Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 2:21-22

"And it shall come to pass in that day, I will answer, saith Jehovah, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth; and the earth shall answer the grain, and the new wine, and the oil; and they shall answer Jezreel." — Hosea 2:21-22 (ASV)

I will hear the heavens ... - As all nature is closed, and would refuse her office to those who rebel against her God, so, when He has withdrawn His curse and is reconciled to man, all shall combine together for man’s good; and, by a kind of harmony, all parts of it join their ministries for the service of those who are in unity with Him. And, as an image of love, all, from lowest to highest, are bound together, each depending on the ministry of that beyond it, and the highest on God.

At each link, the chain might have been broken. But God, who knit their services together and had previously withheld the rain, made the earth barren, and laid waste the trees, now made each supply the other. He also led the thoughts of people through the course of causes and effects up to Himself, who causes all that comes to pass.

The immediate desire of His people was the grain, wine, and oil; they needed the fruitfulness of the earth. The earth, by its parched surface and gaping clefts, seemed to crave the rain from heaven; the rain could not fall without the will of God. So all are pictured as in a state of expectancy, until God gave the word, and His will ran through the whole course of secondary causes and accomplished what man prayed to Him for. Such is the picture.

But although God’s gifts of nature were joyful tokens of His restored favor, and now too, under the Gospel, we rightly thank Him for the removal of any of His natural chastisements and look upon it as an earnest of His favor toward us, the prophet who had just spoken of the highest things—the union of man with God in Christ—does not here speak only of the lowest.

What God gives, by virtue of an espousal forever, are not gifts in time only. His gifts of nature are, in themselves, pictures of His gifts of grace, and as such the prophets employ them. So then God promises, and this in turn, a manifold abundance of all spiritual gifts. Of these, corn and wine, as they are the visible parts, so are they often, in the Old Testament, the symbols of His highest gift, the Holy Eucharist; and oil, of God’s Holy Spirit, through whom they are sanctified.

God here calls “Israel” by the name of “Jezreel,” repealing, once more at the end of this prophecy, His sentence conveyed through the names of the three children of the prophet. The name “Jezreel” combines in one the memory of the former punishment and the future mercy.

God did not entirely do away with the temporal part of His sentence. He had said, I will scatter; and, although some were brought back with Judah, Israel remained scattered in all lands—in Egypt, Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, and the far East and West. But God turned His chastisement into mercy to those who believed in Him.

Now He changes the meaning of the word to God shall sow. Israel, in its dispersion, when converted to God, became everywhere the preacher of Him whom they had persecuted. And in Him—the true Seed, whom God sowed in the earth and it brought forth much fruit—converted Israel also bore, some a hundred-fold; some sixty; some thirty.