Hos 2:6-7 | KingComments | STEP | This verse indicates how God acts with His people to bring them back from their own path. He uses imagery twice: “hedge up her way with thorns” and “build a wall”. A road barred with thorns is a road on which an impenetrable barrier has been placed. You can only go up that road if you are prepared to suffer painful injuries. The path of sin is made unattractive, its painful side is shown. Someone can be kept from a sinful road if it is painted in bright colors that will mean, for example, the ruin of his health. A military exercise ground or a minefield can be cordoned off by barbed wire because it is very dangerous to enter this terrain or field. Anyone who does not heed the warnings and still wants to risk it must bear the consequences. He can get a lot of clothes tears and also physical injuries, he even runs the risk of being killed. Only a fool does not care about thorns or barbed wire. But God still has a means. He will close off access to the path taken by sin with a wall. He does this to bring the illegal users – His unfaithful people – from the path of sin back on the right path. God erects a wall, a wall that provides seclusion, separating His people from their lovers (cf. ). This happens when He scatters Israel. Then they no longer exist as a nation and as a nation they no longer have contact with foreign peoples and their gods. In this way she can no longer commit adultery with the idols. In Hosea 3 this is further elaborated, but here this judgment is described as a disciplinary measure that must lead to conversion ( ).

‏ Hosea 2:6-7

Thorns and a Wall

This verse indicates how God acts with His people to bring them back from their own path. He uses imagery twice: “hedge up her way with thorns” and “build a wall”. A road barred with thorns is a road on which an impenetrable barrier has been placed. You can only go up that road if you are prepared to suffer painful injuries. The path of sin is made unattractive, its painful side is shown.

Someone can be kept from a sinful road if it is painted in bright colors that will mean, for example, the ruin of his health. A military exercise ground or a minefield can be cordoned off by barbed wire because it is very dangerous to enter this terrain or field. Anyone who does not heed the warnings and still wants to risk it must bear the consequences. He can get a lot of clothes tears and also physical injuries, he even runs the risk of being killed. Only a fool does not care about thorns or barbed wire.

But God still has a means. He will close off access to the path taken by sin with a wall. He does this to bring the illegal users – His unfaithful people – from the path of sin back on the right path. God erects a wall, a wall that provides seclusion, separating His people from their lovers (cf. Job 19:8).

This happens when He scatters Israel. Then they no longer exist as a nation and as a nation they no longer have contact with foreign peoples and their gods. In this way she can no longer commit adultery with the idols. In Hosea 3 this is further elaborated, but here this judgment is described as a disciplinary measure that must lead to conversion (Hos 2:7).

The Decision to Return

In this verse follows the elaboration of what God did in Hos 2:6. If Israel appeals in vain to the nations from whom they have benefited so much, they will remember that they have not had it that bad with God. They will return to Him. Unfortunately, the confession of sin is missing. There is no repentance. There is no disgust for their sin and the idols are not given up.

With the prodigal son in Luke 15 this is different. That boy also thinks it is better in the world than at home. But when he is in misery, he remembers how much better he had it at home. When he gets up and goes back home, he does so with a confession (Lk 15:13-20).

If only Israel had returned to God with such a confession. The following verse makes it clear that they have no awareness that God has given them everything they attribute to the idols.

This picture of Israel also applies to nominal Christians. One seeks the world and its benefits, its riches and prosperity, the pleasant existence, without asking for God. But it can happen that there is no longer any advantage to be gained in the world, for example by a natural disaster that takes away all the abundance of a country, or by a disease that puts an end to all plans. Then there is a tendency to return to that good old ‘religion’. In wartime the churches fill up and when there is personal need, people often start praying again. But if one starts asking for God again solely because of need, without remorse and repentance, this is just a hollow phrase. God will certainly not listen to it (Job 35:12-13 ; Job 35:9-10).