Hosea Chapter 2 verse 3 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born. The Lord, by his servant the prophet, enforces the preceding exhortation by a stern denunciation, and the threat of further severities unless averted by repentance; as an injured husband withdraws from a faithless wife all the gifts and presents he had made for her adornment, leaving her poor and bare. Not only the removal of her garments by way of degradation and disgrace, but exposure in that position to insult and ignominy would ensue. In other words, the nation is threatened with deprivation of all the blessings previously lavished upon them - property, prosperity, population, and privileges; while dishonor of the deepest dye would aggravate the misery. The day of the nation's birth denotes the weakness and wretchedness of their infant state. To this corresponded their servile, suffering condition during their bondage and oppression in Egypt. Rashi thus explains it; Kimchi says, "The figure of birth is the time they are slaves in Egypt;" so also Theodoret, - the latter calls the day of her birth the sojourn in Egypt. The Prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:4) expands the idea, occasionally employing, as Rosenmüller remarks, the very words of Hosea. And make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and clay her with thirst. This part of the verse is susceptible of two explanations. The faithless female, under which character the northern kingdom is personified, may be compared to a wilderness, that is, according to Cyril, fruitless, parched, and productive only of thorns, thirsty and waterless. This comparison of a woman to a desert is wanting in suitability, and seems in some degree awkward in itself, beside being out of harmony with the closing clause; for to "slay with thirst," however applicable to a person, cannot with any propriety be said of a place, whether desert or otherwise. No doubt the wilderness may stand for those dwelling in it. We prefer, therefore, the alternative rendering, "make her as in a wilderness, and set her as in a dry land." Rashi aptly explains the threat to mean, "Lest I pronounce against them such a sentence as of old in this desert (Numbers 14:35), 'In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.'" There is, moreover, a natural connection of ideas between a wilderness, a dry land, and thirst. The nation's birth, represented by or compared to their sojourn in Egypt, naturally suggests the idea of their wandering in the wilderness after their exodus from that country; a wilderness, again, suggests what is an ordinary feature of such a district, namely, a dry land; while a region thus without water is suggestive as well as provocative of thirst. The former explanation, however, is given by Kimehi: "I will make thee like the wilderness which is open to every one, and in which, moreover, one finds no means of subsistence, nor anything that man needs; so I'll withdraw my goodness from them, and they shall be surrendered as a prey to every one."

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) Set her . . .--Reduce Israel to the destitute exposed condition in which she struggled into being in Egyptian bondage, and endured the wanderings and terrors of the wilderness. Probably we have here an allusion to the custom of female infanticide, which still prevails very widely in the East, as it did in the ancient world, the child being simply abandoned to death on the day that she was born. (Comp. Ezekiel 16:4.)