Though Hosea 1:10 – 2:1 functions as a neat unit, in which God’s gracious promises are held up despite the mounting evidence against Israel, Hosea 2:2 links with Hosea 2:1. In both verses God addresses the children. In Hosea 2:1 he says they must remind one another of the hope of salvation, while in Hosea 2:2 he says they must plead with their mother. The most straightforward understanding is that God, through the prophet Hosea, is addressing the nation of Israel, his people. Of course, considering the sustained illustration or metaphor of Hosea, his wife, and their children, Hosea could be speaking to his children, asking them to plead with their mother on his behalf (Hosea 2:2). But this illustration always functions to bring God and Israel’s fraught relationship into clearer light. Because the children are commanded to plead
with their mother, the possibility of repentance is present.1
2 “Plead with your mother, plead for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts;