28. What does the name Jezreel mean, and, because of its prophetic significance, why was it a fitting name for Hosea’s son?

²⁸ Because of the action that Jehovah purposed to take against spiritually adulterous Israel, Jehovah had Hosea call his firstborn son by Gomer by the name Jezreel. The name was very fitting. In Hosea’s language, Hebrew, it meant “God Will Sow.” Yes, “sow,” but not in a beneficial sense. Here ‘sowing’ has the meaning of ‘scattering, dispersing,’ since, when one sows seed, one scatters it. Jehovah’s acting against the royal “house of Jehu” with a scattering motion would mean its breakdown, its dissolution.

He used the Assyrian World Power to “break the [battle] bow of Israel in the low plain of Jezreel.” The overthrow of Israel’s capital city of Samaria brought the apostate nation low. The nation’s power was scattered when the Israelite survivors were deported to the distant provinces of the Assyrian Empire, scattered like seed. The terrible experience matched the symbolical meaning of the expression “the low plain of Jezreel [God Will Sow Seed].”