Deeper Commentary
Hos 2:1 Say to your brothers, ‘Ammi! [My people]!’ and to your sisters, ‘Ruhamah! [I will have mercy!]’- In an attempt to bring about Gomer’s repentance, Hosea addresses his children as “Ammi” and “Ruhamah”, i.e. ‘my people’ and ‘I will have mercy’- purposefully changing the names God had given them. On this basis he appealed for Gomer’s repentance: “Let her therefore put away her prostitution” (Hos. 2:2). As Paul was to later say in so many words, the mercy and grace of God is intended to lead us to repentance. Rather than that grace leading to a laissez-faire indifference and continuance in sin, the very reality of His grace to us in our weak moments should of itself inspire our repentance. But there is of course a limit, if we continually refuse: “Lest I strip her naked…and slay her” (:3). We too at baptism are given the new name, righteousness in Christ is imputed to us, but we must live in practice how we are considered in status. Through appealing to the children, Hosea was hoping to win back the heart of their mother. And something similar was going on in God's prophetic appeal to the children of Zion. "Not my people" being called "my people" is understood by Paul as referring to the Gentile converts to Christ who are counted as spiritual Israel. And their conversion was intended to provoke the mother, Zion, Israel after the flesh, to repent and turn to God again.
"Say to your brothers..." may be a message to Judah, to take the good news to their brothers in Israel- that a new start, a new covenant was possible. The imperative plural of the "say..." means it is addressed to a group of people. They are to appeal / contend (:2) with the ten tribes, appealing for them to return to Yahweh. Although we note that Judah are also severely criticized as the prophecy goes on, with Judah being the second whore whom Hosea marries in Hos. 3. In the Hosea-Gomer relationship, we can assume that by this point the children have grown to be old enough to appeal to their mother and brothers.
It was part of God's purpose, tied up
in His very Name, that "I will take you as My own people, and I will be
your God" (Ex. 6:7). There are seven statements of "I will..." in Ex. 6,
making these statements part of the meaning of the Name "I will be who I
will be". But by saying Israel were not His people, and He was not their
God, Yahweh was denying His very own Name. Just as we noted on Hos. 1:9
that God negated the very "I am that I am" Name of Yahweh, by saying "I
will not be...". As if to say,
"I am not I AM for you". Yahweh presents as so eager to be who He really
and essentially is, a God with a people, and not a wayfaring man without a
home and a people (Jer. 14:8 "why should You be as a foreigner in the
land, and as a wayfaring man"). Just as we can infer that Hosea was a man
built and wired to be married, to be a good husband and father to the
children that would ensue. So God's fantasy here is understandable- that
the people He had disowned would become His people truly, in spirit and
truth.
Hos 2:2 Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife,
neither am I her husband-
This is Hosea feeling that he has divorced
Gomer, and yet he continually affirms his total love and commitment to her
as his wife. He calls the children to "contend", a word usually used in a
legal context of pleading, as if the children were to be involved in the
divorce case. This fluctuation of emotion is understandable for Hosea. But
it points forward to the internal conflict within God as regards His
people. "She is not my wife, neither am I her husband"
is
a verbatim quotation from various Babylonian divorce formulas, and was
later incorporated into the Talmud as a divorce formula (Umberto
Cassuto,
Biblical And Oriental Studies
(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973) Vol. 1 p. 122). Likewise the threat
to strip her naked (Hos. 2:3) was what was done in the case of divorce for
adultery; Hosea's threat to withdraw her clothing, her "wool and flax
[linen]" in Hos. 2:9 likely refers to the same thing. Yet Hosea keeps
wanting Gomer to return to him; he wishes to divorce her, and yet in his
heart keeps coming back to her. This was an exact reflection of God's
feelings for His people.
And let her therefore put away her prostitution from her face, and
her adulteries from between her breasts-
Song 1:13 speaks of myrrh between the breasts
being used as an aphrodisiac; and prostitutes paint their faces in Jer.
4:30 and Ez. 23:40.
2:3 Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land- This was the punishment for a prostitute, a punishment which she should’ve had right back at the start. But instead of this punishment, Hosea had married her. We are perhaps nervous to equate our sinfulness, our rebellion, our unfaithfulness, with Gomer’s prostitution. But this, surely, is what we are intended to do, and to thereby perceive the extent of God’s patient love toward us, to the end that that grace and goodness might lead us to repentance. Because Hosea had loved this woman, he had feelings of anger- he desired to strip her naked and slay her, to “discover her lewdness in the sight of all her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand” (Hos. 2:10). These feelings were quite natural. Hosea was the wounded lover, the betrayed man. And these are exactly the feelings of God over the unfaithfulness of His people.
The metaphors used to describe the anger of God with Israel are
awful. Her children to be slain with thirst, she was to be stripped naked
by her husband (Hosea 2), gang raped by her lovers; all similar to the
language of having her nose cut
off and left a battered, bleeding mess in the scrubland (Ez. 16,23), to
have her skirt pulled up over her head and her nakedness revealed (Jer.
13:20-27), wishing to pluck off her own breasts for shame (Ez. 23:34).
Jerusalem is to be raped, violated and humiliated, according to Ezekiel.
Indeed, Ezekiel’s images verge at times on what some would consider
pornographic. He speaks of the woman Israel’s pubic hair, breasts,
menstrual cycle (Ez. 16:7,10); the gang rape by her enemies which God
would bring about, leaving her mutilated and humiliated (Ez. 16:37;
23:22-49); about the size of her lovers’ sexual organs and coital
emissions, and how she let them fondle her breasts (Ez. 23:8,20). This is
shocking language, which perhaps we skip over in our Bible reading from
sheer embarrassment- and we are modern readers brutalized by
exposure to this kind of stuff in the media. For early Israel, it would
all have been even more shocking. It all seemed out of proportion to
having ‘merely’ made a few political alliances with Egypt and Assyria. Was
that really like a wife letting other men fondle her breasts and have sex
with her, admiring their bodies as she did so? Did it all have to end in
such brutality and vulgarity? Today, sex and violence are what attract
attention. From lyrics of songs to advertising and movies, that’s clear
enough. And the prophets are using the same tactics to arrest Israel’s
attention, all the more so because nudity and sex were things simply not
up for public discussion. There’s an anxiety which any talk about sex
seems to arouse in us, and it was the prophets’ intention to make us
likewise get on the edge of our seats, anxious, rapt, sensitive for the
next word… realizing that really and truly, this is what human sin does to
God. The outrageous sex talk was to bring out how outrageous and obscene
are our sins and unfaithfulness to the covenant we cut with God in
baptism.
And kill her with thirst- The punishment intended for Hagar, which was again rescinded by grace. All the allusion to the wilderness and thirst is to give insight into how God felt toward Israel in the wilderness, when He wanted to destroy them for still worshipping the Egyptian idols; but by grace alone He did not.
Let’s remember that God’s own law was pretty clear about adultery.
The
adulterous woman was to be punished with death- for one act of adultery.
Even if she repented. And in any case, it was a defiling abomination
[according to the Mosaic Law] to remarry a divorced wife. But Hosea
doesn’t strictly keep the law; his love and grace are beyond it. He lets his wife commit multiple acts of adultery,
and he still loves her and pleads with her- even though he was a man in
love with God’s law. And this reflects the turmoil of God in dealing with
human sin, and His sinful people. Hosea outlines his plan in Hosea 2. He
will hamper her movements so she can’t find her lovers; if she does find
them, he will take away her food and clothing, so she appreciates his
generosity to her; and if she still doesn’t return, he will expose her
naked and shamed in front of her lovers. But there’s no evidence Hosea
ever did that. He just… loved her, was angry with her as an expression of
that love, loved her yet more, yet more… And this perhaps too reflects
God’s mind- devising and declaring judgments for Israel, which are
themselves far less than what He has earlier stated in His own law, and
yet the power of His love means He somehow keeps bearing with His people.
Even in the context of speaking of His marriage to Israel, God says that
He will punish them "as women that break wedlock are judged" (Ez. 26:38;
23:45). And yet, He didn't. His love was too great, His passion for them
too strong; and He even shamed Himself by doing what His own law forbad,
the remarriage to a divorced and defiled wife. Perhaps all love involves a
degree of paradox and self-contradiction; and a jealous, Almighty God in
love was no different. This, to me, is why some Bible verses indicate God
has forsaken Israel; and others imply He hasn’t and never will. Somehow,
even right now, the Jews you meet… are loved still by their God. And he
still fantasizes, in a way, over their return to Him. Imagine His utter
joy when even one of them does in fact turn to Him! That alone motivates
me to preach to Israel today.
Hos 2:4 Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness- Hosea appears to have been speaking about the children on his own account, whilst also thereby manifesting the spirit, feelings and words of Yahweh about His people Israel. Hosea's mood swings, alternating between love and anger, reflected God's.
Hosea had initially been told to marry Gomer and also take on her
“children of whoredoms” into his family (Hos. 1:2), so it would seem unlikely
that his rejection of Gomer’s children because “they be the children of
whoredoms” refers to them. Surely he refers to what appeared to be ‘his’
children, whom she had borne after her marriage to him. Note how he calls
them “her children”. The children are described by Hosea as “her
children” rather than “my children” (Hos. 2:6,7)- as if they were not his,
although she bore them whilst newly married to him. Indeed, Gomer appears
to reason in Hos. 2:14 that the children were her lovers’ payment to her
for her sexual services. And in the parallel relationship between God and
Israel, Israel were unfaithful to Yahweh and “engendered foreign children”
(Hos. 5:7). We can learn much about the nature of Gomer’s behaviour with
Hosea by seeing how Israel are described subsequently in Hosea’s prophecy.
So often they are spoken of in terms of an unfaithful woman, and we are
surely intended to understand that they were epitomized by the woman
Gomer. So we can ‘read back’ from what is said about Israel in the
prophecy to Gomer personally. God made the accusation that
“[Israel] have
dealt treacherously against the Lord: for they have begotten strange
children”, whilst at the same time claiming to keep the sacrifices and
Sabbaths of the Law (Hos. 5:6,7; 2:11). This would confirm that Gomer
acted as Hosea’s wife, assuring him of her faithfulness, in the same way
as the sacrifices and Sabbaths were intended to reflect Israel’s exclusive
faithfulness to Yahweh.
Throughout the book, Hosea clearly speaks on God’s behalf, even though he at times speaks in the first person. It’s hard at times to realize whether Hosea is talking about his own marriage, or about God’s feelings to Israel. And that’s understandable, given the view of inspiration we have been discussing. The feelings of Hosea were God’s feelings; He was inspired with the spirit / mind / attitude of God Himself. Thus here in Hos. 2:4-25 we appear to have a monologue in which Hosea speaks to his wife and kids; but he speaks to them as if it’s God speaking. So close was his identity with God’s feelings as a result of the pain of his failed marriage and family life. See on Hos. 3:2.
Hos 2:5 For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink’- See on Hos. 1:3. Notice how her conception of the children is said to have been “shameful”. And in addressing the children, Hosea never calls them ‘his’ children. The list of things here refer to basic food and clothing, and these were what a husband was bound to provide for his wife. But what Hosea provided for her, she liked to understand as what her lovers had given her. "My lovers" presumably refer to the men with whom Gomer had relationships before she married Hosea, and to whom she returned ("I will go..."). This clearly speaks of how Israel returned to the idols of Egypt which they brought with them through the Red Sea, and which they continued worshipping after their marriage covenant with God at Sinai. The good things Yahweh provided for Israel as the blessings of the covenant, they assumed arose from their idol worship. And they thanked their idols for what Yahweh had in fact provided. All this has strange and biting relevance for us. We too can assume that the idols of careers, investments and hard work are what give us the daily blessings which are ultimately from God and not anything else.
Hos 2:6 Therefore behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way- In Ezekiel, building a wall against Zion God's people refers to the siege of Jerusalem. Hosea planned to put Gomer in a position where she couldn't find her way to her lovers, and then she would return to Hosea. We can assume from the language of going and returning in :5 and :7 that she had left Hosea and was living with them. Hosea planned to make her 'way' there difficult, hedging the path with thorns and building a wall to stop her in her path. "Thorns" were the punishment for Adam and Eve's sin; the consequences of her sin were intended to lead her to repentance. Rather like God tried to stop Balaam on his path to apostacy from Him. And this was all reflected in God's besieging Zion through their invaders; and being hedged in is the language of the Babylonian invasion in Lam. 3:7,9. It was judgment, but it was all intended to bring Israel back to Him. And thus in wrath God remembers mercy; His judgments are not simply statements of anger, but designed to elicit repentance, at least on a national scale.
Hos 2:7 She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them;
and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go
and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now’-
See on 2:8.
In
the same way as Hosea had this plan to get Gomer to “return” to him, so
God likewise planned that “afterward shall the children of Israel return,
and seek the Lord their God” (Hos. 3:5). Both God and Hosea thought that “I
will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence… in
their affliction they will seek me early” (Hos. 5:15). But it didn’t work out
like this. Both God with Israel and Hosea with Gomer ended up
pleading
with her to return (Hos. 14:1); “and they do not return to the Lord their God,
nor seek him for all this” (Hos. 7:10). It was and is a tragedy. In our
preaching to Israel, indeed to mankind generally, we are pleading with
them to accept this most unusual love. The pain of God, the way He is left
as it were standing there as a tragic figure, like Hosea was, of itself
inspires us to plead with people all the more passionately. Notice in all
this that ‘return’ is probably an idiom; neither Hosea nor Gomer appear to
have physically split up, but both of them had ‘left’ the other one, as in
so many marriages today.
The image of the unfaithful wife played deeply on male fears of female
sexuality. Hosea was a Hebrew male. And they all feared their women in one
way- that she might be unfaithful to him. And this was and is the fear of
God for our sin, our unfaithfulness. The Jews who first heard Hosea and
others would've been led into taking sympathy with the man, agreeing that
the punishment for the woman was appropriate to her sin (Jer. 2:30-37;
13:20-27). And yet of course the point was that it was they who were the
woman in all this. We’ve all seen jealous men in relationships, querying
every guy who calls their home number, wanting to know whom the wife’s
been out with… and on a far higher and altogether not petty level, this is
the kind of God with whom we are in relationship. The men of Old Testament
times feared their woman’s unfaithfulness as it placed his whole honour
and status as a man at stake. Hos. 2:7,12 reveals Hosea’s hurt and anger
that his wife considered other men to be the providers of her food and
needs; for this was his honour, to provide for his wife, and for other men
not to do that. And so we could say that in our unfaithfulness, in our
turning to other supports other than Him… no less that God Himself is at
stake. God is at stake. That’s how he sees it. That’s how much He’s risked
Himself for us, when He could have never even gotten involved with us. No
less than God Himself is at stake. And perhaps I need to stop writing and
you need to stop reading for a moment, to reflect on the tragedy of that.
Hos 2:10 Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of My hand- The idea is that she would be made naked. To strip a woman naked was the punishment for adultery. But this was to be done before or "in the sight of" the lovers, who represented Israel's idols. Idol worshippers made themselves naked before the idols (Ex. 32:25; and it is especially used of the idolatry at the time of Ahaz, 2 Chron. 28:19, in whose time Hosea prophesied, Hos. 1:1). So the punishment was in fact their sin. Sin is its own punishment. Sinners live out their own condemnation by what they do. "No one will deliver her..." refers to the "lovers". None of the idols in whom Israel trusted could deliver them from Yahweh's judgment and jealous wrath. Or "None shall deliver her" could suggest that previously God had not judged Israel fully for the sake of faithful ancestors like Abraham and David. We see that third parties can affect others' salvation as in Mk. 2:5, but only within limits. Those limits had now been exceeded.
Hos 2:11 I will also cause all her celebrations to cease: her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies- Hosea was prophesying in the context of the reforms of Jeroboam II, which had appeared on the surface to root out Baal worship- but in reality, the people remained deeply committed to it. All this was reflected in the surface level commitment of Gomer to him whilst committing adultery with multiple partners. God through Hosea said that He despised Gomer and Israel’s keeping of the Sabbaths, sacrifices and solemn feasts. Gomer and Israel offered sacrifices with flocks and herds (Hos. 5:6). Gomer was an observant Jewess- all part of her deceptive life with Hosea. The feasts ["celebrations"] may refer to the extra feasts which the Jews inaugurated upon their return from Babylon (Zech. 7:5; 8:19). This apparent devotion to Yahweh when they were self-centred, materialistic and self-righteous were abhorrent to God, and the latter half of Isaiah's prophecies make the same point. They were matched by Gomer's apparent devotion to Hosea.
Hos 2:12 I will lay waste her vines and her fig
trees, about which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have
given me; and I will make them a forest’, and the animals of the field
shall eat them-
Gomer received vines, fig trees and forests from her lovers. She
even became “rich” because of this (Hos. 12:8). All of this was done whilst
married to Hosea. His patience and love for her must have been amazing.
And even that was and is a poor reflection of the depth of God’s love and
grace for Israel, and for us too. It’s more than sobering, to be in a
relationship where we are loved so much more deeply than we love back.
It’s worrying and challenging, to the point that every fibre in our being
should be crying out to love this wonderful God far, far more than we do.
Gomer must have lied to Hosea so much. And Israel are criticized
throughout his prophecy for just the same. “Ephraim compasses me about
with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit… they have spoken lies”
(Hos. 11:12; 7:13). In fact, the untruthfulness became compulsive and
obsessive: “He daily increases lies” (Hos. 12:1). Gomer would’ve lied about
where she was going, about how she spent Hosea’s money, about whose the
children were… And the key proof of our spiritual sincerity is whether we
are in the core of our beings truthful , both with our God and with
ourselves.
Hos 2:13 I will visit on her the days of the Baals, to which she
burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels,
and went after her lovers
Hos 2:16 It will be in that day, says Yahweh, that you will call Me
‘my husband’, and no longer call Me ‘my master’-
In Hos. 2:16-23 we appear to have a fantasy of Hosea about his family.
After nostalgic dreaming about the early days of their relationship, Hosea
fantasizes about once again wooing Gomer, becoming betrothed to her,
marrying her in some sort of outdoors wedding ceremony in which the
animals and physical creation witness the vows and enter the joy, entering
a new covenant with her, and renaming their children from ‘Not my people’
to ‘My people’. As the children were to be renamed, Lo-ammi becoming Ammi,
so the valley of Achor would become a door of hope (Hos. 2:15), and
Jezreel, scene of Israel’s rebellions, would become the place of joyful
reconciliation between God and His people. The valley of Achor had
previously been a block to Israel’s entry to the land; now it becomes the
entrance to it. In that awful place, God wanted to stage an outdoor
wedding ceremony with His re-married people. Is. 65:10 mentions Achor as a
place of special blessing in the Kingdom of God on earth- it’s as if God’s
grace rejoices in inverting things, pouring out His richest blessing upon
the places of our darkest failures. And we in daily life, in the
interactions we have with others, are asked to reflect this same kind of
grace.
Hos 2:17 For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they will no longer be mentioned by name- The Baals of our day are sin in all forms; and such things are "not to be named amongst us" now (Eph. 5:3). God here promises to stop Israel serving Baal. This suggests a psychological miracle- the work of the Spirit directly on human hearts, and the new covenant we too are in promises the same- the gift of a new heart and spirit, and a desire for God in truth. "Take away" is the same Hebrew word in :2 where Israel are asked to "put away" their adulteries. Their adultery was with the Baals. And now God says that He will even do this for them, such is His desire to have them. This is the power of the Spirit in the new covenant.
The plural "Baals" is repeated elsewhere in Hosea. Israel weren't going after just one other god. There were various Baals, just as Gomer had many lovers rather than just one lover with whom she had an affair. Her sexual addiction therefore represents Israel's psychological obsession with having many gods. That there is only one true God was accepted in theory by them- only as much as Gomer claimed to be the wife of only one man. We see here how hard it was to believe in just one God, and that difficulty is perhaps reflected to this day in how man wishes to turn the one true God into a trinity.
Hos 2:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, and will make them lie down safely- This covenant with the animals recalls the covenant in Eden and also with the earth / eretz after the flood. Judgment would come, but the faithful Israel were to have part in a wider covenant with all creation, looking forward to the restoration of their Kingdom being the re-establishment of God's Kingdom on earth under Messiah. Dwelling safely without war and in harmony with the natural creation, who would also be blessed, is also the language of the blessings for obedience to the old covenant detailed in Lev. 26 and Dt. 28. I suggested on :17 that God's intention was to make them obedient, to make them blessed, to take away sin from them. All that is within us cries out that they themselves had to be obedient, and then get the blessings. But God's love goes even beyond that; measure for measure and crime and punishment is all subsumed beneath the power of His saving grace.
God wanted to make a new covenant with them, and this involved a new creation- hence the allusions to the Genesis creation here. The animals here are mentioned in the order of their creation in Gen. 1. As Hosea loved Gomer but so wished she would be different in some ways, so God was and is prepared to re-create His beloved- if they are willing. All they have to do is say yes. His Spirit will do the rest. Animals, birds, creeping things all repeats the order of the creation found in Gen. 1:30 "To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth". God had in view a new creation to go along with His redeemed, permanently faithful people; after the uncreation discussed on Hos. 4:3. And this is a theme of the new covenant. The new covenant offered to Gomer and to Israel, seeing they had broken the first one, broken it in the sense of rendering it broken in pieces, is the new covenant we have accepted. We memorialize it in the cup of the new covenant. And we have accepted it because Israel, as Gomer, refused it.
Hos 2:20 I will even betroth you to Me in faithfulness; and you shall
know Yahweh- The faithfulness of God is here emphasized apart from
the other characteristics which comprise His Name (:19). Gomer had been
unfaithful, and yet Hosea, reflecting God's feelings toward Israel,
assured her of his utter faithfulness. "You shall know Yahweh" uses
'knowing' in the Hebraic sense of relationship. Through experiencing His
utter grace toward their unfaithfulness, they would know Him. And this is
the amazing paradox which continues to this day; through serious failure
we come to know Him in spirit and truth. And that knowledge is quite
separate to the academic, theological truth which is thought by many to be
so important- until they face up to their own sins and the wonder of God's
grace. The Hebrew idea of "faithfulness" is that of truth; the deepest
truth is not a set of theological propositions, however accurate and
faithful to the Biblical text; but rather the experience of God's eternal
faithfulness to His covenant to us, and His immense desire to make the
relationship work.
Hos 2:21 It will happen in that day, I will respond, says Yahweh, I
will respond to the heavens, and they will echo down to the earth- I
suggested on :16 that Hosea has been fantasizing about an outdoor
remarriage ceremony with Gomer in which even the natural creation gets
involved, but the emphasis is now upon God. He will "respond" to the
marriage vows with a voice so mighty that it reaches from earth to heaven,
and echoes back to earth. That was how Hosea felt he would cry out in
response to the "I do!" of a marriage covenant. And this is the force of
God's word to us- it is a powerful voice, louder than that heard at Sinai,
which endlessly assures us of His "I do!" toward us. God places Himself at
this point as if on earth; for His voice uttered on earth ascends even to
Heaven and then echoes back to earth. This is how closely identified God
is with us. The whole idea of course recalls the Sinai covenant, but as we
read in Heb. 12, the new covenant involves a voice more powerful even than
that. "Respond" is the same word used in Ex. 19:8,19 of how God "answered"
the people and they "answered" to Him. Heb. 12 interprets the voice
associated with the new covenant with the word made flesh in the blood of
God's Son.
Hos 2:22 And the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine,
and the oil-
Hos 2:23 I will sow her to Me in the earth; and I will have mercy on
her who had not obtained mercy-
"Jezreel" means 'the sowing of Yah'.
Sowing implies fruit, spiritual fruit; and the return of the exiles to
their land was intended to be the basis of their spiritual fruit, filling
the face of the earth with it (Is. 27:6). But this sowing in the earth by
Yahweh, 'Jezreel', was to arise out of their judgment at Jezreel. And so
out of judgment for sin comes spiritual fruit. That was God's intention,
just as Hosea's intended outcome from the open air remarriage ceremony he
envisaged was "fruit", children by Gomer, rather than the children she had
had by her adulterous liaisons. But this intention didn't work out for
Hosea, and it only did for God by redefining "Israel", as Paul explains in
Romans.
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