Hosea 2:1-5

Proclamation of wrongdoing

1 Say to your brother, My People, and to your sister, Compassion:
2 Level a charge against your mother; plead with her! She is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove prostitution from her presence, and adultery from between her breasts,
3 or else I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day she was born. I will make her like a desert, and turn her into a dry land, and make her die of thirst.
4 I will also have no compassion on her children because they are children of prostitution.
5 Their mother has played the prostitute; she who conceived them has behaved shamefully. She said, "I will seek out my lovers; they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen cloth, my oil and my drink."

Hosea 2:1-5 Meaning and Commentary

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, Ho 2:1-13, 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, Ho 2:14-23.

Footnotes 1

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