Hosea Verse-by-Verse

Session 2 | Hosea 1:10-2:4

Hebrews 1:10-11 | A Glorious Future

Verse 10 -- Note that, because of a break in the Hebrew text, all Hebrew Bibles begin chapter 2 at verse 10, thus 1:10 in an English Bible is 2:1 in a Hebrew Bible, with Hebrew Bibles having 25 rather than 23 verses. The Hebrew break seems to fit the text much better than the English break. Verse 10 takes a radical change of direction, from **ye are not my people, and I will not be your **God (v. 9) to an unmeasurable blessing and benediction in verse 10, concluding with the prophetic word that *it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Verse 9 echoes promises to Abraham in Genesis, promising a day in which his descendants cannot be measured nor numbered. This clearly does not describe the Hebrew nation either now or any time in the past. But rather than conclude that this remains a yet future prophecy, too many Christian interpreters take this to be prophetic of the church today. They do not explain, of course, how it can be that the church today, and at every time of its history, can be measured and numbered, just like Israel. But a crazed fervor for eisegesis causes Christians to interpret this as a prophecy of the Body of Christ. To do so absolutely requires the substitution of Israel ***with some kind of new Israel, which is absolutely replacement theology. Rather than make stuff up about the church, why not rather take the verse to be prophetic of exactly what it says? This is especially true when Hosea 3:4-5 speaks of Israel coming back to the Lord in the latter days. So much Biblical misinformation would have been avoided had interpreters simply taken this as prophetic of the children of Israel, exactly as the text says. The rabbinical explanation is as follows: shall lay it to your heart among all the nations where… has exiled you etc. And the Lord your God shall return your captivity." Verse 11 -- What a beautiful description of the coming day in which the whole house of Israel will come under one head, their Messiah. Though the Hebrew nation was currently divided and was about to be scattered, there will come a day of being gathered together and then they will appoint themselves one head. Note that the gathering appears to be external and passive while the appointment of their Messiah is internal and active, which is in harmony with all other Scriptures. The whole house of Israel shall come up out of the land (from which they are scattered) and **great *****shall be ***the day of Jezreel. Not only a play on the first son's name, but also a reference to the meaning of the name, God sows. Great will be the day when God plants His people in His land and they appoint their Messiah. Note that this could also be a timing reference, for the valley of Jezreel is also the valley of Armageddon.

Hosea 2:1-23 | God's Poetic Condemnation of Israel

Verse 1 -- Only the King James uses the necessary pronoun ye“to say," which is in the second person plural. Without this plural pronoun, one might assume that God is speaking to Jezreel as an individual. With the pronoun we can see that either Jezreel is considered in the plural as the future nation replanted, or that this is in some other manner a message to the totality of the nation. The declaration, Ammi and **Ru-**hamah is an undoing of the prophecies of the second and third children (the first being reversed in vv. 9-10 of chapter 1). Verse 2 -- The word plead should not be understood in its sense of begging, but rather in its primary sense of contending or arguing against (as in Gen. 26:20 and many others). God wants the children to contend with Gomer (the nation as a whole), arguing that she is in the wrong and should put away her whoredoms, etc. And God, as her husband, has declared **she is not my wife, neither *****am ***I her husband. But this certificate of divorce is a threat and not a declaration, as the words that follow (both in v. 2 and beyond) display. Verse 3 -- The threat to Gomer is stated with no reserve, showing the anger of God the husband toward Israel the wife. “divorce" her. Verse 4 -- The pronouns change from the previous verses, where God speaks to His children (so it seems), to her children who are the children of whoredoms. It appears that the message is not to the children of Hosea and Gomer (as in v. 1) but of Gomer alone, conceived in her adultery. If Gomer represents the nation of Israel, then the children of Hosea and Gomer represent the individuals of brought forth by the marriage, and the other children brought forth by harlotry are illegitimate, and thus have no inheritance in the Abrahamic promise.

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