Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of [her] friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.
Ver. 1. Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, &c.] This yet is emphatic: and it is as if he had said, Go over the same subject again in shorter discourse, and lay before them the same truths, but in more lively colours, that the obstinate may be left without excuse, and the penitent may not be left without comfort. Iterun abi, Go to them once more, and be instant with them, or stand over them, as St Paul saith, 2 Timothy 4:2 (επιστηθι), and as St Paul doth, in crying down the Jews' conceit of being justified by the works of the law, and in disgracing the sin of fornication so common at Corinth. Chrysostom at Antioch having preached sundry sermons agaist swearing, was at length asked when he would preach upon another subject? He answered, when you leave swearing I will leave preaching against swearing. Austin (De Doct. Christian.) would have a preacher so long to pursue and press the same point, until, by the gesture and countenance of the hearers, he perceive that they understand it, and will practise it. This is to whet the word of God upon people (as Moses' phrase is) by going oft over the same thing, as the knife doth the whetstone. Deuteronomy 6:7 , Shanan et Shanah repetere sicut in acuendo A like type to the former is here first propounded, secondly expounded, that at length it might fasten. A preacher must not desist, though at first he prevail not (as some from this second injunction collect, that this prophet would have done), but he must turn himself into all manner of shapes and fashions both of speech and of spirit to win people to God, with all longsuffering and doctrine, 2 Timothy 4:2. And this the Lord here teacheth Hosea to do by his own example of patience and tolerance, notably set forth in this ensuing type.
Love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress] This was a harder task than to take her, Hosea 1:2, in hope she would prove honest. But now that she hath played the adulteress and so deserved to be discarded, yet to love her, yea, and that when she is habituated and hardened in her lewd practices (as the Hebrew word signifieth), Durus est sic sermo, who can bear it? (Non tam actum quam habitum significat. Rivet.) If none else can, yet God both can and will, as appeareth by this whole parable, wherein the prophet is commanded to represent God, as in the former type, Hosea 1:4,5; Hosea 1:9,11, and by loving that wife which he had taken before, though she had played false with him, to show what was the love of God toward Israel. She forsaketh me, saith he, who give her all the good she either hath or hopeth for, and followeth after those that put bottles of wine to her mouth, she loves those flagons, &c. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, &c.: howbeit I will not relinquish her, but will love her freely as if she had never offended me. O matchless mercy! O cocnio plena consolationis! O most comfortable sermon! God so loved the world, the mundus immundus, dirty world, that he gave his only begotten Son. This was a sic so, without a sicut, like, there being nothing in nature that can possibly parallel it. See Romans 5:8. God loveth apostates, idolaters, adulterers, yet not as such, but as he intendeth and respecteth their conversion to himself; which nothing will sooner effect than the sense of such an undeserved love. I am not ignorant that another sense is set upon these words, as thus; Go, yet love a woman not married, as yet but espoused unto thee, who may hereafter be thy wife, but is for her adultery rejected for a long season: so God loved the Israelites as an adulterous spouse, and therefore for a long while neglected, but yet at length to be taken by him to wife, according to Hosea 2:15; Hosea 2:19 .
Beloved of her friend] sc. of some paramour, as Jeremiah 3:1, "thou hast played the harlot with many lovers." These the Greeks called εταιρους, fellow friends; the whore was called εταιρα : so they flattered their own vices, putting gilded names on them, as our blades name drunkenness good fellowship, harlots, she sinners, &c. The Septuagint render it a woman that loveth naughty things or naughty packs. But I like the former interpretation better, and it is agreeable to the Chaldee Paraphrast.
Who look to other gods] Look and lust, ut vidi! ut perii! The mind lodgeth in the eye, and looketh out at that window of wickedness. "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand," &c., Job 31:26,27, alludeth to the practice of those old idolaters, which was to kiss their idols, if they could reach them, as 1 Kings 19:18. (Cicero tells of the image of Hercules cuius mentum osculis adorantium attritum fuit who chin he will kiss and rub, and the Papists so kiss their pictures, that hard marble is worn with it, saith Sir Edwin Sands an eyewitness.) But when they could not come at the idol to kiss it, they looked up and kissed their hand, in token of homage; and this was called adoration (quasi applicatio manus ad os). This looking to other gods, imports a turning towards them. See Deuteronomy 31:18; Deuteronomy 31:20, a loving them, a longing after them, and an expectation of some good from them. No wonder, therefore, that such whorish hankerings and honings were offensive to the jealous and just God: "but the unjust knoweth no shame," Zephaniah 3:5; men are forbidden so much as to lift up their eyes to their idols, Ezekiel 23:27. And shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills (saith David, as some read that text), as if from thence came my help? Psalms 121:1. Absit. God forbid. Christ's spouse hath a dove's chaste eye, Song of Solomon 4:1; and he would have her like that Persian lady, who being at Cyrus's wedding, and asked how she liked the bridegroom? How? saith she, I know not. I saw nobody there but my husband.
And love flagons of wine] Luxury is the ordinary companion of idolatry, as Exodus 32:6 1 Corinthians 10:7 Revelation 18:13,14. See Judges 9:27 Amos 2:8. O monachi vestri stomachi, &c. Oh king of your belly. At Paris and Louvain the best wine is called vinum theologicum, the divinity wine; it is also called vinum cos, wine of the consul, i.e. caloris, odoris, saporis optimi. the best warmth, fragrance and taste. Those clergy locusts lick up all; those abbey lubbers are good for nothing but to devour grain, like vermin; those wine bibbers and flesh mongers (as Solomon calleth them) are no better than the excrements of human society, gelulim, belly gods, and fit servants of those dung hill gods, as idols are called, Hab 2:18-19 cf. Jeremiah 10:3,5. And a scavenger, whose living is to empty privies, is far to be preferred before such a one, as, looking to other gods, and making his gut his god, lives but to fill privies. For a flagon of wine, or a meal's meat, any god may soon have the hearts and the services of such as have (Poliphemus-like) no supreme deity but their belly.