Hosea 2:12
And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.
Hosea means salvation, and he was the last of the great prophets of the northern kingdom of Israel. The opening three chapters, in which this verse stands, were written about 748 or as early as 785, and chapters 4-14 were written about 734. The prophecy as a whole was also dated about 750 B.C. He is the most subjective and individual of the prophets, with many passages as odes or dirges, unexcelled in tragic pathos. His own painful and pathetic personal history symbolizes Jehovah's separation from His people.
The verse belongs to a striking prophecy concerning Israel's moral corruption, sad moral degeneration and decay, the gross iniquity of priests and princes, and coming desolation. It announces God's destruction of Israel's vines and fig trees, which she credited to her lovers as her rewards; the cultivated land would be made a forest and grow wild, and the beasts of the field would eat its produce. That loss shows God withdrawing the provisions Israel had mistakenly attributed to Baal and her idolatrous lovers. It predicts the coming captivity of the tribes and warns against wicked alliances, including alliance with Egypt.
Beyond apostasy, the book looks to the Lord's restoration of His people, closing with remonstrance and tender exhortation and rich promises of blessing from God as the result of repentance, full of hopeful remonstrance, tender expostulation, earnest entreaty, and prophecy of the future. Backsliding from God and transgression of His holy law is rightly named adultery, because He is husband to His people as Maker, Lord of hosts, Redeemer, and God of the whole earth. Any attempt to mix heaven with earth and righteousness with sin is dangerous adulteration and spiritual adultery, joining Israel's conformity to the world, idolatry, and departures from God. Sacrifices and religious observances become vain when separated from the spiritual truth they were meant to teach, for offerings and sacred objects had no power in themselves but were lessons pointing beyond their outward forms.