Discipline is an act of love. The author of Hebrews notes that all discipline is painful at first, “but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Indeed, whenever God disciplines us, we ought to be encouraged that He is treating us like sons.

The opposite of discipline is to be given over, which we see in Romans 1. There, Paul speaks about the sinfulness of all people because even though everyone can see that God is the Creator of all things, we all suppress that truth. “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21).

Those are the roots of all sin: not honoring God as God nor giving thanks to Him. Every other sin is born from those two interconnected sins. We see this in the first sin. Adam and Eve sinned because they wanted to be like God and were ungrateful that they were already made in His image. And the same is true for all sins since.

That further sin is the fruit of not honoring God nor giving thanks to Him is seen in Paul’s threefold declaration that: “therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (v. 24), “For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions” (v. 26), and “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28). Thus, being given over to debased passions and more obvious sins is a consequence of first refusing to honor God and give thanks to Him.

These two roads, discipline for sin or being given to it, are crucial for understanding Hosea 2. Our text will begin with an indictment toward Israel/Gomer in verses 2-5. Verses 6-20 then describe the discipline upon her. The first section, verses 6-13, are severe discipline, while verses 14-20 are a tender discipline. Nevertheless, they are two sides of the same coin. Both are aimed at restoration. Finally, the text ends with peaceful fruit of righteousness that discipline produces in verses 21-23.

THE INDICTMENT: SHE HAS PLAYED THE WHORE // VERSES 2-5

We should note from the beginning that this chapter in particular blends the subjects of Yahweh and Israel and Hosea and Gomer. Language of both is used, but ultimately, Hosea and Gomer’s relationship is a real-world parable of Yahweh and Israel.

Verse 2 begins: Plead with your mother, plead–for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband– that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts.

Here it is as though Hosea were saying to his children, “You should plead with your mother because I am done with her.” Indeed, he uses severe language of a broken covenant. Instead, of hearing my Beloved is mine and I am his, we have “She is not my wife, and I am not her husband.” And this immediately ought to make us tense for what will follow because Hosea was fully within his rights to divorce Gomer according to Deuteronomy 24:1-4. Is this, therefore, a Romans 1 situation?

Verse 3 only adds to the suspense. Outside of Genesis 2 and the Song of Songs, nakedness is always associated with shame, so it sounds like she will be given over to shameful deeds. He also threatens to “make her like a wilderness,” which represented chaos, disorder, and being outside of civilization. Will he give her over to her sin?

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The key to that verse is that if Yahweh is our delight, then the desire of our heart is Him. To be given the desires of our heart without possessing a delight in God is a fearful thing. It would be making us into the wilderness that our hearts so often crave.

Verse 4 turns to Gomer’s children, for children do inevitably suffer from the sins of their parents. They are marked as children of whoredom. They have a mother who is constantly chasing lovers, thinking that they are the ones who are providing for her.

That is the indictment and accusation laid before her.

THE DISCIPLINE: I WILL ALLURE HER // VERSES 6-20

Verse 6 begins with the word ‘therefore,’ which connects it to the previous verses. Indeed, it is the answer to the question of verses 2-5: Will he give her up? No, he will hedge her up instead with thorns and build a wall against her. He will not give her over. He will discipline her.

We should take note of the shared imagery with the Song of Songs throughout this section. In the Song, the Bride was a garden locked with a wall around her. But Israel has been a garden trampled and overrun, so Yahweh will wall her in and hedge her with thorns.

Verse 7: She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them. She shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she will say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me than now.” She has been pursuing her lovers, like the forbidden woman of Proverbs 7 rather than the Bride of the Song. Israel did the same. They did not stumble by accident into their idolatry but sought it out. Thus, in His discipline, the LORD would cut them off from their idols.

Verse 8 gives us a proper understanding of verse 5: But she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the wine and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold which they used for Baal. This is the Romans 1:25, where they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever! Amen.” They gave credit for the gifts that Yahweh gave them to their idols.

Thus, in verse 9, the LORD declares that He will take away those gifts from her and, in verse 10, expose her shame. Painful though it may be, exposing sin and shame is a means of discipline. To leave sin to fester is not compassion. If a doctor left an infected wound untreated or a broken bone out of place, we would accuse him of malpractice. Likewise, Proverbs 13:24 speaks to parents, saying, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” To expose sin and correct it is an act of love.

Verses 11-12 describe God’s further discipline in cutting off her celebrations and her comforts. Vines and fig trees are a symbol of the comfort that God promised His people. In Micah, the LORD said that everyone would sit under his own vine and fig tree, and no one would make them afraid. Vines, of course, make wine, and fig trees give both shade and fruit. Because they attribute those blessings to their idols, God would make Israel into a forest, which is a place of chaos compared to a cultivated garden, and have their fields devoured by beasts.

Verse 13: I will punish her for the feasts of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers. The picture here is Israel putting on her nicest garments and jewelry but not for her husband. She is using very gifts that God gave to her to court her lovers.

The last line of verse 13 is the emotional heart of this passage: and forgot me, declares the LORD.

In verse 14, we have a sudden shift, but the transition is intentional. Again, notice the word ‘therefore.’ This is connected and building upon the previous verses. Those verses described severe discipline; now tender discipline is brought in. Both, however, are still discipline, and both work together in love.

Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. There is still pain and discomfort here, for the wilderness is not a pleasant place to be. Indeed, it is a place of trouble. Yet the LORD says, And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. Achor means trouble. God will turn her trouble into hope in the wilderness. And she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

What is God promising here? He will replay the exodus with Israel. Just as the LORD originally brought them out of their slavery in Egypt and took them into the wilderness, where they were forced to rely upon Him as their shepherd, so God would do again. He will pull Israel away from her comforts and away from lovers. He will take her back into a desolate place where she will be forced to trust Him for her food and drink again.

In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband, and no longer call me ‘My Baal.’ Baal means master. In the next verse, the LORD promises to remove the names of the Baals from their mouth, but here they were calling Yahweh ‘My Baal.’ I think this points to two things. First, many of the Israelites still claimed to worship Yahweh, but they did not worship Him exclusively. Thus, they were treating the LORD as if He were just one among a pantheon of gods.

It also likely points to their view of Yahweh. They only saw Him as a master. They were overlooking completely the intimate and exclusive covenant that He had established with them. Their relationship with Yahweh was not simply one of master and slave but of husband and wife.

Verse 18: And I will make a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. I will abolish the bow and the sword and war from the land, and I will make you like down in safety.

We are not given a name for this covenant, but it seems clear that it is the New Covenant that Jeremiah and Ezekiel predict. In Jeremiah, this covenant will see God writing His law upon His people’s hearts. In Ezekiel, God will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them. Here it is a cosmic covenant, one that will be made with all creation as in Genesis 1. It will also see war abolished, which is essentially a return to Eden.

The promise of the new covenant is important because it was not enough for the Mosaic Covenant to simply be renewed. Even in Deuteronomy, Moses repeatedly tells the Israelites that they would not be able to keep God’s commandments, even though they were for their own good.

Again, the problem with the old covenant was that it was insufficient. The sacrifices could not take away sin, nor could the law change their hearts. A new covenant was needed. And because humanity’s sin cursed all of creation, it needed to be a cosmological covenant like this one.

Verse 19-20 are the end of the disciplinary section. Notice the threefold “I will betroth you to me…” God will not cast off His people forever. Through His discipline, He will unite them to Himself forever. Only Christ has accomplished this, for no one can snatch from His hand those who belong to Him.

This eternal betrothment will be done in righteousness and justice as well as steadfast love and mercy. There is an interesting parallel to those two thoughts. Righteousness is the root concept, while justice is righteousness enacted. Likewise, steadfast love is the root concept, while mercy is steadfast love enacted. Indeed, the word mercy means a deep compassion that springs from pity over someone else’s misery. The emphasis, therefore, is that both God’s justice and mercy will be accomplished with this betrothment. He will both forgive her sins and by no means clear them.

The only place where righteousness, judgment, steadfast love, and compassion meet is at the cross, where Christ is both sacrifice and high priest. There, He made the once for all atonement for our sins, sprinkling His blood upon the heavenly altar, and fully clearing all of our iniquity from the record of our sins. In Him, we are declared righteous, and in Him, the judgment is paid in full. It is also a betrothal in faithfulness. Though we were unfaithful, He betroths us to Himself in faithfulness.

And you shall know the LORD. This is always the telos of God’s discipline. We saw it clearly in Exodus, where everything God did was so that both the Israelites and the Egyptians (and even the whole earth!) would know that He is Yahweh. In the plagues and exodus, He revealed Himself as Redeemer. In the wilderness, He revealed Himself as Shepherd. And at Sinai, He revealed Himself as Lawgiver and Covenant-Maker. And that is the same revelation that He is making with the discipline here in Hosea. He will redeem her from having given herself to the Baals. He lead her in the wilderness as her shepherd. And He will fulfill all justice against her and establish His eternal covenant with her. Again, this is a new and greater exodus, the exodus that Christ accomplished (Luke 9:31).

THE FRUIT OF DISCIPLINE: YOU ARE MY GOD // VERSES 21-23

All of God’s people come to Christ through an act of discipline of some kind. We cannot come to Christ until we acknowledge and lament our sin, which means that they must be exposed to us, at the very least. Very often, the LORD uses severe discipline before He leads us to Himself with tender discipline. The severe discipline often tills the soil of our hearts so that the tender discipline of God can take root and ultimately bear fruit.

That is how Hosea ends: with the fruit of God’s discipline upon His people. It is a fruit that is now being fulfilled in Christ and will be fully accomplished at His return.

Notice that verses 21-22 have a liturgical call-and-response feel to them, which is often seen at covenant ceremonies in Scripture. Again, this covenant applies to the LORD, His people, and all of creation. God will reverse the curse upon the earth, and it will freely give its gifts to men again. And God’s people will give thanks to God for those gifts, not to the Baals.

Jezreel will no longer be a place of bloodshed. Rather, it will live up to its name: God sows. The LORD will sow His people for Himself in the land. This is a reference again to the great day of Jezreel in 1:11, where Judah and Israel will be united again under one head, under the kingship of Christ.

How will that day be accomplished? Verse 23 is the answer. Yahweh will have mercy on No Mercy, and He make Not My People into His people. And they will all declare, “You are my God.” Again, Paul cites verse 23 as applying to the inclusion of the Gentiles under the new covenant in Christ. This is what we see from James’ citation of Amos 9. Christ is rebuilding the tent of David, and He is including “all the Gentiles who are called by my name” (Acts 15:17). One day, the fullness of God’s people will stand before Him face to face.

But until that day, Christ is gathering them from all the nations. For all those who presently do not honor God as God nor give thanks to Him, there is still time to repent, to face the discipline of the LORD rather than being given over to sin. Christ is the door of hope in our very troubled world. And He sends us as His ambassadors to tell No Mercy that there is mercy and to tell Not My People that they can become God’s people.

Indeed, the Table before us is a proclamation of Christ’s death until He comes again. It is a declaration that only Christ can preserve the justice and mercy of God together, that Christ alone is the door of hope in the valley of trouble.

Crucially, it is also a meal of covenantal remembrance. In Hosea, God declares that Israel forgot Him, and here Jesus tells us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” So as we come, remember the Bridegroom who pursued us when we were unfaithful. Remember the God who did not give us over to our sin. Remember the Savior who became the door of hope in the wilderness for us. Remember the blood of the covenant by which He has betrothed us to Himself forever.

And remember that this meal points forward to the day when the betrothal will be consummated, when Christ will return for His bride, and we will sit with Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Until that day, we eat and drink in remembrance of Him, honoring God as God and giving thanks to Him.