Hosea 11:10

They shall walk after the Lord,.... That is, after the Messiah, who is Jehovah our righteousness; that Jehovah the Jews pierced, and now shall mourn at the sight of, being converted to him; for these

They shall walk after the LORD: he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.

They, whom infinite mercy spareth, the choice remnant, shall walk after the Lord; shall hear and obey, worship and depend on the Lord, on the Messiah, of whom these and the words of the next verse do certainly speak. They refer also to the return out of captivity, in both history and type, of our deliverance out of spiritual and eternal captivity. He shall roar like a lion; Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, shall send out his gospel: this is meant by the lion’ s roaring, , of whom it is observed, that he doth by roaring gather his whelps and others of his kind to the prey: by the mighty voice of the Lord in the gospel, the elect shall be gathered to partake of eternal life. Then the children shall tremble; the Spirit by its power awakening them to the sight of sin, shall make them fear and tremble, from the west, to the ends of the earth. This is the mystical sense; yet the literal, I think, refers to the return of the Jews out of captivity, when many out of Assyria and Egypt returned, and some report one hundred thousand from Ethiopia Cusses, and the parts toward Arabia; and possibly this hath particular respect to Darius’ s decree, on the behalf of those that followed Haggai and Zechariah’ s counsel, finished the temple, restored the worship of God, reformed strange and unlawful marriages, paid their tithes, &c.; in these they followed the Lord; and Darius made a decree for them, terrible to the children of the west, as the roaring of a lion: Let this work go forward, , &c.; who dares to hinder, let timber be taken out of his house, and a gallows made thereof, and such be hanged thereon, ,12. All this filled the inhabitants of those parts with great fear, when God thus gathered his dispersed ones: but what I conjecture at I do submit to better judgments.

Hosea 11:10 They shall walk after the LORD: he shall roar like a lion: when he shall roar, then the children shall tremble from the west.Ver. 10. They shall walk after the Lord] Powerfully calling them by his Word and Spirit, going before them, and bringing up the rear, Isaiah 3:12; their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them, Micah 2:13. There was a time when they fled from God, Hosea 7:13, and said, "I will go after my lovers," &c. Hosea 2:5-7. Now they are of another mind and other manners; they shall walk after the Lord, non pedibus sed affectibus; they shall be carried after him with strength of desire and delight, which he shall work in them; they shall follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, Revelation 14:4. God’ s people are said in Scripture to walk before him in godly sincerity, to walk with him in a humble familiarity, to walk after him in a holy conformity, yielding unto him the obedience of faith. As Israel in the wilderness, so must we, follow God and the line of his law, though it seem to lead us in and out, backward and forward (as them), as if he were treading a maze. He shall roar like a lion] By the preaching of the gospel he shall shake heaven and earth. The voice of the gospel is, repent. Aut poenitendum, aut pereundum, except ye repent ye shall all perish. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned," was a terrible voice, Mark 16:16. Of the lion it is reported, that he roareth so fiercely that the rest of the creatures stand amazed; and that, whereas his own whelps come dead into the world, he roareth over them and reviveth them. Afterwards, when he meeteth with prey, he roareth for them to come about him. Let this be applied to the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Confer Joe 3:16. Then the children shall tremble from the west] The children of grace, Deuteronomy 14:1, shall join themselves in spirit to the communion of the Church from all the ends of the world, where they have been scattered; they shall serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling. The ancient Hebrews applied this promise to the coming of the Messiah; only they dreamed of an earthly kingdom of his, as did also the disciples, being soured with the leaven of the Pharisees. Others think it to be a prophecy of the conversion and calling of the Jews, to be accomplished in the last days; as also of the general spreading of the gospel, and gathering of the elect, far and wide, from one end of the heavens to another. And this they call the time of the restitution of all things.

(10) Render, They shall go up after Jehovah, who roars as a lion; yea, he shall roar so that the children, &c. Lions accompanied Egyptian monarchs to the battle-field. Read the picturesque description of Rameses II. in his battle with the Kheta, by George Ebers in Uarda. “West” means the coast and islands of the Levant. Tremble—i.e., come with an awe-stricken joy to the voice of the Divine summons.

Verse 10. They shall walk after the Lord] They shall discern the operations of his providence, when, He shall roar like a lion] When he shall utter his majestic voice, Cyrus shall make his decree. The people shall tremble - be in a state of commotion; every one hurrying to avail himself of the opportunity to return to his own land.

8–11. The prophet cannot believe in a final rejection of Israel (comp. Hosea 13:14). He speaks as if Jehovah had at first contemplated this. Evidently there was a conflict in his own mind between the ideas of justice and love. Justice seemed to demand that all relations between Jehovah and Israel should be broken off; love remonstrated with the assurance of its undecayed healing faculty (Hosea 14:4). Both justice and love were divine; hence it seemed that there must be a conflict even in the mind of Jehovah. Let us not however presume to deduce a ‘doctrine’ from Hosea’s description of his mental mood. His final intuition alone is his legacy to the Church; not the inward struggle out of which he triumphantly emerged.

They shall walk after the Lord - Not only would God not destroy them all, but a remnant of them should “walk after the Lord,” i. e., they shall believe in Christ. The Jews of old understood this of Christ.

10, 11. No promise is made that judgment will be withheld entirely. It must come, but it will not result in destruction.