Hosea 14:1

O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God,.... From whom they had revolted and backslidden; whose worship and service they had forsaken, and whose word and ordinances they had slighted and neglected,

O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.

HOSEA CHAPTER 14 An exhortation to repentance, . A promise of God’ s blessing, . O Israel, you that are the true Israel of God, you that are the remnant amidst so great a body of incurable rebels, return; repent ye thoroughly, not hypocritically, turn ye from all your sins in which with others you have been defiled, and turn to the Lord, the everlasting, living God, who is worthy to be worshipped and obeyed; your idols were never worth your love, but the Lord, the Fountain of being and life, is worthy of it. Turn to him as thy God, in covenant with thee, to get pardon for past sins according to covenant promise, to renew covenant for time to come, and to engage thyself sincerely and heartily to be his people. For thou hast fallen; thy sins against the Lord thy God have enkindled his wrath against thee, have involved thee in endless troubles, have turned thy prosperity into extreme adversity; sin hath cast thee from the height of glory to the depth of reproach and contempt, thus thou art fallen. By thine iniquity: it is the singular number, either because all their sins were so linked together they were as one huge mass of sin, or it refers particularly to their idolatry, which is by way of eminency, and above any one other sin a falling from God, and here punished with a fall into calamities.

Hosea 14:1 O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.Ver. 1. O Israel, return unto the Lord] Usque ad Dominum, all the way to God, as far as to the Lord: give not the half, but the whole turn; and take it for a mercy that you are yet called upon to return, and may be received; "that yet there is hope in Israel concerning this thing," Ezra 10:2. All the former part of the prophecy had been mostly denunciations; this last chapter is wholly consolatory; the Sun of Righteousness loves not to set in a cloud. Return unto the Lord thy God] He is yet thy God: no such argument for our turning to God as his turning to us, Zechariah 1:3. See the note there. Tantum velis et Deus tibi praeoccurret. If ye be willing and obedient ye shall eat, &c. The father’ s plenty brought home the prodigal; he had but a purpose to return, and his father met him, Isaiah 65:24. See Joe 2:12-13 Isaiah 55:6-7 Jeremiah 31:18 Hosea 3:5 Acts 2:38. This is the use we should make of mercy. Say not, He is my God, therefore I may presume upon him; but, he is mine, therefore I must return unto him. Argue from mercy to duty, and not to liberty, for that is the devil’ s logic, which the apostle holds unreasonable, yea, to a good heart impossible, Romans 6:1-2. His mercy is bounded with his truth, with which it therefore goes commonly coupled in Scripture. It is a sanctuary for the penitent, but not for the presumptuous. For thou hast fallen by thine iniquity] i.e. "Consumption is decreed, yet a remnant reserved," Isaiah 10:22-23. Thou hast fallen into great calamity, and that by thine iniquity, which puts a sting into thy misery. This it is fit thou shouldst be sensible of; for conviction is the first step to conversion. But if thou art fallen, wilt thou there lie and not rise again by repentance, and return to him that smiteth thee? wilt thou not submit to his justice, and implore his mercy? Here, then, is another motive to conversion; as indeed this verse abounds with arguments to that purpose, Pareus well observeth. First, thou art a prince of God, who hath greatly graced thee above all people: return to him therefore. 2. Thou hast run away from him by thine iniquity; and turned upon him the back, and not the face: return therefore. 3. He is the author of thy being and well-being. 4. He is God, to whom thou must either turn or burn for ever: aut poenitendum, aut pereundum; he can fetch in his rebels. 5. He is thy God in covenant with thee, and will accept of pence for pounds, desires for deeds, sincerity for perfection. 6. Thou hast fallen by thine iniquity; and yet wilt fall farther, and never rise again, as Amos 8:14, if thou stop not, step not back by repentance, and stir up thyself to take hold of God.

XIV. (1) Thy.—Tenderness and inextinguishable love are suggested by the use of the pronoun. “Repentance (say the Rabbis) presses right up to the Eternal Throne.”

CHAPTER XIV By the terrible denunciation of vengeance which concludes the preceding chapter, the prophet is led to exhort Israel to repentance, furnishing them with a beautiful form of prayer, very suitable to the occasion, 1-3. Upon which God, ever ready to pardon the penitent, is introduced making large promises of blessings, in allusion to those copious dews which refresh the green herbs, and which frequently denote, not only temporal salvation, but also the rich and refreshing comforts of the Gospel, 4-7. Their reformation from idolatry is foretold, and their consequent prosperity, under the emblem of a green flourishing fir tree, 8; but these promises are confined to those who may bring forth the fruits of righteousness, and the wicked are declared to have no share in them, 9. NOTES ON CHAP. XIV Verse 1. O Israel, return unto the Lord] These words may be considered as addressed to the people now in captivity; suffering much, but having still much more to suffer if they did not repent. But it seems all these evils might yet be prevented, though so positively predicted, if the people would repent and return; and the very exhortation to this repentance shows that they still had power to repent, and that God was ready to save them and avert all these evils. All this is easily accounted for on the doctrine of the contingency of events, i.e., the poising a multitude of events on the possibility of being and not being, and leaving the will of man to turn the scale; and that God will not foreknow a thing as absolutely certain, which his will has determined to make contingent. A doctrine against which some solemn men have blasphemed, and philosophic infidels declaimed; but without which fate and dire necessity must be the universal governors, prayer be a useless meddling, and Providence nothing but the ineluctable adamantine chain of unchangeable events; all virtue is vice, and vice virtue, or there is no distinction between them, each being eternally determined and unalterably fixed by a sovereign and uncontrollable will and unvarying necessity, from the operation of which no soul of man can escape, and no occurrence in the universe be otherwise than it is. From such blasphemy, and from the monthly publications which avouch it, good Lord, deliver us!

1. return … for thou hast fallen] To ‘stumble’ or to ‘fall’ means to be visited by a calamity (as Hosea 4:3, Hosea 5:5). Experience has shown the Israelites, to quote Jeremiah (Hosea 2:19), ‘what an evil and bitter thing it is to forsake Jehovah their God.’

O Israel, return - (now, quite) unto the Lord your God The heavy and scarcely interrupted tide of denunciation is now past.

1. Return — Israel was an apostate; had gone after the Baals. To enjoy again the divine favor the people must return to their own God, Jehovah, in obedience and love (compare Hosea 6:1; Joe 2:12; Amos 4:6 ff.).