Hosea 1:10-11

There is salvation in store for both Israel and Judah.

1. We must here premise our belief that the two divisions of the Hebrew people—the ten tribes and the two—have been long amalgamated. Even during the Captivity a considerable amalgamation of tribes may have taken place. Though we have the list of families that accompanied Zerubbabel and Ezra from Assyria and Media to Jerusalem, yet the tribal heads of those families are not given, as though their genealogy had been already lost. It has been conjectured, with some degree of probability, that the somewhat indefinite phrases, "Judah and Benjamin" are used by Ezra to denote "the more prominent actors;" while "Israel" designates "the whole nation collectively," including persons belonging to all the tribes. It is certainly remarkable that in the Book of Esther the Hebrews belonging to all the tribes are no longer called "children of Israel" or "children of Judah," but simply "Jews." But besides this fusion of tribes during the Captivity, there would be a considerable admixture of such Hebrews as remained behind with their heathen neighbors; this might be expected from their readiness to contract heathenish intermarriages even in Ezra's time. Many of the original stock of Israel may thus be found in Chaldea and the adjacent countries whither they had been carried captives, while others migrated into regions more remote. The so-called leer tribes may thus comprehend, not only those Israelites that were at so early a period as that of the Captivity incorporated with the children of Judah, but also those that intermingled with or were absorbed among the inhabitants of the Chaldean provinces, and whose descendants are represented by the Nestorians, Yezidees, and other tribes; and in case of those who had removed to greater distances, by the inhabitants of Afghanistan, the Jews of Malabar and elsewhere in India, the black Jews of Cochin China, the Jews of Tartary, and even the North American Indians.

2. This passage of Hoses before us, and that in the second chapter towards the end, which refer to the natural posterity of Abraham, consisting of Israel and Judah, and composing one nationality, are applied in the New Testament to Gentile believers. Hengstenberg draws attention to the paradoxical fact, that, notwithstanding the disinheritance of the natural Israel and in spite of their vast excision, yet "the number of the children of Israel should be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; who, from being not God's people, should be called sons of the living God; that the children of Judah and the children of Israel should be gathered together and appoint themselves one Head, and come up out of the land [of their captivity]; and that great should be this day of Jezreel [or sowing]." He then proceeds to explain this as "first fulfilled in the Messianic time, and as in part still to be fulfilled, when the family of Abraham receives, and will yet more fully receive, an innumerable increase, partly by the reception of an innumerable multitude of adopted sons [Gentiles], and partly by the exaltation of [Israelitish] sons in an inferior, to sons in the highest relation," in other words, by the incorporation of the multitudinous believing Gentries with the faithful remnant of Israel, thus constituting one sublime Israel of God; one family of Abraham, now the father of many nations, the heir of the world.

3. But the sense of the passage is not thus exhausted; more is to be expected. At present Gentiles supply the place of the rejected portion of the natural seed; the ultimate recovery, however, of this rejected and disinherited, because still unbelieving, portion itself is also included, as we believe, in this passage. But whether, with their conversion to God and submission to Messiah, they shall be restored to the "covenant land" from which their sin expelled them, is another question, and one not so easily answered. Indeed, there has been much conflict of opinion in regard to that answer. There is, at least, a presumption that with the pardon of their sin they shall be favored with the "ancient token of reconciliation—their return to the delightsome land."

4. In an able work on "The Future of the Jewish Nation," we find the following statement: "The connection uniformly held forth in Scripture, in the case of the Jews, between defection and dispersion, and between reconciliation and restoration, constitutes strong ground for expecting that the final conversion of the Jews will be accompanied by a final restoration to their fatherland." It is also added in the same work that the restoration advocated is "no voluntary return in a state of unbelief," but "a restoration regarded as God's public token of reconciliation to his ancient and now believing people … neither are we contending for such a restoration as involves separation and seclusion from other nations in the little nook of Palestine … but while the head-quarters, the proper home of the nation, will be in Palestine, there may be an abundant representation of the roving race in all the places of their present dispersion."

HOMILIES BY C. JERDAN