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2. Israel Punished and Restored

1 In Hebrew texts 2:1-23 is numbered 2:3-25.“Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’

Israel Punished and Restored

    2 “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her,
   for she is not my wife,
   and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the adulterous look from her face
   and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
3 Otherwise I will strip her naked
   and make her as bare as on the day she was born;
I will make her like a desert,
   turn her into a parched land,
   and slay her with thirst.
4 I will not show my love to her children,
   because they are the children of adultery.
5 Their mother has been unfaithful
   and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
   who give me my food and my water,
   my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
   I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
   she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
   ‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
   for then I was better off than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
   who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
   which they used for Baal.

    9 “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
   and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
   intended to cover her naked body.
10 So now I will expose her lewdness
   before the eyes of her lovers;
   no one will take her out of my hands.
11 I will stop all her celebrations:
   her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
   her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
   which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
   and wild animals will devour them.
13 I will punish her for the days
   she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
   and went after her lovers,
   but me she forgot,” declares the LORD.

    14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
   I will lead her into the wilderness
   and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
   and will make the Valley of Achor Achor means trouble. a door of hope.
There she will respond Or sing as in the days of her youth,
   as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

    16 “In that day,” declares the LORD,
   “you will call me ‘my husband’;
   you will no longer call me ‘my master. Hebrew baal’
17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
   no longer will their names be invoked.
18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
   with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky
   and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
   I will abolish from the land,
   so that all may lie down in safety.
19 I will betroth you to me forever;
   I will betroth you in Or with righteousness and justice,
   in Or with love and compassion.
20 I will betroth you in Or with faithfulness,
   and you will acknowledge the LORD.

    21 “In that day I will respond,”
   declares the LORD—
“I will respond to the skies,
   and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
   the new wine and the olive oil,
   and they will respond to Jezreel. Jezreel means God plants.
23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
   I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. Hebrew Lo-Ruhamah (see 1:6)’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people, Hebrew Lo-Ammi (see 1:9)’ ‘You are my people’;
   and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

God here amplifies the ingratitude of the people, that they understood not whence came such abundance of good things. She understood not, he says, that I gave to her corn and wine. The superstitious sin twice, or in two ways; — first, they ascribe to their idols what rightly belongs to God alone; and then they deprive God himself of his own honour, for they understand not that he is the only giver of all things, but think their labour lost were they to worship the true God. Hence the Prophet now complains of this ingratitude, She understood not that I gave to her corn and wine and oil. And this was an inexcusable stupidity in the Israelites, since they had been abundantly instructed, that the abundance of all good things, and every thing that supports man, flow from God’s bounty. Of this they had the clear testimony of Moses; and then the land of Canaan itself was a living representation of the Divine favour. It was then a prodigious madness in the people, that they who had been taught by word and by fact, that God alone is the Giver of all things, should yet not consider this truth. The Prophet, therefore, condemns this outrageous folly of the people, that neither experience nor the teaching of the law availed anything, She knew not, he says. There is stress to be laid on the pronoun, she; for the people ought to have been familiarly acquainted with God, inasmuch as they had been brought up in his household, as a wife, who is her husband’s companion. It was then incapable of any excuse, that the people should thus turn their minds and all their thoughts away from God.

She knew not then that I had given to her corn and wine and oil, that I had multiplied to her the silver, and also the gold she has prepared for Baal The verb עשה means specifically, to make: but here to appropriate to a certain purpose. They have, therefore, prepared gold for Baal; when they ought to have dedicated to me the first-fruits of all good things, in obedience to me and to the honour of my name, they have appropriated to Baal whatever blessings I have bestowed on them. We then see that in this verse two evils are condemned, — that the people deprived God of his just honour, — and that they transferred to their own idols what they ought to have given to God only. But he touched upon the last wickedness in the fifth verse, where he said in the person of the people, I will go after my lovers, who give my bread and my waters, my wool and my wine, etc. Here again he repeats, that they had prepared gold for Baal.

As to the word Baal, no doubt the superstitious included under this name all those whom they called inferior gods. No such madness had indeed possessed the Israelites, that they had forgotten that there is but one Maker of heaven and earth. They therefore maintained the truth, that there is some supreme God; but they added their patrons; and this, by common consent, was the practice of all nations. They did not then think that God was altogether robbed of his own glory, when they joined with him patrons or inferior gods. And they called them by a common name, Baalim, or, as it were, patrons. Baal of every kind was a patron. Some render it, husband. But foolish men, I doubt not, have ever had this superstitious notion, that inferior gods come nearer to men, and are, as it were, mediators between this world and the supreme God. It is the same with the Papists of the present day; they have their Baalim; not that they regard their patrons in the place of God: but as they dread every access to God, and understand not that Christ is a mediator, they retake themselves here and there to various Baalim, that they may procure favour to themselves; and at the same time, whatever honour they show to stones, or wood, or bones of dead men, or to any of their own inventions, they call it the worship of God. Whatever then, is worshipped by the Papists is Baal: but they have, at the same time, their patrons for their Baalim. We now then perceive the meaning of the Prophet in this verse.
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