Oséias 1:4

4. Jezreel That is, God sows. The name was to be given, as the next line shows, not on account of its meaning but on account of its historical connections. Jezreel is the well-known city of that name in the Plain of Jezreel.

Blood Or, blood-guiltiness (G.-K., 124n); the extinction of the house of Ahab by Jehu, about 842 B.C. (2 Kings 9:10). The name, therefore, points both backward and forward backward to the crime and forward to the punishment. Not only the dynasty of Jehu is to be destroyed, but also the northern kingdom. The events are thought to be imminent.

Yet a little while In this the prophet was not mistaken, for the fulfillment in each case took place within a few years, though not at one time; the farmer in the assassination of Zechariah by the usurper Shallum (2 Kings 15:10), the latter in the fall of Samaria and the exile of the northern tribes in 722-721 B.C. (2 Kings 17:0). One cannot fail to see that the standpoint of Hosea is not the same as that of 2 Kings 10:30. There Jehu is highly commended for the very act condemned here. How are we to explain the difference? The attempt to prove that Hosea has in mind some other crime is futile. The explanation lies in the advance in religious and ethical conceptions during the intervening century. The character of Jehovah never changes; but the conceptions of his character, even by the inspired prophets, did change and advance. It seems that the prophets of the ninth century had not yet learned “that the cause of truth is not permanently advanced by intrigue and bloodshed,” while Hosea is advancing toward the Christian belief that the kingdom of God must be extended by the moral influence going out from the kingdom; a view held also by the author of Isaiah 2:2-4. It should be noted, however, that some deny that Hosea’s judgment differed from that of the author of 2 Kings 10:30; and they explain the prophet’s condemnation by assuming that he recognized a wrong motive, unnoticed by the historian, behind Jehu’s act. “The same historical fact which, if it had proceeded from high motives, would have been praiseworthy as pleasing to God may, if arising from other motives, be unpardonable sin in the sight of God.” In addition it is claimed that Jehu went to excess in executing the divine command (2 Kings 9:27; 2 Kings 10:13-14).