Hosea 1:4

King James Version (KJV)

And the Lord said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

Call his name Jezreel - יזרעאל that is, God will disperse. This seems to intimate that a dispersion or sowing of Israel shall take place; which happened under Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 2 Kings 17:5, 2 Kings 17:6. But the word refers also to the name of a city, where Jehu slew Jezebel and all the children of Ahab. 2 Kings 9:10, 2 Kings 9:36; 2 Kings 10:6.

This was one of those prophetic names which we so often meet with in the Scriptures; e.g. Japheth Abraham, Israel, Judah, Joshua, Zerubbabel, Solomon, Sheer-jashub, etc.

The blood of Jezreel - Not Jehu's vengeance on Ahab's family, but his acts of cruelty while he resided at Jezreel, a city in the tribe of Issachar, Joshua 19:18, where the kings of Israel had a palace, 1 Kings 21:1.

Will cause to cease the kingdom - Either relating to the cutting off of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, see 1 Kings 21:6, or to the ceasing of the kingdom of Israel from the house of Jehu, 2 Kings 10:30, and which was fulfilled, 2 Kings 15:10. - Newcome.

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Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

Call his name Jezreel - that is, in its first sense here, “God will scatter.” The life of the prophet, and his union with one so unworthy of him, were a continued prophecy of God‘s mercy. The names of the children were a life-long admonition of His intervening judgments. Since Israel refused to hear God‘s words, He made the prophet‘s sons, through the mere fact of their presence among them, their going out and coming in, and the names which He gave them, to be preachers to the people. He depicted in them and in their names what was to be, in order that, whenever they saw or heard of them, His warnings might be forced upon them, and those who would take warning, might be saved. If, with their mother‘s disgrace, these sons inherited and copied their mother‘s sins, then their names became even more expressive, that, being such as they were, they would be scattered by God, would not be owned by God as His people, or be pitied by Him.

I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu - Yet Jehu shed this blood, the blood of the house of Ahab, of Joram and Jezebel and the seventy sons of Ahab, at God‘s command and in fulfillment of His will. How was it then sin? Because, if we do what is the will of God for any end of our own, for anything except God, we do, in fact, our own will, not God‘s. It was not lawful for Jehu to depose and slay the king his master, except at the command of God, who, as the Supreme King, sets up and puts down earthly rulers as He wills. For any other end, and done otherwise than at God‘s express command, such an act is sin. Jehu was rewarded for the measure in which he fulfilled God‘s commands, as Ahab who had “sold himself to work wickedness,” had yet a temporal reward for humbling himself publicly, when rebuked by God for his sin, and so honoring God, amid an apostate people. But Jehu, by cleaving, against the will of God, to Jeroboam‘s sin, which served his own political ends, showed that, in the slaughter of his master, he acted not, as he pretended, out of zeal 2 Kings 10:16 for the will of God, but served his own will and his own ambition only.

By his disobedience to the one command of God, he showed that he would have equally disobeyed the other, had it been contrary to his own will of interest. He had no principle of obedience. And so the blood, which was shed according to the righteous judgment of God, became sin to him who shed it in order to fulfill, not the will of God, but his own. Thus God said to Baasha, “I exalted thee out of the dust, and made the prince over My people Israel” 1 Kings 16:2, which he became by slaying his master, the son of Jeroboam, and all the house of Jeroboam. Yet, because he followed the sins of Jeroboam, “the word of the Lord came against Baasha, for all the evil that he did in the sight of the Lord, in being like the house of Jeroboam, and because he killed him” 1 Kings 16:7. The two courses of action were inconsistent; to destroy the son and the house of Jeroboam, and to do those things, for which God condemned him to be destroyed. Further yet. Not only was such execution of God‘s judgments itself an offence against Almighty God, but it was sin, whereby he condemned himself, and made his other sins to be sins against the light. In executing the judgment of God against another, he pronounced His judgment against himself, in that he that “judged,” in God‘s stead, “did the same things” Romans 2:1. So awful a thing is it, to be the instrument of God in punishing or reproving others, if we do not, by His grace, keep our own hearts and hands pure from sin.

And will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel - Not the kingdom of the house of Jehu, but all Israel. God had promised that the family of Jehu should sit on the throne to the fourth generation. Jeroboam II, the third of these, was now reigning over Israel, in the fulness of his might. He “restored the coast of Israel from the entering of Hamath” 2 Kings 14:25, i. e., from the Northern extremity, near Mount Hermon, where Palestine joins on to Syria, and, which Solomon only in all his glory had won for Israel, “unto the sea of the plain” 2 Chronicles 8:3-4, the Dead sea, regaining all which Hazael had conquered 2 Kings 10:32-33, and even subduing Moab also (see the note at Amos 6:14), “according to the word of the Lord by Jonah the son of Amittan.” He had recovered to Israel, Damascus, which had been lost to Judah, ever since the close of the reign of Solomon 1 Kings 11:24. He was a warlike prince, like that first Jeroboam, who had formed the strength and the sin of the ten tribes. Yet both his house and his kingdom fell with him. The whole history of that kingdom afterward is little more than that of the murder of one family by another, such as is spoken of in the later chapters of Hosea; and Israel, i. e., the ten tribes, were finally carried captive, fifty years after the death of Zechariah, Jeroboam‘s son. Of so little account is any seeming prosperity or strength.

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Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary

Israel was prosperous, yet then Hosea boldly tells them of their sins, and foretells their destruction. Men are not to be flattered in sinful ways because they prosper in the world; nor will it last long if they go on still in their trespasses. The prophet must show Israel their sin; show it to be exceedingly hateful. Their idolatry is the sin they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone, is an injury and affront to God; such as for a wife to take a stranger, is to her husband. The Lord, doubtless, had good reasons for giving such a command to the prophet; it would form an affecting picture of the Lord's unmerited goodness and unwearied patience, and of the perverseness and ingratitude of Israel. We should be broken and wearied with half that perverseness from others, with which we try the patience and grieve the Spirit of our God. Let us also be ready to bear any cross the Lord appoints. The prophet must show the ruin of the people, in the names given to his children. He foretells the fall of the royal family in the name of his first child: call his name Jezreel, which signifies "dispersion." He foretells God's abandoning the nation in the name of the second child; Lo-ruhamah, "not beloved," or "not having obtained mercy." God showed great mercy, but Israel abused his favours. Sin turns away the mercy of God, even from Israel, his own professing people. If pardoning mercy is denied, no other mercy can be expected. Though some, through unbelief, are broken off, yet God will have a church in this world till the end of time. Our salvation is owing to God's mercy, not to any merit of our own. That salvation is sure, of which he is the Author; and if he will work, none shall hinder.

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SDA Bible Commentary (limited)
Volume 1-7

4. Jezreel. The meaning of the Hebrew name is “God will sow,” or “God will scatter.” Some have pointed out the play on ideas in the Hebrew name itself. Because anciently seed was scattered in the process of sowing, the word “to scatter” came also to have the meaning “to sow,” or “to plant.” The first meaning of the name Jezreel applied to the time of Gomer’s unfaithfulness, as a result of which Hosea “scattered,” or hindered, her, that is, hedged her up and restricted her privileges. Later, when she repented, Hosea “planted” her, that is, he restored her to her former status and privileges (see on ch. 2:22). Also there is a typical Hebrew play on words in the contrast of the word Jezreel with the word Israel: the latter has reference to prevailing with God for salvation (see on Gen. 32:28), the former, as used here, is a reference to being scattered by God unto destruction. The names of the prophet’s three children are significant, pointing as they do to God’s punishment of His people for their sins.

Avenge. Literally, “visit”; here used in the sense of administering punishment (see on Ps. 8:4;59:5).

Blood of Jezreel. At the command of God, Jehu had exterminated the whole house of Ahab in the city of Jezreel (2 Kings 9:6, 7; 10:17). Why, then, should Jehu’s action be avenged? Very likely because his motive in destroying the dynasty of Ahab was sinful. To destroy the house of Ahab fitted into Jehu’s selfish desire to obtain the kingdom. God’s purpose in exterminating the house of Ahab was to blot out completely the idolatry so generally provoked by Ahab and Jezreel. Although Jehu brought to an end the worship of Baal, he still retained the worship of Jeroboam’s calves (see 2 Kings 10:21-31). This half fulfillment of the divine command revealed a divided heart, and so brought upon Jehu the greater condemnation, since it nullified the divine objective. He placed his own purposes before those of God, and so the sentence was pronounced upon him, “I will avenge.” A man may be employed by God to accomplish a divine purpose, and yet be rejected if his heart is not right.

House of Jehu. Jehu’s son (Jehoahaz), his grandson (Jehoash or Joash), and his great-grandson (Jeroboam II) followed him on Israel’s throne; then Shallum slew the son of Jeroboam II, Zachariah, ending this royal line (2 Kings 15:8-12). Thus was fulfilled both Hosea’s prophecy and the previous word of the Lord unto Jehu (see on 2 Kings 10:30).

Cause to cease. This follows because the event that ended the house of Jehu, the assassination of Zachariah, began the period of political confusion that quickly ushered in the downfall of the northern kingdom (see Vol. II, pp. 84, 85). The pronounced secular prosperity of the nation under Jeroboam II was not an evidence of divine favor. The ultimate result of disobedience was the same then as nowâ€”destruction.

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