forgotten me, is the word of Jehovah.” The days of the Baals are the sacred days and festive seasons mentioned in Hos 2:13, which Israel ought to have sanctified and kept to the Lord its God, but which it celebrated in honour of the Baals, through its fall into idolatry. There is no ground for thinking of special feast-days dedicated to Baal, in addition to the feasts of Jehovah prescribed by the law. Just as Israel had changed Jehovah into Baal, so had it also turned the feast-days of Jehovah into festive days of the Baals, and on those days had burned incense, i.e., offered sacrifice to the Baals (cf. Hos 4:13; 2Ki 17:11). In Hos 2:8 we find only הבעל mentioned, but here בּעלים in the plural, because Baal was worshipped under different modifications, from which Beâlı̄m came to be used in the general sense of the various idols of the Canaanites (cf. Jdg 2:11; 1Ki 18:18, etc.). In the second hemistich this spiritual coquetry with the idols is depicted under the figure of the outward coquetry of a woman, who resorts to all kinds of outward ornaments in order to excite the admiration of her lovers (as in Jer 4:30 and Ezek. 22:40ff.). There is no ground for thinking of the wearing of nose-rings and ornaments in honour of the idols. The antithesis to this adorning of themselves is “forgetting Jehovah,” in which the sin is brought out in its true shape. On נאם יהוה, see Delitzsch on Isa 1:24.
Verses 14-15
In Hos 2:14 the promise is introduced quite as abruptly as in Hos 2:1, that the Lord will lead back the rebellious nation step by step to conversion and reunion with Himself, the righteous God. In two strophes we have first the promise of their conversion (Hos 2:14-17), and secondly, the assurance of the renewal of the covenant mercies (Hos 2:18-23). Hos 2:14, Hos 2:15. “Therefore, behold, I allure her, and lead her into the desert, and speak to her heart. And I give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor (of tribulation) for the door of hope; and she answers thither, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.” לכן, therefore (not utique, profecto, but, nevertheless, which lâkhēn in Hos 2:6 and Hos 2:9, and is connected primarily with the last clause of Hos 2:13. “Because the wife has forgotten God, He calls Himself to her remembrance again, first of all by punishment (Hos 2:6 and Hos 2:9); then, when this has answered its purpose, and after she has said, I
