Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of my people. Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee, when I returned the captivity of my people.
Also, O Judah, he hath set an harvest for thee - "an harvest," namely, of judgments, as in Jeremiah 51:33; Joel 3:13; Revelation 14:15. Called a "harvest," because it is the fruit of the seed which, Judah herself hath sown (Hosea 8:7; Hosea 10:13, "Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity;" Job 4:8; Proverbs 22:8). Judah, under Ahaz, lost 120,000 "slain in one day (by Israel, under Pekah), because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers."
When I returned the captivity of my people - when I, by Oded my prophet, caused 200,000 women, sons, and daughters of Judah to be restored from captivity by Israel (2 Chronicles 28:6-15). This prophecy was delivered under Pekah (Ludovicus de Dieu). Maurer explains, When Israel shall have been exiled for its sins, and has been subsequently restored by me, thou, Judah, also shalt be exiled for thine. But the objection is, Judah's punishment was not at the time when God restored Israel. Grotius translates, 'When I shall have returned to make captive (i:e., when I shall have again made captive) my people.'
The first captivity of Israel under Tiglath-pileser was followed by a second under Shalmaneser. Then came the siege of Jerusalem, and the capture of the fenced cities of Judah, by Sennacherib, the forerunner of other attacks, ending in Judah's captivity. But the Hebrew is elsewhere used of restoration, not renewed punishment (Deuteronomy 30:3; Psalms 14:7, "When the Lord bringeth back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice"). I therefore prefer either Ludovicus de Dieu's view or, with Pusey 'Judah also shall be punished; but the Lord hath set an harvest of good for thee, O Judah, at last, when I return,' that is, turn again the captivity of my people after the seventy years' coming exile in Babylon. "Then they which sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Psalms 126:1; Psalms 126:5). This latter view accords with the beginning of the chapter, "He hath torn, and He will heal us," primarily fulfilled in the return from Babylon.
Remarks:
(1) If sinners would have God return to them, they must return to the Lord. When we are truly penitent we ascribe our punishment, not to chance, but to God's gracious appointment. And as God has wounded, so must we look to Him alone, and not to man, to heal the wound. The firm persuasion of His mercy prompts the penitent to seek Him: for without this persuasion we should flee from Him, not to Him. Moreover, true penitents do not wish to return to the Lord singly or alone; but encourage one another, no longer as heretofore in sin, but now in a general movement toward their gracious Father.
(2) The resurrection of Christ on the third day, according to the Scriptures, is the foundation of all hope to the Church of all ages. Israel's hope of national resurrection is inseparably linked with the resurrection of Christ, the antitypical Israel. It is "together with His dead body" that both the literal and spiritual Israel shall arise. Already in spirit, if we be believers, God hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:4-6). As believers were crucified in the person of Christ, so are they risen with Christ (Colossians 3:1). As yet the promise has not been fulfilled to the literal Israel of the ten tribes, who have never yet been restored at all; nor to Judah, except in a very partial degree, at the restoration from Babylon. The whole of the elect nation therefore wait still for the full accomplishment of God's gracious promise of resurrection as a state. Much more do we, the spiritual Israel of God, "groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). It is true, already in spirit believers walk in the light of God's countenance, referring all their ways to Him, and enjoying the sense of His favour. But not until the resurrection shall we fully "live in His sight" (Hosea 6:2), "beholding the King in His beauty" (Isaiah 33:17), "seeing Him as He is" (1 John 3:2), "face to face," and "knowing" Him "even as also we are known" (1 Corinthians 13:12).
(3) The first-fruit of the recovered favour of God will be progressive advancement in the knowledge of God. But we must "follow on," and "follow hard after (Psalms 63:9) God," "forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before," in order that we "may apprehend that for which we are also apprehended of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12-13). We know in order to follow, and we must follow in order to know. Light illumines the path of love; and love prompts us to press onward in the path of light, that knowing more, we may love and obey the more. True and saving knowledge of God is heat as well as light, the warmth of spiritual life, not the unfructifying moonlight of mere dog-mas. Yet there must be knowledge and doctrine; else there could be no love, and no true obedience; for the root of faith would be wanting. Throughout eternity the ever-fresh and enlarged views of the infinite God given us, as "we follow on to know the Lord," shall constitute the ever-increasing bliss of the redeemed in heaven.
(4) As the penitent in affliction seek the Lord early and in the morning (Hosea 5:15), so are His goings forth to them "as the morning, prepared" and sure in His eternal purposes of grace (Hosea 6:3). While His people are "waiting for Him more than they that watch for the morning" (Psalms 130:6), He shall come to them as the morning ("Day-spring from on high," Luke 1:78), all-radiant with joy and blessedness. As the early and the latter rains were needed in the thirsty soil and terraces of Palestine, respectively to form and to mature the grain, at the seed-time and at the harvest, so Christ; is the Beginner and Finisher of our faith, coming down to the soul spiritually athirst, "as rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth" (Psalms 72:6).
(5). How sad a contrast is presented by the transition from Israel as she ought to be, and as she shall by God's marvelous grace yet be, to Israel as she then was, and, alas, still is! God appeals to herself to say, what more can God do for her conversion, than what He has done? The all-perfect and all-knowing God asks sinners to prescribe to Him what other means they would have Him to adopt, since they will not be drawn by those all-wise and all-gracious means which He has already used. Sometimes, indeed, Ephraim and Judah seemed to be disposed to repent under chastisements: but their godliness soon disappeared as the morning cloud, which promised to give the fertilizing rain for a time, but was quickly dried up by the sun's heat: or, as the sparkling dew, presenting the appearance of moisture at early dawn, but speedily disappearing, and leaving the ground dry and parched as ever: whereas, on the contrary, Christ's "going forth" to His people is "as the morning" "shining more and more unto the perfect day" (Proverbs 4:18), and "as the latter and former rain unto the earth" (Hosea 6:3). Therefore, the judgments of God upon Ephraim and Judah shall correspond to their sins. "The words of God's mouth," whereby they might have been saved, shall be the very "two-edged sword" whereby they shall be "hewn" asunder (Hosea 6:5). The coming of Christ to all unbelievers, which might have been, but for their sinful folly, as the light of morning (Hosea 6:3), shall be as the destroying "lightning" flash. For "he that receiveth not Christ's words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that Christ hath spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day" (John 12:48).
(6) Sinners plead as a ground of pardon in the judgment their formal prayers and services, just as the Israelites pleaded their "sacrifices" (Hosea 5:6); but God will not have sacrifices where "mercy" and love are wanting. God requires outward confession of His name and religious services, but He requires mercy and beneficence more: for it is for the sake of these that those are enjoined. While He ordains that we "forsake not the assembling of ourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25), He tells us that the most essential religious service х threeskeia (G2356)] is, "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self unspotted from the world" (James 1:27). "The knowledge of God" must go hand in hand with "mercy:" Faith toward God must accompany love to man: for 'vain were it to boast that we have the other members, if faith, the head, were cut off' (Jerome). The covenant of God with men will not avail for salvation those who "have transgressed" it (Hosea 6:7). As Adam was cast out of paradise, so shall all transgressors be deprived of the privileges of the covenant, and of the goodly inheritance which the faithful are heirs to according to the covenant.
(7) Ramoth-gilead and Shechem (Hosea 6:8-9), the cities of refuge, the former beyond, the latter on this side of Jordan, were made the scenes of blood-shedding by the very priests whose duty was there to save life. They intercepted and slew at Shechem the pilgrims who rested there on their way to Jerusalem to the temple worship. It is peculiarly hateful God, and marks presumptuous, deliberate, and wanton wickedness, when the very places which God hath sanctified, are desecrated to the perpetration of heinous sin and crime. And all this was done "in the house of Israel" (Hosea 6:10), among God's own elect people. This made the thing peculiarly "horrible," and was the seed of a "harvest" of awful punishment to both Ephraim and Judah (Hosea 6:11). And yet from that harvest of wrath there is yet to be a "return," through the grace of God. "Oh that the time were come!" "Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion!" For "when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of His people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad" (Psalms 14:7).