Hosea 2:14

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

Therefore - rather, Nevertheless (Henderson). The English version gives a more lovely idea of God. That which would provoke all others to unappeasable wrath, Israel's perversity and consequent punishment, is made a reason why God should at last have mercy on her. As the "therefore" (Hosea 2:9) expresses Israel's punishment as the consequence of Israel's guilt; so "therefore" here, as in Hosea 2:6, expresses that when that punishment: has effected its designed end, the hedging up her way with thorns, so that she returns to God, her first love, the consequence, in God's wondrous grace, is, He "speaks comfortably unto her" - literally, speaks to (or ON - i:e., so as to make an impression on) her heart [ `al (H5921) libaah (H3820)] (cf. Judges 19:3, "speak friendly," margin, 'to her heart;' Ruth 2:13).

Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. So obstinate she is, that God has to "allure her" - i:e., so to temper judgment with unlooked-for grace as to win her to his ways. For this purpose it was necessary to "bring her into the wilderness (i:e., into temporal want and trials) first, to make her sin hateful to her by its bitter fruits, and God's subsequent grace the more precious to her by the contrast of the "wilderness." In the Hebrew it is, 'I myself will allure her.' Her who was allured by Satan's false enticements I will allure by making her taste something of the exquisite delights that are in ME, so that she may be henceforth attracted to God as her truest good. Jerome makes the "bringing into the wilderness" to be rather a deliverance from her enemies, just as ancient Israel was brought into the wilderness from the bondage of Egypt: to this the phrase here alludes (cf. Hosea 2:15, "She shall sing ... as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt"). The wilderness-sojourn, however, is not literal, but moral: while still in the land of their enemies locally, by the discipline of the trial rendering the word of God sweet to them, they are to be brought morally into the wilderness-state - i:e., into a state of preparedness for returning to their temporal and spiritual privileges in their own land; just as the literal wilderness prepared their fathers for Canaan: thus the bringing of them into the wilderness-state is virtually a deliverance from their enemies.