Hosea 1:11 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

This verse without doubt hath in it both an historical sense and a mystical or spiritual sense; it looketh somewhat to the return out of the Babylonish captivity, and to their settling in Canaan; but it looketh further to a more glorious deliverance from a more miserable captivity. Then; in the type and history, when the Babylonish captivity is dissolved, and the captives are loosed. The children of Judah; the children of the two tribes, who adhered to the house of David, who were carried captives, but under promise of a redemption from it. The children of Israel; some of the ten tribes who either went over to and did incorporate with the kingdom of Judah, and so were carried captives with them; or some of the ten tribes which the children of Judah found in the kingdom of Babylon, which having swallowed up the Assyrian monarchy, now the ten tribes were captives to their conquering sword. Thus in type, but it is spiritually and mystically to be understood of the whole Israel of God, Jew and Gentile, redeemed by and converted to Christ, in the day of his power. Be gathered together, by the power of God, by the decree Of Cyrus, by each other, heartening one another to return; so the type: in the antitype, shall be gathered together by the Spirit of God, the preaching of the gospel, and mutual instruction, exhortation, and encouragements of each other Appoint themselves one head; Zerubbabel in type, who was appointed by Cyrus, yet with full approbation of the people, putting themselves under his conduct, to carry them up to Jerusalem. But in the antitype Christ, appointed by the Father Head of his church, whom believers, heartily accepting, may in large sense be said to appoint to themselves. Out of the land; literally, out of Babylon; spiritually, out of captivity of sill and Satan. For great, good, joyous, and comfortable, shall be the day of Jezreel; of the seed or people of God, the sons of God once dispersed, but now gathered by the gospel.