Hosea 14: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The prophet calls Israel to return to the LORD, bringing words with them and giving up Assyria, horses, and idols made by their own hands. God answers with a promise to heal their turning away and to love them freely, pictured as dew, a lily, Lebanon, an olive tree, grain, and a vine. The chapter closes with a saying: the LORD's ways are right, the righteous walk in them, and rebels stumble in them.

Claim by Claim

1. 14:1
   • Israel is called to return to the LORD its God
   • The LORD is Israel's God
   • Israel has fallen by its own iniquity
2. 14:2
   • Israel is told to take words with it
   • Israel is told to turn to the LORD
   • Israel is told to say to the LORD: take away all iniquity
   • Israel is told to say to the LORD: receive us graciously (the request is worded ambiguously, either that God accept them kindly or that He accept what is good)
   • Israel is told to say: so we will render the calves of our lips
3. 14:3
   • Assyria will not save us
   • We will not ride upon horses
   • We will no longer say to the work of our own hands, You are our gods
   • The work of our hands is what we called our gods
   • In the LORD the fatherless finds mercy
4. 14:4
   • The LORD says he will heal their turning away
   • The LORD says he will love them freely
   • The LORD says his anger has turned away from him
5. 14:5
   • The LORD says he will be like dew to Israel
   • Israel will blossom like the lily
   • Israel will send out his roots like Lebanon
6. 14:6
   • His shoots will spread out
   • His splendor will be like the olive tree
   • His fragrance will be like Lebanon
7. 14:7
   • Those who dwell in his shade will return (the wording is ambiguous between returning to dwell in his shade and those dwelling there returning)
   • They will revive as grain (the wording is ambiguous between reviving like grain and making grain flourish)
   • They will blossom like the vine
   • His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon (the King James takes this as his scent)
8. 14:8
   • Ephraim will say: what have I to do any more with idols?
   • The LORD says he has answered him
   • The LORD says he has watched over him
   • The LORD says he is like a flourishing cypress
   • The LORD says your fruit is found from him
9. 14:9
   • The question is asked who is wise, so that he will understand these things
   • The question is asked who is discerning, so that he will know them
   • The ways of the LORD are right
   • The just will walk in the ways of the LORD
   • The transgressors will fall in them

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

14:1

Hosea spoke to the northern kingdom, called Israel here and Ephraim later in the chapter, after its leading tribe. It had split from Judah in the south and was, in Hosea's lifetime, about to be destroyed by Assyria. "Fell" is the everyday word for tripping over something and going down; the same verb closes the chapter in verse 9.

14:2

"Bring words with you" is pointed: words, not animals to sacrifice. What is asked for is something said out loud. The closing phrase is literally "we will pay the bulls of our lips", spoken words offered in place of the bulls that would otherwise have been killed at the altar. Ancient Greek translators read one Hebrew letter differently and got "the fruit of our lips," which is why many modern versions have that instead.

14:3

Assyria was the empire to the northeast and the dominant military power of the day; Israel's kings swung between paying it tribute and courting its protection. Horses meant cavalry and chariot teams, imported mainly through Egypt, so "riding on horses" stands for trusting armed force and foreign alliances rather than farm transport. A fatherless child had no one to press his claim in a dispute over land or debt; Israelite law names orphans, widows and resident foreigners over and over as the people with no protector.

14:4

"Turning away," "come back" in verse 1, and God's anger "turned away" are all built on one Hebrew verb, shuv, which runs through the whole chapter like a refrain. English cannot keep the repetition.

14:5

In that climate virtually no rain falls between spring and autumn, and the heavy night dew is what keeps plants alive through the dry months, so dew means steady, unfailing life-support, not something slight. Lebanon is the mountain range north of Israel, famous throughout the ancient world for its enormous cedar forests; it was the standard comparison for anything tall, deep-rooted and magnificent.

14:6

An olive tree was among the most valuable things a family could own: it stays green year-round, takes decades to mature, and yields for centuries. The smell of Lebanon is the resin scent of its cedar forests.

14:7

Shade is a standard Hebrew image for shelter and protection, of the kind a great tree or a king provides. Wine from the Lebanon hills was traded far afield and had a reputation for quality, so the comparison is to something known well beyond its own region.

14:8

Translators disagree about who is speaking in each line here, and the Hebrew genuinely allows more than one arrangement (the opening question could be Ephraim's or God's own ("What have I to do any more with idols?"). The tree is an evergreen; the Hebrew word probably means a cypress or juniper, and the point is that it stays green when everything around it is bare. The image is deliberately mixed, since a tree of that kind bears no edible fruit) the fruit has to come from somewhere else.

14:9

This closing verse steps outside the prophecy and speaks to whoever is reading it, in the manner of Israel's wisdom writings such as Proverbs. "Trip and fall" is the same verb used of Israel's fall in verse 1: the road itself is sound, and the difference lies in who is walking it.