Hosea 2:7, commentary and pictures

Hosea, whose name means salvation, was the last of the great prophets of the kingdom of Israel, and his prophecy was given about 750 B.C. It was a prediction of the coming captivity and a warning against wicked alliances, spoken with hopeful remonstrance, tender expostulation, and earnest entreaty, with prophecy of the future. This verse stands in the opening chapters addressed to the northern kingdom, where the prophet's painful personal history symbolizes Jehovah's separation from His people amid moral degeneration and decay. There is warning of coming captivity and against alliance with Egypt, exposure of the iniquity of priests and princes, while pointing to repentance and blessing.

The verse pictures Israel, God's people, and by extension the land, as an unfaithful wife who has turned from her first husband, who is God, Christ, the Lord. Her lovers are the idols she credited with providing for her, representing conformity to the world and departure from God. She follows after her lovers but does not overtake them, and seeks them but does not find them or find satisfaction with them. This frustration leads her to say she will go and return to her first husband, recognizing that life with Him was better than her present condition. The surrounding context explains that God had supplied her needs though she wrongly credited her lovers, and that He would withhold those gifts.

The marriage covenant between Christ and Israel endured despite Israel's unfaithfulness and ended when Christ died on the cross. The wife's return to her first husband represents the land being brought back to the Lord. God is the husband of His people, so any backsliding from Him, idolatry, conformity to the world, transgression of His holy law, and attempt to mix good and evil, heaven with earth, and righteousness with sin is adultery, a dangerous adulteration and spiritual adultery that breaks the seventh commandment.