Hosea 3:5

"Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king, and shall come with fear unto Jehovah and to his goodness in the latter days."

The strong Messianic thrust of this passage is undeniable. It is no longer the old Israel which is in focus here, for the new Israel suddenly enters the picture. The words "afterward" and "in the latter days" which begin and close the passage make this certain. Also, the return to "David their king" can only mean that the return will be to the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of David (Matthew 1:1), whose resurrection from the dead and subsequent exaltation at God's right hand in heaven were flatly declared by the apostle Peter to be the fulfillment of the ancient promise of God's raising up one to sit on David's throne (Acts 2:19-31). Butler has a significant comment on this:

Every school of the ancient Jews (Talmudic, mystical, Biblical, or grammatical) explained this prophecy of Christ, the Messiah. They even paraphrased it thus:

Afterward the children of Israel shall repent, and turn by repentance, and shall seek the service of the Lord their God, and shall obey the Messiah the Son of David, their King.

Such an interpretation is found in some of the Targums and the Midrash and by such scholars as Ibn Ezra and Kimchi.[32]

There is hardly any need to multiply names and citations from discerning scholars of all ages who have accepted this passage as a reference to the glorious age of Jesus Christ during that present dispensation, during which his holy name is honored literally all over the world. The participation of the new Israel in this is certain, nor do the words of this passage (or any other) deny the possibility that even remnants of the old Israel may yet come to the feast. However, to affirm that such a thing "will be" is to go beyond the word of the Lord.

The three chapters (Hosea 1-3) concluded by this verse are as important as any ever written. As Hailey expressed it, "They stand out in the book of Hosea as of special importance,"[33] this being due to the Messianic import of Hosea 1:10-11; 2:1,21-23, and Hos.3:5.

A SUMMARY OF HOSEA 1-3

God's dealings throughout history with the Israel of God, as manifested at first in the literal descendants of Abraham, and later as the New Israel made up of Abraham's spiritual seed (Galatians 3:28-29), are dramatically presented under the strange and complex figure of Hosea's relationship to Gomer. The various events of that domestic relationship are scattered throughout the three chapters; but the arrangement of them is precise, logical, and necessary for carrying the complex meaning assigned to the relationship.

In Hosea 1, the marriage occurs, three children are born; and their names, providentially given, are prophetic of the Scattering, the Apostasy, and the Divorce of the Secular Israel. The secular state, "the sinful kingdom," had become falsely identified as "God's chosen people," which, from the beginning, had never been identified as any kind of a state, but as the true "sons of Abraham," the spiritual seed, the holy remnant who would remain and ultimately welcome the Messiah. This prophecy of the divorce of Israel, as seen in the mystical name of Lo-Ammi, was not to mean the end of the true Israel; and all of God's glorious promises regarding that true Israel were affirmed in the same breath with the mention of Ammi (Hosea 1:10-2:1). That Israel was specifically defined as including the Gentiles, and described as an innumerable multitude; and significantly, they were spoken of, not as Israel, but as Jezreel, the name being a derivative of Israel and possessing a double meaning applicable both to the old Israel and the new. As it applied to the old Israel, it meant "I will scatter"; and as applied to the new, it meant "I will sow," or "I will plant."

Hosea 2 begins at once with the formal announcement of the divorce of the old Israel (Hosea 2:2), and follows that with a bill of particulars (Hosea 2:3-13) containing a remarkable montage with blended elements of Gomer's shameless conduct and Israel's brazen apostasy. There is also recounted a number of initiatives on the part of God who sought to bring Israel back, culminating in the promise of a new marriage, often misunderstood as the divine acceptance of the divorced state, but actually indicating God's marriage to another in the person of the new Israel, as indicated by the significant use of "Jezreel" in @@Hosea 2:22.

However, one important aspect of God's dealing with his once "chosen people" (as identified with the sinful nation) remained to be prophesied. What would be the status of the divorced Israel afterward? Since they were not to be "re-married" to Jehovah, what would be their status during the interim and afterwards? That was dramatically prophesied in Hosea 3 under the figure of Hosea's purchase of Gomer out of slavery and keeping her shut up in his house until she should repent, but without conjugal privileges, the same representing that God would indeed continue to be concerned with Israel, but no longer as his wife or "chosen people." That status would belong to the people of the new covenant, the new Israel of God in the church of Jesus Christ.

Of course, there was to be no injustice whatever done to the old Israel in the developments depicted here; because, the new Israel would include not only the Gentiles of all nations, but not a single member of the old fleshly Israel would be excluded from participation in the new order as an integral part of the "Bride of Christ." That is the situation as it exists even to the present time.

This whole terrible picture of the apostasy of ancient Israel was a product of their own arrogant presumption. It began when they rejected God as their ruler and demanded a king like other nations; and through those kings they were led into the grossest immoralities and idolatrous worship of the Baalim, even rejecting God outright and attributing all of their blessings to pagan deities. Throughout that long period of progressive apostasy, there was still the presumption that they were the "chosen people" of God; and Hosea's prophecy was designed to destroy that conceit. The true Israel of God, submerged for centuries within the wrappings of their man-made state, and still later (until the times of Christ) obscured by experiences of the divorced nation, yet all the while "waiting for the kingdom of heaven," were at last blessed by the visit of the Dayspring from on High, whom they joyously welcomed.

No other prophecy in the whole Bible so adequately foretells the future of God's relationship with Israel (both the old and the new) as does this one. The call of Israel as the "chosen people," God's deliverance of them from slavery and his endowment of them with nationhood and a land of their own, their rejection of God as their ruler in the demand for a king, their progressively bold and arrogant apostasy, God's divorce of the sinful nation (the holy remnant excepted) from any further status as the "bride of Jehovah", the whole nation's sinking into the open debaucheries of paganism, such a state being one of spiritual slavery (to be equated in every way with the spiritual slavery of the whole Gentile world), God's redemption of the old Israel from the slavery of idolatry, his withholding from them his former favor through the long denial of any prophetic word (the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament), and his eventual new marriage to Israel (this time to the new Israel, made up of the faithful elements of the old, plus spiritual seekers of God's kingdom from among the Gentiles of all nations), and finally the great felicity and blessing pertaining to that new marriage as found in the church of Jesus Christ - all of these significant events pertaining to God and Israel are faithfully depicted in the first three chapters of the amazing prophecy of God through Hosea.