Hosea 2:1

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Hosea 2:1-2. Say to your brethren — Many interpreters consider this verse as being connected with the preceding chapter, thus: When that general restoration of the Jewish nation shall take place, you may change your language in speaking to those of your brethren and sisters whom I had before disowned, and you may call them Ammi, my people, and Ruhamah, she that hath obtained mercy. The prophet alludes to the 6th and 9th verses of the preceding chapter. Other expositors, however, with more apparent reason, consider this verse as connected with the following words, and translate it thus: “Ye that are my people, and have obtained mercy, speak to your brethren and sisters, and plead with your mother,” &c. “Although the Israelites, in the days of Hosea, were in general corrupt, and addicted to idolatry; yet there were among them, in the worst times, some who had not bowed the knee to Baal. These were always Ammi and Ruhamah; God’s own people, and a darling daughter. God commissions these faithful few to admonish the inhabitants of the land in general, of the dreadful judgments that would be brought upon them by the gross idolatry of the Jewish Church and nation;” and to reprove, and use their best endeavours to reform that general corruption which the nation had contracted by its idolatry; whereby the people had broken the covenant God had made with them, and had caused a separation, or divorce, between him and them. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms, &c. — Let her leave off her idolatries. These are often expressed in the Scriptures by the fondness and caresses which pass between unchaste lovers.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:1-5 This chapter continues the figurative address to Israel, in reference to Hosea's wife and children. Let us own and love as brethren, all whom the Lord seems to put among his children, and encourage them in that they have received mercy. But every Christian, by his example and conduct, must protest against evil and abuses, even among those to whom he belongs and owes respect. Impenitent sinners will soon be stripped of the advantages they misuse, and which they consume upon their lusts.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi - that is, "My people, and to your sisters, Ruhamah," i. e., "beloved or tenderly pitied." The words form a climax of the love of God. First, the people scattered , unpitied , and disowned by God , is re-born of God; then it is declared to be in continued relation to God, "My people;" then to be the object of his yearning love. The words, "My people," may be alike filled up, "ye are My people," and "be ye My people." They are words of hope in prophecy, "ye shall be again My people;" they become words of joy in each stage of fulfillment. They are words of mutual joy and gratulation, when obeyed; they are words of encouragement, until obeyed. God is reconciled to us, and willeth that we be reconciled to Him. Among those who already are God's people, they are the voice of the joy of mutual love in the oneness of the Spirit of adoption; "we are His people;" to those without (whether the ten tribes, or the Jews of heretics,) they are the voice of those who know in whom they have believed, "Be ye also His people." Despair of the salvation of none, but, with brotherly love, call them to repentance and salvation."

This verse closes what went before, as God's reversal of His own sentence, and anticipates what is to come (Hosea 5:14 ff). God commands the prophets and all those who love Him, to appeal to those who forget Him, holding out to them the mercy in store for them also, if they will return to Him. He bids them not to despise those yet alien from Him, "but to treat as brethren and sisters, those whom God willeth to introduce into His house, and to call to the riches of His inheritance."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 2

Ho 2:1-23. Application of the Symbols in the First Chapter.

Israel's spiritual fornication, and her threatened punishment: yet a promise of God's restored favor, when chastisements have produced their designed effect.

1. Say … unto … brethren, Ammi, &c.—that is, When the prediction (Ho 1:11) shall be accomplished, then ye will call one another, as brothers and sisters in the family of God, Ammi and Ruhamah.The people are exhorted to forsake idolatry, which is threatened with severe judgments, Hosea 2:1-13. God allureth them with promises of reconciliation, Hosea 2:14-23.

In the two last verses of the former chapter, the prophet did from God promise marvellous mercy to Judah and Israel, to that remnant of the seed of Abraham who returned out of captivity, and to the converted Gentiles; now in this verse he calls upon them to acknowledge the mercy, and to excite one another to mutual love and esteem.

Say; declare, own, or publish.

Ye; who of no people are made a people, who were once unpitied and unregarded, but now have obtained mercy; you that are the sons of the living God, whether Jews or Gentiles. You Christians, as the apostle applies the words, Romans 9:24,25; and so in the ant, type no doubt they are to be understood; but in the letter and type, the persons here mentioned are those who among this people were pious, feared God, and kept his law; some such there were among them.

Unto your brethren; to those of the ten tribes who are, and will be these forty years, your brethren.

Ammi; let them know that yet they are the people of God, and repentance may remedy all; they are still within the covenant of their father Abraham; if they will, as their father. walk with God, all shall be well.

And to your sisters, Ruhamah: in a decorum, to (what before was made an emblem of Israel) the prophet’s daughter, Lo-ruhamah, some are here directed to reason (as it is Hosea 2:2) with her, i.e. with Israel, whose name is yet Ruhamah, and it may be so still, if Israel will retain it by returning to God.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah. These words are to be considered either in connection with the latter part of the preceding chapter, and as directed to the sons of the living God, who had not been, but now were, "Ammi", the Lord's people; and who had not, but now have, "Ruhamah", obtained mercy; which grace and mercy shown them, it became them to speak of one to another, to affect their hearts mutually with it, and to glorify God for it, Malachi 3:16 as also to speak of it to their carnal relations, that so, if it was the will of God, it might be of use to them, to show them the state they were in, the danger of it, their need of the grace and mercy of God, and the hope there was by their own instance and example of obtaining it; see Romans 9:1, or as directed to the converted Jews that appointed Christ their Head, and believed in him; exhorting them to own the believing Gentiles as their brethren and sisters, since they were the spiritual seed of Abraham their father, and walked in the steps of his faith; and to call them Ammi and Ruhamah, since they, who were not the people of God, now were, and who had not obtained mercy, now have obtained mercy, 1 Peter 2:10, or else they may be considered as in connection with the following words,

plead with your mother; and that either as spoken to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who were the people of God, retained the pure worship of God, and obtained mercy of the Lord, Hosea 1:7,

"O ye Ammi and Ruhamah, that are the Lord's people, and he has had mercy on; stir up and exhort your brethren and sisters of the ten tribes, for so they were, notwithstanding their separation, 1 Kings 12:4, to contend with their mother, the body of the nation, about idolatry and departure from God;''

or as spoken to the godly among the ten tribes, who were the real people of God, and sharers in his grace and mercy; the remnant he reserved for himself, who had not bowed their knees to idols; or as the command of God by the prophet, to the people of Israel, to exhort one another to contend with their mother, who were, as yet, the Lord's people, had mercy shown them, when this prophecy was delivered out; though, in case of obstinacy and impenitence, they were threatened with a "Loammi" and "Loruhamah"; so Schmidt, who thinks that "ammi" and "ruhamah" are put by way of "apposition to your brethren and sisters", in which he seems to be right. Aben Ezra thinks the words are spoken ironically, like those in Ecclesiastes 11:9, and others, but without reason. The Targum is,

"O ye prophets, say to your brethren, and my people, and I will have mercy on your congregation;''

but whether the words are spoken to the Jewish converts who first believed in Christ, were his people, received grace and mercy from him, and stood in the relation of brethren and sisters to one another, both in a natural and spiritual sense, to stir up one another to reprove their mother, the Jewish church, for rejecting Christ, saying, as follows:

Geneva Study Bible

Say ye unto your {a} brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.

(a) Seeing that I have promised you deliverance, it remains that you encourage one another to embrace this promise, considering that you are my people on whom I will have mercy.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

1. The parallel lines here seem misleading.

Say ye …] Now that the storm-cloud has rolled away, those names of baleful import Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah have ceased to be admissible, and are altered into the direct opposites. The verse is best understood as the conclusion of chap. 2, just as ‘Call his name Lo-ammi’, &c. ought to form the conclusion of chap. 1. The persons addressed are perhaps the disciples of the prophet, who are directed to communicate the joyful news summed up in the names Ammi (‘my people’) and Ruhamah (‘she hath found compassion’) to the whole nation.

2–23, Hosea 1:10-11, Hosea 2:1. Hosea’s first discourse, slightly obscured by the dislocation of some of its verses (see above on Hosea 1:10-11). The prophet sets forth in more intelligible language what he has already suggested rather enigmatically. The finest part of the chapter is from Hosea 2:14 to Hosea 2:23, where Hosea shows how Israel will emerge purified from her captivity, and enjoy the love and favour of her Divine Bridegroom.

Hosea 2:1

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

To confirm the certainty of this most joyful turn of events, the promise closes with the summons in Hosea 2;Hosea 1:1-11 : "Say ye to your brethren: My people; and to your sisters, Favoured." The prophet "sees the favoured nation of the Lord (in spirit) before him, and calls upon its members to accost one another joyfully with the new name which had been given to them by God" (Hengstenberg). The promise attaches itself in form to the names of the children of the prophet. As their names of ill omen proclaimed the judgment of rejection, so is the salvation which awaits the nation in the future announced to it here by a simple alteration of the names into their opposite through the omission of the לא.

So far as the fulfilment of this prophecy is concerned, the fact that the patriarchal promise of the innumerable multiplication of Israel is to be realized through the pardon and restoration of Israel, as the nation of the living God, shows clearly enough that we are not to look for this in the return of the ten tribes from captivity to Palestine, their native land. Even apart from the fact, that the historical books of the Bible (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) simply mention the return of a portion of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites, under Zerubbabel and Ezra, and that the numbers of the ten tribes, who may have attached themselves to the Judaeans on their return, or who returned to Galilee afterwards as years rolled by, formed but a very small fraction of the number that had been carried away (compare the remarks on 2 Kings 17:24); the attachment of these few to Judah could not properly be called a union of the sons of Israel and of the sons of Judah, and still less was it a fulfilment of the word, "They appoint themselves one head." As the union of Israel with Judah is to be effected through their gathering together under one head, under Jehovah their God and under David their king, this fulfilment falls within the Messianic times, and hitherto has only been realized in very small beginnings, which furnish a pledge of their complete fulfilment in the last times, when the hardening of Israel will cease, and all Israel be converted to Christ (Romans 11:25-26). It is by no means difficult to bring the application, which is made of our prophecy in 1 Peter 2:10 and Romans 9:25-26, into harmony with this. When Peter quotes the words of this prophecy in his first epistle, which nearly all modern commentators justly suppose to have been written to Gentile Christians, and when Paul quotes the very same words (Hosea 2:1, with Hosea 1:10) as proofs of the calling of the Gentiles to be the children of God in Christ; this is not merely an application to the Gentiles of what is affirmed of Israel, or simply the clothing of their thoughts in Old Testament words, as Huther and Wiesinger suppose, but an argument based upon the fundamental thought of this prophecy. Through its apostasy from God, Israel had become like the Gentiles, and had fallen from the covenant of grace with the Lord. Consequently, the re-adoption of the Israelites as children of God was a practical proof that God had also adopted the Gentile world as His children. "Because God had promised to adopt the children of Israel again, He must adopt the Gentiles also. Otherwise this resolution would rest upon mere caprice, which cannot be thought of in God" (Hengstenberg). Moreover, although membership in the nation of the Old Testament covenant rested primarily upon lineal descent, it was by no means exclusively confined to this; but, from the very first, Gentiles also were received into the citizenship of Israel and the congregation of Jehovah through the rite of circumcision, and could even participate in the covenant mercies, namely, in the passover as a covenant meal (Exodus 12:14). There was in this an indirect practical prophecy of the eventual reception of the whole of the Gentile world into the kingdom of God, when it should attain through Christ to faith in the living God. Even through their adoption into the congregation of Jehovah by means of circumcision, believing Gentiles were exalted into children of Abraham, and received a share in the promises made to the fathers. And accordingly the innumerable multiplication of the children of Israel, predicted in Romans 9:10, is not to be restricted to the actual multiplication of the descendants of the Israelites now banished into exile; but the fulfilment of the promise must also include the incorporation of believing Gentiles into the congregation of the Lord (Isaiah 44:5). This incorporation commenced with the preaching of the gospel among the Gentiles by the apostles; it has continued through all the centuries in which the church has been spreading in the world; and it will receive its final accomplishment when the fulness of the Gentiles shall enter into the kingdom of God. And as the number of the children of Israel is thus continually increased, this multiplication will be complete when the descendants of the children of Israel, who are still hardened in their hearts, shall turn to Jesus Christ as their Messiah and Redeemer (Romans 11:25-26).