HOSEA - CHAPTER 2
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2001 James Melough
2:1.
“Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ru-hamah.”
In referring to them as Ammi
my people, and Ru-hamah shown mercy or having obtained mercy,
it seems that God was commanding Hosea to address the believing remnant,
telling them to plead with their apostate brethren and sisters.
2:2.
“Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her
husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and here
adulteries from between her breasts;”
It is instructive to note that
apostate Israel is here described as the mother of the believing remnant, thus
making that remnant second generation, as it were, and this is in perfect
harmony with the principle stated in Heb 10:9, “He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second,” and declared symbolically throughout Scripture
in God’s choice of the secondborn rather than the firstborn to be the channel
of blessing, see, for example, His rejection of Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Reuben,
Manasseh, and His acceptance of Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Ephraim. The
principle was stated explicitly by the Lord Himself in Jn 3:3,7, ”Except a man
be born again he cannot see (enter) the kingdom of God.... Ye must be born
again.” In Scripture, the firstborn always represents what we are by natural
birth; the secondborn, what we become as a result of the new birth. This
seems to confirm that here God’s command through Hosea was to the believing
remnant.
Plead means strive or
contend with: debate with: rebuke. The believing remnant
was to use all these means to convict their apostate brethren of their
terrible sin, not with a view to repentance - apostate Israel had already
crossed the invisible line separating God’s mercy from His wrath - but to make
her aware of the terrible judgments soon to fall upon her, she thus becoming a
warning to Judah and to all others not to follow in her idolatrous footsteps.
“... she is not my wife,
neither am I her husband” is literally “she is no longer my wife,
neither am I any longer her husband.” She by her wantonness had
severed that relationship into which she had been brought with Jehovah when He
redeemed her to Himself out of Egyptian bondage.
This may not be taken to teach
that a genuine believer could ever lose his salvation: he can’t; but rather to
teach that mere profession is not salvation. Israel claimed to be God’s
people, but apart from the small believing remnant within the apostate mass of
the nation, she knew nothing of a faith relationship with Jehovah. That
apostate mass is a type of the professing, but equally apostate professing
church today, and the same dreadful fate awaits her, for as the apostate
Israel of Hosea’s day was destroyed by Assyria, so will the apostate church be
destroyed by the Tribulation-age beast emperor after the true Church has been
raptured home to heaven.
It is to be remembered,
however, that the fate of the apostate corporate body will be also that of the
individuals comprising it, the Lord Himself warning in Mt 7:21-23, “Not every
one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;
but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to
me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy
name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And
then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work
iniquity.”
Whoredom implies sexual
activity for payment, and Israel’s idolatrous relationship with the Canaanite
gods had been for that very purpose. Believing the lie of her Canaanite
neighbors that Baal was the god who could multiply their children, give or
withhold abundant harvests, increase their flocks and herds, they gave to him
the worship that belongs to God alone. Their sin, in fact, was simply lack of
faith to believe His word; but faithlessness is the unpardonable sin, for it
is failure to believe God that ultimately excludes men from heaven and
consigns them to hell and the lake of fire, there being no sin that God won’t
forgive in response to believing faith.
Adultery, on the other hand,
is illicit sexual activity, not for payment, but to gratify lust, and God’s
describing Israel as an adulteress simply declares that she preferred the
gross licentiousness associated with the worship of Baal, to the pure and holy
worship of Jehovah.
No one can deny that actual
harlotry and adultery are two of the besetting sins of our own society, nor
can it be denied that their spiritual counterparts are equally pervasive:
money, and worldly knowledge are two of the principal god’s worshiped today,
their deluded votaries believing that in the possession of these lies
happiness and peace, while the worship of the goddess Pleasure has in view the
gratification of every lust. The judgment which overtook the Israel of
Hosea’s day is but a type of the more terrible imminent Tribulation judgments
that will destroy the whole corrupt commercial, political, military, and
religious edifice created by the evil ingenuity of puny man in defiance of
God, Whose foreknowledge of all this is declared in 2 Tim 3:1, “But know this,
that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of
themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to
parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without
self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers
of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but
denying its power,” (NKJV).
It is instructive to note that
James describes as adulterers and adulteresses those who court the friendship
of this present evil world, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that
the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God,” Jas 4:4.
2:3.
“Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make
her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.”
There are indications that prior
to her execution an adulterous wife was stripped naked, see e.g., Ez
16:36-40. God had lavished multiplied blessings upon Israel, but now they
were all to be taken away because she in her folly had turned from Jehovah,
and instead worshiped Baal as her imagined benefactor.
“... and set her as in the day
that she was born.” The day of Israel’s birth was that one in which she had
lain the helpless, destitute bondslave of the Egyptian oppressor, a slavery
from which God had redeemed her by the blood of the Passover lamb, leading her
as a shepherd leads his sheep, through the wilderness and into Canaan with its
milk and honey, where He multiplied her, and in the days of David and Solomon
crowned her with glory by giving her dominion over all other nations. But
foolish Israel had forgotten all that, and as a result was to be returned to
the destitution and slavery from which God had first taken her, Assyria taking
the place of Egypt as her task master.
“... and make her as a
wilderness, and set her like a dry land.” God had sent the early and the
latter rain upon Canaan so that Israel’s harvests had been abundant, and He
had multiplied her flocks and herds, and her children, so that she lacked
nothing, but she turned from Him, and credited Baal with her blessings.
Consequently she was to become in Assyria what she would have been had Canaan
been a wilderness, a desert. All she would have as bondslave of the Assyrian
would be what would keep her alive to do his work, while he enjoyed the fruit
of her toil.
“... and slay her with thirst.”
The language is metaphoric. As a thirsty man craves water so would captive
Israel languish in Assyria, their numbers being diminished by lack of even the
necessities of life, only the fittest surviving to serve the taskmaster, the
feeble and aged being accounted worthless. How bitter would be their regret
as they remembered, too late, the blessedness of their state when God had been
to them as a loving husband delighting to lavish upon them all that their
hearts could desire! So will it be with her again, and with an apostate
Christendom, and all the nations, in the fast approaching Tribulation,
concerning which we read, “And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat
on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst
of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of
barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine,” Re 6:5-6,
expositors being virtually unanimous in taking this to be the portrait of
famine that will grip the whole earth in the Tribulation.
2:4.
“And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of
whoredoms.”
The focus here shifts from the
corporate body, the nation, to the individuals comprising it, reminding us
that ultimately it is the individual who is responsible before God, each
unbeliever’s degree of eternal punishment in the lake of fire being in
proportion to the degree of his rebellion against God; and each believer’s
eternal reward being in proportion to the measure of faithfulness with which
he exercised his stewardship here on earth.
“... for they be the children of
whoredoms.” The national sin simply reflected the state of the individuals
comprising the apostate majority of the nation, as does that of the professing
but apostate harlot church reflect the state of its members. Their being
“children of whoredoms” may mean that they were the product of their evil
parents, or that they themselves delighted in the licentiousness associated
with Baal worship. Both, in fact, were true, and God would have no mercy,
because they refused to repent, forsake their sin, and return to Him. Such
will be the case also in connection with an unrepentant world in the
Tribulation. Only a relative few will repent, those of them who die, entering
heaven; and those who survive alive till Christ’s return, entering the
millennial kingdom.
2:5.
“For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done
shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and
my water, my wool, and my flax, mine oil and my drink.”
Israel was the mother of the
apostate nation, playing the harlot by forsaking Jehovah, and giving to the
Canaanite Baalim (Baal was the principal among many false gods), the worship
which belonged to Him alone, believing the lie of her heathen neighbors that
it was Baal and other false gods who gave her her food and drink, her
clothing, her oil and her wine, i.e., who supplied all her needs. She was
about to learn to her sorrow the extent of her error, and the enormity of her
wickedness, when those “gods” were shown to be incapable, not only of
supplying her needs, but of delivering her out of the hand of Him Who still
loved her, but Who must also, because of His Own holy nature, punish her sin.
Today’s world has aped her
folly. Having cast off all knowledge of God, they worship money and
education, crediting them with the power to supply all their needs, and
worshiping the goddess Pleasure as the one who makes possible the
gratification of every sensual lust. The Assyrian captivity of Israel is but
a shadow of the terrible Tribulation judgments about to overtake this present
evil world and its false church.
2:6.
“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that
she shall not find her paths.”
Israel’s saying “I will go after
my lovers,” seems to imply that the imagined bounty of the Baalim had begun to
diminish, the truth being that Jehovah was withdrawing His blessing by
refusing to give the needed rain, and by reducing the fertility of the earth,
thus exposing the failure of the imagined power of the Baalim, and at the same
time attempting to lead Israel to repentance. It seems, in fact, that
Israel’s going after her “lovers” was another way of saying that she was
offering more costly sacrifices, and rendering a greater degree of devotion,
in order to regain the favor of those nonexistent “gods.”
Jehovah’s response, however, to
her increased attempts to placate the Baalim was to render those attempts
futile. He was the One she needed to placate, for though she refused to
believe it, it was He, not the Baalim, Who had supplied her food and water,
her clothing, and her oil and wine. Thorns are the biblical symbol of sin,
see Ge 3:18, and also of the misery that attends it. By hedging up her way
with thorns, i.e., by multiplying her miseries; and by making a wall between
her and her imagined lovers, i.e., by refusing to give what she imagined her
increased sacrifices would induce the Baalim to give, she would finally come
to realize, too late, the enormity of her sin, and the utter worthlessness of
the imagined gods to which she had given the love and worship which belong to
Jehovah alone.
2:7.
“And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and
she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go
and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.”
This continues to portray
Israel’s offering more costly sacrifices to the Baalim in order to induce them
to restore the bounty with which she in her folly had credited them instead of
Jehovah. Her failure to overtake or find them declares that God would
continue to blight her harvests until she had learned, too late, that it was
He, and not the Baalim, who had been the Source of all her past blessings.
Conspicuously absent from her
determination to return to her first “husband” (Jehovah) is any sign of
contrition or repentance. She simply recognized that it had been better with
her when she had worshiped Him instead of Baal and all the other false gods of
Canaan; but her decision to return to Him was merely the acknowledgment that
He seemed to be a better god than the others. This, however, fell far short
of recognizing that He wasn’t just one of a multitude of gods, but that He was
the only God, the others being but the figments of men’s darkened minds.
2:8.
“For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied
her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.”
The ignorance of that generation
of Israel relative to Jehovah, points up the need for believers to instruct
their children thoroughly in the things of God. Through failure to give that
instruction, the knowledge of Him can be lost completely in just one
generation, the present generation of Christendom being the living proof of
that assertion, for the great majority of them have no more knowledge of Him
than do the heathen. For the most part this scripturally ignorant generation
never gives a thought to the fact that He even exists. The “gods” to whom
they attribute all their blessings are money, education, and pleasure, their
idolatry being no less real because of the absence of literal idols.
Silver and gold are the biblical
symbols of salvation and glory respectively, and Israel had had “silver”
multiplied to her on the night of the Passover when Jehovah had redeemed her
from the bitter bondage of Egypt; and He had multiplied her “gold” when He set
her above the other nations in the reigns of David and Solomon. But she had
forgotten all this, and when He multiplied her literal silver and gold, she
molded it into images of Baal before which she prostrated herself in
idolatrous worship.
2:9.
“Therefore will I return and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my
wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to
cover her nakedness.”
By drought and blight the Lord
diminished Israel’s grain, grape, and flax harvests; and the recovery of His
wool indicates His depletion of their flocks, possibly by infertility and
disease.
Though undiscerned by
spiritually blind eyes and darkened minds, the spiritual counterparts of these
chastisements are evident everywhere throughout the professing but apostate
church. Corn is one of the biblical symbols of the written Word as spiritual
food to nourish men’s souls; and wine, of that same Word to cheer and
encourage their hearts, but the abysmal ignorance both of the literal and
spiritual content of Scripture furnishes incontrovertible
evidence that Christendom also lies under the same chastisement as did the
Israel addressed by Hosea, and for the same reason: she too has forgotten God,
and is giving to idols the worship due to Him alone.
The spiritual counterpart of the
diminished wool and flax “given to cover her (Israel’s) nakedness” is also
glaringly apparent everywhere today. Clothing speaks of righteousness, either
the righteousness of Christ which clothes the believer, or the “filthy rags”
of self-righteousness to which the unbeliever clings in his blindness. It is
sadly evident that the righteousness which ought to accompany conversion is
little seen today even in the lives of believers, while the blatant parade of
every form of sin in society in general, thunders the truth that “the wool and
the flax” have been taken away, and that judgment is about to break on the
heads of earth’s rebels.
2:10.
“And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none
shall deliver her out of mine hand.”
The vileness in the heart of
Israel, but disguised under the outward mask of religion in the form of Baal
worship, was about to be exposed and punished; and so is it with today’s
society. The world’s wickedness, also disguised under the vail of religion,
is about to be exposed, and punished by the terrible Tribulation judgments,
which will reveal the holiness of God and His utter abhorrence of evil.
“... and none shall deliver her
out of mine hand.” As there were none to deliver sinful Israel out of
Jehovah’s mighty hand, neither will there be any able to deliver from His
righteous wrath in the quickly approaching Tribulation era. The vaunted might
of man will then be revealed for the puny thing it is in spite of its imposing
facade.
As noted already, however,
consideration of the corporate shouldn’t blind us to what relates to the
individual. Daily, thousands are swept in their sins from time into eternity,
to await in the torment of hell their eventual arraignment at the great white
throne, from which they will be banished body, soul, and spirit, into the
unquenchable eternal flame of the lake of fire. What utter folly it is to
reject or neglect the salvation, purchased at such cost at Calvary, which
would deliver every believer from judgment and assure him of heaven!
2:11. “I
will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast day, her new moons, and her
sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.”
Israel’s mirth was about to give
place to weeping; her feasting to famine. Since the moon is one of the
biblical symbols of corporate testimony, God’s causing her new moons to cease
seems to be the symbolic announcement that future (new) generations of her
children would be a testimony to the folly of disobedience, instead of what
God wanted them to be: a testimony to the blessedness of obedience.
Since the sabbath is synonymous
with rest, the taking away of her sabbaths is simply another way of saying
that her bitter slavery in Assyria would be unrelieved by any periods of
rest. And the ending of her solemn feasts declared that her celebrations of
God’s goodness would be exchanged for her bitter lament as she languished
under His chastisement.
Spiritually enlightened minds
will have no difficulty seeing in all of this the foreshadowing of the still
more terrible judgments which are about to overtake this present evil world.
2:12.
“And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These
are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall eat them.”
The vines and fig trees with
which God had blessed her land, she had foolishly attributed to the imagined
beneficence of the Baalim, viewing the vines and fig trees as tokens of the
love of these “gods” conjured up by her own darkened and deluded mind. Who
can measure the depths of error to which apostasy may lead its blinded dupes!
Foolish Israel failed to realize that in her veneration of the Baalim she was
actually worshiping Satan, and thereby kindling the wrath of the One Who loved
her, and Who had blessed her so abundantly. Her idolatry was about to
transmute His blessing into cursing; what He had given for her enjoyment and
pleasure He was about to give to the beasts of the field, while she would have
to exist on what her Assyrian taskmasters might choose to give her.
2:13.
“And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to
them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went
after her lovers, and forget me, saith the Lord.”
Her true Benefactor, Whose great
patience she had finally exhausted, was now to requite her for all the years
she had worshiped the imaginary gods of Canaan, bedecking herself with
earrings and jewels, and reveling in all the vile licentiousness practiced in
the name of worship - and all the while forgetting her true Lover, Jehovah.
2:14.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and
speak comfortably unto her.”
How great are the love and
kindness of God! Even in the midst of judgment He remembers mercy. His
chastisement of Israel was not for her destruction, but to lead her to
repentance, so that He might again bless her.
It is an eloquent testimony to
the perversity of human nature that only in adversity will men seek God.
Prosperity almost invariably causes them to become independent, and to forget
Him. When He had brought Israel out of Egyptian bondage into the wilderness,
and then into the riches of Canaan flowing with milk and honey, she quickly
forgot Him, and so is it with most of us. When the lines are falling unto us
in pleasant places we too tend to forget Him, calling upon Him only when
trouble overtakes us. Hence the need to bring rebel Israel again out of
Canaan into the equivalent of a wilderness: captivity in Assyria. Only thus
would she learn that God alone has the power to bless or to curse, the former
being His reward of obedience; the latter, His recompense of rebellion.
“... and speak comfortably unto
her” is to speak gently, tenderly, lovingly to her heart.
That “wilderness” experience
foreshadows what will befall Israel, and the nations also, in the fast
approaching Tribulation era when Divine judgment will bring a remnant of
Israel and of the Gentiles to repentance and faith in Christ, the living
believers entering the Millennium to enjoy its blessings; and those believers
who die during those terrible years, entering heaven to enjoy eternal
blessings with us and with the resurrected saints of the OT age.
2:15.
“And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a
door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in
the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt.”
“... from thence” is literally
“in the place where she experiences My judgments is the very place in which
she will once again enjoy My blessing.” This looks on to the Millennium when
the earth, ravished by the Tribulation judgments will be transformed so that
“the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose,” Isa 35:1.
And the reference to the valley
of Achor is peculiarly appropriate, for it is to be remembered that that same
valley had been the scene of Divine judgment in an earlier day in connection
with Achan’s sin, see Jos 7; but concerning it also we read that in the
Millennium, “Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place
for the herds to lie down in, for my people that have sought me,” Isa 65:10.
The lesson of Achor, meaning to trouble, is that sin must be dealt with
and put away before God will bless. Only through the trouble of chastisement
would Israel be led to repentance and blessing.
Clearly the promise of this
verse is to have its fulfillment in the Millennium when the believing remnant,
the new Israel, will sing the praises of the God to Whom she will have been
reconciled as a result of the Tribulation judgments. It is to be noted also
that her past deliverance from Egypt, and her having been brought into Canaan,
are themselves simply OT foreshadowings of her yet future deliverance out of
the hand of the beast at the end of the Tribulation.
This typological picture is just
another proof that many past events in Israel’s history are but miniatures of
things yet future, a fact which should impel us to recognize that God has
woven into the literal language of the OT the annunciation of deeper truths
than will be perceived by the casual reader.
2:16.
“And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi;
and shalt call me no more Baali.”
“... that day” is obviously the
millennial age, for it will not be until that day that Israel, by means of the
Tribulation judgments, will be brought to fulfill this prediction.
“Ishi” here means my husband,
but in other places my salvation; and Baali, my lord. The
tender loving care of God for His redeemed is here set before us under the
figure of a loving husband’s care for his wife, and is the antithesis of the
harsh cruel tyranny of a slave master, for the sinister spirit portrayed by
all the idols which men in their ignorance worship, is Satan, whose only
interest in men is to make them sharers of his own terrible fate, which is to
suffer eternal torment in the lake of fire.
2:17.
“For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no
more be remembered by their name.”
Following her conversion or
reconciliation to Jehovah in the Tribulation, and her enjoyment of that new
relationship in the Millennium, Israel will cease to invoke the false gods
which she has worshiped in the past, and will worship only Jehovah, His
chastisements having taught her the enormity of her folly.
2:18.
“And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field,
and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and
I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will
make them to lie down safely.”
This continues to describe
millennial conditions, for other Scriptures make it clear that in that coming
halcyon age all of these things will be fulfilled, see for example, Isa
11:6-9, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed;
their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like
the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the
weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice” den. They shall not hurt
nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea,” and Isa 2:4, “... and
they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war any more.”
2:19.
“And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in
righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies.”
This is the assurance that the
union yet to be established between God and the believing remnant of Israel in
the Millennium will be eternal; and its being “in righteousness” declares with
equal certainty that the righteousness imputed, not only to believing Israel,
but to every believer, of every age, is a righteousness which can never be
lost. The eternal life received by faith is characterized by an eternally
enduring righteousness.
“... and in judgment
(justice).” Another characteristic of the new life of faith is that it rests
upon a basis of perfect justice. Sin requires that the transgressor die, and
God’s failure to execute that sentence would make Him a liar (and therefore
cease to be God), for it is He Who declared to Adam - and through him to all
men - “In the day that thou eatest thereof, i.e., sin, thou shalt surely die,”
Ge 2:17. That sentence was carried out at Calvary when the last Adam, the
Lord Jesus Christ yielded up the human life forfeited by the rebellion of the
first Adam, thus meeting the just claim of God against man. Just as the sin
of the first Adam is imputed to the whole human race because he was the
federal head of that race, so is the righteousness of Christ imputed to every
man who accepts God’s indictment, and trusts in Christ as Savior, as it is
written, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but
quickened (made alive) by the Spirit,” 1 Pe 3:18.
“... and in lovingkindness.”
Love and kindness beyond the ability of human minds to comprehend will mark
God’s dealings with believing Israel in the Millennium, as they do with every
man who trusts in Christ as Savior.
“... and in mercies.” Mercy
withholds deserved punishment, while grace bestows undeserved blessing.
Israel’s sin was such that God would have been justified in consigning her to
the eternal torment of the lake of fire, yet in measureless grace, and because
of Calvary, He will yet restore her to the place of love and honor pictured in
the marriage relationship.
The use of the plural “mercies”
is also to be noted. God will yet pardon, not just one of Israel’s many sins,
but all of them, as He does also the multiplied sins of every man who trusts
in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.
2:20. “I
will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord.”
That relationship into which
Israel is yet to be brought, will be marked by faithfulness on her part
similar to that which will mark His dealings, not only with her, but with
everyone who knows Christ as Savior.
2:21.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will
hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth;”
2:22.
“And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall
hear Jezreel.”
These two verses are generally
understood to mean that in the Millennium there will be abundant harvests, as
it is written, “Behold, the days some, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall
overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the
mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will
bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the
waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards,
and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruits
of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be
pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God,”
Am 9:13-15.
This section might be
paraphrased, “The heavens, responding to the need of the earth for water, it
in turn responding to the need of the grain fields, the vineyards, and olive
trees, will ask God for the rain to meet all these needs, and He will give it
in abundance. There will no longer be drought and famine. The millennial
earth will burgeon.” “... and they shall hear Jezreel.”
Since Jezreel means it will be sown of God, the thought seems to be
that the productivity of the earth will be the equivalent of nature’s joyous
declaration that God Himself will have done the sowing.
2:23.
“And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that
had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou
art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.”
The fecundity of the earth in
that day will be matched by the proliferation of the people, God Himself being
the Sower, so that Israel will no more be called Lo-ruhamah not having
obtained mercy, nor Lo-ammi not my people, but rather those who
will have obtained mercy, and who will be acknowledged by God as My people,
they responding with the grateful confession, Thou art my God. See Ro
9:25-26, where Paul quotes from this verse.
[Hosea 3]