CHAPTER ONE

1:2:  “take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms” = Here God is asking Hosea to actually break the Mosaic Law.  But our Lord wants to show His people that He is rather a forgiving God and just wants His people to repent.  This demands that God’s mercy outreach His righteous judgment.

It is to be considered that our Lord did not ask Hosea to take a woman of prostitution; but the phrase, “wife of whoredoms,” i.e., “adulterous wife/woman,” could, in the original Hebrew, refer to either what she would later become, or to a description of her ancestry, or more probably that she was prone to be unfaithful.

A literal translation of the phrase is, “wife of promiscuity.”  That is to say, a woman with lax moral values, considering the use of the Hebrew noun “zonah,” which can also refer to adultery, fornication, or prostitution.

What is clear is that God told Hosea to take a wife of harlotry (consider Amos 7:17), to marry a woman who was involved in some form of prostitution (see Hos. 3:1), and after marriage she would return to her former lifestyle.  Another thing to consider is that she may already have had children, i.e., “and children of whoredoms,” possibly never having been wed; even though they are never mentioned except here.

However, from the “Bible Knowledge Commentary” we read:  “ ‘Children of unfaithfulness’ may simply point to their being born in the context of (but not as a direct result of) Gomer’s infidelity.  Also, the phrase emphasizes the mother’s character, not that of the children.  Andersen and Freedman understand the phrase as elliptical:  ‘children of (a wife of) promiscuity’ (Hosea, p. 168).  It is similar to other Hebrew expressions in which the descriptive term points primarily to a quality of the parent not of the offspring (cf. bene hanne ‘urim, lit., ‘sons of youth,’ i.e., ‘sons born to a youthful parent,’ Psa. 127:4; and ben zequnim, lit., ‘son of old age,’ i.e., ‘a son born to an aged parent,’ Gen. 37:3).”  This Commentary implies that the text is speaking of what her children would become, not of prior children.

However again, this connection “necessarily requires that both the children and the mother should stand in the same relation of estrangement from the lawful husband and father,” as Hengstenberg argues.

1:3 & 6 & 8:  “which conceived, and bare him a son” = This son is attributed to Hosea, based upon the text.  However, the next two children are attributed to Gomer’s adulterous life according to Hosea 2:4-5.

1:4:  “Jezreel” = The meaning is, “God will scatter,” or “God scatters.”  See my Hosea 1:11 Note.

1:6:  “Loruhamah” = Literally meaning, “she hath not obtained mercy,” or more simply, “not loved,” or “unpitied.”  The “Targum” for this verse is:  “and they added and did evil works; and He said unto him call their name, who obtained not mercy by their works.”  In other words, God will lift His mercy from the nation of Israel and permit her to suffer for her sins.

1:9:  “Loammi” = Literally meaning, “Not My people.”  How low can we go to reach this stage?

1:10:  “sons of the Living God” = For those who use this verse to prove that Israel is still God’s chosen people, let’s look at John 11:12, “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”

For the “Close of Probation” for the Jewish nation, see Deuteronomy 32:26-38 [39-42 is if they repent]; Jeremiah 31:35-37; Matthew 3:10 & 12; Luke 3:9; 19:14; John 19:15; Acts 7:43 & 58; 13:46; Romans 11:25.

Jesus Himself makes it clear that Israel no longer represents His values and failed in the mission given to them when He states, speaking of the then upcoming destruction of Israel and the reason for it and their ultimate “Close of Probation:”  “And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; [HERE IS WHY] because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”  Luke 19:44.

1:11:  “great shall be the day of Jezreel” = This verse has both an historical and a spiritual sense; the one referring to the return out of Babylon, the other to a more glorious deliverance from a more miserable captivity -- sin.

“Jezreel” = Jezreel means, “scattered,” which refers to the time when God would scatter Israel among the nations (Hos. 1:4).

CHAPTER TWO

2:1:  “Ammi” = Meaning, “The Lord’s people.”

“Ruhamah” = Meaning, “Obtained mercy.”  Thus, God is pleading (see verse 2) for His people to be His people which have obtained His mercy.

2:4-5:  “they be the children of whoredoms” = See my Hosea 3:1 Note.

2:16:  “Ishi. . . Baali” = Ishi, literally meaning, “my husband,” knowing that she was united to God by a covenant which could not be violated.  “Baali,” literally means, “my lord; my master,” which name was applied to their “idols.”  In essence, God is saying to them that they would no longer be calling him Baali, or “My lord and master,” which alludes to authority and the false god “Ba-al” and love towards him, but rather Ishi, which is an address of affection towards the true God.

CHAPTER THREE

3:1:  “love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress” = In other words, Love a woman who is an “adulteress” and yet loved by another, but not married to that other because of the use of the word “friend.”  According to the “Targum” and “Jarchi,” this was not the prophet’s wife Gomer, but some other feigned person; beloved either of her own husband, or someone else.  The reason is because of Hosea, Chapter 2, verses 4 and 5, which teach us that Hosea’s wife had the second and third child via another man or men (see Hos. 1:2 & 3 & 6 & 9 Notes).

Since Gomer was off playing the harlot herself (still according to the “Targum” and “Jarchi”) God instructs Hosea to take another.  However, it could also be that this woman was the same Gomer, whom the prophet had before been bidden to take as his wife, and whom had forsaken him and was living in adultery with another man.  This would make the “friend” the husband himself, i.e., the prophet Hosea (speaking of himself in the second person).  The word “friend” expresses that the husband of Gomer treated her, not harshly, but mildly and tenderly such that her faithlessness becomes the even more aggravating of sins.

“flagons of wine” = Rather, “pressed cakes of dried grapes,” such as were offered to idols (see Jer. 7:18).

3:4:  “teraphim” = The “teraphim” were tutelary household gods, in the shape of human busts, cut off at the waist (as the root of the Hebrew word implies, see Gen. 31:19, 30-35).  They were supposed to give responses to consulters (2Ki. 23:24; Eze. 21:21, Margin; Zec. 10:2).  We learn from Saul’s daughter, Michal, when putting one in a bed, as if it were David, that the shape proves to have been that of a man (1Sa. 19:13).

CHAPTER FOUR

4:2:  “blood toucheth blood” = Meaning, these practices are done even among our relatives.

4:3:  “shall be taken away” = These things that “shall be taken away” are the very things that were given to mankind to have dominion over in Genesis 1:28.

4:4:  “thy people” = Notice God’s disassociation with this adulterous people, being no longer called, “My people.”

“strive with the priest” = Striving with a priest, who was sitting as a judge, was punishable by death, according to Deuteronomy 17:8-12.

4:5:  “I will destroy thy mother” = According to “Albert Barns Notes On The Bible,” “Individuals are spoken of as the children; the whole nation, as the mother.  He denounces then the destruction of all.”

4:8:  “They” = The “They” here is the ones of God’s people that He could no longer call, “My people,” because of “their iniquity.”  This also refers to the gentile nations around them, who “eat up the sin of My people.”  These people not only sinned, they brag about it.  See Isaiah 5:18.

4:9:  “like people, like priest” = The leaders encouraged the people to sin.

4:11:  “Whoredom. . . take away the heart” = Insight into things that “take away the heart,” and the “whoredoms,” in verse 12, and the beginning of this verse, in this sense would be all types of things; yet more specifically, “covetousness.”

4:12:  “ask counsel at their stock, and their staff” = Instead of asking “counsel” of their God.

4:13:  “spouses” = The Hebrew word Hosea uses here for “spouses” is, “kallah,” and literally means, “daughter[s]-in-law.”  According to Deuteronomy 23:17, the daughters of Israel were forbidden to practice cultic prostitution.  Thus, Hosea might have been referring to the cultic practice of the time of permitting a man to have sexual intercourse with his daughter-in-law in order to insure fertility in her marriage.  Particularly practiced by the Canaanites.

4:15:  “Bethaven” = Notice:  “Bethel,” means, “The House of God;” while “Bethaven,” means, “The House of Vanity.”

4:16:  “as a backsliding heifer” = The term really means, Israel is refusing to be led by God.  Attempting to load a stubborn heifer can make the chore seem impossible.

4:17:  “Ephraim is joined to idols:  let him alone” = Although the text emphasizes “Ephraim,” you can put any personage in here that does no listen to reason.  Agree to disagree and walk away.  You are wasting your time.  Ephraim was the largest of the tribes at that time and as such, Hosea may just be referring to the entire northern kingdom as a whole.  It is used 37 times in this Book and usually is referring to the northern kingdom.

“joined” = The Hebrew is, “chabar,” and means, “to be yoked to; cleaving to; merged with.”

4:19:  “The wind hath bound her up in her wings” = This is expressive of the wind of God’s wrath and vengeance.  Or as the case came to be as this is a prophecy, that the enemy, the Assyrian, should come like a whirlwind and carry them swiftly, suddenly, and irresistibly, out of their own land into a foreign country.  As is common in prophecy, the structure is coming from the past tense to the future tense.  Or, in other words, “hath bound her,” meaning that it is already determined in the mind of God that this will happen; it is as good as done already.

CHAPTER FIVE

5:1:  “Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor” = “Mizpah” was in the South-West, while “Tabor” was in the North-East.  It’s like saying, from Los Angeles to New York.  Hosea is covering the entire land.

5:6:  “He hath withdrawn Himself from them” = God will ALWAYS answer a repentant heart (1Jo. 1:9).  Therefore, they are only seeking Him because they got caught or want the calamities to stop.

5:7:  “strange children” = As opposed to Abraham who taught his children the :Law of God (Gen. 18:19); these children were brought up to adore idolatry.

5:8:  “Blow ye the cornet” = A call to repentance.

5:10:  “remove the bound” = To change the boundaries of the tribes was considered a sin in Deuteronomy 19:14; 27:17 (1Ki. 15:22).  However, this may be speaking even more seriously than that, in that they may have been changing the Law of God.  It characterizes the conduct of men with being entirely regardless of the rights of others (the Tenth Commandment and others).

5:11:  “willingly walked after the commandment” = That is, not God’s, but man’s; or better, after the commandment of the prophets of Ba-al.

5:12:  “as a moth” = A “moth” eats slowly away at your clothing until it is finally noticed; too late.  So does “rottenness.”

5:13:  “Ephraim saw his sickness” = Herein lays the foundation of “Ephraim’s” sin; that they forsook the healing of God, verse 15, by going to Assyria instead.

5:14:  “will tear and go away:  I will take away” = This is a prophecy.  The northern kingdom was destroyed, then taken to Assyria.

5:15:  “early” = The Hebrew is, “shachar,” and would better be translated, “earnestly.”

CHAPTER SIX

6:3:  “his going forth is prepared as the morning” = “He who places himself where God can enlighten him, advances, as it were, from the partial obscurity of dawn to the full radiance of noonday.”  AA:564.

“the rain, as the latter and former rain” = Here is my Revelation 14:13 Note:  According to EV:701; FLB:246 & 333, this is none other than the “latter rain,” which equals “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”

“The outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles was the ‘former rain,’ and glorious was the result.  But the ‘latter rain’ will be more abundant.”  AUCR, June 1, 1904; ChS:251; Ev:701; 8T:21; ML:60; ST, Feb. 17, 1914; YRP:287, 307.  [SDA’s:  Last sentence left out of AA:54-55 and LDE:184, but it is in LDE:185].

See if you agree with my breakdown of Zechariah 10:1:  “Ask ye of the LORD rain [for the Holy Spirit] in the time of the latter rain [the outpouring of the Holy Spirit]; so the LORD shall make bright clouds [a people worthy of the white robes of Heaven], and give them showers of rain [the outpouring of the Holy Spirit], to every one grass in the field [the indwelling of the Holy Spirit].”

“In the East the former rain falls at the sowing-time.  It is necessary in order that the seed may germinate [The Christian life begins].  Under the influence of the fertilizing showers [the Holy Spirit], the tender shoot springs up.  The latter rain, falling near the close of the season [close of probation], ripens the grain, and prepares it for the sickle [the Second Coming of our Lord].  The Lord employs these operations of nature to represent the work of the Holy Spirit [meaning, the rain represents the Holy Spirit].  As the dew and the rain are given first to cause the seed to germinate, and then to ripen the harvest, so the Holy Spirit is given to carry forward, from one stage to another, the process of spiritual growth.  The ripening of the grain represents the completion of the work of God’s grace in the soul [the latter rain].  By the power of the Holy Spirit the moral image of God is to be perfected [ready for transformation to Heaven] in the character.  We are to be wholly transformed into the likeness of Christ [ready for His Second Coming].  

“The latter rain, ripening earth’s harvest [close of probation], represents the spiritual grace that prepares the Church for the Coming of the Son of Man.  But unless the former rain has fallen, there will be no life; the green blade will not spring up.  Unless the early showers have done their work, the latter rain can bring no seed to perfection [ready for transformation to Heaven].  

“There is to be ‘first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.’ There must be a constant development of Christian virtue, a constant advancement in Christian experience.  This we should seek with intensity of desire, that we may adorn the doctrine of Christ our Saviour.

“Many have in a great measure failed to receive the former rain [the Holy Spirit].  They have not obtained all the benefits that God has thus provided for them.  They expect that the lack will be supplied by the latter rain [outpouring of the Holy Spirit].  When the richest abundance of grace shall be bestowed, they intend to open their hearts to receive it.  They are making a terrible mistake.  The work that God has begun in the human heart in giving His light and knowledge, must be continually going forward.  Every individual must realize his own necessity.  The heart must be emptied of every defilement [perfection of character], and cleansed for the indwelling of the Spirit.  It was by the confession and forsaking of sin, by earnest prayer and consecration of themselves to God, that the early disciples prepared for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit [there you have it; “the outpouring of the Holy Spirit”] on the day of Pentecost.  The same work, only in greater degree, must be done now.  Then the human agent had only to ask for the blessing [“Ask ye of the Lord rain”], and wait for the Lord to perfect [“perfect”] the work concerning him.  It is God Who began the work, and He will finish His work, making man complete [perfect] in Jesus Christ.  But there must be no neglect of the grace represented by the former rain [the Holy Spirit].  Only those who are living up to the light they have, will receive greater light.  Unless we are daily advancing in the exemplification of the active Christian virtues, we shall not recognize the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain [outpouring of the Holy Spirit].  It may be falling on hearts all around us, but we shall not discern or receive it.”  RH, March 2, 1897, par. 4; FLB:333.

In addition, FLB:333; AG:220 ; Mar:256; add: “But near the close of earth’s harvest, a special bestowal of spiritual grace is promised to prepare the Church for the Coming of the Son of man.  This outpouring of the Spirit is likened to the falling of the latter rain.”

“Under the figure of the early and the latter rain, that falls in Eastern lands at seedtime and harvest, the Hebrew prophets foretold the bestowal of spiritual grace in extraordinary measure upon God’s Church.  The outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles was the beginning of the early, or [55] former, rain, and glorious was the result.  To the end of time the presence of the Spirit is to abide with the true Church.  But near the close of earth’s harvest, a special bestowal of spiritual grace is promised to prepare the Church for the Coming of the Son of man.  This outpouring of the Spirit is likened to the falling of the latter rain; and it is for this added power that Christians are to send their petitions to the Lord of the harvest. . .”  AA:54-55; AG:220; ChS:250-251; FLB:333; Mar. 256; OFC:212; YRP:316.

“The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost was the former rain, but the latter rain will be more abundant.  The Spirit awaits our demand and reception.  Christ is again to be revealed in His fullness by the Holy Spirit’s power.”  COL:121; DA 827; Ev:701; ST, Feb. 17, 1914.

“I saw that many were neglecting the preparation so needful, and were looking to the time of ‘refreshing’ and the ‘latter rain’ to fit them to stand in the day of the Lord, and to live in His sight.  Oh, how many I saw in the time of trouble without a shelter!  They had neglected the needful preparation, therefore they could not receive the refreshing that all must have to fit them to live in the sight of a Holy God.”  CET:112; EW:71.

“Not one of us will ever receive the seal of God while our characters have one spot or stain upon them.  It is left with us to remedy the defects in our characters, to cleanse the soul-temple of every defilement.  Then the latter rain will fall upon us as the early rain fell upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost.”  CET:189; CCh:334.

“At that time the ‘latter rain,’ or refreshing from the presence of the Lord, will come, to give power to the loud voice of the third angel, and prepare the saints to stand in the period when the seven last plagues shall be poured out.”  EW:85.

“I was pointed down to the time when the third angel’s message was closing.  The power of God had rested upon His people; they had accomplished their work and were prepared for the trying hour before them.  They had received the latter rain, or refreshing from the presence of the Lord, and the living testimony had been revived.  The last great warning had sounded everywhere, and it had stirred up and enraged the inhabitants of the earth who would not receive the message.”  EW:279.

“Today you are to have your vessel purified, that it may be ready for the Heavenly dew, ready for the showers of the latter rain; for the latter rain will come, and the blessing of God will fill every soul that is purified from every defilement.  It is our work today to yield our souls to Christ, that we may be fitted for the time of refreshing from the presence of the Lord -- fitted for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.”  Ev:701.

“The great work of the gospel is not to close with less manifestation of the power of God than marked its opening.  The prophecies which were fulfilled in the outpouring of the former rain at the opening of the gospel, are again to be fulfilled in the latter rain at its close.”  FLB:332.

6:7:  “like men” = In other words, “Like men” normally do.