God's mercifulness and Israel's sinfulness are brought into contrast.
Some are disposed to regard the woman mentioned in this chapter as identical with Gomer, whom the prophet had previously made his wife; and that she had in the mean time forsaken her husband the prophet, and had formed an adulterous connection with another man: while others regard the command of God to the prophet and his conduct in compliance therewith in the light of a new transaction with a different individual. In either case the whole is not an actual occurrence, but only a symbolical representation.
I. THE LESSONS OF THIS CHAPTER ARE MIDWAY BETWEEN THE PUNISHMENT THREATENED AND THE PROMISE VOUCHSAFED. Calvin has plainly pointed out the position of this chapter in the series of God's dealings with Israel. "It was God's purpose," he says, "to keep in firm hope the minds of the faithful during the exile, lest, being overwhelmed with despair, they should wholly faint. This prediction occupies a middle place between the denunciation of the prophet previously pronounced, and the promise of pardon. It was a dreadful thing that God should divorce his people and cast away the Israelites as spurious children; yet a consolation was afterwards added. But lest the Israelites should think that God would immediately, as on the first day, be so propitious to them as to visit them with no chastisement, it was the prophet's design expressly to correct this mistake; as though he said, 'God will indeed receive you again, but in the mean time a chastisement is prepared for you, which by its intenseness would break down your spirits, were it not that this comfort will ease you, and that is that God, although he punishes you for your sins, yet continues to provide for your salvation, and to be as it were your Husband.'"
II. GOD'S LOVE TO ISRAEL UNMERITED AS WELL AS UNREQUITED. The prophet's treatment of the woman whom he was to take or had taken to be his wife evinced extreme forbearance and exceeding tenderness. He loved her before her fall,—this was natural enough; he loved her during and notwithstanding her fall,—this was not to be expected; he continued to love her after her fall,—this is contrary to all the ordinary feelings and instincts of humanity. This continued affection was designed, as it was calculated, to win her back from the error and evil of her ways. But where is the man who under ordinary circumstances would act so? Where is the husband that would treat a worthless wife with such mildness and compassion? But what man cannot find in his heart to do, what man cannot bring himself to do, God does in his treatment of Israel and in his dealings with sinners in general; "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Notwithstanding all God's love to his people Israel, from the very commencement of their national existence they showed a special proneness to apostasy, readily and recklessly turning aside to idolatrous worship; yet God's love continued through it all, and outlived it all. It was love to the unlovable and unloving, to the undeserving and ungrateful; the current of his love runs on like the river broad and deep, which never ceases in its course till its waters form part of" the shining levels of the sea."
III. THE ACCOMPANIMENTS OF IDOLATRY HAVE A SEDUCTIVE TENDENCY. Idolatry was usually associated with voluptuousness and sensuality; and indulgences of this sort tended, no doubt, to attract many votaries, and served as inducements to idol-worship. Whether we" take flagons of wine" to be the right rendering of the original, as the Authorized Version does, or rather "raisin-cakes," the nature of the attraction will be much the same—fondness for self-indulgence. The Levitical priests were forbidden the use of wine when they ministered before the Lord; the Nazarites were total abstainers all the time of their vow; but the worshippers of idols—priests and people alike—am represented as drinking bowls or flagons of wine. Raisin-cakes, sweet and luscious, formed parts of idolatrous repasts, and served as appetizing morsels in idol-feasts and for idol-worshippers. How like the seductive pleasures of sin in general! But they neither last long nor satisfy while they do last. The meat offerings of Mosaic ritual were of a severer sort, and less calculated to gratify the taste and please the palate.
IV. THE MERCIFUL PROVISION MADE FOR ISRAEL IN THE SEASON OF HER SEPARATION. If the prophet had already espoused the woman whom he is directed to love, the pieces of silver and measures of barley could neither be dowry, nor purchase, nor present in any proper sense. How, then, are we to understand the matter? Probably we may regard the expenditure here indicated as a suitable allowance for her support—a sufficient maintenance for her during the period of her separation from her husband. She may now be conceived as living apart from her husband—shut out a mensa eta thoro, as it is said, and so deprived of her proper means of subsistence. During this sad state of things, which her own guilt has brought about, she is still the prophet's wife, and neither forgotten nor forsaken by him. True, in one way she is unpitied and undeserving of pity, because of her vileness, yet in another she is not entirely bereft of her husband's affection; in spite of her grievous departure from the path of rectitude and virtue, his love follows her, still striving for her reformation and yearning for her restoration. Meantime he provides her with nearly fifty bushels of barley for food, and with nearly two pounds sterling in cash for raiment and other necessaries of life. The money and grain together would afford a sufficient, though not very sumptuous, support. Thus God's treatment of his Israel is symbolized. Though they were separated by sin from his immediate presence, and though they had forfeited his favors and proved themselves unworthy of his love, yet he has not entirely and finally cast them off. His eye still rests upon them; his mercy provides for them in their state of isolation; they are deprived indeed of the honor and dignity they once enjoyed and might still have retained, and they possess no longer the means of living in luxury and splendor as aforetime, yet they are allowed the necessary means of subsistence and an humble maintenance, with the prospect and for the purpose of their ultimate restoration to full favor, and unstinted possession of all the benefits and blessings still in store for them.
V. ISRAEL'S SOLITARY AND SEQUESTERED STATE. She is doomed to sit in solitary widowhood. Restrained from all licentious intercourse on the one hand, she is not restored to conjugal rights on the other. She was not to be a harlot, neither was she to be a husband's. That husband, however, still regards himself bound to her, and while she abides for him he promises her a like return: "So will I likewise be to thee-ward." He would stilt have regard to her and respect for her; feelings of kindness would animate him towards her; his guardian care and watchful providence would still be exercised on her behalf and for her benefit. The meaning and application of Hosea 3:3 is well given in the following comment: "He, his affections, interest, thoughts, would be directed towards her. The word "towards" expresses regard, yet distance also. Just so would God, 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 failing wholly from him into the gulf of irreligion and infidelity." Sin is the cloud that darkens our sky and shuts out the bright light of our heavenly Father's countenance; yet behind the dark cloud of afflictive providences he hides a shining face.
VI. THE CONDITIONS OF THE COVENANT WHICH GOD MAKES WITH HIS PEOPLE.
1. We see here the Divine considerateness. God might have made out a bill of divorce, and dismissed them at once and forever. He does not deal with us with the rigor of law or in the strictness of justice, but according to the multitude of his tender mercies and loving-kindnesses.
2. The condition he proposes to us is that we be to him a people, and he will be to us a God. When punished for sin it is wise and well to justify God's ways with us; we must wait with patience, and that perhaps for many days, until God again lift on us the light of his countenance. But besides all this, we must not turn again to folly, as Israel was strictly enjoined to eschew harlotry in the future; in other words, to shun every form of idolatry in all time to come. So, in dependence on Divine grace, we must resolve to follow the Lord fully, not wandering in the wilderness, not worshipping the idols of our own pride, or passion, or sensuality, or sin of any sort, and never more to go a-whoring from our God.
3. Another condition of the covenant between the sovereign and his once rebel but now repentant subjects is implied in this passage, and well stated in the following words: "If they will be for God to serve him, he will be for them to save them. Let them renounce and abjure all rivals with God for the throne in the heart and devote themselves entirely to him, and him only, and he will be to them a God all-sufficient. If we be faithful and constant to God in a way of duty, and will never leave nor forsake him, he will be so to us in a way of mercy, and will never leave nor forsake us."
The applicability of these verses.
There is an important question in connection with these verses which presses for solution, and that is—Are the children of Israel the descendants of the ten tribes exclusively? Or has the expression, as used by the prophet, that wider and larger signification in which we popularly employ it, namely, as including all the descendants of Jacob or Israel, in other words, all the Jewish or Hebrew race? These questions involve a prior consideration. The ten tribes were carried away into captivity and left in the lands of Assyria, B.C. 722 according to the common chronology; the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin were carried into captivity in Babylon about one hundred and thirty years subsequently. After a lapse of seventy years' captivity the latter were permitted to return to their own land, and large numbers availed themselves of that permission. But what became of the ten tribes of Israel? They are still spoken of by some as the lost tribes; some, again, identify them with the Afghans; others with the American Indians. Such theories are easily enough formed, but can scarcely be said to be founded on facts. It is admitted that the fifty thousand who returned belonged mainly to the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while many of those two tribes remained behind in Babylon, and comparatively few of the members of other tribes joined their brethren in the return to Palestine. Where, then, are we to look for the main body of the ten tribes? We will try to answer this interesting and important question as best we can, and with a view to its bearing on the subject before us. After the restoration of the temple and city of Jerusalem, we find that there was an immense increase of the inhabitants of Palestine in the time and under the rule of the Maccabees. May we not regard it as more than probable that lingerers out of all the tribes were attracted to their native land after the restoration of its capital, and the revival of the country's prosperity? But large bodies still remained behind in the lands of their dispersion; there would be a natural tendency on the part of the remnants of the two tribes and the ten to gravitate towards each other. Thus they may be supposed to have amalgamated. Hence James addresses his Epistle to "the twelve tribes which are of the dispersion," that is, "scattered abroad," according to the Authorized Version; and Paul says, "Unto which promise our twelve tribes instantly serving God day and night, hope to come." We may cite, as confirmatory, the opinion of the late Dr. M'Caul. He says, "I feel strongly inclined to the opinion that the ten tribes are now found mingled with the other two. I do not mean that the ten tribes returned from Babylon, for in Ezra and Nehemiah we are told particularly who did return, but that the main body of the Jews, who remained in Babylon, who were dispersed in Egypt and other countries, and who never returned, naturally mingled with their brethren of the other tribes, and that this intermixture increased after the destruction of the second temple." Their return to the house of David, intimated in verse 5, presupposes some such reunion with their brethren as that of which we speak. We are, therefore, inclined to believe that the Judahites as well as the Israelites are comprehended in this plural patronymic of "the children of Israel."
I. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE CONDITION OF THE JEWS WITH THAT HERE SPECIFIED. The state of the Jewish people at the present day, as well as during centuries past, corresponds most exactly with that here described by Hosea. And where, it may be asked, is it possible to find any other nation whose condition—political and religious—is the same or even similar? Their condition is precisely what is here described with respect to Church and state, or public worship and civil government. No doubt in their dispersion they are subject to the king or rulers of the countries where they dwell; they have kings over them, but not of their own nation; they have laws by which they are governed, but those laws are not their own, nor the laws which God had given them. They have no king nor rulers to defend them from aggression without, nor king and high officers of state as the legislative and executive powers within. Kings of countries where they have sojourned have been mean enough and wicked enough to rob and plunder and oppress them cruelly.
II. THE CONFUSION OF THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES. "Here," says an old commentator, "is much privation—six 'withouts:'
but the last verse makes up for all: 'They shall return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king.' These 'withouts' show the wonderfully confused estate that Israel was to be in for many days, many years, both in regard of their civil and of their Church estate." They had corrupted their way, setting up idols in Dan the place of judgment, and in Bethel the house of God; and that corruption now ends in confusion of both their civil and Church estate. They had combined the ordinances of God with their own devices, that is, the sacrifice and ephod with the image and the teraphim; now they are deprived of both.
HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN