Hosea 6:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

HOSEA CHAPTER 6 An exhortation to repentance, Hosea 6:1-3. A complaint against Israel and Judah for persisting still in their wickedness, Hosea 6:4-11. The former chapter ended with a declaration of God's resolution to bring his own chosen ones, true Israelites, by deep distresses to repentance, and to seek him whom they had forsaken; this chapter begins with a declaration of the success of this project. The prophet therefore brings them in exhorting and calling upon one another, and encouraging each other; the phrase you have Isaiah 2:3 Micah 4:2, &c. Let us return unto the Lord; let us be wiser at last, idols have not profited us, they have been our sin, and our fall; we forsook the fountain of living water when we did forsake the Lord. Let us now, with repenting hearts, leave idols, and return to the Lord; let us cast them off, and betake ourselves to the worship, obedience, love, and fear of the Lord, the only true and eternal God. For he hath torn; we now see his hand in all we suffer, and as it is his we own it very just: we, like froward rebels, sought our help from his enemies, and he, as he threatened, hath met us, like a lion, and hath torn us: his voice in the judgment, like the roaring of a lion, hath awakened us; and our bleeding wounds have told us, that God hath done all this against us, and all this because we were departed from him. And he will heal us; for, beside his mercy inclining him, we know it was his design by this course to recover us to himself; and we are assured he hath withdrawn his hand. left us in perplexities, but till we would seek, till we would be willing to be healed: he will be our Physician, and by his lenitives will ease and cure us, now his severer course hath abated our phrensy. The Assyrian king could not, but Israel's God and King can and will heal. He hath smitten; the same thing in a different simile, God hath wounded. And he will bind us up, as a skillful and tender chirurgeon binds up with plasters, and swathes to heal.