In spirit, as well as in circumstances, there shall be revival, moral as well as national recovery, conversion as well as restoration. Hosea’s last chapter lets us see this, and all the prophets. Micah, whose prophecy we may consider in another place, gives us this subject in a very vivid way, delineating the exercises of the soul very strikingly in his last two chapters.
Very various and broken are the notices which our prophet gives us of those iniquities which were leading the people to their graves, or to the judgment of death.
The land was to mourn—the people were to languish. The Lord would be to Ephraim as a moth, to the house of Judah as a worm (Hos. 5:12); as the fowls of the heaven He would bring them down (Hos. 7:12). They should be swallowed up (Hos. 8:8); Memphis was to bury them (Hos. 9:6); their children should be brought forth to the murderer (Hos. 9:13); they should use the words prepared for the day of utter excision, mountains cover us, hills fall on us (See Luke 23:20).
Such words are used, such descriptions are given of them. But they were to revive, and of this we get abrupt witness also. The Lord was God and not man, and His heart would turn within Him—His repentings should be kindled (Hos. 11:8); there should be no full and final destruction. Resurrection, as in the third day (a glance at the resurrection of the Lord of Israel Himself) is spoken of (Hos. 6:2). The coming out from Egypt also, as a renewal of their history, as though they were beginning afresh (Hos. 11:1), under the hand and grace of God, and Jacob’s history, are likewise referred to, with the same intent (Hos. 12:2-6). Birth from the womb (Hos. 9:11), and resurrection from the grave (Hos. 13:14), are also called forth to set forth, as in figures, the same story of this people. And, again, the blighting force of the east wind (Hos. 13:15-16), and then afterward the bloom and beauty of spring (Hos. 14:5-8), tell us of the doom and the revival of the nation.
Such passages throughout the book give it its character. I read it as that which, under the Spirit of God, keeps the judgment and redemption, the death and resurrection, of Israel as a nation, constantly in view. The language of resurrection itself is so employed in Hosea 13, that the apostle can use it, when he is making literal resurrection his subject, in 1 Corinthians 15. Here, however, it is the recovery of the nation. And standing, as Hosea was, in the full prospect of the Assyrian captivity, and in the near approach of the doom of the house of Jehu, it was natural and easy, so to speak, that the Spirit should lead him to see and speak of the death-stricken state of Israel as just about to begin. (In Hosea 13:14 we get the thought of the apostle in Romans 11:29—that divine mercy shall gather Israel at the end, because God’s gifts and calling are without repentance.)
Principally, again I say, we have a detail of those iniquities which were making such a process, judgment unto death, necessary. But I welcome and fully admit the instructions of another, that, in a passing way, we get a large view of truth in this book of Hosea.