Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
Then shall the children of Judah and the childern of Israel be gathered together - (Isaiah 11:12-13, "He shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah ... Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim; Jeremiah 3:18; Ezekiel 37:16-24, wherein the stick of Ephraim was joined to the stick of Judah, and God saith, I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all").
And appoint themselves one head - Zerubbabel typically; Christ antitypically, under whom alone Israel and Judah are joined, the "Head" of the Church (Ephesians 1:22; Ephesians 5:23), and of the hereafter united kingdom of Judah and Israel (Jeremiah 23:5-6; Ezekiel 34:23). Though "appointed" by the Father (Psalms 2:6), Christ is in another sense "appointed" as their Head by His people, when they accept and embrace Him as such.
And they shall come up out of the land - of the Gentiles, among whom they sojourn. The phrase "come up" refers to the moral elevation of the land of promise, as compared with all other lands. So Isaiah 2:2-3, "The mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains ... and many people shall ... say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob."
For great shall be the day of Jezreel - "the day of" one is the time of God's special visitation of him, either in wrath or in mercy. Here "Jezreel" is in a different sense from that in, Hosea 1:4, "God will sow," not "God will scatter;" great shall be the day when they shall be the seed of God, planted by God again in their own land (Jeremiah 24:6; Jeremiah 31:28; Jeremiah 32:41; Amos 9:15).
Remarks:
(1) God in this chapter sets forth the apostasy of the Israelite kingdom of the ten tribes, not only by word, but by action, which is more impressive than words. The prophet Hosea, is directed to take, in vision, a wife of whoredoms, and thus to have, as his children, children of whoredoms, as a vivid pictorial representation of God's grace to Israel, in having joined her to Him originally, when she was naturally impure, in order that He might make her pure in holy communion with Himself. Herein we have an affecting image of the Lord's unmerited grace toward us, in that, "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The Church, whom He hath espoused to Himself, is composed of those who originally were all alike defiled with corruption, and estranged from their rightful Lord and Head; but He, with marvelous and gratuitous love, deigns, out of such impure elements, to mould a church, to become, in communion with Him, a bride without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:25-32).
(2) The wife so taken by the prophet in vision bare him a son, whose name was called, by the direction of God, "Jezreel" - that is, God will scatter. Hereby God intimated that, as formerly His covenant-people were rightly called Israel-that is, Princes with God-by the might of faith and prayer, so now, because of their unfaithfulness, they should become that which Jezreel, the name of their royal city, means, scattered by God. As the mother Gomer, whose name implies complete devotion to sensuality, represents man in his natural carnality the call of God, so the children represent the awful tendency of man, even when in outward communion with God, to prove unfaithful to Him, and therefore the consequent rejection of the false professor by God. The Lord bears our provocations and inconsistencies with exceeding long-suffering. We should be wearied out with half the ingratitude and perverseness from others with which we try the patience and grieve the gracious Spirit of God. Yet there is a judicial limit even to God's long-suffering. And as in the case of Israel, so in the case of all who long abuse great spiritual privileges-God will cast them out from His presence at last, and punish with the heavier stripes in proportion to the greater degree of knowledge of His will which once they enjoyed.
(3) God, moreover, declared that He would avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu (Hosea 1:4). At first sight it may seem strange that God should punish for what He Himself had commanded to be done. But let us remember, when God commands, He requires that He should be obeyed, not merely in the outward act, but also in the inward motion. Jehu had obeyed God's command in the outward act of shedding the blood of Ahab's doomed race, and received a present reward accordingly. But in the inward motive which God requires, a complete surrender of man's will to God's will, Jehu was utterly wanting. So long as his so-called "zeal for the Lord" (2 Kings 10:16) coincided with his own personal ambition, so long he obeyed God; but when false political expediency required, as he thought, that he should disregard God's will, by worshipping the golden calves, he did not hesitate to do the very sin for which the divine judgment had been inflicted by the hands of himself on the house of Jeroboam. By his disobedience in this case he plainly showed that he would have disobeyed in the other case also, had it been contrary to his own impetuous will and selfish ambition. Let us hence learn that if we do the will of God merely for the sake of our own ends, and not from the pure principle of obedience, we are not pleasing God, but pleasing ourselves; and however prosperous we he for a time, in the end must pay an awful penalty for virtual disobedience.
(4) Hosea foretold that the kingdom of Israel would ere long "cease" to exist (Hosea 1:4). Yet at the time Israel was (4) Hosea foretold that the kingdom of Israel would ere long "cease" to exist (Hosea 1:4). Yet at the time Israel was in a state of prosperity, under Jeroboam II, such as it had not enjoyed since the days of Solomon. Through God's tender pity for Israel in her affliction by the Syrians; Jeroboam was permitted to recover all the territory that had been lost to Israel, and even to gain possession of Damascus. So entirely independent of mere human sagacity and foresight was the prophet's prediction. No material prosperity is a guarantee of safety to that people whose stability rests not on the moral basis of the fear of God and obedience to His laws. Where the will of God is regarded, there, even amidst outward trials, there is a pledge of final prosperity. Where God is set at nought, and men proudly rely on temporal resources as securing them from evil, there they are on the verge of an awful downfall.
(5) Three successive stages are marked in God's judgments on Israel, by the three children born in succession to the prophet by his wife, according to the vision. As "Jezreel" marks the period when, under Jeroboam II, the nation was seemingly in the robustness of masculine strength, but was doomed to have that strength scattered by the Lord, so "Lo-ruhamah" corresponds to the period which followed of woman-like weakness, when law and government had no power to establish the throne and kingdom, and the God who yearns with fatherly pity over His children doomed Israel to exclusion from His tender pity and love. Finally, the people having been "weaned" (Hosea 1:8) from the milk of the Word, and from all their former rich privileges, were to be "not the Lord's people," the last awful stage in their doom, marked by the name of the third child, Lo-ammi. How terrible is the case of that people, or that individual, who, after chastisements, remains still unchanged, and is therefore given up to eat the fruit of his own way! Such a one may temporally prosper for a time; but spiritually God seals his speedily coming doom forever with that sentence, "Ye are not my people, and I will not be your God."
(6) In lovely contrast to this stands the promise, "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God" (Hosea 1:7). God saves His people, not by their own efforts or powers, but by Himself, and by the Saviour, one with Himself whom the love of the Father provided. Judah's deliverance from the mighty hosts of Sennacherib, "without bow or sword, horses or horsemen," is a vivid type of the spiritual deliverance which is wholly effected by the Lord for us, and in which we must be content, if saved at all, to be simply recipients of his grace.
(7) Though then excluded from the favour of God, Israel also was not always to be so. God remembers mercy amidst wrath; and the same hand which wounded was also to heal. In Gospel times there has been spiritually a restoration of Israel, as well as of Judah, in the "remnant according to the election of grace," who through faith in Jesus Christ inherit the heavenly Canaan. This church of the election shall at last, when complete, be "the sand" (Hosea 1:10), a multitude which no man can number (Revelation 7:9). But besides the spiritual restoration, Hosea, in common with all the prophets, promises also a national restoration, when Judah and Israel, united as one nation, shall "come up out of" all the several lands of their exile (Hosea 1:11), and shall gladly "appoint themselves as their one Head" Him who in God's eternal decree has been appointed as His King of Israel upon His holy hill of Zion, (Psalms 2:1-12.) That shall be "the great day of Jezreel," when He who hath "scattered" Israel shall gather and "plant them upon their own land" (Amos 9:15). Let us see that, as "sons of the living God" by the spirit of adoption, we "live by the faith of the Son of God," even while we are still in the flesh. And let us look joyfully for that great day when "God shall sow" - that is, shall give the full increase of the falling into the ground of that One Divine Seed-corn which died in order that He might bring forth much fruit! (John 12:24.)