remove her fornications from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts: lest perhaps I strip her naked, and make her as on the day of her birth." This is a message directed towards the Israelite people, that is, the ten tribes. Now begins the second chapter, and they are commanded to their sons, that is, the people, to judge against their mother, who bore them, who, becoming a harlot's wife, did not leave previous manners, and again committed fornication with her lovers. And observe the mercy of the husband. She has already been divorced, already rejected, already he has said to her: "This is not my wife, and I am not her husband:" yet he commands his sons, that they should not speak to the wife whom he dismissed, but to their mother who bore them. But let those who provoke to repentance speak, so as to remove fornication from their face, and their adultery from the midst of their breasts. She is a harlot, who lies with many. An adulteress is she who, deserting one man, joins herself to another. Both of these are a Synagogue, which if it remains in fornication and adultery, God will take away from her the clothes and ornaments He had given her. Of whom Ezekiel writes: "In the day when you were born, your navel was not cut, neither were you washed with water for your health; you did not rub yourself with salt, or wrap yourself in swaddling clothes. And when I passed by thee, I saw thee wallowing in thy blood (Ezek. 16:4-5)." And after a little while: "I clothed thee with broidered work and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands and a chain on thy neck." These things were given to her by her exceedingly lavish husband when he found her in Egypt, lusting after idolatry and spreading her legs to all. And now he threatens, if she does not return to her husband, she will become without God and without a husband, just as she once was in Egypt. Let it suffice rarely to have warned us that what has been said agrees with both the Jews denying Christ, and the heretics abandoning the faith of the Lord: whose fornication is properly among the breasts, and is situated in the craft of idols and various doctrines in the heart, who will return on the day of their birth, so that if they do not do penance, they will be compared to the heathen. And I will make it like a wilderness, and set it up like a desert land, and slay it with thirst" (Jeremiah 50:12). The Septuagint translates it as: "And I will make it as a desert, and I will set it up as a land without water, and I will kill it with thirst." If they do not want to turn to better things, I will do to them what I did in the wilderness, so that those led into captivity may fall in a foreign land, patiently enduring thirst for all good things, and unable to return to their homeland. Or certainly, let them hear in the Gospel: "Your house will be left desolate to you" (Matt. XXIII). And the Lord will not send him a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water; but a hunger to hear the word of the Lord (Amos. VIII). About whom Isaiah also speaks: "They shall be like a garden without water" (Isaiah I, 30). Heretics who are rejected by the Lord, if they do not return to their former home, suffer such scarcity of all things that even what they seem to possess falsely will be reduced to nothing.

She has not preserved the genuineness of love toward me, but rather she denied the intimacy and underestimated the purity of spiritual communion with me. Nor was she willing to bring forth the fruits of my will.

The prophet sounds the alarm of a dreadful calamity, the description of which is most terribly worked up, Joe 2:1-11. Exhortation to repentance, fasting, and prayer, that the Divine judgments may be averted, Joe 2:12-17. God will in due time take vengeance on all the enemies of pure and undefiled religion, Joe 2:18-20. Great prosperity of the Jews subsequent to their return from the Babylonish captivity, Joe 2:21-27. Joel then makes an elegant transition to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, Joe 2:28-30; for so these verses are explained by one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. See Act 2:16-21. Prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, which was shortly to follow the opening of the Gospel dispensation, Act 2:31. Promises of safety to the faithful and penitent; promises afterwards remarkably fulfilled to the Christians in their escape to Pella from the desolating sword of the Roman army, Act 2:32.

Plead with your mother - People of Judah, accuse your mother, (Jerusalem), who has abandoned my worship, and is become idolatrous, convince her of her folly and wickedness, and let her return to him from whom she has so deeply revolted.

APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. (Hos. 2:1-23) Israel's spiritual fornication, and her threatened punishment: yet a promise of God's restored favor, when chastisements have produced their designed effect. Say . . . unto . . . brethren, Ammi, &c.--that is, When the prediction (Hos 1:11) shall be accomplished, then ye will call one another, as brothers and sisters in the family of God, Ammi and Ruhamah.

Plead--expostulate. mother--that is the nation collectively. The address is to "her children," that is, to the individual citizens of the state (compare Isa 50:1). for she is not my wife--She has deprived herself of her high privilege by spiritual adultery. out of her sight--rather, "from her face." Her very countenance unblushingly betrayed her lust, as did also her exposed "breasts."

What the prophet announced in Hosea 1:2-2:1, partly by a symbolical act, and partly also in a direct address, is carried out still further in the section before us. The close connection between the contents of the two sections is formally indicated by the simple fact, that just as the first section closed with a summons to appropriate the predicted salvation, so the section before us commences with a call to conversion. As Rckert aptly says, "The significant pair give place to the thing signified; Israel itself appears as the adulterous woman." The Lord Himself will set bounds to her adulterous conduct, i.e., to the idolatry of the Israelites. By withdrawing the blessings which they have hitherto enjoyed, and which they fancy that they have received from their idols, He will lead the idolatrous nation to reflection and conversion, and pour the fulness of the blessings of His grace in the most copious measure upon those who have been humbled and improved by the punishment. The threatening and the announcement of punishment extend from Hos 2:2 to Hos 2:13; the proclamation of salvation commences with Hos 2:14, and reaches to the close of Hos 2:23. The threatening of punishment is divided into two strophes, viz., Hos 2:2-7 and Hos 2:8-13. In the first, the condemnation of their sinful conduct is the most prominent; in the second, the punishment is more fully developed. "Reason with your mother, reason! for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband: that she put away her whoredom from her countenance, and her adultery from between her breasts." Jehovah is the speaker, and the command to get rid of the whoredom is addressed to the Israelites, who are represented as the children of the adulterous wife. The distinction between mother and children forms part of the figurative drapery of the thought; for, in fact, the mother had no existence apart from the children. The nation or kingdom, regarded as an ideal unity, is called the mother; whereas the several members of the nation are the children of this mother. The summons addressed to the children to contend or reason with this mother, that she may give up her adultery, presupposes that, although the nation regarded as a whole was sunken in idolatry, the individual members of it were not all equally slaves to it, so as to have lost their susceptibility for the divine warning, or the possibility of conversion. Not only had the Lord reserved to Himself seven thousand in Elijah's time who had not bowed their knees to Baal, but at all times there were many individuals in the midst of the corrupt mass, who hearkened to the voice of the Lord and abhorred idolatry. The children had reason to plead, because the mother was no longer the wife of Jehovah, and Jehovah was no longer her husband, i.e., because she had dissolved her marriage with the Lord; and the inward, moral dissolution of the covenant of grace would be inevitably followed by the outward, actual dissolution, viz., by the rejection of the nation. It was therefore the duty of the better-minded of the nation to ward off the coming destruction, and do all they could to bring the adulterous wife to desist from her sins. The object of the pleading is introduced with ותסר. The idolatry is described as whoredom and adultery. Whoredom becomes adultery when it is a wife who commits whoredom. Israel had entered into the covenant with Jehovah its God; and therefore its idolatry became a breach of the fidelity which it owed to its God, an act of apostasy from God, which was more culpable than the idolatry of the heathen. The whoredom is attributed to the face, the adultery to the breasts, because it is in these parts of the body that the want of chastity on the part of a woman is openly manifested, and in order to depict more plainly the boldness and shamelessness with which Israel practised idolatry. The summons to repent is enforced by a reference to the punishment. Hos 2:3. "Lest I strip her naked, and put her as in the day of her birth, and set her like the desert, and make her like a barren land, and let her die with thirst." In the first hemistich the threat of punishment corresponds to the figurative representation of the adulteress; in the second it proceeds from the figure to the fact. In the marriage referred to, the husband had redeemed the wife out of the deepest misery, to unite himself with her. Compare Eze 16:4., where the nation is represented as a naked child covered with filth, which the Lord took to Himself, covering its nakedness with beautiful clothes and costly ornaments, and entering into covenant with it. These gifts, with which the Lord also presented and adorned His wife during the marriage, He would now take away from the apostate wife, and put her once more into a state of nakedness. The day of the wife's birth is the time of Israel's oppression and bondage in Egypt, when it was given up in helplessness to its oppressors. The deliverance out of this bondage was the time of the divine courtship; and the conclusion of the covenant with the nation that had been brought out of Egypt, the time of the marriage. The words, "I set (make) her like the desert," are to be understood as referring not to the land of Israel, which was to be laid waste, but to the nation itself, which was to become like the desert, i.e., to be brought into a state in which it would be destitute of the food that is indispensable to the maintenance of life. The dry land is a land without water, in which men perish from thirst. There is hardly any need to say that these words to not refer to the sojourn of Israel in the Arabian desert; for there the Lord fed His people with manna from heaven, and gave them water to drink out of the rock.