Hosea 2:7a goes on to say, “She will pursue her lovers / But will not overtake them; / And she will seek them but not find them.” This shows Israel’s stubbornness. Even though God will hedge her up and build up a wall against her, blocking her way, she will not return to Him but instead will pursue her lovers, her idols. However, eventually she will say, “I will go / And return to my first husband, / For it was better for me then than now.” This indicates that eventually she will return to God as her first Husband. All of us have had this kind of experience. First, we struggled persistently against God to a point, but later we returned to God to be with Him. We said, “I will return to God, for it was better then than now.”
Israel did not know that it was Jehovah who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil and who multiplied to her silver and gold. Rather, she used the silver and gold to serve Baal, an idol (v. 8).
Verse 9 tells us that Jehovah will take back His grain in its time and His new wine in its appointed season, and He will snatch away His wool and His flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Some may wonder whether the great God would do things such as this. Yes, God does such things in order to correct us, to adjust us, to perfect us, and to make us according to His intention.
Jehovah will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her from His hand. He will bring all her mirth to an end, her feasts, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed assemblies. He will desolate her vine and her fig tree, of which she said, “These are my payments / That my lovers have given me” (vv. 10-12a). He will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field will devour them (v. 12b). He will also visit the days of the Baals upon her, in which she offered incense to them and adorned herself with her nose rings and her jewels and went after her lovers and forgot Jehovah (v. 13).
In 2:14-23 we see Jehovah’s restoration of the adulterous and apostate Israel.
Jehovah will lure Israel, He will bring her into the wilderness, and He will speak to her heart (v. 14). The wilderness should signify a wild place. During the Second World War Hitler made Germany a wilderness for the Jews, and today the Arab countries are trying to make the nation of Israel a wilderness. God would allow even this, for in the wilderness God can speak to Israel.
Quite often in our human life we enter into a situation which may be likened to a wilderness. Sometimes God will cause our environment to be a wilderness so that He may speak to us, to our heart.
Jehovah will give Israel her vineyards from there (the wilderness) and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. She will respond there as in the days of her youth and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt (v. 15).