This chapter, like Hosea 1., is written in prose; all the other twelve being rhythmical. It deals, as Hosea 1. does, with the personal life of Hosea, giving one further glimpse of the bitter domestic sorrow by which God made him a prophet. The same wonderful providence which had led him to marry Gomer at the first now impelled him to rescue her from the wretchedness into which she had fallen. And his own quenchless love for his erring wife became a parable to him of Jehovah's infinite compassion towards Israel.

I. HOSEA'S NEW RELATION TO GOMER. (Vers. 1-3.) For we take the "woman" here to be Gomer, and "her friend" to be the prophet, her husband. After she had borne him three children (Hosea 1:3-9), she fell into adultery and forsook him. It would seem, too, that she by-and-by became the slave of her paramour. But Hosea, as he sat in his blighted home, thought of poor Gomer with compassionate tenderness. She was still "beloved of her friend." He felt that he must seek her out, and say to her (as King Arthur said to Guinevere), "I loathe thee, yet I love thee." He resolved to buy her back. Her ransom cost him in money only one-half of the ordinary price of a female slave; the rest of the payment being made in barley - the usual coarse food of the class to which she now belonged. The inexpensiveness of the ransom shows to what a depth of degradation Gomer had fallen. This was so great, indeed, that the prophet could not at once restore her to her place at his table, or to the other rights of a dutiful wife. He will bring her home at first only as his ward. He will protect her from her sins. He will test her penitence by a lengthened probation, looking forward, however, to the time when the "receiving" of her again shall be as "life from the dead" to his long-widowed heart. It is pleasant to think of Gomer as not only rescued from her sinful courses, and by-and-by restored to her earthly husband, but as eventually also won back to the love of Jehovah. It is delightful to cherish the hope that the three children too became God's; their original names being purged of their vile associations, and becoming suggestive of spiritual blessing (Jezreel, Ruhamah, Ammi), so that

"When soon or late they reached that coast,
O'er life's rough ocean driven,
They would rejoice - no wanderer lost -
A family in heaven!"

(Burns.)

II. THE SYMBOLIC MEANING OF THIS NEW RELATION. (Vers. 1, 4, 5.) Generally, it is a sign of Jehovah's love towards Israel, notwithstanding her idolatry and sensuality (ver. 1). It reflects the debasement, to which sin leads, the discipline which God metes out to the penitent, and the irrevocable covenant of love which he makes with those who return to him. Hosea's family history stands out as a picture and a prediction. In particular, his new relation to Gomer foreshadowed:

1. Israel's long seclusion. (Ver. 4.) Although the primary reference of the passage is to the ten tribes, the prophecy really embraces the whole Hebrew nation. God has not utterly rejected Israel; she is still "a people near unto him;" but he does not meantime dwell with her as of old. The specific features of her seclusion are noted in the six "withouts" of the verse, and these arrange themselves naturally into three pairs. The whole representation strikingly describes what has been the actual condition of the Jewish nation during the last eighteen hundred years.

(1) Without civil polity. It had been a passion with Israel to have a king. But within three generations after the Lord gave Hosea this oracle, the tea northern tribes were "without a king, and without a prince." And when at last "Shiloh" came, "the scepter" finally "departed from Judah" also. That was a memorable day on which the spiritual leaders of the nation professed so emphatically their willing subjection to the world-power: "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15); but during all the subsequent centuries Jerusalem has "sat solitary," and "is become as a widow."

(2) Without temple service. The temple was the center of the Hebrew religious system. When it was destroyed the Mosaic ritual collapsed. Such worship as the Jews now offer is conducted "with maimed rites." How sad that they should be "without a sacrifice"! Sacrifice was the very soul of the Hebrew worship. Every sinner needs a sacrifice of atonement before he can stand in God's gracious presence; but the poor Jew, who still clings to the old covenant, has none. It follows that he is also "without an ephod." The ephod was part of the dress of the high priest. In the breast of it were the Urim and Thummim, by which Jehovah gave responses. But now, alas! to the Jew "the oracles are dumb." He has no altar, no priest, no access!

(3) Without gross idolatry. In Hosea's time the nation was attempting to combine the worship of Jehovah and of the Baalim; but the Lord tells him that for "many days" the people shall be without any god, true or false. They shall be "without an image," i.e. any public monument of idolatry such as the two golden calves were. And "without teraphim," i.e. those portable household gods which were sometimes kept as tutelary deities, and worshipped as the givers of earthly prosperity. It is a fact that ever since the Assyrian exile the Hebrew nation have not been able to endure any gross idolatry. They doubtless break the first commandment after the more refined fashion of civilized peoples; many Jews, e.g., are money-lovers, and "covetousness is idolatry." But they have been at least free from the guilt of setting up "an image" or of worshipping "teraphim." Israel was to "abide many days" in this long seclusion; and it has already lasted for two millenniums. During all that period the Jewish nation has been the miracle of history. Its situation since Christ came is one of the most convincing of the external evidences of Christianity. And that situation shall continue until Messiah, the Prince of the house of David, shall assemble all the children of Jacob under his spiritual scepter.

2. Israel's final restoration. (Ver. 5.) This is to take place "afterward" - "in the latter days," i.e. in gospel times, and as one of "the last things" of the Christian dispensation. Both Jewish and Christian commentators understand by "the latter days" the Messianic economy, which was to be ushered in by the advent of the Messiah himself. The restoration shall be characterized by:

(1) Religious earnestness. They shall "seek Jehovah their God," and make the most assiduous efforts to find him. The Jews as a nation are not yet doing this. It is true, doubtless, that there are many devout families among them - many who cherish the deep piety which Sir Walter Scott has expressed so beautifully in his "Hymn of the Hebrew Maid," in ' Ivanhoe.' But among the cultured Jews much skepticism prevails. Many are pantheists, like the eminent Jew Spinoza. And among the mercantile Jews there is often an excessive devotion to wealth, together with indifference to all religion. "In the latter days," however, the Hebrew nation shall diligently "seek Jehovah their God."

(2) Loyalty to King Jesus. They shall resume also the allegiance to the royal line of David which the ten tribes renounced when they apostatized from Jehovah under Jeroboam I. The Jewish rabbis themselves acknowledge that "David" in this verse means the Messiah. But Christendom is persuaded that he began to reign eighteen hundred years ago, and that he is reigning still. Jesus of Nazareth is "the Root and the Branch of David." His birth Gabriel announced beforehand to his mother (Luke 1:32, 33); and Israel, at the time of her restoration, shall accept that angelic oracle and rejoice in it.

(3) Holy reverence for her Divine Husband. Israel "shall fear Jehovah and his goodness." She shall have such a grateful remembrance of his loving-kindness in forgiving her adultery as shall constrain her to the most vigilant obedience. "In the latter days" her heart shall say "Amen to the devout sentiment of the ancient psalm, There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared" (Psalm 130:4). She shall find that to know the Lord (Hosea 2:20) and to partake of "his goodness" are blessings inseparable from each other.

CONCLUSION. The threatened isolation of Israel has been abundantly fulfilled; and shall not also the promised restoration? If ver. 4 has already become matter of history, and so very marvelously, may we not expect that ver. 5 shall also, in the Lord's time? We are sure that it shall. Jehovah's promise must be fulfilled. "Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion!" - C.J.

This exquisitely beautiful phrase comes in the midst of a passage of the most painful and distressing character. As a fend husband may tenderly love his wife, even though she abandon herself to a course of infidelity and profligacy, so the God of Israel is represented as cherishing towards his people, even in their defection and apostasy, the sincerest compassion, the most invincible affection.

I. HOW THE LOVE OF THE LORD TO ISRAEL WAS FIRST DISPLAYED.

1. In their selection from amongst the nations of the earth as the object of his special favor and calling.

2. In the communication to them of peculiar advantages and privileges. They were the depositaries of his truth, the conservators of his worship.

II. How THE LOVE OF THE LORD TO ISRAEL WAS TRIED AND TESTED.

1. By their forgetfulness of him.

2. By their neglect of his ordinances.

3. By their rejection of his messengers and prophets.

4. By their addictedness to idolatry.

5. By their violation of his commandments.

6. By their blasphemy of his Name.

III. HOW THE LOVE OF GOD ENDURED AND TRIUMPHED IN THE TEST TO WHICH IT WAS SUBJECTED.

1. Israel was spared, although deserving abandonment to destruction.

2. Promises of grace were addressed, when threats of desertion were to be expected.

3. Opportunity of repentance and reconciliation was afforded, and Israel was entreated not to abuse it. - T.

It has been shown in Hosea 2. that the punishment of Israel is designed to work for the nation's moral recovery. A new symbol is accordingly employed to set forth this aspect of the truth; as formerly the punitive aspects of God's dealing with the nation had been exhibited in the symbols of Hosea 1. The symbol is again drawn from the prophet's relations to his wife.

I. THE PROPHET'S CONTINUED LOVE FOR HIS UNFAITHFUL WIFE. (Ver. 1.) Gomer, adhering to her adulterous courses, had apparently left her husband, and had sunk to a condition of great wretchedness. The prophet, however, had not lost his love for her. She was still a woman "beloved of her friend," i.e. her husband. His love was the more remarkable that it is rarely a husband retains his love for an adulterous wife. Hosea, it may be inferred, felt that there was something uncommon in his relations with this woman. He did not, therefore, renounce her when she abandoned him. He still cherished towards her a husband's affection; retained his love for her, though unworthy; followed her in her devious ways with a pure, steadfast, unalterable, and wholly disinterested regard. In this his love became a fit image of Jehovah's love "toward the children of Israel." It was the image of it then, while the kingdom of Israel stood, and the people were zealous in their pursuit of" other gods;" and it would be still more the image of it when the threatenings of the previous chapter had taken effect, and the people were eating the bitter fruits of their sins. Is it not also the image of God's love to the sinful world as a whole? We had departed from him, and had bestowed our affections adulterously on the creature; but he did not on this account cease to love us, he saw us lost, sinful, and degraded; but he still looked on us with pity, and sought opportunity for our recovery. He so loved us that he gave his Son as the price of our salvation. This love of God to sinners finds no explanation in the nature of its objects. It is love to the unworthy, to the wicked, to the ungrateful; a love, therefore, entirely pure, self-caused, unbought, and disinterested. How warmly should our love go back to him who has thus loved us!

II. THE PROPHET'S TREATMENT OF HIS WIFE. (Vers. 2-4.) Consider here:

1. The condition in which he found her. It was a very deplorable one. She had sunk so low that it became necessary to "buy" her. The price paid - fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley - seems the equivalent of the price of a slave. If so, it is an additional token of her deeply humbled state. Either

(1) she had sunk to the condition of a slave, and required to be redeemed out of it; or

(2) "it was perhaps an allowance, whereby he brought her back from her evil freedom, not to live as his wife, but to be honestly maintained, until it should be fit completely to restore her" (Pusey). Barley was the coarsest food, so that, if maintenance was the object, her condition was still a hard and unenviable one. In this see a picture of the state to which sin reduces those who follow after it. It is a picture true to the life as respects the state to which sin reduced Israel But it is surely not less true in the representation it gives of the results of a life of sin generally. The sinner, in beginning his career, promises himself liberty and happiness. He cheats himself with the belief that he is taking the true way to obtain these objects of universal desire. How soon he finds out his mistake! He obtains neither of the things he wishes. The pleasure he found in his vices soon dies out. His means are squandered. Friends desert him. His character, reputation, influence, are gone. He finds himself the victim of evil habits, perhaps of disease. He has lost his own self-respect. He feels that he has forfeited the respect of others. What remains for him but poverty and disgrace; or perhaps a life of crime? The whole history is depicted in the memorable parable of the prodigal - the beginning, waste of substance in riotous living; the end, snatching a morsel at the swine-trough (Luke 15:11-32). "The way of transgressors is hard" (Proverbs 13:15). The prophet's wife should be a warning to every female tempted to go astray.

2. The restraint under which he placed her. He did not admit her at once to full conjugal rights. He put her under trial. He bound her, in the mean time, to refrain from further immoral conduct. She was not to play the harlot. He, on his part, would abide in separation from her. This was to continue "many days." It would take a long time to wean her from her immoral ways, and thoroughly to test her disposition. The intention was that she might be trained to be again a faithful wife to him. Analogous to this would be God's method of dealing with Israel. "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king," etc. In the light of the subsequent history this prophecy is very striking. There is involved in it:

(1) Long exile. The people were to abide "many days" without king or prince (civil government), without sacrifice or pillar (religious worship), without ephod or teraphim (means of inquiring into the future). This implies expulsion from their own land. The objects of Jehovah and idol worship are mixed up in this description to indicate the then mixed state of the nation's religion, and to show that in exile "the Lord would take away both the Jehovah-worship and also the worship of the idols, along with independent civil government" (Keil).

(2) Continued preservation. The nation, it is further implied, though east off, was not to be destroyed. It would still be the object of a Divine care. It would preserve its identity and distinctness through the" many days." "God would, in those times, withhold all special tokens of his favor, covenant, providence; yet would he secretly uphold and maintain them as a people, and withhold them from falling wholly from him into the gulf of irreligion and infidelity" (Pusey).

(3) Ultimate recovery. God's end in his treatment of the nation was its salvation. Its banishment was not to be perpetual. A day of recovery was set for it (ver. 5). It will be admitted that the prophecy has had, in its first two parts, a singular fulfillment. The tribes - remnants both of the ten and of the two - are at this hour precisely in the condition of the prophet's wife. They are in a manner "waiting on God, as the wife waited for her husband, kept apart under his care, yet not acknowledged by him;" not following after idolatries, yet cut off through unbelief in Christ from full covenant privilege. They have been in this condition "many days," "praying to God, yet without sacrifice for sin; not owned by God, yet kept distinct and apart by his providence for a future yet to be revealed" (Pusey). The object of the present exile is

(1) to wean Israel entirely from idols, - this end may be said to be effectually accomplished;

(2) to train her to value lost privileges;

(3) to educate her to constancy;

(4) to create a longing for reconciliation and restoration. These ends attained, restoration will follow. In a similar way God often deals with sinners for their good, cutting them off from the objects of their sinful desire, trying them by experiences of privation, leaving them without the comforts of his presence and the privileges of his worship, so teaching them the vanity of past pursuits, inciting them to seek him, and preparing them to receive his mercy when it is at length proposed to them.

III. THE RESULT OF GOD'S TREATMENT OF ISRAEL. (Ver. 5.) "Afterwards shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king," etc.; that is, Israel, when recovered to God, would return to its allegiance to the Davidic house, and specially to him whom prophecy pointed to as the Messiah. It is to be noticed:

1. Return to God is the designed end of moral discipline.

2. Return to God is connected with submission to his Son.

3. The result of return to God is experience of his goodness." "They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days."

4. God is to be served by those who return to him in holy "fear." This fear is awakened by the experience of his "goodness," as well as by the remembrance of his chastisements. It is a holy, filial fear, born of reverence and love, and dreading to displease One so good. It has nothing in common with the slavish fear which combines love of sin with dread of the Punisher of it. - J.O.

The singular symbolism of this book is intended vividly to depict the misery of Israel, by which she was to be driven in penitence and contrition to seek again the Divine favor she had forfeited. The woman whom the prophet purchased and married was to be deprived at once of her husband and of her lovers, and in this forlorn and anomalous state was to be an emblem of Israel, cut off at the same time from Jehovah, her true Husband, to whom she had been unfaithful, and from the spiritual paramours after whom she had gone, but in whom no kelp and no joy were now to be found.

I. THE PRIVATION OF KING AND PRINCE WAS PUNISHMENT FOR NATIONAL INFIDELITY. Jehovah was himself the King of the Israelites; their kingdom was a theocracy. He had sent Moses the lawgiver; he had raised up judges; he had heard their prayer and given them a king. In revolting from the house of David, the ten tribes had dishonored God. Whether we are to look for the fulfillment of this threat in the collapse and captivity of the northern kingdom, or in the present dispersion of Israel, is immaterial. The lesson is plain. The nation which misuses national privileges and neglects national opportunities shall lose them both, and without a head, a corporate life, a settled abiding-place, shall learn the truth of the saying, "The Lord reigneth. He taketh down one, and setteth up another."

II. THE PRIVATION OF RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES WAS PUNISHMENT FOR IRRELIGION AND SPIRITUAL REBELLION. The Hebrews were highly favored in their possession, not only of the Law, but of a priesthood, a dispensation of sacrifices and festivals and various means of communion with Heaven. As preparatory to a more spiritual economy, these arrangements were invaluable. But the enjoyment of them was justly made dependent upon their proper estimation and employment. The northern tribes, by their secession, forfeited some of these advantages, and they largely corrupted to their own injury such as remained. The time came when, in Oriental captivity, they mourned the loss of advantages they had too often despised and misused. And now, as they are scattered among the nations, they possess neither the sacrifices of the heathen nor the sacrifice of the Messiah, and are either condemned to a barren and unhappy seclusion or to a yet sadder alliance with the deists of the lands in which they dwell. A lesson to all who neglect the precious opportunities with which they are favored by Providence. "Walk in the light whilst ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you." - T.

This is another instance of the remarkable conjunction of threat and promise. It seems as if the prophet no sooner uttered a word of denunciation, a prediction of wrath, than he followed it up with a prospect of reconciliation and an assurance of blessing.

I. THE OCCASION OF THIS RETURN. There is no note of exact time; but the reference is to "the latter days," to a period described as "afterward." Comparing this language with the context, we infer that this return to God should follow upon departure from God, and upon a bitter experience of the evil consequences of such forsaking. How often, as in the case of Israel, is it necessary that the sinner should learn that "the way of transgressors is hard"! Surely chastening, which is designed to produce a juster estimate of sin and a sincere desire for deliverance, is not to be resented, but rather received with humility, that it may lead to contrition, repentance, and amendment.

II. THE PURPOSE OF THIS RETURN. Observe:

1. To whom should Israel return. To "the Lord their God," whom they had forsaken in order to worship the vain gods of the heathen, but who, nevertheless, had a claim upon them that none other had, and who never ceased to be their God. In this Israel represents mankind; whoever returns to the Lord, returns to his own, proper, rightful God. To "David their king," from whose dynasty they had revolted in the pride, self-sufficiency, and rebelliousness of their heart. David was representative of the theocracy, for he was "the Lord's anointed," and he was an emblem of him who was David's Son and David's Lord. So that whoever returns to the Lord by the gospel of Jesus Christ, returns unto David, whose "sure mercies" are ratified in the Divine Savior.

2. In what spirit Israel should return. They should "seek the Lord, and should fear" or approach with reverential devoutness the Lord and his goodness. The spirit thus described is a spirit of true earnestness, a spirit of lowly repentance, and a spirit of trembling confidence in that "goodness" upon which alone a contrite sinner can rely, and upon which he can never rely in vain. - T.