The sufferings of Israel symbolically recorded.
The three children of the prophet by Gomer symbolize at once a degree of sin and a period of suffering. The forefathers of Israel had been idolaters in their native laud and in Egypt, as we learn from the admonition of Joshua (Joshua 24:14), "Put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt." But God took them into covenant with himself at Sinai; this new relation may be represented by the prophet's espousing at the Divine command Gomer, notwithstanding her previous impurity and lewdness. But though God took the people of Israel into such a close and endearing relation to himself, yet their posterity, instead of proving themselves children of God, often forsook God and fell into idolatry, this apostasy of the descendants through succeeding generations is set forth by the children of whoredoms which the prophet had by a wife of whoredoms. So with ourselves tainted with original sin; we are stained by many actual transgressions. "Sin," it has been well said, "is contagious, and, unless the entail is cut off by grace, hereditary."
I. THE NAME OF THE FIRST CHILD IMPLIES DEGENERACY, Jezreel, if taken in its local sense, reminds of bloodshed as also idolatry, and of the nemesis that in due time followed; but if understood appellatively, the name of dominion implied in Israel degenerates into that of dispersion included in Jezreel.
1. Imperfect work is imperfectly rewarded. No work done for God can make him our debtor, yet he is graciously pleased to reward honest work in his service, the reward being entirely of grace and not of debt. Jehu executed God's judgment on the house of Ahab, and had his reward in the succession of his family to the fourth generation. Though he pretended zeal he did not do the Lord's work sincerely; his own selfish interests and his own base designs mingled largely with his motives, and marred the worth of his work. The obtainment of a kingdom for himself rather than obedience to God was the chief end on which his heart was set. Neither did he perform the Lord's work thoroughly. He abolished the idolatry of Baal, but he adhered to the idolatry of the calves; obviously because the former served his own ends and helped to establish him in the kingdom, while the latter tended, as be thought, to secure his interest in the kingdom and keep his subjects detached from Judah.
2. Punishment, though slow, is sure. Yet a little while and the dynasty of Jehu became extinct; while fifty years afterwards the very kingdom over which that dynasty had ruled ceased altogether to exist. In the interval that elapsed between the extinction of the dynasty of Jehu and the total cessation of the kingdom of Israel a crushing defeat had been sustained in the valley of Jezreel, when the military strength of Israel was completely broken. Whether this was the battle of Betharbel, in which Shalmanezer was victorious, or some other reverse sustained in the invasion by Tiglath-pileser, to the success of which the inscriptions of that monarch testify, we have not perhaps sufficient means of ascertaining. This was the beginning of the end, and a premonition of what was near at hand. The sins of princes and people had gone on accumulating till at length the day of vengeance came. As with nations, so with individuals—
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."
3. The unexpected often happens. Nothing could have appeared more unlikely in the reign of Jeroboam II. than the destruction of his kingdom within such a comparatively short space. He had proved himself a man of prowess and of power; he had extended the boundaries of his kingdom outwardly, and had consolidated its resources inwardly. He had restored the northern boundary of Israel to what it was in the days of Solomon; he had extended his kingdom southward by the sea of the plain, and to the valley of willows (Isaiah 15:7) between Moab and Edom; he had recovered what had been lost by the victories of Hazael; he had recaptured Damascus. He was, in fact, "the greatest of all the kings of Samaria. As if with a forecast of his future glory, he was named after the founder of the kingdom—Jeroboam II." Yet then, while King Jeroboam was at the zenith of his fame, and the kingdom at the height of its prosperity, the word of the Lord went forth against it. God, who seeth not as man seeth, directed the eye of his servant the prophet to sin unrepented of and unforsaken—that internal moral weakness and rottenness which no amount of material prosperity or power could either rectify or remove.
II. THE NAME OF THE SECOND CHILD IMPORTS EXTREME DESOLATENESS OF CONDITION. Israel is pictured as Lo-ruhamah, and thus represented as a woman, worthless; for she is one of the children of whoredom, weak, an easy prey to the spoiler, a victim of injury and insult, unpitied and unprotected, impenitent and unpardoned. Applied nationally, the conquered people are uncompassionated, and waiting to be carried into captivity. Applied personally, how dreadful is the state of that individual who, by a long course of iniquity, has sinned away the day of mercy, and against whom God has shut up the bowels of his compassion!
1. To Israel as a nation, so to each of us God has showed great and manifold mercies; let us beware of abusing our mercies, and thereby forfeiting them. If we forsake our own mercies for lying vanities, as, alas I so many do, we may expect that those mercies will forsake us, being withdrawn in the providence of God. How sad the condition of those who are in affliction, and yet can have no reasonable assurance of the mercy of God; who are afflicted, and yet cannot plead the Divine pity, or hope for Divine sympathy and succor! Sadder still is the case of those whom death surprises in the condition indicated as not having obtained mercy! God, it is true, is infinite in compassion, and his mercy everlasting to them that fear him; but to the impenitent and unbelieving there is a limit to his mercy somewhere; while to such nations and individuals alike the time may come when he will say, "I will have no more mercy upon them, no more pity, and no more pardon."
2. An aggravation of their misery is the natural consequence of the contrast with Judah in verse 7. Our blessed Lord very touchingly applies a similar contrast when he says, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out." The Revised Version, which has "cast forth without," makes it yet stronger and more striking.
3. The salvation of Judah at this tired was their deliverance from Sennacherib. To this great event of Jewish history we find frequent reference elsewhere. Thus Isaiah, at the close of Hosea 10:1-15. and the commencement of Hosea 11:1-12; has a very striking contrast between the crash of mighty cedars and the springing up of a young shoot from a withered stump—the downfall of the great conqueror with his men of might, and the uprising of a righteous Savior out of the lowliness of the royal house of Judah; in other words, the Assyrian and the Savior. This contrast is couched in the following poetic language: "The Lord of hosts shall lop the bough with terror [i.e. terrific force]: and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall lie low; and he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one. And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots." The same prophet, in Hosea 29; pictures the formidable military operations of the Assyrian, together with the suddenness of the disappearance and completeness of the destruction of his mighty host. Of the former he speaks in the first person, as the Assyrian was only the rod of his anger for the purpose of chastisement, and says, "I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee with a mount, and will raise forts against thee;" while of the sudden disaster that would overwhelm them he adds, "And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel [Lion of God], even all that fight against her, and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision;" a little before he had said, "The multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly." In the following chapter (30), naming him by name, he intimates that he had been a rod of chastisement in the Lord's hand, and when that purpose had been served, the rod itself would be broken by the voice of the Almighty: "And through the voice of the Lord shall the Assyrian be broken down that smote with a rod"—the latter was chastisement and discipline, the former destruction. Several of the psalms also contain allusions to the events of Hezekiah's reign connected with this great deliverance—the forty-fourth to Rabshakeh's blasphemy in the words, "The shame of my face hath covered me, for the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth;" the seventy third, a psalm of Asaph, to Sennacherib's destruction, "How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment I… As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou debt despise their image." In like manner the whole of the seventy-sixth applies. The third verse enumerates the peculiar weapons of the Assyrian, and affirms their destruction: "There brake he the arrows of the bow, shield and sword and battle;" the fifth and sixth depict that sleep of death that overtook them so calmly, so noiselessly, and so awfully: "They slept their sleep, and none of the men of might found their hands Both chariot and horse fell into a deep sleep;" the eighth verse adds the solemn awe in which all at last was hushed: "The earth feared, and was still." The ninety-first psalm, which mentions the terror by night and the pestilence walking in darkness, and thousands perishing, may, whatever was the actual occasion of its composition, apply to the destruction of the Assyrian army at the eventful time when Judah was so miraculously saved.
III. THE NAME OF THE THIRD DENOTES DEPLORABLE DEGRADATION. Before this third and last stage is reached there is a respite—some time intervenes.
1. Speaking after the manner of men, we may say with reverence that God seems to repent of his resolution to cast off his people; he shows reluctance to renounce them at once and forever. Hence the delay. So in this very book he questions with himself: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together." He pauses before proceeding to extremities.
2. Once they were the people of God, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; now they have lost that high position—they are degraded, and that degradation must ere long issue in destruction. God, addressing them directly and, as it were, face to face, tells them plainly," Ye are not my people, and I will not be your God." The word "God" is here supplied, and the original expression is peculiarly tender. It is literally, "I will not be yours—your Father and Friend, or your Husband and Head, or your Sovereign and Savior, or your Patron and Protector." "I will not be to you," as the words still more literally taken mean, "I will not be to you what I once was, what I long continued to be in spite of your numberless provocations, what I would still be but for your gross unfaithfulness, what you need no longer expect me to be in consequence of your base ingratitude. The bend is broken. I have no interest in you nor you in me; I have no honor from you, nor shall ye have benefit by me. You have withheld from me the observance that was duo to me and the obedience which I claimed; I shall withdraw all my mercies and loving-kindnesses from you. No more shall I send you my prophets, no more make known to you my promises; in a word," and including the whole, "I will no more be your God." Similar to the original words is that beautiful expression in Canticles, "My beloved is mine, and I am his" (ani ledodi vedodi li).
There is salvation in store for both Israel and Judah.
1. We must here premise our belief that the two divisions of the Hebrew people—the ten tribes and the two—have been long amalgamated. Even during the Captivity a considerable amalgamation of tribes may have taken place. Though we have the list of families that accompanied Zerubbabel and Ezra from Assyria and Media to Jerusalem, yet the tribal heads of those families are not given, as though their genealogy had been already lost. It has been conjectured, with some degree of probability, that the somewhat indefinite phrases, "Judah and Benjamin" are used by Ezra to denote "the more prominent actors;" while "Israel" designates "the whole nation collectively," including persons belonging to all the tribes. It is certainly remarkable that in the Book of Esther the Hebrews belonging to all the tribes are no longer called "children of Israel" or "children of Judah," but simply "Jews." But besides this fusion of tribes during the Captivity, there would be a considerable admixture of such Hebrews as remained behind with their heathen neighbors; this might be expected from their readiness to contract heathenish intermarriages even in Ezra's time. Many of the original stock of Israel may thus be found in Chaldea and the adjacent countries whither they had been carried captives, while others migrated into regions more remote. The so-called leer tribes may thus comprehend, not only those Israelites that were at so early a period as that of the Captivity incorporated with the children of Judah, but also those that intermingled with or were absorbed among the inhabitants of the Chaldean provinces, and whose descendants are represented by the Nestorians, Yezidees, and other tribes; and in case of those who had removed to greater distances, by the inhabitants of Afghanistan, the Jews of Malabar and elsewhere in India, the black Jews of Cochin China, the Jews of Tartary, and even the North American Indians.
2. This passage of Hoses before us, and that in the second chapter towards the end, which refer to the natural posterity of Abraham, consisting of Israel and Judah, and composing one nationality, are applied in the New Testament to Gentile believers. Hengstenberg draws attention to the paradoxical fact, that, notwithstanding the disinheritance of the natural Israel and in spite of their vast excision, yet "the number of the children of Israel should be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; who, from being not God's people, should be called sons of the living God; that the children of Judah and the children of Israel should be gathered together and appoint themselves one Head, and come up out of the land [of their captivity]; and that great should be this day of Jezreel [or sowing]." He then proceeds to explain this as "first fulfilled in the Messianic time, and as in part still to be fulfilled, when the family of Abraham receives, and will yet more fully receive, an innumerable increase, partly by the reception of an innumerable multitude of adopted sons [Gentiles], and partly by the exaltation of [Israelitish] sons in an inferior, to sons in the highest relation," in other words, by the incorporation of the multitudinous believing Gentries with the faithful remnant of Israel, thus constituting one sublime Israel of God; one family of Abraham, now the father of many nations, the heir of the world.
3. But the sense of the passage is not thus exhausted; more is to be expected. At present Gentiles supply the place of the rejected portion of the natural seed; the ultimate recovery, however, of this rejected and disinherited, because still unbelieving, portion itself is also included, as we believe, in this passage. But whether, with their conversion to God and submission to Messiah, they shall be restored to the "covenant land" from which their sin expelled them, is another question, and one not so easily answered. Indeed, there has been much conflict of opinion in regard to that answer. There is, at least, a presumption that with the pardon of their sin they shall be favored with the "ancient token of reconciliation—their return to the delightsome land."
4. In an able work on "The Future of the Jewish Nation," we find the following statement: "The connection uniformly held forth in Scripture, in the case of the Jews, between defection and dispersion, and between reconciliation and restoration, constitutes strong ground for expecting that the final conversion of the Jews will be accompanied by a final restoration to their fatherland." It is also added in the same work that the restoration advocated is "no voluntary return in a state of unbelief," but "a restoration regarded as God's public token of reconciliation to his ancient and now believing people … neither are we contending for such a restoration as involves separation and seclusion from other nations in the little nook of Palestine … but while the head-quarters, the proper home of the nation, will be in Palestine, there may be an abundant representation of the roving race in all the places of their present dispersion."
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN