Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 1:11

"And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint themselves one head, and shall go up from the land; for great shall be the day of Jezreel." — Hosea 1:11 (ASV)

Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together – A little image of this union was seen after the captivity in Babylon, when some of the children of Israel, that is, of the ten tribes, were united to Judah on its return, and the great schism of the two kingdoms came to an end.

More fully, both literal Judah and Israel were gathered into one in the one Church of Christ, and all the spiritual Judah and Israel; that is, as many of the Gentiles as, by following the faith, became the sons of faithful Abraham, and heirs of the promise to him.

And shall make themselves one Head – The act of God is named first, “they shall be gathered;” for without God we can do nothing.

Then follows the act of their own consent, “they shall make themselves one Head;” for without us God does nothing in us.

God gathers by the call of His grace; they make themselves one Head by obeying His call and submitting themselves to Christ, the one Head of the mystical body, the Church, who are His members.

In the same way, Ezekiel foretells of Christ, of the seed of David, under the name of David: “I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; and I the LORD will be their God, and My servant David a Prince among them” (Ezekiel 34:23–24).

And again: “I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore at all” (Ezekiel 37:22).

But this was not wholly fulfilled until Christ came, for after the captivity they were under Zerubbabel as chief, and Joshua as high priest.

And shall come up out of the land – To “come up” or “go up” is a title of dignity. Hence, in our time, people are said to go up to the metropolis or the University.

In Holy Scripture, people are said to “come up” or “go up” out of Egypt (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 45:25, etc.), or Assyria (2 Kings 17:3; 2 Kings 18:9, 13; Isaiah 36:1, 10), or Babylon (2 Kings 24:1; Ezra 2:1; Ezra 7:6; Nehemiah 7:6; Nehemiah 12:1) to the land of promise.

Or they go up from the rest of the land to the place which God chose to place His name there (Exodus 34:24), Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:22), or, afterward, Jerusalem (2 Samuel 19:34; 1 Kings 12:27–28; Psalms 122:4, etc.).

And it is foretold that “the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be exalted above the hills; and many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:2–3; Micah 4:1–2).

The land from which they should go up is, primarily and in image, Babylon, from which God restored the two tribes. But, in truth and fully, it is the whole aggregate of lands, the earth, the great “city of confusion,” which Babel designates.

Out of which they shall go up, “not with their feet but with their affections,” to the “city set upon a hill” (Matthew 5:14), “the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22), and heaven itself, where we are “made to sit together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:6), and where “our conversation is” (Philippians 3:20), so that where He is, there may we His servants be (John 12:26).

They ascend in mind above the earth and the things of earth, and the lowness of carnal desires, so that they may, in the end, come up out of the earth, “to meet the Lord in the air, and forever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

For great is the day of Jezreel – God had denounced woe on Israel under the names of the three children of the prophet: Jezreel, Lo-Ammi, and Lo-Ruhamah; and now, under those three names, He promises the reversal of that sentence in Christ.

He begins with the name under which He had begun to pronounce the woe: the first son, Jezreel. “Jezreel” means “God shall sow,” either for increase or to scatter. When God threatened, “Jezreel” necessarily meant “God shall scatter;” here, when God reverses His threatening, it means “God shall sow.”

But the issue of the seed is either single, as in human birth, or manifold, as in the seed-corn. Hence, it is used either of Him who was eminently “the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of the woman,” or the manifold harvest which He, the seed-corn (John 12:24), should bring forth when sown in the earth by His vicarious Death. It means, then, Christ or His Church.

Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God before all worlds, was, in time, also “conceived by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary,” the Son of God Alone, in a way in which no other man was born of God.

Great then should be the day when “God should sow,” or give the increase in mercy, as before He scattered them in His displeasure.

The Great Day in which “God should sow” was, first, “the day which the LORD hath made” (Psalms 118:24): the Incarnation, in which God the Son became Man, “the seed of the woman.”

Then, it was the Passion, in which, like a seed-corn, He was sown in the earth. Then, the Resurrection, when He rose, “the Firstborn among many brethren.” Then, all the days in which “He bare much fruit.”

It is the one day of salvation, in which, generation after generation, a new seed has been or “shall be born” unto Him, and “shall serve Him” (Psalms 22:30–31).

Even to the end, every time of any special growth of the Church, every conversion of Pagan tribe or people, is “a day of Jezreel,” a day in which “the Lord sows.”

Great, wonderful, glorious, thrice-blessed is the day of Christ, for in it He has done great things for us, gathering together under Himself, the Head, those scattered abroad, “without hope and without God in the world;” making “not My people” into “My people” and those not beloved into His “beloved,” the objects of His tender, yearning compassion, full of His grace and mercy.

For so it follows,