Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.1.5

Verses 10, 11. — “For the number of the children of Israel,” he says, “shall be like the sand of the sea, which is without measure and will not be numbered. And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, Children of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great is the day of Jezreel.” By these holy words he promises the return of the people from the Babylonian captivity, whose great pageant is described by other prophets too, but especially by blessed Isaiah. It serves to commend God’s mercy and to console and strengthen the faithful, who, sharing that calamity against the honor of their merits because of their fellowship with their nation, were offered comforts of hope that hung on the expectation of good things. These good things are said to be so great that they even require new names. For when they slipped from happiness to sorrow, they ceased to be called the people of God, as if poured back into the worthlessness of the other nations. But when the time of liberation comes, the change from sorrow to joy will follow so fully that restoring their former dignity will not be enough, but the distinction of their names will be increased. For the number of the faithful will exceed the sands, and in them so much reverence and grace will shine that they will no longer be called the people, but the children, of the God who holds all things. Corrected by the anguish of their earlier servitude, they will be joined to one another in love as well as in blood; they will avoid above all that separation which was for them a great cause both of crimes and of disasters; and, rejoicing in one ruler, they will go up eagerly to the temple of God. They will be placed in such a state of happiness that they will confess that the day of Jezreel was great: that is, either that time when their adversities began, of which the prophet said above, “I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel” (the liberated people will call this to mind so that its joys may grow by comparison); or else it will proclaim that the meaning of the name Jezreel itself suits it, for in our language it means “seed of God,” and the sense is this: when the time of captivity is ended, there will be such a display of exultation that a great day will be said to have dawned for the children of God. This festival, like the other prophets, blessed David celebrates especially in that song: “I rejoiced at what was said to me: We will go into the house of the Lord. Our feet were standing in your courts, O Jerusalem, to confess your name, O Lord. For there the seats were set for judgment, seats over the house of David. Ask for the things that make for the peace of Jerusalem.” So, following the course of the history that the prophetic announcement contained, he briefly indicated all that he was going to treat: that the ten tribes, corrupted under Jeroboam’s leadership, were carried off when the Assyrian captured them; that Judah, which trusted in its God, was wonderfully delivered under King Hezekiah; that afterward this tribe too followed the footsteps of its brothers’ ungodliness and was handed over to Babylonian domination; but that promised freedom would loose its chains once more, and that the brothers, no longer separated from each other but standing under one ruler, would celebrate the honor of God in the sanctuary of his temple. The happiness of this time would be so great that it would even be pleasant to remember the adversities and to call the day of Jezreel great, that is, the time when captivity was inflicted, since its occasion had produced so much exultation. “They shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land.” Of this time blessed David also says, “From the ends of the earth I cried to you, when my heart was in anguish; you lifted me up on a rock; you led me, because you became my hope.” It should also be noted that blessed Paul took the promise of this passage concerning the multitude of the faithful flocking to the preaching of the Gospel, declaring that the announcement of the Gospel’s mercy went beyond the narrow bounds of one nation, and that crowds came together to take up the dignity of the divine mark not only from the Jews, who were once called the people of God, but also from the Gentiles, who had lived in manifold error. As he says in Hosea: “I will call those who were not my people, my people, and her who was not beloved, beloved. And in the place where it was said, You are not my people, there they shall be called children of the living God.” The teacher of the Gentiles thus shows that the promise of this happiness was fulfilled in the time of the Gospel: not, certainly, to deny what the text of the whole prophecy presses home, namely that the end of the Babylonian captivity also was promised, but to show what rule of understanding we ought to keep in the prophetic books. That is, when, under the narrative of Jewish affairs, something is put forward greater than the modest scale of one nation could contain, and we recognize that it was partly fulfilled in that people, we should see that by theoria it also fits others, namely all the nations. Theoria, as learned men have defined it, is the perception, by contemplation, of things of greater importance, mostly in brief forms or causes. So it would not properly be said that the recall of the Jews from Babylon was signified according to history, and the freedom conferred through faith in Christ according to allegory; for the prophetic word solidly promised both, so that the lesser thing that came first would point to the fuller measure that followed. For what was at first said with exaggeration was afterward scarcely equaled by the greatness of the events. Thus the captivity announced, which then terrified the Jewish people, and the freedom restored, which afterward lifted them up, also carried signs of another captivity and freedom, far weightier: that of which the apostle says, “We were by nature children of wrath, as also the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, when we were dead in sins, made us alive together in Christ.” For the stronger one came and bound that enemy of the human race who had held down the guilty under a long domination, plundered all his goods, released the captivity of the nations by restoring their freedom, and ennobled the redeemed with gifts of grace, so that we who were once strangers and foreigners suddenly became his people, the nation that has obtained mercy, and were called a chosen race, priestly and royal (1 Pet 2). So what Hosea declared about the times of Babylon Paul transferred to the work of the Savior: not that the prophet resisted, or followed reluctantly where he was being led, but that through the course of the prophecy he strongly favors the apostle’s understanding, since it teaches that the gifts and joys that had begun in that age were increased here almost to their fulfillment. Up to this point the prophet’s discourse has gone on in such a way as to indicate briefly what affairs and times he was going to speak about. Now he returns to the order of the censure, or the complaint, he had begun. He took care wisely and with foresight that what served the grandeur of prediction should not begin to hinder saving teaching. For since, with the impulse of a prophet, he had touched on things that would follow long afterward, and supplied the confidence of the announcement as a guarantee for adversity and prosperity alike, he did not want this very fact to seem to extinguish both merit and prayer: as if the effort of amendment were of no use, since the punishment once foretold pressed on by necessity; or as if there were no further need to pray for prosperity, since it must in any case be given for the sake of the truthfulness of the one who announced it. Therefore the discourse is directed to the peoples, and we are called to share in the judgment, so that they themselves may go on examining their mother (that is, the multitude of their parents, by whose crimes God had been angered) with attentive eyes, and remind her of the divine mercy, which is accustomed to remove even punishments that have been announced if it sees that the guilty one has fled to amendment. So they ought not to despair of salvation if they are made better by fear, since the master who presides over the reckoning of merits is delighted far more by smiling indulgence than by bitter severity.