Hosea 10:12

‘Sow to yourselves in righteousness,

Reap in accordance with covenant love,

Break up your fallow ground,

For it is time to seek YHWH,

Until he come and rain righteousness on you.'

Ever ready to respond to repentance God now called on Israel and Judah to turn back to Him in response to the covenant. While they were to go on sowing, reaping and breaking up the ground they were to do it in righteousness and covenant love. But as Hosea 10:13 brings out, the words go deeper than that, for they have reference to their inner lives. Rather than reaping iniquity they were to sow righteousness in their behaviour, both in their inner thoughts and in their behaviour towards others. And what they constantly reaped in their lives was to be continually in covenant love. Furthermore they were to ‘break up' their inner hardness. And once they had established themselves in love and righteousness and humility, and their hearts had become softened, they would be able to seek YHWH with the expectancy that He would come and rain righteousness on them. They could sow and reap, but only God could send the rain, and here was an indication that even at this last moment, if they ‘truly repented' He would have mercy on them. In this latter case the raining of righteousness indicates the active working of God producing righteousness in His people (i.e. acceptability to YHWH through the shedding of blood and ‘inworked salvation' as in Philippians 2:13).