And I will visit upon her the days of the Baals, wherein she burned incense to them, and decked herself with her rings and jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith Jehovah.
Hosea pictures Israel as a wife who left her husband. This verse is God's sentence on her: He will call her to account for every day she gave to the Baals, and the charge ends on one wound — she forgot Him.
The picture is not unique to Hosea, and it does not end in judgment.
The figure of marriage is used again and again for the relation between Jehovah and Israel, a people brought into close and unique attachment to Himself. This is true both in the history of the past and in the prophecy of the future… In Hosea 2, God judges them for their wanderings from Him as adultery. At the same time He foretells the return of the nation to her "first husband," as the result of His dealings with her in the time to come.
Older translations read "the days of Baalim," and the quote below keeps that older wording. The name has an everyday meaning.
Baal means "husband" and "lord," with the main idea of ownership… Yet it has no necessary bad sense either. In the sense of "husband," God uses it of His own relation to the people: "your Maker is your baal"; "though I was a baal to them" (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 31:32). Still, God rejects the word in the end. Through Hosea He says, "You shall call me Ishi [my husband], and you shall no more call me Baali: for I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth."
The punishment reaches the days themselves, and the whole life built around them.
Verses 9-13 make the punishment fully known. She is to be left alone. The gifts and blessings will be taken away. Her shameful behaviour will be exposed, all her joy will stop, and God would bring upon her in judgment the days of the Baals, spent in immoral worship.
The jewellery she wore for her lovers came from the God she left.
Israel had credited the Baals with the blessings Jehovah had given them. Jehovah said He would strip them of those mercies to show them their folly.
Regret did come. Commentators explain why it never held.
There was remorse at times, a little revival now and then even in Israel. But the people never truly repented, and so never gave up their course of sin. Their good resolutions were the proof of God's goodness and the fruit of His testimony, but they never produced a thorough repentance in Israel… So everything was turned to the service of idols, and credited to the favour of false gods.
The list of sins closes on forgetting. One writer links that forgetting to the judgment, then shows where God takes her next.
She did not know that it was Jehovah who filled her with this abundance. So He would take it from her, and leave her naked and destitute. He would visit upon her all the days of the Baals, during which Israel had served them and had forgotten Jehovah. But He would bring this unfaithful woman into the wilderness, where she must learn that these false gods could not enrich her. There Jehovah Himself, who had drawn her in, would speak to her heart in grace.
The next verse opens with a "therefore" that turns everything around. This, writers say, is how God still works.
The very scene of judgment will be the very starting-point of recovery. It must be out of "Achor" — that is, out of trouble — that the deliverance comes; it cannot come in any other way. That is the way He will work with Israel in time to come, and in the same way now in the souls of any who have wandered from Him.
- Relationship — God treats Israel's idolatry as adultery inside a marriage. The return He promises is a return to her "first husband."
- Ownership — "Baal" means husband and lord, with the idea of ownership. God later refuses that title for Himself.
- Gifts — The jewels she wore for her lovers came from Him. He takes back the blessings she credited to idols, to show her folly.
- Forgetting — The charge climbs from feast days and incense to the real wound: she forgot Him. Those forgotten days are what He brings up.
- Recovery — The sentence is not the end. The place of judgment becomes the starting point of recovery — for Israel, and for anyone who has wandered.
Therefore behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart.
God has just announced judgment on a nation that behaves like an unfaithful wife. Then the whole passage turns on one word — "Therefore" — and what follows is not more punishment but courtship.
Notice who receives this promise. God speaks it to a people He has already judged.
In this passage from the prophet, Israel is not just guilty. She has already gone through judgment. God had declared that He would no longer show mercy... and that Israel was no longer His people. But afterwards, once the judgment had fallen, He returns to His unchangeable purposes of grace. He allures Israel as a forsaken wife, and gives her the valley of Achor for a door of hope. That was the valley of trouble, where Achan was stoned — the first judgment on unfaithful Israel after they entered the promised land. For judgment is changed into grace, and God begins everything again on a new principle. It was as though Israel had come up out of Egypt again, but on an entirely new principle. He betroths her to Himself for ever — in righteousness, in judgment, in grace, in mercy — and all is blessing. Then He calls her "Ruhama," that is, "the object of mercy," and "Ammi," "my people."
God does not order her back, and He does not drag her back. This is how a dishonoured Husband speaks when He still means to win His wife back.
The prophet speaks of Israel as an unfaithful wife. He shows the unmatched love with which her dishonoured Lord not only receives her, but woos her to return to Him. He says: "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her."
God does not speak to her heart in the comfortable city. He takes her out where nothing competes with His voice. One writer, using an older wording — "speak to her heart" — sees Him still working this way.
Long centuries before, the Lord had said to the prophet, "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart" (Hosea 2:14). As one has said, "There was no talking to her heart... in the fair and flourishing city... but out in the cold, hungry, empty wilderness, He allured her," there to speak to the conscience and win the heart. And today how often He takes this way with sinners, and, indeed, with saints. We seek comfort and ease, and too often our hearts grow cold and careless. Then the Lord breaks in on our ease with sorrow and trial, to speak to our hearts and draw us to Himself.
God's promise is to speak to her heart. What opens a heart is love, not threat. The same writer points to the look that recovered Peter, and to the word Joseph spoke to the brothers who sold him.
Was it not a look of love that recovered Peter?... Peter discovered by that look that his denial of the Lord had not altered the Lord's love to him. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Love broke him down. Our sins broke His heart, but His love breaks our hearts. How did Joseph dispel the lingering doubts in his erring brothers, who had treated him so shamefully? We read "he comforted them and spoke to their hearts" (Gen. 50:21, margin). He confirmed his love to them.
The next verse names the place He leads her to: the Valley of Achor, where Achan was judged in Joshua's day. Watch what the relationship becomes when it starts again there. (The quote below uses an older translation, which reads "sing" where the ESV reads "answer.")
Still, Jehovah remembers mercy. Right after this He announces that He will allure her. Though He leads her into the wilderness, He will speak soothingly to her... The very place that was once a door of judgment under Joshua becomes a door of hope in the prophetic vision. "And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt." And this freshness of renewed youth will not fade away as it did then. "And it shall be at that day, says Jehovah, that you shall call me Ishi, and shall no longer call me Baali" — that is, "husband" in love, not just "lord".
- Therefore. The promise comes after the judgment, not instead of it. Only when the sentence has fallen does God return to grace and begin again on a new principle.
- Allure. The dishonoured Husband does not just take His wife back. He wins her, and the winning is His work, not hers.
- Wilderness. He could not reach her heart in the comfortable city. In the desert nothing competes with His voice.
- Heart. Love does the breaking, not threats. Joseph spoke to the hearts of the brothers who wronged him; God speaks to hers.
- Hope. The valley of judgment becomes the door of hope. God calls her "my people" again, and she calls Him "my husband," not "my lord." This renewed youth will not fade.