Hosea 2:14

Hebrew Bible

12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees, about which she said, ‘These are my wages for prostitution that my lovers gave to me!’I will turn her cultivated vines and fig trees into an uncultivated thicket, so that wild animals will devour them. 13 I will punish her for the festival days when she burned incense to the Baal idols; she adorned herself with earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but she forgot me!” says the Lord. 14However, in the future I will allure her; I will lead her back into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. 15 From there I will give back her vineyards to her and turn the ‘Valley of Trouble’ into an ‘Opportunity for Hope.’ There she will sing as she did when she was young, when she came up from the land of Egypt. 16 At that time,” declares the Lord, “you will call me, ‘My husband’; you will never again call me, ‘My master.’

Jeremiah 2:2

Hebrew Bible

1 The Lord’s message came to me, 2 “Go and declare in the hearing of the people of Jerusalem: ‘This is what the Lord says: “I have fond memories of you, how devoted you were to me in your early years. I remember how you loved me like a new bride; you followed me through the wilderness, through a land that had never been planted. 3 Israel was set apart to the Lord; they were like the firstfruits of a harvest to him. All who tried to devour them were punished; disaster came upon them,” says the Lord.’” 4 Now listen to the Lord’s message, you descendants of Jacob, all you family groups from the nation of Israel.

 Notes and References

"... Perhaps it is instructive to remember that the marriage and separation take place in the metaphorical world of an enacted parable. This is especially true of Anderson and Freedman’s argument, since the whole point of the enacted parable is that the Lord desires to be reconciled with his adulterous wife (Israel) and in fact will be at some point in the future. The Lord promises to do a miracle in reconciling with Israel, not to follow the commands of the law with respect to adultery. The restoration of Israel’s marriage will take place in the Wilderness (2:14 ... M. Friedman, “Israel’s Response,” compares this to Jeremiah 2:2) This constitutes a blending of the Wilderness Tradition with a marriage metaphor. Like Isaiah 40-55, Hosea sees the restoration of Israel as happening in the Wilderness. While the time in the Wilderness is a separation from the husband for a long time, Hosea sees a certain restoration of the marriage in the future. There will be the time when the Lord himself will enter the Wilderness and call his bride, restoring her to her marriage ..."

Long, Phillip J. The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels: an Intertextual Study (pp. 195-196) Andrews University, 2013

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