Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 2

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi — that is, “My people”; and to your sisters, Ruhamah — that is, “beloved or tenderly pitied.” The words form a climax of the love of God. First, the people scattered, unpitied, and disowned by God, are reborn of God; then they are declared to be in continued relation to God, “My people”; then to be the object of His yearning love. The words, “My people,” may be similarly filled up: “ye are My people,” and “be ye My people.” They are words of hope in prophecy, “ye shall be My people again”; they become words of joy in each stage of fulfillment.

They are words of mutual joy and rejoicing when obeyed; they are words of encouragement until obeyed. God is reconciled to us, and wills that we be reconciled to Him. Among those who already are God’s people, they are the voice of the joy of mutual love in the oneness of the Spirit of adoption: “we are His people”; to those without (whether the ten tribes, or the Jews of heretics) they are the voice of those who know in whom they have believed: “Be ye also His people.” Despair of no one's salvation, but, with brotherly love, call them to repentance and salvation.”

This verse closes what went before, as God’s reversal of His own sentence, and anticipates what is to come (Hosea 5:14 and following). God commands the prophets and all those who love Him to appeal to those who forget Him, holding out to them the mercy in store for them also, if they will return to Him. He instructs them not to despise those still alien from Him, “but to treat as brothers and sisters those whom God wills to introduce into His house, and to call to the riches of His inheritance.”

Plead with your mother, plead - The prophets close the threats of coming judgments with the dawn of after-hopes; and from hopes they go back to God’s judgments against sin, pouring in wine and oil into the wounds of sinners. The “mother” is the Church or nation; the “sons” are its members, one by one. These, when turned to God, must plead with their mother, that she turn also. When involved in her judgments, they must plead with her, and not accuse God.

God “had not forgotten to be gracious;” but she “kept not His love, and refused His friendship, and despised the purity of spiritual communion with Him, and would not travail with the fruit of His will.”

“The sons differ from the mother, as the inventor of evil from those who imitate it. For as, in good, the soul which, from the Spirit of God, conceives the word of truth, is the mother, and whoever profits by hearing the word of doctrine from her mouth, is the child; so, in evil, whatever soul invents evil is the mother, and whoever is deceived by her is the son. So in Israel, the adulterous mother was the synagogue, and the individuals deceived by her were the sons.”

“You who believe in Christ, and are both of Jews and Gentiles, say to the broken branches and to the former people which is cast off, ‘My people,’ for it is your brother; and ‘Beloved,’ for it is ‘your sister.’ For when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then shall all Israel be saved (Romans 11:25–26). In the same way we are instructed not to despair of heretics, but to incite them to repentance, and with brotherly love to long for their salvation.”

For she is not My wife - God speaks of the spiritual union between Himself and His people whom He had chosen, under the terms of the closest human oneness, of husband and wife. She was no longer united to Him by faith and love, nor would He any longer own her. Plead therefore with her earnestly as orphans, who, for her sins, have lost the protection of their Father.

Let her therefore put away her whoredoms - So great is the tender mercy of God. He says, let her only put away her defilements, and she shall again be restored, as if she had never fallen; let her only put away all objects of attachment, which withdrew her from God, and God will again be All to her.

Adulteries, whoredoms - God made the soul for Himself; He betrothed her to Himself through the gift of the Holy Spirit; He united her to Himself. All love, then, apart from God, is to take another instead of God.

Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.

“Adultery” is to belong to another instead of Him, the Only Lord and Husband of the soul. Whoredom is to have many other objects of sinful love. Love is one, for One. The soul which has forsaken the One is drawn here and there, has manifold objects of desire, which displace one another, because none satisfies.

Hence, the prophet speaks of “fornications, adulteries,” because the soul, which will not rest in God, seeks to distract herself from her unrest and dissatisfaction by heaping to herself manifold lawless pleasures, outside of and contrary to the will of God.

From before her - Literally “from her face.” The face is the seat of modesty, shame, or shamelessness. Hence, in Jeremiah God says to Judah, Thou hadst a harlot’s forehead; thou refusedst to be ashamed (Jeremiah 3:3); and they were not at all ashamed, neither will they blush (Jeremiah 6:15). The eyes, also, are the windows (Jeremiah 9:21), through which “death,” that is, lawless desire, “enters into” the soul, and takes it captive.

From her breasts - These are exposed, adorned, and degraded in disorderly love, which are employed to allure. Beneath also lies the heart, the seat of the affections. It may mean then, that she should no more gaze with pleasure on the objects of her sin, nor allow her heart to dwell on things which she loved sinfully.

Thus it is said of the love of Christ, which should keep the soul free from all unruly passions which might offend Him (Song of Solomon 1:13), My Well-beloved shall lie all night between my breasts, as a seal upon the heart (Song of Solomon 8:6) beneath.

Lest I strip her naked - “There is an outward, visible nakedness and an inward, which is invisible. The invisible nakedness is when the soul within is bared of the glory and the grace of God.” The visible nakedness is the deprivation of God’s temporal and visible gifts, the goods of this world, or outward distinction.

God’s inward gifts the sinful soul or nation despises, while those outward gifts she prizes. And therefore, when the soul parts with the inward ornaments of God’s grace, He strips her of the outward—His gifts of nature, of His providence, and of His protection—so that perhaps, through her outward misery, shame, and poverty, she may come to feel that deeper misery, emptiness, and disgrace within, which she had lacked the will to feel.

So, when our first parents lost the robe of innocence, they knew that they were naked (Genesis 3:7).

And set her - (Literally, “I will fix her,” so that she will have no power to free herself but must remain as a spectacle) as in the day that she was born, that is, helpless, defiled, uncleansed, uncared for, unformed, cast out, and loathsome. Such she was in Egypt, which is spoken of in Holy Scripture as her birthplace (Ezekiel 16:4); for there she first became a people; from there the God of her fathers called her to be His people.

There she was naked of the grace and love of God, and of the wisdom of the law; indwelt by an evil spirit, as being an idolatress; without God; and under hard bondage, in works of mire and clay, to Pharaoh (the type of Satan), and her little ones a prey. For when a soul casts off the defense of heavenly grace, it is an easy prey to Satan.

And make her as a wilderness, and set her as a dry land, and slay her with thirst - The outward desolation, which God inflicts, is a picture of the inward. Drought and famine are among the four severe judgments with which God threatened the land, and our Lord forewarned them, Your house is left unto you desolate (Matthew 23:38); and Isaiah says, Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee (Isaiah 60:15).

But the prophet does not say, make her a wilderness, but make her as a wilderness. The soul of the sinner is solitary and desolate, for it does not have the presence of God; unfruitful, bearing only briars and thorns, for it is unbedewed by God’s grace, unwatered by the Fountain of living waters; thirsty, not with thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord, yet also burning with desire, which the foul streams of this world’s pleasure never quench.

In contrast with such thirst, Jesus says of the Holy Spirit which He would give to those who believe in Him, Whosoever drinketh of the water, that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water, that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14; John 7:38–39).

“But was not that certain which God had said, I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel? How then does God recall it, saying, ‘Let her put away her fornications, etc., lest I do to her this or that which I have spoken?’ This is not unlike that, when sentence had been passed on Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel saying, This is the decree of the Most High, which is come upon my Lord the king; they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling; (Daniel 4:24–25).

The same Daniel says, Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and redeem thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility (Daniel 4:27).

What should we learn by this, but that it hangs upon our own will whether God suspends the judgment or not?

For we should not impute our own evil to God, or impiously think that fate rules us. In other words, this or that evil comes, not because God foreknew or foreordained it; but, because this evil was to be, or would be done, therefore God both foreknew it and prefixed His sentence upon it.

Why then does God predetermine an irrevocable sentence? Because He foresaw incorrigible malice. Why, again, after pronouncing sentence, does God counsel amendment? That we may know by experience that they are incorrigible.

Therefore, He waits for them, although they will not return, and with much patience invites them to repentance.”

Individuals also repented, although the nation was incorrigible.

I will not have mercy upon her children – God visits the sins of the parents upon the children, until the consequent curse is cut off by repentance. God enforces His own word “lo-ruhamah, Unpitied,” by repeating it here, “lo-arahem,” “I will not pity.” Reproaches, which fall upon the mother, are always felt with special keenness.

This is why Saul called Jonathan (1 Samuel 20:30), Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman. Therefore, the more to arouse them, God says, for they are the children of whoredoms, evil children of an evil parent, just as John the Immerser calls the hypocritical Jews, ye generation of vipers (Matthew 3:7).

“This they were, from their very birth and swaddling-clothes, never touching any work of piety, nor cultivating any grace.”

Just as of Christ, and of those who, in Him, are nourished up in deeds of righteousness, it is said, I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art my God from my mother’s belly; so, conversely, of the ungodly it is said, The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

And just as those who live honestly, as in the day and in the light, are called children of the day and of the light, so those who live a defiled life are called the children of whoredoms.

“To call them ‘children of whoredoms’ is the same as saying that they too are incorrigible or unchangeable. For of such, Wisdom, after saying, ‘executing Thy judgments upon them by little and little,’ added immediately , ‘not being ignorant that they were a naughty generation, and that their malice was bred in them, and that their cogitation would never be changed, for it was a cursed seed from the beginning.’

All this is expressed here briefly by the phrase ‘that they are the children of whoredoms,’ meaning that their ‘malice’ too was inbred, and that they, as much as the Amorite and Hittite, were a ‘cursed seed.’

Yet, in saying this, he did not blame the nature which God created, but he vehemently reproves the abuse of nature—that malice, which cleaves to nature but was not part of it, was by custom changed into nature.”

She that conceived them has done shamefully, literally, has made shameful - The silence as to “what” she “made shameful” is more emphatic than any words. She “made shameful” everything which she could “make shameful”: her acts, her children, and herself.

I will go after my lovers - (literally, let me go, I would go). The Hebrew word “Meahabim” denotes intense passionate love; the plural form implies that they were sinful loves. Every word aggravates the shamelessness. Amid God’s chastisements, she encourages herself, “Come, let me go,” as people harden and embolden themselves, and, as it were, lash themselves into further sin, lest they should shrink back or stop short in it.

“Let me go after.” She does not wait, as it were, to be enticed, allured, or seduced. She herself, uninvited, unbidden, unsought, contrary to the accustomed and natural feeling of woman, follows after those by whom she is not drawn, and refuses to follow God who would draw her . The “lovers” are whatever a man loves and courts apart from God.

They were the idols and false gods whom the Jews, like the pagans, took to themselves in addition to God. But in truth, they were devils. Devils she sought; the will of devils she followed; their pleasure she fulfilled, abandoning herself to sin, shamefully filled with all wickedness, and laboring with all kinds of impurity. These she professed that she loved, and that they, not God, loved her.

For whoever receives the gifts of God, except from God and in God’s way, receives them from devils. Whoever seeks what God forbids, seeks it from Satan, and holds that Satan, not God, loves him; since God refuses it, Satan encourages him to possess himself of it. Satan, then, is his lover.

That gave me my bread and my water - The sense of human weakness abides, even when divine love is gone. The whole history of human superstitions is evidence of this, whether they have been the mere instincts of nature, or whether they have attached themselves to religion or irreligion—Jewish, Pagan, or Muslim—or have been practiced by half-Christians.

“She is conscious that she does not have these things by her own power but is indebted to some other for them; but not remembering Him (as was commanded) who had given her power to get wealth, and richly all things to enjoy,” she professes them to be the gifts of her lovers. “Bread and water, wool and flax,” express the necessities of life—food and clothing; “mine oil and my drink” (Hebrew, drinks), its luxuries.

Oil also includes ointments, and so served for health, food, and medicine, for anointing the body, and for perfume. In perfumes and choice drinks, the rich people of Israel were guilty of great profusion; therefore it is said, He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich (Proverbs 21:17). For such things alone—the things of the body—did Israel care. Ascribing them to her false gods, she loved these gods and held that they loved her.

In the same way, the Jewish women shamelessly told Jeremiah, we will certainly do whatsoever thing goes out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine (Jeremiah 44:17–18).