s the conclusion. The punishment will at length
produce conversion. Israel returns to the Lord his God, and to David
his king.

* * * * *

Ver. 1. "_Then said the Lord unto me, Go again, love a_ [Pg 274] _woman
beloved of her friend, and an adulteress, as the Lord loveth the sons
of Israel, and they turn to other gods and love grape-cakes._"

The right point of view for the interpretation of this verse has been
already, in many important respects, established; compare p. 183 sqq.
We here take for granted the results there obtained. It is of great
importance, for an insight into the whole passage, to remark, that the
symbolical action in this section, just as in that to which chap. i.
belongs, embraces the entire relation of the Lord to the people of
Israel, and not, as some interpreters assume, one portion only, viz.,
the time from the beginning of the captivity. This false view--of which
the futility was first completely exposed by _Manger_--has arisen from
the circumstance, that the prophet, in narrating the execution of the
divine commission, omits very important events. In the expectation that
every one would supply them, partly from the commission itself, and
partly from the preceding portions, where they had been treated of with
peculiar copiousness, he rather at once passes from the first
conclusion of the marriage, to that point which, in this passage, forms
his main subject, namely, the disciplinary punishment to which he
subjects his wife,--the Lord, Israel. The prophet's aim and purpose is
to afford to the people a right view of the captivity so near at hand;
to lead them to consider it neither as a merely accidental event,
having, no connection at all with their sins; nor as a pure effect of
divine anger, aiming at their entire destruction; but rather as being
at the same time a work of punitive justice, and of corrective love.
Between the second verse, "I purchased her to me," etc., and the third,
"Then I said unto her," etc., we must supply. And I took her in
marriage and loved her; but she committed adultery. That this is the
sound view, appears clearly from ver. 2. According to the right
exposition (compare p. 195 sqq.), this verse can be referred only to
the first beginning of the relation betwixt the Lord and the people of
Israel--to that only by which He acquired the right of property in this
people, on delivering them from Egypt. This is confirmed, moreover, by
the s