Hosea 1:4

1:1-7 Israel was prosperous, yet then Hosea boldly tells them of their sins, and foretells their destruction. Men are not to be flattered in sinful ways because they prosper in the world; nor will it last long if they go on still in their trespasses. The prophet must show Israel their sin; show it to be exceedingly hateful. Their idolatry is the sin they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone, is an injury and affront to God; such as for a wife to take a stranger, is to her husband. The Lord, doubtless, had good reasons for giving such a command to the prophet; it would form an affecting picture of the Lord's unmerited goodness and unwearied patience, and of the perverseness and ingratitude of Israel. We should be broken and wearied with half that perverseness from others, with which we try the patience and grieve the Spirit of our God. Let us also be ready to bear any cross the Lord appoints. The prophet must show the ruin of the people, in the names given to his children. He foretells the fall of the royal family in the name of his first child: call his name Jezreel, which signifies dispersion. He foretells God's abandoning the nation in the name of the second child; Lo-ruhamah, not beloved, or not having obtained mercy. God showed great mercy, but Israel abused his favours. Sin turns away the mercy of God, even from Israel, his own professing people. If pardoning mercy is denied, no other mercy can be expected.

(4) Jezreel means “God shall sow.” The prophet had already discovered the faithlessness of his spouse, and that his married life was symbolic of his nation’s history. Observe the resemblance in sound between Jezreel and Israel, and the historic associations of the former. It was the name of a very fertile plain in the tribe of Issachar, which was many times the scene of terrible struggles ( Judges 4:13 ; Judges 6:33 ; Judges 7:1 ; 1Samuel 29:1 ). It was also the name of a town associated with the guilt of Ahab and Jezebel in bringing about the murder of Naboth (1 Kings 21), and with the final extinction of Ahab’s house by Jehu ( 2Kings 9:21 ; 2Kings 10:11 ).

And the LORD said unto him, Call his name {e} Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of {f} Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. (e) Meaning that they would no longer be called Israelites, which name they boasted because Israel did prevail with God: but that they were as bastards, and therefore should be called Jezreelites, that is, scattered people, alluding to Jezreel, which was the chief city of the ten tribes under Ahab, where Jehu shed so much blood; 1Ki 18:45. (f) I will be avenged upon Jehu for the blood that he shed in Jezreel: for even though God stirred him up to execute his judgments, yet he did them for his own ambition, and not for the glory of God as the intended goal: for he built up that idolatry which he had destroyed.

4. Jezreel—that is, "God will scatter" (compare Zec 10:9). It was the royal city of Ahab and his successors, in the tribe of Issachar. Here Jehu exercised his greatest cruelties (2Ki 9:16, 25, 33; 10:11, 14, 17). There is in the name an allusion to "Israel" by a play of letters and sounds.

Hosea 1:4 . And the Lord said, Call his name Jezreel — This name, compounded of the nouns זרע seed, and אל , God, signifies the seed of God. The names, it must be observed, imposed upon the woman’s children by God’s direction, sufficiently declare what particular parts of the Jewish nation were severally represented by them. The persons signified by this the prophet’s proper son, says Bishop Horsley, “were all those true servants of God, scattered among all the twelve tribes of Israel, who, in the times of the nation’s greatest depravity, worshipped the everlasting God in the hope of the Redeemer to come. These were a holy seed, the genuine sons of God, begotten of him to a lively hope, and the early seed of that church which shall at last embrace all the families of the earth. These are Jezreel, typified by the prophet’s own son, and rightful heir, as the children of God, and heirs of the promises. For yet a little while — And yet this little was a long while, through God’s gracious forbearance. As bad as this people were, they should not perish without warning. Φιλει ο Θεος προσημαινειν , God loves to premonish, or forewarn, says the heathen historian, Herodotus.

I will avenge the blood — Hebrew, bloods of Jezreel: that is, says Bishop Horsley, “the blood of the holy seed, the faithful servants of God, shed by the idolatrous princes of Jehu’s family in persecution, and the blood of the children shed in their horrible rites upon the altars of their idols.” It must be observed further here, that this mystical name of the prophet’s son, Jezreel, was the name of a city in the tribe of Issachar, and of a valley, or plain, in which the city stood: the city famous for its vineyard, which cost its rightful owner Naboth his life; and, by the righteous judgment of God, gave occasion to the downfall of the royal house of Ahab: the plain, one of the finest parts of the whole land of Canaan. As it was here that Jehu shed the blood of Ahab’s family with unsparing hand, many modern expositors, “forgetting the prophet’s son, have thought of nothing in this passage but the place, the city or the plain.” And by the blood of Jezreel, which God here threatens to avenge upon the house of Jehu, they have understood the blood of Ahab’s posterity; because though, in shedding that blood, Jehu executed the judgment which God had denounced by Elijah against the house of Ahab, for the cruel murder of Naboth; yet, in doing that, he acted from a principle of ambition and cruelty, without any regard to God’s glory, whose worship he forsook, maintaining in the country the idolatry which Jeroboam had first set up.

And the Lord said unto him, Hosea the prophet, who as in taking to wife an adulteress, so in giving name’ to his son by her, was to presignify Israel’s future calamities. Call his name, thy son now born, Jezreel: the word is, The seed of the Lord , or, The arm of the Lord , or, The Lord will scatter ; so it may insinuate that God by his own arm will scatter among the people, i.e. the Assyrians, those who were his people or seed. But we have a surer guide to lead us through this, i.e. the history of what was by Jehu done in Jezreel; of which more presently. For; this is the reason why the prophet’s son is so called. Yet a little while: it was four generations of Jehu God promised the throne to, and now the third that is now running, how near to an end we know not, but are sure it was within twenty-eight years; for Jeroboam began his reign in the fifteenth of Amaziah, and so thirteen years of his forty-one are spent ere Uzziah comes to the throne, 2 Kings 14:23 ; this according to one account: but 2 Kings 15:1 accounteth Jeroboam’s twenty-seventh to be the first of Uzziah, and then there are not above fourteen years to come; so little a while was this here spoken of, for in six months after Jeroboam’s death Shallum conspired against Zachariah, and slew him, and reigned a month; so Jehu’s seed was cast out of the throne. Will avenge; inquire after and punish these crimes, which were committed in Jezreel. Heb.

I will visit , i.e. as a just and impartial judge I will require an account, and execute punishments. The blood: murders committed are in Scripture expressed thus by blood: here are particularly meant the slaughters made by Jehu’s hand or by his order, 2 Kings 9:10,11 10:1-7 , in Jezreel, where he did with a treacherous mind, and aiming at his own greatness, destroy Ahab’s house, and slew Ahaziah king of Judah also. This was the just judgment of God upon that wicked house by Jehu executed, but he did it not with that mind God required. Of Jezreel; the town which Ahab chose above others to dwell in, where the dogs licked up Ahab’s blood, when his chariot was washed and cleansed of the blood of that slain king, and where dogs did eat Jezebel, as the prophet threatened, 1 Kings 21:23 . Upon the house of Jehu; which had now possessed the throne (Jehu usurped) through the reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoash, and Jeroboam; but the usurper and his successors adhering to the idolatry of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and adding other sins to it, had now provoked God to declare a sudden extirpation of the family, which God will in his just revenge make as like to Jeroboam’s family as Ahab’s, and they had made themselves like them in sin; all which came to pass when Shallum, conspiring against Zachariah, slew him, 2 Kings 15:10 .