Not only does she chase after her lovers (Hosea 2:5), the Baals, but she fails to recognize that God was the One who had abundantly blessed Israel (similarly Hosea 2:8, Hosea 2:12). Had Israel recognized God as the One who blessed them, then it is unlikely that she would have pursued other gods, deities, and powers. But the repetition of the personal pronoun my
in Hosea 2:5 further indicates that there was no recognition of God’s gracious hand in Israel’s life. When God’s people abandon providence, they inevitably return favours to someone or something other than the true God.
Hubbard1 identifies and summarizes this two-fold error: credit to the wrong giver; possessiveness by a selfish recipient.
Thus, he continues, part of the threatened judgement will be God’s correction of the double error, when he takes back what is ever and rightly his.
5 For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’