And Jehovah said unto him, Call his name Jizreel; for yet a little, and I will visit the blood of Jizreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease.
Hosea's son carries a name that works as a verdict on Jehu — the king God once rewarded for destroying the house of Ahab at Jezreel. So why does God now charge that blood against Jehu's own family, and why does the whole northern kingdom fall with him?
The child's name is not just a label for a baby. It is a message about the nation's future.
The son she gives birth to is a sign. The name the prophet is to give him points to the judgment of God on the house of Jehu, and on the kingdom of Israel, which would cease to exist. In fact, after Jehu's family died out there were several more kings, but all was confusion in the kingdom of Israel — the kingdom was lost.
Jezreel was a place with a history of murder for gain. Ahab wanted Naboth's vineyard there. Naboth refused to sell, and it cost him his life. God later raised Jehu up to settle that account.
Through the cunning of Jezebel, and by the hand of certain worthless men, Naboth's blood is shed in Jezreel (1 Kings 21:13). Ahab seizes his inheritance, the inheritance of his fathers. For this deed the Lord, through His prophet, announces judgment on Ahab and his house. Blow after blow, He makes a full end of them... God calls out Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, to finish this judgment, to be the avenger of blood, and to cleanse the land that had been polluted with it (Num. 35:33). As his reward, God secures the throne of Israel to his family for four generations (2 Kings 10:30).
God had once told Jehu he had done well. But God's silence about the blood at Jezreel was not approval of everything Jehu did.
The Lord had kept silent about the blood Jehu shed at Jezreel; He had not spoken of it to anyone — not even to guilty Jehu. God had said to him, "You have done well in carrying out what is just in my eyes" (2 Kings 10:30), and had promised to reward him. So it might have seemed to Jehu that God approved everything he had done. Far from it! The Lord had indeed raised him up for judgment and approved him in that. But the time had come when this king's deceit and furious violence must be punished.
God weighed the deed, and He also weighed the heart behind it.
God, in His righteous judgment, used Jehu to deal with the wicked house of Ahab. But He did not overlook the mixed motives that drove Jehu. In carrying out the vengeance of the Lord, Jehu was indulging his own cruel heart for his own ends. If God has to deal in judgment, it is His strange work. If Jehu undertakes to deal with evil, it is to him a task he enjoys.
Darby puts the charge sharper still. Self-serving zeal is worse, not better, when it wears God's name.
In a word, nothing that comes from self is hidden from His eyes. It all gets exactly what it deserves — all the more because it hides behind the great name of the Lord.
The threat reaches past one family. Jehu's line ended with the murder of his descendant Zechariah, and the nation went down after it.
The murder of Zechariah ended the dynasty of Jehu — five generations in all, more than a hundred years. From the time of Jeroboam's death, decline set in, ending less than seventy years later in the kingdom's final overthrow. From this time on, prophetic ministry greatly increased. As an unknown writer says, "Such is the way of our gracious God: when judgment is near at hand, testimony is multiplied."
One sin Jehu left alone decided the outcome.
Jehu had no conscience about the sin of Jeroboam, so the Lord judged it in due time. God struck not only Jehu's house, but Israel. The kingdom was to pass away. It might linger a little while afterwards, but God had struck it. This is what is represented by Jezreel. God would scatter in due time.
The name itself holds two futures.
Jezreel is interpreted both as "God scatters" and "God sows." Hosea 1:4 refers to judgment on the house of Jehu and the house of Israel. Hosea 1:10-11 refers to blessing. Then it will be said of both Israel and Judah, "Children of the living God," and "great shall be the day of Jezreel."
- Name. The child is a sign: Jezreel announces judgment on Jehu's house and the end of the northern kingdom.
- Blood. Jezreel was where Naboth died for his vineyard — and where God recorded Jehu's own bloodshed against him.
- Motive. God approved the deed and still judged the heart. Zeal that serves self under God's name is judged all the more.
- End. Jehu's line closed with Zechariah. As judgment came near, God multiplied prophetic testimony.
- Sown. The same name means "God scatters" and "God sows." The place of heaviest judgment becomes the day of restoration.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jizreel.
Hosea's first son carries a name that is also a sentence of judgment: Jezreel. This verse says what that name will cost the northern kingdom. God will break its fighting strength in the same valley where its rulers had shed blood.
Writers explain why the bow, rather than the sword, stands for a nation's strength:
Throughout Scripture the bow is the symbol of strength to conquer the enemy. The sword fights hand to hand. The bow attacks from a distance and opposes the enemy's approach. The archer sees the enemy coming far off. He takes account of his movements and his plans. He brings him down before he has a chance to attack. The bow takes more skill than the sword. Above all it is the symbol of strength, because it takes strong arms and hands to draw a bow and use it well.
To break Israel's bow, then, is to end its ability to defend itself at all.
The valley has a history of battles, and a battle still to come:
The wide valley or plain in which the last-named city stood, in southern Galilee. People have called it the battlefield of Palestine. Barak won his victory there, and Josiah met his defeat there, Judges 5:19; 2 Chronicles 35:22. Megiddo is in the same area. It is also perhaps the place where the great battle of Armageddon will be fought. Revelation 16:16. It is a very fertile plain, and is now well cultivated (compare Hosea 2:22); Joshua 17:16; Judges 6:33; Hosea 1:5.
God names the plain where Israel had won its battles as the place where its strength will be broken.
The previous verse ties this to Jehu, the king who wiped out Ahab's house at Jezreel. Commentators read his zeal as self-serving, which is why the man God used is also the man God judges:
But in all this Jehu had himself in view. He pretended zeal for the Lord, while he was really satisfying his own desire. Ahab had coveted the vineyard of Naboth in Jezreel, close to his palace, and he shed the blood of the righteous to get it. In the same way Jehu loved power. For the sake of it — and not in the spirit of service to the Lord — he carried out God's judgment on the house of Ahab. And so in his turn, like Ahab, he is made to answer for the blood of Jezreel.
God had once approved this same king. That is what makes the sentence against him so striking:
The Lord had raised him up for judgment and approved him in that. Even so, the time had come when the deceit and the furious violence of this king must find their punishment... What a God is ours! Who else can weigh in the same balance both the acts He approves and those He condemns, and reward and punish them both?
Writers name whom God struck, and the power He used to do it:
God struck not only Jehu's house, but Israel. The kingdom was to pass, though it might linger for a little while afterwards; but God struck it. This is what Jezreel represents. God would scatter in due time. The Assyrian broke the power of Israel in the valley of Jezreel, later called Esdraelon. That valley was a scene of greed and blood from first to last.
The name Jezreel carries two meanings at once:
The Lord commands him to call this son "Jezreel." The name Jezreel also has a symbolic meaning. It means "God shall scatter" (Jeremiah 31:10); but it also means "God shall sow" (Zechariah 10:9). So Israel was to be scattered and sown among the nations.
By the end of the chapter the same name has changed direction:
"For great shall be the day of Jezreel." The name of Jezreel was once a term of reproach and the start of judgment. Now the grace of God turns it into a title of endless mercy. Then they will indeed be the seed of God — not for scattering only, but for the rich harvest of blessing that is to mark the coming day.
- Bow — the bow pictures a nation's strength to keep an enemy at a distance. God breaks it, and Israel can no longer defend itself.
- Blood — the judgment goes back to the blood Jehu shed at Jezreel. He claimed zeal for the Lord, but he served his own ambition.
- Balance — God weighs both in the same scales. He rewarded what He approved in Jehu, and punished the deceit and violence He condemned.
- Battlefield — the blow falls in the valley of Jezreel, the plain of Israel's battles. The Assyrian is the one who broke Israel's power there.
- Blessing — Jezreel means both "God shall scatter" and "God shall sow." The name that opens the judgment ends as the name of Israel's harvest of mercy.
And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. And he said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruhamah; for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, so that I should pardon them.
Hosea's second child is a daughter, and God chooses her name. The name is the message. It raises two questions: has God finished with Israel for good, and why does Judah keep the mercy Israel loses?
The New Testament carries her name over, and gives it in two shades.
Next a daughter is born. Here "bore him," as found in verse 3, is left out. The prophet receives a name for her — Lo-ruhamah, which means "not having received mercy." The Holy Spirit renders this passage in two interesting ways in the New Testament. Romans 9:25 gives it as "not beloved." First Peter 2:10 gives it as "has not received mercy." Love and mercy were now to be withdrawn from Israel. They were to be taken away completely.
Another writer ties the name to what God was about to do, and names the one nation He spared.
A symbolic name given to Hosea's daughter. The context shows its meaning to be "not having received mercy," as in the margin. It was given to stress that God was going to punish the people of Israel and take them out of the land. Judah, though, still had His mercy for a time.
The first child's name, Jezreel, announced judgment on one royal house. This second name widens it to the whole northern kingdom.
Then a daughter appears. Her name was to be called Lo-ruhamah — a name that expresses the absence of pity toward the people. No more mercy was to be shown… Jezreel was only the beginning of the judgments of God. "I will utterly take them away." So it was not only the collapse of the house of Jehu. Israel as a whole was to be swept out of the land. It would never be restored again as a separate nation.
(Kelly quotes an older translation, "I will utterly take them away." The ESV reads "to forgive them at all.")
How final is this sentence? One writer answers with a single exception.
God commands the prophet to call her Lo-ruhamah (that is, "no more mercy"). God carried out judgment on Israel. And this judgment was final — apart from sovereign grace, which He kept back for the last days. There was no longer any room for God's patience toward the kingdom of Israel. God's power would still preserve Judah.
The next verse spares Judah, and says how God will do it. History soon proved it.
Then the house of Judah is mentioned. They will be saved by the Lord their God, because He has mercy on them. Their salvation was not by bow, by sword, or by battle, horses and horsemen. Only a little later the Assyrian came before the gates of Jerusalem. He was God's instrument in carrying out judgment on Israel. But Jerusalem was saved just as predicted here, not by bow or sword. The angel of the Lord struck down an army of 185,000 in one night.
Peter picks up this language and turns it around for people who now belong to God.
"Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy" (1 Peter 2:10). This is a word from Hosea 2. Because of their wickedness and sin, God had said that Israel should not get mercy and were not His people (Hosea 1:6)… Despite their sin, disobedience and unfaithfulness — and My judgment too — I will bring them into blessing later on, God says. In the very spot where they were judged, there they will be blessed. Judgment has gone by, and mercy triumphs over judgment, for even disobedience cannot frustrate the purposes of God in grace.
This sentence reaches further than Israel. Romans uses it to include Gentiles — people outside Israel.
The prophecies clearly apply only to Israel. Yet it is Israel at the same distance from God as though they had been Gentiles: "not My people." If God could have mercy on Israel after declaring them "not My people," it plainly follows that He could be merciful to Gentiles too. They were in exactly the same class.
- Named — Lo-ruhamah means "not having received mercy." The child's name is God's verdict, given later as "not beloved" and "has not received mercy."
- Removed — with mercy withdrawn, Israel was swept out of the land and never restored as a separate kingdom. Jezreel was only the start.
- Reserved — the judgment was final except for sovereign grace, which God kept back for the last days.
- Spared — Judah received the mercy Israel lost. God saved them without bow or sword, as the Assyrian army found out in a single night.
- Reversed — mercy triumphs over judgment. Those told "no mercy" receive mercy, and by the same logic God's mercy reaches Gentiles too.