The Desire of the Lord (2:2-15): Once again the disciple who arranged chapters 1–3 has included a passage that serves as a summary of much of Hosea’s preaching (2:16–14:9). All of 2:2–15 represents genuine oracles of Hosea, but it is possible that this unit as a whole has been put together from originally independent oracles, such as 2:2–4; 2:5–7a; 2:7c–10; 2:11–13; and 2:14–15. As it now stands, however, the pericope forms a rhetorical whole.
The setting for these words is a court of law, indicated by the initial imperative verb, rîbû, which often has the meaning, “go to court,” but which in this context means, “plead” or “accuse.” (The NIV rebuke does not adequately convey the legal setting.) Yahweh, the aggrieved husband, has taken Israel, his unfaithful wife, to court. But this is a very unusual court case. Instead of filing for divorce from his harlotrous wife (cf. Deut. 24:1) or demanding the lawfully stipulated death penalty for unfaithfulness (cf. Gen. 38:24; Lev. 21:9; Deut. 22:23–24), Yahweh pleads with Israel to amend her ways in order that she may continue to be his wife. This is a love that will not let her go!
2:2–4 The plea is directed at the couple’s children, meaning Israel as a whole, as much as to say that if all the individual Israelites will turn from their harlotry, then the “collective wife,” Israel, whom they represent, will also turn. Yahweh pleads that Israel put away the marks of harlotry from her face and from between her breasts, verse 2, referring perhaps to makeup and jewelry worn by harlots or in the cult of Baal (cf. v. 13). If the wife Israel will not do so, then Yahweh threatens serious punishment, verse 3. It was the legal duty of a husband to clothe his wife (Exod. 21:10), but if Israel will not return in faithfulness to him, then Yahweh will leave her naked and helpless like a newborn infant (cf. Ezek. 16:4, 10), like a land upon which no rain falls (a daring contradiction of Baal’s supposed fertilization of the land with rain), like a traveler who dies of thirst in the desert. Yahweh will show no pity toward any of the children of Israel in their helplessness (cf. 1:6).
2:5–8 The reason for this threat is stated in verse 5: Israel has believed that all of the goods that sustain its life have come from Baal—the basic necessities of bread (NIV has food) and water, wool for warm clothing, flax (so the Hebrew) from which to make cool linen cloth, oil for anointing and healing, and pleasant drinks.
Yahweh, however, has the resources to disabuse Israel of her faith in Baal. He will block her path to her lovers—perhaps meaning the paths to the Baal cult sites—with thorn-hedges or stone walls, so that Israel cannot run after other gods, verse 6. The image is of an animal that needs to be fenced in (cf. 4:16; 8:9; Jer. 2:23–25). Israel is like a wanton prostitute, who not only waits for her lovers to come to her (as in Gen. 38:14–18; Jer. 3:2), but who searches them out and pursues them. But her search will be fruitless. No good things—no bread and water, clothing and luxuries, fertility and vitality—will be granted by Baal. Such is the meaning of she will look for them but not find them, verse 7. Israel the wife will therefore decide to return to her first husband, Yahweh, who gave her food and clothing and increase in the beginning.
Israel’s decision to return to Yahweh is crucial in this passage, because it shows what Israel is looking for from her God. She wants material goods, prosperity, multiplication of her population—in short, the good life. In this attitude, Israel mirrors those in our day who turn to religion to gain success or wealth, political office or social approval (cf. the same attitude in Jer. 44:15–18).
Yahweh, however, will not be satisfied with such superficial religion. He does not want Israel to return simply for what she can get out of him! That is never the purpose of the worship of God: we do not go to church for what we gain—though we gain much—but rather for what we give, namely, glory and adoration to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yahweh, in Hosea’s time as in ours, desires a people who love him, as a faithful wife loves her husband, or as an obedient son loves and admires and adores his father. Yahweh wants communion with his people, the heartfelt, trusting, unwavering communion of persons who love one another to the deepest depths. Once the Israelites attain that communion, they will realize from whom come all the sources and sustenance of their life. But the Israelites’ faith in their God is far from such communion.
2:9–15 Thus, according to verse 9, the Lord will deny Israel the goods for which she has returned to him. God will prevent the grain from ripening and the vineyards from yielding fruit. He will prevent the flocks from yielding wool and the flax from growing. Israel will be left naked and ashamed before the eyes of her former lovers (cf. Lam. 1:8; Ezek. 16:37), and the baals will be helpless to give any aid or to rescue her from Yahweh’s omnipotent hand, verse 10.
As a result of such deprivation, all of the cultic festivities, the yearly festivals, the New Moons, and Sabbath days, which have been so shot through with syncretistic worship of Baal alongside Yahweh, will come to an end, for there will be no animals to sacrifice and no produce to offer, verse 11. Yearly festivals (ḥāg), in verse 11 [MT v. 13], refer to the three annual pilgrimage festivals of unleavened bread, harvest, and ingathering that were coordinated with the agricultural year (Exod. 23:14–17; 34:18–23). Among these, the feast of harvest in the autumn was, in Hosea’s time, the most important; it was the time when the fruit from grapes and fig trees was gathered. Harlotrous Israel considered such fruit the payment by the baals in return for her worship of them, verse 12, but she shall no longer enjoy such fruit. In reality Yahweh gave these and Yahweh can take them away. New Moons, verse 11, occurring monthly (cf. Isa. 1:13–14), may have included the sexual baal rites of hieros gamos, “sacred marriage,” since they occurred in the same temporal pattern as that of female menstruation—a pattern that modern-day feminist celebrations of new moons and menstrual cycles resemble. Sabbath days, verse 11, were the weekly days of rest (cf. Amos 8:5) stipulated in the covenant law (Exod. 20:8–11; Deut. 5:12–15). In verses 11–13 Yahweh is saying that the entire cultic calendar will be canceled. Israel’s worship has been used to honor the pagan baals. Therefore it will be done away.
Israel’s harlotrous sin is summarized in the last line of verse 13: but me she forgot, says the LORD. “To forget” Yahweh, in the oracles of Hosea, is the opposite of knowing Yahweh (v. 8), of participating in that intimate communion of love that Yahweh so desires to have with the covenant people. “To know the LORD” is to know the sacred history and all the gracious acts that Yahweh has done for his people. As the Psalmist put it: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps. 103:2 RSV). But to know the Lord is also to live in such inner, daily, heartfelt fellowship that one delights in God’s presence, and sees everything in the context of God’s love and will, and rejoices in obeying divine directions for one’s daily life. It is that inner relationship of love and delight and obedience that Israel has rejected for the sensuous and materialistic worship of the baals.
Yahweh, however, will not forget his faithless people, and so the final two verses of this oracle, which summarize the totality of Hosea’s message, tell what the Lord will do in the future, after Israel has been punished (v. 13) for her apostasy and syncretism.
In effect, the Lord will begin the sacred history with his people all over again. After bringing Israel out of the inevitable exile that will requite Israel for her sin, God will lead her into the desert, as he led her at the first. There in the wilderness, where there is no baal to come between them, the Lord will “woo” his young bride again. Literally, in the Hebrew, God will “speak to her heart” (cf. Gen. 34:3), for it is Israel’s heart that Yahweh wants to win, verse 14.
There the Lord will give Israel gifts (cf. 2:19–20), as he leads her farther into the promised land (v. 5). The Valley of Achor, meaning “the valley of trouble,” probably led from the plain of the Jordan River southwest of Jericho up toward the hill country. It will become for Israel a door of hope, leading to a new beginning and a new life. There Israel will “answer” her divine husband (the NIV incorrectly reads sing; see the RSV), heart to heart, love to love, in true commitment and faithfulness. Such is the future to which God through Hosea looks forward.
Perhaps, then, it is no accident that the wilderness is a significant place for Jesus of Nazareth. He begins his ministry in the wilderness, when he is baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. It is in the wilderness that he faces and overcomes the temptations of Satan (Mark 1:2–15 and parallels).
Additional Notes
2:5 Lovers, meʾahabay [MT v. 7], is used only of adulterous lovers in the OT and especially in the oracles of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. For the payment given prostitutes, see 9:1; Mic. 1:7; cf. Gen. 38:16.
2:13 Baals, in the plural: Baal gods were thought of as diffuse numina who could be found at a multiplicity of cult sites. Thus, the OT refers to Baal of Hermon (Judg. 3:3); Baal-Berith of Shechem (Judg. 8:33; 9:4); the Baal of Samaria (1 Kgs. 16:32) and of Carmel (1 Kgs. 18:19), both of which were identified with the god Melkart of Tyre; Baal Zebul of Ekron (2 Kgs. 1:2), etc. All may have been seen mythologically as the manifestation of one high god of fertility, but the diffusion of baal numina, worshiped at “high places” throughout Canaan, led Deuteronomy and Jesus to insist that “the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:29), to be worshiped only at one place where God “put his name” (Deut. 12:5; cf. Acts 4:12).
The New Covenant in the New Age (2:16-23): In 2:2–15 we saw Yahweh’s desire for an intimate, inner relation with his people, and from 2:15 we learned that Israel would, indeed, “answer” the Lord’s desire for that relationship. This oracle, which the NIV correctly translates as poetry (contra RSV prose), now details how such a new communion between God and his people can come to be. Yahweh is the speaker throughout, and every action mentioned is the result of his initiative.
Yahweh will establish a new relation with his people in that day, verse 16 (cf. vv. 18, 21). The phrase most often refers to the eschatological future in the OT, to the time when the Lord sets up his rule over all the earth in the Kingdom of God, although here the reference is to his rule over only Israel. But it is an indefinite time in the future, after Israel has passed through judgment on its faithlessness toward God. And it is a time that can be ushered in not by human action, but only by God alone.
To create the new intimate relationship of love between himself and his people, Yahweh will take several actions. We saw in 2:14–15 that God will lead Israel once again into the desert, “woo” her like a lover wooing his beloved, and lead her once again into the promised land, through the Valley of Achor that has been transformed into a “door of hope.” Now, as she enters the promised land, she will find all the fertility gods removed, and the cult purified of all syncretistic baal worship.
2:16–18 Verse 16 implies that Yahweh had been worshiped as a baal god. To call on the name of a God in the cult meant to invoke that deity’s presence and aid or action (cf.1 Kgs. 18:26), and the presence of Yahweh had been invoked with the name “My Baal” (NIV: my master), a practice expressly forbidden in Exodus 23:13. Now the very mention of the name of Baal will be lost to Israel’s vocabulary, v. 17. Israel will call out, “my husband,” using the expression of personal devotion (cf. Gen. 29:32, 34; 30:15, 20; 2 Kgs. 4: 1), instead of “my baal,” which means “my master” or “my owner” or “my lord.” Worship will be characterized by love, instead of by duty and fear.
Second, the Lord will mediate a covenant between Israel and the animal kingdom so that the latter will no longer be a threat to Israel’s security, verse 18a–c. The promise seems strange, because only in verse 12 has there been any previous mention of the enmity of wild beasts. Hosea is, however, using a promise characteristic of Israel’s eschatological traditions.
The Israelites always knew, as we moderns often do not, that sin disrupted their relations not only with human beings but also with the natural world (Gen. 3:15, 17–18; 9:2; Deut. 7:22; Ps. 91:13) and that Yahweh, the Lord of nature, could use the wild beasts as instruments of judgment (Jer. 5:5–6; 8:17; 15:3; Ezek. 5:17, etc.). Here Hosea begins the prophetic tradition of Israel looking forward to a restoration of peace with the animal kingdom in the kingdom of God (Isa. 11:6–9; 35:9; Ezek. 34:25, 28).
God’s promise for the future includes peace with the animal kingdom and also peace between Israel and its surrounding enemies, verse 18d. God will abolish all weapons of war from the land, because they will no longer be needed (cf. Isa. 9:5, 7). As has often been noted, however, land in verse 18 refers here, as elsewhere in Hosea, only to the land of Canaan, and this eschatological vision does not encompass the cosmic peace that is typical of later prophetic promises (cf. Isa. 2:4; Mic. 4:3; Ezek. 39:9; Zech. 9:10).
The emphasis in Hosea is on security for Israel—for that wayward people that has looked for life and security to Baal instead of to Yahweh. And Yahweh here affirms that he is Israel’s one source of security, the one sovereign ruler who can enable Israel to lie down in safety and not be afraid (cf. Isa. 32:17–18; Jer. 23:6=33:16; Mic. 4:4–5).
2:19–20 Having reassured the Israelites of their guarantee of safety so that they have come to trust God with their lives, Yahweh will then enter into a formal betrothal with his beloved people, verse 19.
A betrothal or engagement was arranged in Israel by the future groom’s payment of a brideprice to the father of the future bride. Based on Deuteronomy 22:29, the customary price was probably 50 shekels or about one and one-quarter pounds of silver, and the father’s acceptance of the gift signified that he had no further objections to the marriage. Betrothal, however, signified far more than it does in our society. Legally, it was tantamount to marriage (cf. Exod. 22:16; Deut. 20:7; 2 Sam. 3:14; Matt. 1:18–20) and therefore a binding commitment. Yahweh will be betrothed to Israel forever, in a life-long, faithful marital covenant.
The brideprice that Yahweh will pay for Israel is not silver, however, but righteousness (ṣedeq) and justice (mišpāṭ), “covenant, steadfast love” (ḥesed; NIV: love) and “mercy” (raḥamîm; NIV: compassion), and faithfulness (ʾemûnâ), verses 19–20 [MT vv. 21–22]. Those are all terms describing relationships. Throughout the Scriptures, righteousness is the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, and very often Yahweh’s “righteousness” consists in his salvation of his people, which fulfills the demands of his covenant relation with them. Justice signifies the fulfillment of those legal rights and claims appropriate to the relationship. Ḥesed is that steadfast love and devotion given within a covenant relation. “Mercy” is sympathy and help toward the dependent. Faithfulness or ʾemûnâ comes from the same stem as our word “amen,” and is unswerving, day-by-day, step-by-step obedience, devotion, and affirmation of one’s ties to another. With such gifts, Yahweh betroths Israel to himself.
There has been some confusion about the meaning of verses 19–20, however. Obviously there is no father to whom the brideprice is paid, and some commentators have maintained that these are qualities that Yahweh pledges to manifest toward Israel—that he here promises to be righteous, just, devoted, merciful, and faithful toward his “wife.” But that is not correct. Yahweh already has these qualities, and it is Israel who needs them! Thus, these are the qualities that Yahweh gives, not to the father of the bride, but to the bride herself, so that henceforth the relation between God and his people Israel will be characterized by mutual righteousness, justice, devotion, mercy, and faithfulness. Here is the promise that the Israelites will be transformed in their inner selves to live with their God in that relation of intimate love and faithfulness for which God so yearns. And when the Israelites become such a people, then they will, indeed, “know” the Lord—the key word in Hosea for the intimate relation of devotion between God and his people. (The NIV translation of yādaʿ with acknowledge instead of “know” completely obscures the meaning of v. 20b.) In short, this is the establishment of a new, everlasting, marital covenant with Israel, like the new covenant that Jeremiah foretells in Jeremiah 31:31–34, and indeed, this is the first mention of that new covenant in the OT, although the word “covenant” itself is not used. The Israelites are here promised that they will enter into the new, eschatological age of the kingdom with their God.
2:21–23 Verses 21–22 might be characterized by Jesus’ saying, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33). In the new age, the new Israel will lack no good thing. The Lord will respond to the heavens, that is, he will cause them to give rain, and they will in turn water the earth. The earth will therefore give forth its produce of grain, grapes, and olives, and will respond with the word Jezreel, which here means “God sows.” It does not refer to the people; it is simply the celebrative cry of nature in response to its God. The natural world often celebrates the action of God, according to the OT (cf. Ps. 96:11–13; 98:7–9; Isa. 35:1, etc.)—a characteristic of the new eschatological kingdom (cf. Isa. 43:19–20; 45:8; 49:13; 55:12)—and that is the celebration here in verse 22.
That such is the meaning of verse 22 is shown by verse 23a, which reads, And I will plant her for myself in the land. Many commentators emend the text to read, “plant him” (so the RSV), since a masculine pronoun is required if “Jezreel” in the preceding verse refers to Israel. But it does not. It is simply the exultant cry of nature, celebrating the God who fructifies it.
Verse 23 then points back to 1:6 and 1:8–9 and corresponds to the promise of 2: 1. There is no need to mention “Jezreel” from 1:4–5, because all warfare has been abolished, 2:18. Rather, the need is to reverse the rejection of Israel and the abrogation of the covenant relation, recounted in 1:6, 8–9. And that is what is said in 2:23. Yahweh will henceforth have mercy on his dependent people, and he will restore his covenant with them in the most intimate of relationships.
In that new covenant, Israel, here referred to by a masculine pronoun as in 1:9, will respond with a confession of complete trust, surrender, and love, my God! (cf. John 20:28). The new age of the new covenant will come, Hosea is saying, as the result of God’s action alone. Israel will have done nothing to deserve it, and it is not conditional on Israel’s work. By transforming the people from the inside out, and by altering their circumstances in the world, God will usher in a new age of righteousness and justice, covenant love and mercy, in which Israel will be forever faithful to the God who has been everlastingly faithful to her.
The new covenant is not simply a repair of the old, but an entirely new relationship (cf. Mark 2:18–22). And yet it will gather up all of the promises of God in the old covenant and bring them to fulfillment. The interpreter needs to be aware, then, that when Jesus sat at table with his disciples on the night in which he was betrayed, he took the cup after supper and gave it to his disciples, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. . . . For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:25–26). With that act, our God began the new age, promised by Hosea, that will be present in its fullness when the Lord returns.
Additional Notes
2:16 The Hb. [MT v. 18] reads, “You will call, ‘My husband’,” omitting “me,” which has been supplied from the LXX, Syr., and Vg. The Hb. has an air of immediacy and intimacy, which the emendation does not fully capture.
