Hosea 3:1-5 Then said the LORD to me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress… 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. Parallel Verses KJV: Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine. |
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