Israel Will Return to God...

Fulfilled During Christ's First Advent!

Hosea 3:1-4 Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”

(2) So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. (3) And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man – so, too will I be toward you.”

(4) For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim.  Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.  They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.

New Geneva Bible Study Notes:

3:1 love…just like the love.  God’s apparently unreasonable request is patterned after His own loyal, protective, and bountiful love for undeserving Israel.

Raisin cakes.  These delicacies, made from raisins pressed together, were associated with special occasions (2 Samuel 6:10), and may have been used in Baal worship as an aphrodisiac (cf. Song 2:5).

3:2 bought.  Christ similarly fulfilled this picture of love in action when He redeemed His saints from the slave market of sin.

Shekels.  The payment, roughly half in silver and half in produce amounted to about thirty shekels and approximated the price of a slave in Exodus 21:32.  The New Testament teaches that the actual cost of redemption was Christ’s blood (1 Peter 1:16).

3:4 many days.  The waiting period until the coming of Christ, the great and final King of the Davidic dynasty (v.5).

Without king…teraphim.  Israel’s basic political and religious institutions, both legimate (sacrifice and ephod, Exedus 28:31) and illegimate (sacred stones or pillars. Deut. 16:21, idols or teraphim, Zech. 10:2).

3:5 return and seek.  Many Israelites repented with a full desire for intimacy with God at Pentacost (Acts 2:38-41).

David.  This reference points to Jesus Christ, Son of David 2 Sam. 7:12-16; Matthew 1:1; Romans 1:3).

The latter days.  Micah 4:1 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And peoples shall flow to it.

4:1 the latter days.  Micah’s prophetic vision shifts from impending judgment in the short term to the “latter days”, when the messianic reign of God is established in Zion.  The expression points to a new epoch, which, though in the hidden future, decisively alters the course of history.  Here it refers to the messianic age, begun at Christ’s First Advent (Acts 2:7; Heb. 1-2) and consummated in the new heaven and earth (Rev. 21,22).