9 So I will take away again my grain in its time and my wine, and I will take away my wool and my linen with which her body might have been covered.
For fear that I may take away her robe from her, making her uncovered as in the day of her birth; making her like a waste place and a dry land, causing her death through need of water.
In that day the Lord will take away the glory of their foot-rings, and their sun-jewels, and their moon-ornaments, The ear-rings, and the chains, and the delicate clothing, The head-bands, and the arm-chains, and the worked bands, and the perfume-boxes, and the jewels with secret powers, The rings, and the nose-jewels, The feast-day dresses, and the robes, and the wide skirts, and the handbags, The looking-glasses, and the fair linen, and the high head-dresses, and the veils. And in the place of sweet spices will be an evil smell, and for a fair band a thick cord; for a well-dressed head there will be the cutting-off of the hair, and for a beautiful robe there will be the clothing of sorrow; the mark of the prisoner in place of the ornaments of the free. Your men will be put to the sword, and your men of war will come to destruction in the fight. And in the public places of her towns will be sorrow and weeping; and she will be seated on the earth, waste and uncovered.
For you have not given honour to the God of your salvation, and have not kept in mind the Rock of your strength; for this cause you made a garden of Adonis, and put in it the vine-cuttings of a strange god; In the day of your planting you were watching its growth, and in the morning your seed was flowering: but its fruit is wasted away in the day of grief and bitter sorrow.
Now, then, my hand is stretched out against you, cutting down your fixed amount, and I have given you up to the desire of your haters, the daughters of the Philistines who are shamed by your loose ways.
I will give you into their hands, and your arched room will be overturned and your high places broken down; they will take your clothing off you and take away your fair jewels: and when they have done, you will be uncovered and shamed.
And again the king of the north will get together an army greater than the first; and he will make an attack on him at the end of years, with a great army and much wealth.
For they have been planting the wind, and their fruit will be the storm; his grain has no stem, it will give no meal, and if it does, a strange nation will take it.
May it not be that he will again let his purpose be changed and let a blessing come after him, even a meal offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?
And their wealth will be violently taken away, and their houses will be made waste: they will go on building houses and never living in them, and planting vine-gardens but not drinking the wine from them.
Much has been planted, but little got in; you take food, but have not enough; you take drink, but are not full; you are clothed, but no one is warm; and he who gets payment for his work, gets it to put it into a bag full of holes. This is what the Lord of armies has said: Give thought to your ways. Go up to the hills and get wood and put up the house; and I will take pleasure in it and be honoured, says the Lord. You were looking for much, and it came to little; and when you got it into your house, I took it away with a breath. Why? says the Lord of armies. Because of my house which is a waste, while every man takes care of the house which is his. For this cause the heaven over you is kept from giving dew, and the earth from giving her fruit. And by my order no rain came on the land or on the mountains or the grain or the wine or the oil or the produce of the earth or on men or cattle or on any work of man's hands.
How, when anyone came to a store of twenty measures, there were only ten: when anyone went to the wine-store to get fifty vessels full, there were only twenty. And I sent burning and wasting and a rain of ice-drops on all the works of your hands; but still you were not turned to me, says the Lord.
Though Edom says, We are crushed down but we will come back, building up the waste places; this is what the Lord of armies has said: They may put up buildings, but I will have them pulled down; and they will be named The land of evil-doing, and The people against whom the Lord keeps his wrath for ever.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Hosea 2
Commentary on Hosea 2 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 2
The scope of this chapter seems to be much the same with that of the foregoing chapter, and to point at the same events, and the causes of them. As there, so here,
Hsa 2:1-5
The first words of this chapter some make the close of the foregoing chapter, and add them to the promises which we have here of the great things God would do for them. When they shall have appointed Christ their head, and centered in him, then let them say to one another, with triumph and exultation (let the prophets say it to them, so the Chaldee-Comfort you, comfort you, my people, is now their commission), "say to them, Ammi, and Ruhamah; call them so again, for they shall no longer lie under the reproach and doom of Lo-ammi and Lo-ruhamah; they shall now be my people again, and shall obtain mercy.' God's spiritual Israel, made up of Jews and Gentiles without distinction, shall call one another brethren and sisters, shall own one another for the people of God and beloved of him, and, for that reason, shall embrace one another, and stir up one another both to give thanks for and to walk worthy of this common salvation which they partake of. Or rather, because the following words seem to have a coherence with these, these also are designed for conviction and humiliation. The mother (v. 2) seems to be the same with the brethren and sisters (v. 1), the church of the ten tribes, the body of the people, who were brethren, and in a special manner with the heads and leaders, who were as the mother by whom the rest were brought up and nursed. But who are the children that must plead with their mother thus? Either,
Hsa 2:6-13
God here goes on to threaten what he would do with this treacherous idolatrous people; and he warns that he may not wound, he threatens that he may not strike. If he turn not, he will whet his sword (Ps. 7:12); but, if he turn, he will sheathe it. They did not turn, and therefore all this came upon them: and its being threatened before shows that it was the execution of a divine sentence upon them for their wickedness; and it is written for admonition to us.
Hsa 2:14-23
The state of Israel ruined by their own sin did not look so black and dismal in the former part of the chapter, but that the state of Israel, restrained by the divine grace, looks as bright and pleasant here in the latter part of the chapter, and the more surprisingly so as the promises follow thus close upon the threatenings; nay, which is very strange, they are by a note of connexion joined to, and inferred from, that declaration of their sinfulness upon which the threatenings of their ruin are grounded: She went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the Lord; therefore I will allure her. Fitly therefore is that therefore which is the note of connexion immediately followed with a note of admiration: Behold I will allure her! When it was said, She forgot me, one would think it should have followed, "Therefore I will abandon her, I will forget her, I will never look after her more.' No, Therefore I will allure her. Note, God's thoughts and ways of mercy are infinitely above ours; his reasons are all fetched from within himself, and not from any thing in us; nay, his goodness takes occasion from man's badness to appear so much the more illustrious, Isa. 57:17, 18. Therefore, because she will not be restrained by the denunciations of wrath, God will try whether she will be wrought upon by the offers of mercy. Some think it may be translated, Afterwards, or nevertheless, I will allure her. It comes all to one; the design is plainly to magnify free grace to those on whom God will have mercy purely for mercy's sake. Now that which is here promised to Israel is,