Charles Ellicott Commentary Hosea 14
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Hosea 14
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Hosea 14
"O Israel, return unto Jehovah thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity." — Hosea 14:1 (ASV)
Thy. —Tenderness and inextinguishable love are suggested by the use of the pronoun. “Repentance (say the Rabbis) presses right up to the Eternal Throne.”
"Take with you words, and return unto Jehovah: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and accept that which is good: so will we render [as] bullocks [the offering of] our lips." — Hosea 14:2 (ASV)
Say to him.— This practice of putting words into the lips of penitents and others is found in Psalm 66:3, Isaiah 48:20, and Jeremiah 31:7. In the latter part of the verse, translate it as: Accept good, and we will offer our lips as calves (or sacrificial offering)—that is, the words of true repentance which we bring with us shall be our offerings instead of calves. .
"Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, [Ye are] our gods; for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy." — Hosea 14:3 (ASV)
The three crying sins of Israel are recounted here:
- Expected salvation from Assyria.
- Dependence on the world-power of Egypt, famed for war-horses and chariots.
- Ascription of Divine names and homage to wrought images of the Divine glory.
God’s paternal love for the orphan is particularly applicable to Israel now, cast on a cold and fatherless world.
"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him." — Hosea 14:4 (ASV)
Heal ... Love. —If the foregoing is the offering of penitent lips, then the majestic reply of Jehovah is full of superlative grace.
"I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive-tree, and his smell as Lebanon." — Hosea 14:5-6 (ASV)
As the Dew. For this imagery, see Psalm 130:3. Properly, it is “a copious mist, shedding small invisible rain, that comes in rich abundance every night in the hot weather, when west or north-west winds blow, and which brings intense refreshment to all organised life” (Neil’s Palestine Explored, p. 136). The lily, which carpets the fields of Palestine (Matthew 6:29), has slender roots that might easily be uprooted; but under God’s protection, even these are to strike downward like the roots of the cedars. Branches are to grow like the banyan tree, until one tree becomes a forest, and the beauty of the olive in its dancing radiance is to cover all, while the fragrance will go abroad like the breezes from the forest of Lebanon.
The lily of the Bible is identified by some with the Lilium chalcedonicum, or Scarlet Martagon, which grows profusely in the Levant, and is said to abound in Galilee in April and May. Wetzstein, on the other hand, identifies it with a beautiful dark violet lily which grows in the large plain southeast of the Hauran range of mountains, and is called susân. The opinion of the Chaldee paraphrast and Rabbinical writers that the rose was really meant by the Hebrew term may safely be rejected.
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