1 Peter 2:10 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Which in time past were not a people. — Here at last, say some, we have a distinct proof that the Epistle was written to the Gentiles only, or, at least, to churches which contained a very small proportion of Jews. Such, however, is by no means the case; in fact, the opposite. We have here an emphasised adaptation of Hosea 2:23, “And I will have mercy upon Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, ‘Thou art Animi,’ i.e., My people.” Now who were Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi? Types of Israel left unpitied, and rejected from their covenant with God. And this unpitied and rejected Israel, after being “scattered,” or sown, all over the earth, was to be restored again to favour, together with the increment of the Gentiles who joined, it as the result of the “sowing.” St. Peter means, then, that in his Hebrew readers and the brethren from among the Gentiles, who by the gospel of St. Paul had adhered to them, this promise given by Hosea had found its fulfilment. But, as usual, the quotation demands a more searching scrutiny of the context from which it is taken. The name Diaspora, or Dispersion, by which St. Peter, in 1 Peter 1:1, designates those to whom he writes, was applied to themselves by the Jews in direct allusion (as seems probable) to the name Jezreel, or God will scatter, in Hosea 1:4. Now mark that St. Peter does not say “which in time past were not God’s people,” but “were not a people.” This was the effect of the dispersion, or “scattering.” Though each Jew of the dispersion retained, and still retains, in isolation, his national characteristics and aspirations, yet their unity — that which made them a “people” — was, and is, for the time broken. The Hebrews had not only ceased to be in covenant as “God’s people,” but had ceased to be “a people” at all. But in Christ, that very “scattering” becomes a “sowing” (Hosea 2:23), for the name Jezreel means both equally; their very dispersion becomes the means of their multiplication by union with the Gentiles in Christ, and thus spiritually they recover the lost unity, and become once more a solid and well-governed confederation, i.e., “a people,” and that “the people of God.” (See John 11:52, and Dr. Pusey’s notes on Hosea.) It is a mistake to take St. Paul’s quotation of this passage in Romans 9:26, as if it referred solely to the Gentiles; for he expressly affirms that the title “My people” belongs to neither section exclusively, but to both in reunion — “us whom He called, not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles.”