Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Hosea · About this commentary
She Did Not Know That I Gave
Hosea 2:6-13
6 Therefore behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way. · WEB
The judgment is a hedge of thorns designed to make pursuit fail, and its stated purpose is a sentence she says to herself.
The first act of judgment in verse 6 is obstruction rather than punishment: I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can't find her way.
Verse 7 gives the intended result, and it is not suffering but a conclusion. She will chase her lovers and not overtake them, seek and not find — then she will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.
The motive in that sentence is unmistakably self-interested. She returns because the alternative is worse, and the book records the calculation without correcting it. What the thorn hedge produces is a comparison, and the comparison is enough to start her back.
Verse 8 supplies the diagnosis the whole chapter rests on: she didn't know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil. Not that she refused to acknowledge it — that she did not know. Ignorance is the book's recurring charge Hosea 4:6.
So the withdrawal in verses 9 to 12 is instructional rather than merely retributive. Taking back grain, wine, wool and flax makes visible who owned them, and the vines she called my wages that my lovers have given me are turned into forest.
Verse 11 removes the religious calendar as well — feasts, new moons, Sabbaths, solemn assemblies — which is a striking thing to include among the losses, since these were his own appointments and she was keeping them.
And verse 13 names the injury in the last three words: she went after her lovers and forgot me.
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