Hosea 2:1-8

1 So call your fellow Israelites "God's People" and "Loved-by-the-Lord."

2 My children, plead with your mother - though she is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and prostitution.

3 If she does not, I will strip her as naked as she was on the day she was born. I will make her like a dry and barren land, and she will die of thirst.

4 I will not show mercy to her children; they are the children of a shameless prostitute. She herself said, "I will go to my lovers - they give me food and water, wool and linen, olive oil and wine."

6 So I am going to fence her in with thorn bushes and build a wall to block her way.

7 She will run after her lovers but will not catch them. She will look for them but will not find them. Then she will say, "I am going back to my first husband - I was better off then than I am now."

8 She would never acknowledge that I am the one who gave her the grain, the wine, the olive oil, and all the silver and gold that she used in the worship of Baal.

Hosea 2:1-8 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

• [a]. the children of a shameless prostitute; [or] as shameless as their mother, a prostitute.