Hosea 3

I will say to them, Thou art My people, and they shall say, Thou art my God. That mutual interest and possession is the very foundation of all our comfort. He first says, My people, calls them so and makes them to be so; and then they say, my God. It is, therefore, a relation that shall hold and shall not break, because it is founded upon His choice who changes not. The tenor of an external covenant with a people, as the Jews found, is such as may be broken by man’s unfaithfulness, though God remain faithful and true. But the new covenant of grace makes all sure on all hands and cannot be broken; the Lord not only keeping His own part, but likewise performing ours, in us and for us, and establishing us, that as He departs not from us first, so we shall not depart from Him. I will betroth thee to Me, says He there, forever (verse 19). It is an indissoluble marriage that is not in danger to be broken either by divorce or death. Leighton.

Chap. 3:2. This buying does not necessarily forbid the supposition that she had been his wife before. It does imply that she had forfeited that relation, and could properly return only as one justly divorced. To show this seems to be the chief or sole intent in this second verse. H. C.—This treatment of Gomer imaged forth the care which Jehovah would take of His people even at the time when they should seem to be no longer the objects of His love. He would keep them in being, and provide for their necessary maintenance, though not in the honor or luxury of a nation enjoying His full favor; and this with a view to their being ultimately restored to the complete possession of their covenanted blessings. B. C.

3. Probably the true sense of the verse is better given by omitting the word “another,” which has nothing to correspond to it in the Hebrew. “Thou shalt not be for man”—any man—the special point being to represent a state of Israel described in the next verse as without any worship of either the true God or idols. H. C.

In the covenant of grace, God is ours, and we are His. He makes over Himself to us; and so, by an entire resignation, we are given up to Him. The covenant is like a conjugal contract, and may be illustrated by that of the prophet Hosea (3:3), “Thou shalt be for me, and I will be for Thee.” God makes over Himself and all His power and mercy to be lievers; so that no dispensation comes to them but in the way of blessing! T. Manton.

4. It is a very remarkable peculiarity of the prediction in this verse, that while it describes Israel as having neither sacrifice nor oracle, it describes her also as abstaining from image-worship, and even from those forms of heretical or heathenish divination which are known to have been in use among them for a thousand years—from the early times of her patriarchs to the end of her monarchy. This was a future of their condition, which no one could have forecast from anything found in her previous history. It is, therefore, not without point that the prophetic Spirit lays reiterated stress upon this hitherto unknown peculiarity—“no sacrifice and no statue; no ephod and no teraphim.” Kimehi recognizes this description in the present condition of his people. “These are the days of the Captivity in which we now are at this day; we have no king nor prince out of Israel; for we are in the power of the nations, and of their kings and princes; and have no sacrifice for God, nor image for idols; no ephod for God that declares future things by Urim and Thummim; and no teraphim for idols, which show things to come, according to the mind of those that believe in them.” B. C.

Up to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, they had a polity and governor, a prince, whatever might be his title. They have long had none. They offer no sacrifice. They worship no images, being now of all people the most opposed to idolatry. They have no ephod—by which is meant no established priesthood—for the ephod was the holy garment worn by the high priest over the tunic and robe (Ex. 29:5). Neither have they teraphim—a sort of household gods, used especially for purposes of divination. Now, the appointed means for inquiring of God was by the Urim and Thummim, a sort of breastplate worn over the ephod (Ex. 28:30), and thus the ephod itself is often used as equivalent to the Urim (1 Sam. 23:9). It means, therefore, that though the Jews have lost the true means of approaching God to know His will, yet that they do not try to discover that will by any false and superstitious means. No more exact description could possibly be given of the present state of the Jews everywhere. And in this state they are to remain till they accept Christ. When Hosea wrote, he was living under the rule of the last probably of those military usurpers who so often had made the crown of Israel their prize; but the king whom the nation must acknowledge when they return to Jehovah is David—not personally, for he had long been gathered to his fathers, but David as the symbol of the Messiah, David’s Son. And so the Targum (of Jonathan) explains it: “They shall obey Messiah, the Son of David, their King.” R. P. S.

4,5. Here is an exceedingly interesting prophecy, to the effect that the children of Israel shall remain a long time without king or prince, without sacrifice, images, or any insignia of worship, whether true or false, required or forbidden. Cured of idolatry, yet not converted to the worship of the true God, they were to remain long in this peculiar, extraordinary state. Considering how strong their national passion has been to have a king and some established ceremonials of worship, either Divine or idolatrous, this prophecy is surely such as no human sagacity could or would have made. Yet, ever since their own Messiah came in the flesh, or, more definitely, since the fall of their city under the Roman arms (A.D. 70), this has been precisely their condition. “Afterward”—somewhere in the times yet future—“they shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.” Hosea is not alone in giving to David’s greater Son the name David. Jeremiah (30: 9) says: “They shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up to them.” Ezekiel likewise (34: 23, 24; 37: 24, 25). David, considered as king, was a special type of the Messiah, so that the transfer of his name to the latter is natural. H. C.