Israel is justly punished for leaving God. The abundance of grace in
the church of Christ.
2:1. Say ye to your brethren: You are my people: and to your sister:
Thou hast obtained mercy.
Say to your brethren, etc. . .or, Call your brethren, My people: and
your sister, Her that hath obtained mercy. This is connected with the
latter end of the foregoing chapter, and relates to the converts of
Israel.
2:2. Judge your mother, judge her: because she is not my wife, and I am
not her husband. Let her put away her fornications from her face, and
her adulteries from between her breasts.
Your mother. . .The synagogue.
2:3. Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was
born: and I will make her as a wilderness, and will set her as a land
that none can pass through and will kill her with drought.
2:4. And I will not have mercy on her children. for they are the
children of fornications.
2:5. For their mother hath committed fornication, she that conceived
them is covered with shame: for she said: I will go after my lovers,
that give me my bread, and my water, my wool, and my flax, my oil, and
my drink.
2:6. Wherefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and I will
stop it up with a wall, and she shall not find her paths.
2:7. And she shall follow after her lovers, and shall not overtake
them: and she shall seek them, and shall not find, and she shall say: I
will go, and return to my first husband: because it was better with me
then than now.
2:8. And she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and
multiplied her silver, and gold, which they have used in the service of
Baal.
2:9. Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in its season, and
my wine in its season, and I will set at liberty my wool, and my flax,
which covered her disgrace.
2:10. And now I will lay open her folly in the eyes of her lovers: and
no man shall deliver her out of my hand:
2:11. And I will cause all her mirth to cease, her solemnities, her new
moons, her sabbaths, and all her festival times.
2:12. And I will destroy her vines, and her fig trees, of which she
said: These are my rewards, which my lovers have given me: and I will
make her as a forest and the beasts of the field shall devour her.
2:13. And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, to whom she burnt
incense, and decked herself out with her earrings, and with her jewels,
and went after her lovers, and forgot me, saith the Lord.
2:14. Therefore, behold I will allure her, and will lead her into the
wilderness: and I will speak to her heart.
I will allure her, etc. . .After all her disloyalties, I will still
allure her by my grace etc., and send her vinedressers, viz., the
apostles: originally her own children, who shall open to her the gates
of hope; as heretofore at her coming into the land of promise, she had
all good success after she had satisfied the divine justice by the
execution of Achan in the valley of Achor. Jos. 7.
2:15. And I will give her vinedressers out of the same place, and the
valley of Achor for an opening of hope: and she shall sing there
according to the days of her youth, and according to the days of her
coming up out of the land of Egypt.
2:16. And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord: That she shall call
me: My husband, and she shall call me no more Banli.
My husband. . .In Hebrew, Ishi. Baali, my lord. The meaning of this
verse is: that whereas Ishi and Baali were used indifferently in those
days by wives speaking to their husbands; the synagogue, whom God was
pleased to consider as his spouse, should call him only Ishi, and
abstain from the name of Baali, because of its affinity with the idol
Baal.
2:17. And I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and
she shall no more remember their name.
Baalim. . .It is the plural number of Baal: for there were divers idols
of Baal.
2:18. And in that day I will make a covenant with them, with the beasts
of the field, and with the fowls of the air, and with the creeping
things of the earth: and I will destroy the bow, and the sword, and war
out of the land: and I will make them sleep secure.
2:19. And I will espouse thee to me for ever: and I will espouse thee
to me in justice, and judgment, and in mercy, and in commiserations.
I will espouse thee, etc. . .This relates to the happy espousals of
Christ with his church: which shall never be dissolved.
2:20. And I will espouse thee to me in faith: and thou shalt know that
I am the Lord.
2:21. And it shall come to pass in that day: I will hear, saith the
Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth.
Hear the heavens, etc. . .All shall conspire in favour of the church,
which in the following verse is called Jezrahel, that is, the seed of
God.
2:22. And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and
these shall hear Jezrahel.
2:23. And I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy on
her that was without mercy.
2:24. And I will say to that which is not my people: Thou art my
people: and they shall say: Thou art my God.
That which was not my people, etc. . .This relates to the conversion of
the Gentiles.