Hosea 2:5-13

Judgment Is To Fall On God's Rejected People Because They Have Followed False Religion And False Gods, Not Realising Who It Was Who Was Really Their Benefactor. They Will Be Exposed And Shamed, Something Which Will Cause Them Once Again To Think Of YHWH (Hosea 2:5).

Because of His people's unfaithfulness to Him YHWH will move ‘her' (His people) to a place where she is unable to have contact with ‘her lovers', that is, with the false aspects of religion which she had introduced beside Yahwism such as images of Baal and Asherah. Then she will be unable to find them, and will thus determine to return to her initial husband. But because she had failed to recognise that it was really YHWH Who had provided for her, she will lose all His provision, will be exposed in her folly, and will receive the due reward for her behaviour. The words have exile in mind.

Analysis of Hosea 2:5.

a “Because she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink' ” (Hosea 2:5 b).

b “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she shall not find her paths” (Hosea 2:6).

c “And she will follow after her lovers, but she will not overtake them, and she will seek them, but will not find them” (Hosea 2:7 a).

d “Then she will say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now” (Hosea 2:7 b).

e “For she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, and the new wine, and the oil” (Hosea 2:8 a).

f “And multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal” (Hosea 2:8 b).

e “Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my new wine in its season, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness” (Hosea 2:9).

d “And now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none will deliver her out of my hand” (Hosea 2:10).

c “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies” (Hosea 2:11).

b “And I will lay waste her vines and her fig-trees, of which she has said, “These are my hire which my lovers have given me,” and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will eat them” (Hosea 2:12).

a “And I will visit on her the days of the Baalim, to which she burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me,” says YHWH (Hosea 2:13).

Note that in ‘a' she said, I will go after my lovers' and in the parallel YHWH says, ‘she went after her lovers, bedecked for love, and forgot Me'. In ‘b' YHWH warns that He will hedge up her way with thorns, and in the parallel He will make her vines and fig-trees into a forest. In ‘c' she will follow after her lovers and not find them, and in the parallel YHWH will render useless all her means of accessing her lovers so that she cannot find them. In ‘d' she will determine to return to her first husband, and in the parallel he will expose her in the sight of her lovers and deal inexorably with her. In ‘e' she did not realise who gave to her her grain, new wine and oil, and in the parallel YHWH would take back her grain, and new wine. Centrally in ‘f' YHWH had multiplied to her silver and gold, and she had used it for Baal.