Hosea 2:7 - Hawker's Poor Man's Commentary

Here we have the beautiful consequence of God's gracious dealings with his people. Though the Lord's people have done, and do commit spiritual adultery with the Mammon of this world, and the Church is continually running after her idols; yet, meeting with nothing but sorrow, disappointment, and vexation of spirit, the Lord mercifully tinging all her pursuits with bitterness and vanity; and by the secret inclinations the Lord works in the heart, working grace, at length issues a cry from the soul, I will go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than now. Reader! I pray you not to overlook the blessed soul-rejoicing, soul-comforting doctrine here taught the Church. Jesus was, and is, and ever will be, the first, and constant, and last, and only husband of his Church. For whatever idols our poor souls, in the fallen state of an unregenerated, unrenewed nature, through the temptation of hell, may go after, still the Lord Jesus loseth not his right in us, neither we our interest in him. Oh! what a thought is here! Oh! what unknown, unexplored, and endless mercies, are found in it, for every redeemed soul to rejoice in! Christ, as Mediator, received his Church, his bride, his spouse, from the hand and gift of God the Father, before all worlds. True, he was to redeem it in time; but this he had bargained for from all eternity. The lapsed state in Adam, like what is said here of the Church, left our whole nature naked, and as in the day in which we were born, children of whoredoms, and deserving wrath. But Jesus claims his right, and recovers his redeemed, the purchase of his blood, by the sovereignty of his Almighty arm. And having undertaken for her debt, he undertook for her duty also, and therefore makes her willing in the day of his power.