2:1 Then you will call your brother, “My People” (Ammi)! You will call your sister, “Pity” (Ruhamah)!
Idolatrous Israel Will Be Punished Like a Prostitute, 2-5
- Idolatrous Israel Will Be Punished Like a Prostitute, 2-5
- The Lord’s Discipline Will Bring Israel Back, 6-7
- Agricultural Fertility Withdrawn from Israel, 8-13
- Future Repentance and Restoration of Israel, 14-17
- New Covenant Relationship with Repentant Israel, 18-20
- Agricultural Fertility Restored to the Repentant Nation, 21-23
2:2 Plead earnestly with your mother
(for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband),
so that she might put an end to her adulterous lifestyle,
and turn away from her sexually immoral behavior.
2:3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked,
and expose her like she was when she was born.
I will turn her land into a wilderness
and make her country a parched land,
so that I might kill her with thirst.
2:4 I will have no pity on her children,
because they are children conceived in adultery.
2:5 For their mother has committed adultery;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.
For she said, “I will seek out my lovers;
they are the ones who give me my bread and my water,
my wool, my flax, my olive oil, and my wine.
The Lord’s Discipline Will Bring Israel Back, 6-7
2:6 Therefore, I will soon fence her in with thorns;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
2:7 Then she will pursue her lovers, but she will not catch them;
she will seek them, but she will not find them.
Then she will say,
“I will go back to my husband,
because I was better off then than I am now.”
Agricultural Fertility Withdrawn from Israel, 8-13
2:8 Yet until now she has refused to acknowledge that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the olive oil;
and that it was I who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used in worshiping Baal!
2:9 Therefore, I will take back my grain during the harvest time
and my new wine when it ripens;
I will take away my wool and my flax
which I had provided in order to clothe her.
2:10 Soon I will expose her lewd nakedness in front of her lovers,
and no one will be able to rescue her from me!
2:11 I will put an end to all her celebration:
her annual religious festivals,
monthly new moon celebrations,
and weekly Sabbath festivities—
all her appointed festivals.
2:12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees,
about which she said, “These are my wages for prostitution
that my lovers gave to me!”
I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees into an uncultivated thicket,
so that wild animals will devour them.
2:13 “I will punish her for the festival days
when she burned incense to the Baal idols;
she adorned herself with earrings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but she forgot me!” says the LORD.
Future Repentance and Restoration of Israel, 14-17
2:14 However, in the future I will allure her;
I will lead her back into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
2:15 From there I will give back her vineyards to her,
and turn the “Valley of Trouble” into an “Opportunity for Hope.”
There she will sing as she did when she was young,
when she came up from the land of Egypt.
2:16 “At that time,” declares the LORD,
“you will call, ‘My husband’;
you will never again call me, ‘My master.’
2:17 For I will remove the names of the Baal idols from your lips,
so that you will never again utter their names!”
‘My master’ – lit. ‘My Baal’.
I was intrigued by this comment by Debra Scoggins Ballentine (part of her attempt to show that ‘Baal is far more interesting than biblical authors indicate’):
‘Hos 2:16-17 indicates that even Yahweh formerly might have been called Baal.’
Well yes, maybe. But only by those who had already forsaken the true worship of Yahweh. Long before, the people had been commanded:
Exodus 23:13 — “Pay attention to do everything I have told you, and do not even mention the names of other gods—do not let them be heard on your lips.”
Less speculatively, Harper’s Bible Commentary notes:
‘Israel will call Yahweh “my husband” (’ishi) and not “My Baal” (ba’li), which also can mean “my husband.” Obviously the prophet rejects the latter expression because it may also be read as the name of the Canaanite deity.’
Hubbard:
‘What God predicts, even commands, is more than a turning from the use of the name Baal (‘lord’ or ‘master’) for Yahweh; it is also the gift of a warmer, more intimate name: my husband, (my [special] man cf. 2:7; Gen. 2:23–24).’
Garrett:
‘The very meaning of the term baʿal—“lord” or “husband”—made it easy to interject the word into Israelite worship. One could call Yahweh “my Baal” and justify it on the grounds that the term means no more than “my lord.” But since the word was also the name of the Canaanite deity, the devotees of Baal could make use of this semantic overlap to smuggle their cult into Yahweh’s worship.’
Kidner (BST):
‘The confusion at the root of popular religion (which gaily mixes one god with another, and faith with superstition) had been made still worse by the existence of the misleading word Baal. In itself it simply meant ‘lord’, ‘owner’ or ‘husband’, and in early Israel it was sometimes used quite innocently of God, as certain personal names confirm. But in Canaanite religion it stood for the most active god in the pantheon, and for his various other selfs and colleagues, the god of each particular place. It was he, as divine husband, who gave the land its fertility through the rites, sexual and otherwise, performed ‘upon every high hill and under every green tree’, as Jeremiah 2:20 sweepingly expresses it.’
Stuart:
‘This verse describes a future time when Israel, Yahweh’s bride, will call him only איש and never again בעל. Both of these words can mean “husband,” איש referring to husband as “man” in the sense of marriage partner, and בעל connoting more the lordship, ownership, and legal right of the husband in relation to a wife (“master”). The point of this oracle is based, however, not on that distinction, but on the fact that בעל means “Baal,” the god, as well as “husband, lord, master.” Israelites in the new age of restoration will simply never use the word בעל in any of its meanings. Baal worship will not exist, a fortiori, because even the very word בעל will be unknown (v 19[17]).’
Stuart adds:
‘It is not necessary to presuppose as referent for those words a syncretism in which Yahweh was worshiped as Baal and thus called “Baal.” Such a Yahweh-Baal syncretism may or may not have existed (cf. Wolff, 49–50). The fact is that the words בעל and יהוה are frequently found in juxtaposition in OT names. The Samaria Ostraca may reflect the old neutral meaning of בעל as “lord.” Thus a name like בעליה, Baaliah (1 Chr 12:6) could mean simply “Yahweh is lord” rather than “Baal-Yahweh” or “Yahweh is Baal.” In the new age as described by our passage, however, the very idea of a Baal-Yahweh syncretism would be impossible.’