Hosea 2:3, commentary and pictures

Hosea 2:3 belongs to the first three chapters of Hosea, written about 748 by Hosea, whose name means salvation, the last of the great prophets of the northern kingdom. It expresses Jehovah's separation from His people, symbolized by Hosea's painful and pathetic personal history. It rests on the marriage relationship between God and His people, since the Maker is the husband of His people and is married to them, so any backsliding from Him and any transgression of His holy law is rightly named adultery.

The whole record of backsliding, conformity to the world, idolatry, and all departures from God is adultery, and the attempt to mix good and evil, heaven with earth, and righteousness with sin is spiritual adultery and dangerous adulteration. The verse stands within a strong prediction of the coming captivity of the tribes and a warning and call away from wicked alliances, including alliance with Egypt. Its setting includes an exposure of sad moral conditions, degeneration and decay of the nation, and the gross iniquity of priests and princes.

The threatened judgment in the verse is complete deprivation, in which unfaithful Israel will be stripped and exposed, returned to a state of desolation as in the day she was born, made as a wilderness and dry land, and left without water until she dies of thirst. That stripping includes taking away mirth, feast days, new moons, sabbaths, and solemn feasts as punishment for sin. The fault lay not in those blessings themselves but in the people, who were children of whoredoms and unfit to have them, so the loss came because of apostasy and not because those things were being replaced with something better, showing that sin never leaves people better off. The warning leads toward closing remonstrance and tender exhortation, with rich promises of blessing from God as the result of repentance.