Hos 14:4-5 | KingComments | STEP | After their confession, God assures them of His love. He has accepted them back as His people. He takes away all the consequences of their sins and replaces their misery with the blessings that belong to the new life. His love was always there, but He could not show it because of their aversion. Now His love can go out to them again without hindrance. Their forsaking of the LORD has been the cause of all misery. He puts an end to that forever. He does this by cleansing them and giving them a new heart and a new spirit ( ). In the LORD says “I will” three times. The first “I will” has to do with the past, with the sin He has taken away. The second “I will” has to do with the present, with His love they may experience at that moment. The third “I will” has to do with the future glory of Israel, when they will blossom and be established in the millennial realm of peace through His refreshment.

‏ Hosea 14:4-5

God’s Answer to the Confession

After their confession, God assures them of His love. He has accepted them back as His people. He takes away all the consequences of their sins and replaces their misery with the blessings that belong to the new life. His love was always there, but He could not show it because of their aversion. Now His love can go out to them again without hindrance.

Their forsaking of the LORD has been the cause of all misery. He puts an end to that forever. He does this by cleansing them and giving them a new heart and a new spirit (Eze 36:25-26).

In Hos 14:4-5 the LORD says “I will” three times. The first “I will” has to do with the past, with the sin He has taken away. The second “I will” has to do with the present, with His love they may experience at that moment. The third “I will” has to do with the future glory of Israel, when they will blossom and be established in the millennial realm of peace through His refreshment.

Future Glory for Israel

For the third time Hosea uses the picture of the dew. In Hosea 6 he uses it as a picture of the volatility of Israel’s love (Hos 6:4) and in Hosea 13 in view of their judgment (Hos 13:3). Both times it says that it is a dew that perishes early in the morning. Here the dew is a picture of blessing and God Himself is like the dew. He is the eternal God, with Whom it is always morning, with Whom the dew never leaves. When God will be like the dew to His people – the people who have been without a drop of moisture for so long – it will blossom like a lily. Then there will be an end to the period when the east wind scorches all that blooms and grows (Hos 13:15).

If the Christian has dry periods in his spiritual life, this is also often the result of a sinful way. After confession and forgiveness there is a longing to read the Word of God again. This is then like the dew (Deu 32:2), through which his life starts to grow and blossom again. With the dew also the manna came (Exo 16:14; Num 11:9). The manna is a picture of the Lord Jesus (Jn 6:48-51).

Israel will blossom like the lily. The lily is a picture of charm and elegance, of the glory that Israel will radiate in the realm of peace. But that is not the only thing. A lily is a delicate, fragile flower. That is why it also says that it will “take root like [the cedars of] Lebanon”. With the Lebanon the picture emerges of stability, immobility. Israel’s visible glory is carried by the unshakable foundation of Christ’s reign that has no end (Dan 2:44). The glory of Israel will be like the lily and that people will be as unshakable as the Lebanon for a thousand years through Him Who then reigns.