He concluded yesterday's text by talking about the way Israel forsook Him for "the Baals" (other gods) and said "but Me she forgot". In spite of all this, He is going to take her back, just as He will command Hosea in Chapter 3 to take his wayward wife back. The emotional and spiritual reconciliation won't happen fully overnight, not for the Lord and Israel or for Hosea and Gomer, but will be an ongoing process for quite some time. After the people of Israel have been conquered and taken captive by an enemy, they will consider their sins and will think about how their sins led to their hardships. They will think back on the blessed lives they once lived in the promised land---before they forsook the Lord---and will begin to call upon Him again.
The Lord says, "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) Prosperity can be detrimental to our spiritual health if we allow our prosperity to come between us and the Lord. Hosea is preaching the message of the Lord during the reign of King Jeroboam II, which was the most prosperous era of the entire history of the northern kingdom of Israel. The people are enjoying prosperity and have become complacent and lazy, spiritually speaking, and are living as if things will always be this way. They don't believe hardship will ever come. They don't believe the Lord will take them to task for their infidelities; indeed, I don't think they are thinking about Him very often at all. They certainly don't appear to be concerned that He might send judgment their way.
But when they are scattered among foreign nations they will think about the Lord. When they are separated from the promised land they will consider all the wrong steps they took that led them into defeat and captivity. And there, in the "wilderness" as the Lord phrased it, they will call to Him. He will speak tenderly to them, urging them to repent and rededicate their lives to Him, encouraging them to remember the way He brought them out of Egypt and called them by His name. Then they will love Him as they used to love Him, forsaking idolatry and giving their hearts to the one true God.
He refers to "the Valley of Achor" which was the place where the sin of Achan was judged back in Joshua 7. Achan took and concealed items the Lord forbade the Israelites to take when they conquered Jericho. Because of this sin, the Israelites were defeated when they attacked Ai next. Joshua prayed to the Lord about this defeat and the Lord revealed to him that there was sin in the camp. Achan had taken the valuable items home and had buried them under his tent, apparently with the full knowledge and approval of his family, for both he and his family were judged guilty of possessing these items. Achan and his family were stoned to death in "the Valley of Achor" which means "the Valley of Trouble". So when the Lord says He is going to turn the Valley of Achor into a valley of hope for Israel, He is saying that the trouble that's going to come upon them is going to turn out for their good. Their trouble is going to lead them back to Him.
Everyone encounters trouble in this world. Some troubles are of our own making, such as the troubles the Lord is foretelling for Israel. The Lord allows us to experience the consequences of our disobedience not because He wants to destroy us but because He wants those consequences to teach us not to keep making the same mistakes. He warned the Israelites before He ever brought them into the promised land that if they turned to idolatry He would remove them from the land. They fell into idolatry in spite of this warning and now, after many repeated pleadings to repent, He has no choice but to bring about the consequences that their actions merit. But He does not intend to wipe them from the earth. Neither is He going to remain separated from them forever but will someday restore their nation. What He is going to do, through their hardships, is bring them to the point of longing for reconciliation with Him. He is going to cause them to ask themselves, "Why did we fare better in former times? Why did the Lord defeat armies for us in the past but has now allowed the enemy to defeat us and drive us from our land?" His intention is for them to conclude, "It is because of our sin! It is because we have not been faithful to the Lord, who was faithful to us. Let us now turn back to Him. Let us now call to Him in hope that He will answer."
The Lord will answer, in spite of the people's many infidelities. The Lord will forgive them and take them back. "'In that day,' declares the Lord, 'you will call Me 'my husband'; you will no longer call Me 'my master.'" (Hosea 2:16) Their relationship with Him will be more intimate and more satisfying than ever before. Rather than serving Him in fear because He is a God who judges sin, Israel will unite herself to Him in love. She will not call Him "my master", serving Him out of a sense of compulsion, but will call Him "my husband", being faithful to Him because He has been faithful to her.
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