Hosea 2:21-22

I will hear Rather, I will respond (and similarly throughout). It is a beautiful picture of the harmony between the physical and the spiritual spheres, Jezreel (i.e. Israel, see next verse) asks its plants to germinate; they call upon the earth for its juices; the earth beseeches heaven for rain; heaven supplicates for the divine word which opens its stores; and Jehovah responds in faithful love. The idea is that of Amos 9:13; Joel 3:18, but it is expressed in an unusual manner. Striking parallels have been quoted from Euripides and Æschylus (fragments beginning respectively

Ἐρᾷ μὲν ὄμβρου γαῖ ʼ, ὅταν ξηρὸν πέδον

and Ἐρᾷ μὲν ἁγνὸς οὐρανὸς τρῶσαι χθόνα);

but we need not have recourse for illustrations to classical literature. The prophets and psalmists have no scruple in adopting and spiritualizing popular (i.e. heathenish) Semitic modes of thought. One of the most prevalent of these modes of thought is referred to by Hosea both in this chapter and in. Hosea 1:2. The heathen Semitic deities were the productive powers of nature, and were grouped in couples of male and female principles, known in the middle zone of Semitic countries as Baal and Baalath (Baaltis), Baal and Ashérah (see note in Introd., part ii.), and Ashtar (or Ashtor) and Ashtoreth (or Astarte). It was believed that the fruitful earth was the issue of this union; or, by a variation of the same myth, that the earth itself was the female principle. Hence the idea that the land (see Hosea 1:2. and comp. the expressions in Hosea 2:5; Hosea 2:9), and, by a later inference, the people of Israel, were the offspring or the spouse of their God was a truism to the hearers of the prophet; but their divine sonship was not physical but moral (see below, on Hosea 11:1), and that the nation's Bridegroom could even divorce his spouse these were strange and offensive ideas. The latter indeed was so inconceivable that Hosea was directed to explain it by allegorizing a distressing episode in his own history. We must not omit to notice in conclusion that the adaptation of mythic and therefore strictly speaking heathenish forms of speech is not confined to the records of revealed religion. The Arabic vocabulary of Mohammedan times contains a group of parallel expressions which may pertinently be referred to here. Thus, for instance baʽlîand - aththarîor - atharîare used of land which is watered from heaven (i.e., by rain and not by springs), and these, being derivatives of the Arabic forms of the divine names Baal and Ashtar, imply the very same myth which has been mentioned above. So too both in Talmudic Hebrew and in Arabic -field, or land of Baal" means land which has no need of irrigation, and ba-lin Arabic, according to Lane, any seed-produce only watered by the rain. (See Prof. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, pp. 172, 409, Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, Vol. 11. p. 295 = 282 Exodus 2). These significant phrases throw a fresh light, not only (as Prof. Smith has shown) on Hosea, but also on the language of Isaiah 45:8, -Shower, ye heavens from above … let the earth open, and let them (viz. heaven and earth) bear the fruit of salvation".

Jezreel In Hosea 1:4 Jezreel was only mentioned for its historical associations, without any reference to the meaning of its name. Here however it evidently has a symbolic value, viz. -God sows (it)".