“Therefore I am now going to allure her;
    I will lead her into the wilderness
    and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards,
    and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
    as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

Hosea 2: 14-15

There will be difficult days ahead for Israel because she has turned away from her covenant relationship with the true God, the God of their ancestors and gone after other gods in unfaithfulness to the God who has brought them prosperity as He had promised. Even so, God will make overtures “in the Valley of Achor” which means “troubles”. To put it very simply, God’ judgment will be executed against Israel, but even His judgment will be used to call Israel back into relationship with God.

God will use this process as a door of hope to offer His people one more chance to repent out of their distress.

You’ll recall I mentioned this pattern when discussing the first chapter, a pattern repeated often in the Old Testament prophets: The people rebel against God who sends multiple warnings to them to repent. They scoff at the warnings and treat the messengers badly. Then God is forced to execute His judgment and extends a ray of hope to them that a better day is coming.

As we will see, this ray of hope extends through the rest of this chapter and the next…