Hosea 2:2

"Contend with your mother; contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts."

It is natural to associate the opening words of this verse with the children mentioned in Hosea 1, for they certainly suggest Hosea's domestic situation; but this impression fades quickly "into the picture of a nation under the figure of a marriage which has gone wrong."[3] The mother here is then the nation of Israel, and the children are individual members of the whole nation, of whom a small remnant were faithful to God; and, it is to that remnant of the faithful that the admonition to "Contend with your mother" was given.

"Her whoredoms ... and her adulteries ..." Whoredoms is a reference to licentiousness generally, but "adulteries" refers to Israel's having broken their marriage covenant with the Lord by the committing of idolatry. This figure is used extensively in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:14,15; Leviticus 17:7; 20:5,6; Numbers 14:33; 15:39; Deuteronomy 31:16; 32:16,21, etc.). Of course, in the background of these remarks was Hosea's consciousness of Gomer's infidelity.

"For she is not my wife, neither am I her husband ..." As Mays accurately discerned, the husband here "stands for Yahweh; and the wife represents the corporate people of Israel."[4] However, while admitting that "this sentence has been identified as a declaration of divorce," he insisted that "a divorce would make little sense, because the purpose of the proceedings was to regain the wife."[5] Smith followed Mays in this, declaring that, "The covenant had been fractured, but not broken!"[6] These views are of course incorrect, because the new marriage that appears under the triple betrothal in Hosea 2:19ff absolutely presupposes that the first had been broken utterly. Practically all of the popular commentators of the present day are very reluctant to allow that God did actually cast off the old Israel, a fact which Paul definitely stated in Romans 11, only with the exception that "not all of them" were so divorced, the faithful remnant who accepted Christ, of course, being exempted. Due to the widespread error on this question, a little further notice will be given here.

(1) Israel most certainly did break God's covenant, as witnessed by Jeremiah: "Israel and Judah have broken my covenant" (Jeremiah 11:10), and, "Which my covenant they brake!" (Jeremiah 31:32). Thus, the holy covenant between God and Israel was not merely "fractured" but broken.

(2) As to the question of whether the words here are the announcement of a divorce, or not, they are cast in the exact legal terminology of the divorce decree itself. Curt Kuhl noted that:

"She is not my wife, and I am not her husband" is simply the Hebrew equivalent of the Akkadian divorce formula, in the light of new Semitic inscriptions.[7]

Furthermore, McKeating has observed that Ezekiel 16:35-39 seems to presuppose that it was used in Israel as well.[8]

There can be, therefore, very little if any doubt whatever that God divorced Israel and that the decree was final and irrevocable. Several figures are used in the Bible to convey the truth of God's rejecting the old Israel as his "chosen people," a status which was taken away from them and bestowed upon the family of God "in Christ." One of these was mentioned by Paul in Romans 7:1ff, in which it was pointed out that God Himself was dead "to Israel" in the person of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Thus, any claim of the old Israel as the bride of Jehovah is as worthless as the claim of a woman who has been divorced for adultery against a husband who has already died.

None of this however, denies the fact of God's continuing love for all men, including the once "chosen people." Moreover, the stern measures of discipline imposed upon the apostate nation, as outlined in this chapter, were benign in purpose, having as their objective the reclamation of a "remnant" of the old Israel who, in time, would accept the true Messiah, and thus partake of the new marriage of the Lord to another Israel, inclusive of both Jews and Gentiles in Christ. This, of course, actually occurred. All of the holy apostles, as well as countless thousands of other Jews, were the original nucleus of the church of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, it is most likely that countless thousands, or even millions, of the holy church throughout history were by "fleshly descent" children of Abraham, and therefore Israelites in two senses; but, to be sure, this is impossible of documentation because any person obeying the gospel of Christ immediately loses any other religious identity that he once might have possessed. There are persons known to this writer who are of Jewish descent, but this is a truth unknown to their associates, and in the majority of instances, even to their children!

The reasons for God's divorcing Israel are vividly presented in this very verse.

"And let her put away her whoredoms from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts ..." Jamieson's comment on this is that, "Her unblushing countenance betrayed her lust, as did also her exposed breasts."[9] The people who are to contend with Israel with a view to her reformation are the faithful remnant of the nation. As Dummelow noted, "The people, here, are sometimes the children (as in this verse) but more generally the wife."[10] Israel had forgotten God, forsaken his teachings, and adopted the shameless worship of the old fertility god, "Baal." While probably true that many of the old forms, festivals and ceremonies of the true Mosaic religion were still observed, they had been entertwined and obscured by the sensuous and licentious paganism of the old Canaanites, even the very name of the true God being perverted to "Baal." This horrible worship had been made the official religion of the state of Israel by Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who brought with her from her native Tyre the Sidonian paganism.

"She encouraged Ahab to build shrines for worship and brought hundreds of the religious priests and prophets to Israel. She persecuted the prophets of God and ordered those slain who spoke against her idolatrous ways, Through her daughter Athaliah (2 Kings 8:18), who became wife of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, the same paganism also penetrated and later destroyed Judah also."[11]

The summons addressed to the children to contend with their mother in this verse, "presupposes that, although the nation regarded as a whole was sunken in idolatry, the individual members were not all slaves to it."[12] The terrible words of this verse should not be regarded merely as the venomous outburst of an outraged prophet, but as the true Word of God. As Hailey declared, "That it is Jehovah speaking, and not Hosea is clear from the `I' of this verse, and from `Thus saith Jehovah' in Hosea 2:13."[13]

While it is clear enough in the prophecy of Amos that God's rejection of Israel was due to the perversion of their holy religion, the point is made much more clearly in Hosea. As Robinson said: "His emphasis falls much more than that of Amos on the actual immorality of the cult and of its priests."[14]