u hast fallen by
thine iniquity. 2. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say
unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so
will we render the calves of our lips. 3. Asshur shall not save us;
we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the
work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless
findeth mercy. 4. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them
freely: for mine anger is turned away from Him. 5. I will be as the
dew unto Israel: He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth His
roots as Lebanon. 6. His branches shall spread, and His beauty
shall be as the olive-tree, and His smell as Lebanon. 7. They that
dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn,
and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of
Lebanon. 8. Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with
idols? I have heard Him, and observed Him: I am like a green
fir-tree. From me is thy fruit found. 9. Who is wise, and He shall
understand these things? prudent, and He shall know them? for the
ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but
the transgressors shall fall therein.'--HOSEA xiv. 1-9.

Hosea is eminently the prophet of divine love and of human repentance.
Both streams of thought are at their fullest in this great chapter. In
verses 1 to 3 the very essence of true return to God is set forth in the
prayer which Israel is exhorted to offer, while in verses 4 to 8 the
forgiving love of God and its blessed results are portrayed with equal
poetical beauty and spiritual force. Verse 9 closes the chapter and the
book with a kind of epilogue.

I. The summons to repentance.

'Israel,' of course, here means the Northern Kingdom, with which Hosea's
prophecies are chiefly occupied. 'Thou hast fallen by thine
iniquity'--that is the lesson taught by all its history, and in a deeper
sense it is the lesson of all experience. Sin brings ruin for nations
and individuals, and the plain teachings of each man's own life exhort
each to 'return unto the Lord.' We have all proved the vanity and misery
of departing from Him; surely, if we are not drawn by His love, we might
be driven by our own unrest, to go back to God.

The Prophet anticipates the clear accents of the New Testament call to
repentance in his expansion of what he meant by returning. He has
nothing to say abou