Text -- Hosea 1:2 (NET)

Symbols of Sin and Judgment: The Prostitute and Her Children

1:2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, he said to him, “Go marry a prostitute who will bear illegitimate children conceived through prostitution, because the nation continually commits spiritual prostitution by turning away from the Lord.”

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per phrase)

Wesley: Hos 1:2

This was, probably, done in vision, and was to be told to the people, as other visions were: it was parabolically proposed to them, and might have been sufficient to convince the Jews, would they have considered it, as David considered Nathan's parable.

Wesley: Hos 1:2

Receive and maintain the children she had before.

JFB: Hos 1:2

Not of the prophet's predictions generally, but of those spoken by Hosea.

JFB: Hos 1:2

Not externally acted, but internally and in vision, as a pictorial illustration of Israel's unfaithfulness [HENGSTENBERG]. Compare Eze 16:8, Eze 16:15, &c. Besides the loathsomeness of such a marriage, if an external act, it would require years for the birth of three children, which would weaken the symbol (compare Eze 4:4). HENDERSON objects that there is no hint of the transaction being fictitious: Gomer fell into lewdness after her union with Hosea, not before; for thus only she was a fit symbol of Israel, who lapsed into spiritual whoredom after the marriage contract with God on Sinai, and made even before at the call of the patriarchs of Israel. Gomer is called "a wife of whoredoms," anticipatively.

JFB: Hos 1:2

The kingdom collectively is viewed as a mother; the individual subjects of it are spoken of as her children. "Take" being applied to both implies that they refer to the same thing viewed under different aspects. The "children" were not the prophet's own, but born of adultery, and presented to him as his [KITTO, Biblical Cyclopædia]. Rather, "children of whoredoms" means that the children, like their mother, fell into spiritual fornication. Compare "bare him a son" (see Hos 2:4-5). Being children of a spiritual whore, they naturally fell into her whorish ways.

Clarke: Hos 1:2

A wife of whoredoms - That is, says Newcome, a wife from among the Israelites, who were remarkable for spiritual fornication, or idolatry. God calls himself the husband of Israel; and this chosen nation owed him the fidelity of a wife. See Exo 34:15; Deu 31:16; Jdg 2:17; Isa 54:5; Jer 3:14; Jer 31:32, Eze 16:17; Eze 23:5, Eze 23:27; Hosea 2, Hos 5:1-15; Rev 17:1, Rev 17:2. He therefore says, with indignation, Go join thyself in marriage to one of those who have committed fornication against me, and raise up children who, by the power of example, will themselves swerve to idolatry. See Hos 5:7. And thus show them that they are radically depraved.

Calvin: Hos 1:2

The Prophet shows here what charge was given him at the beginning, even to declare open war with the Israelites, and to be, as it were, very angry in the person of God, and to denounce destruction. He begins not with smooth things, nor does he gently exhort the people to repentance, nor adopt a circuitous course to soften the asperity of his doctrine. He shows that he had used nothing of this kind, but says, that he had been sent like heralds or messengers to proclaim war. The beginning, then, of what the Lord spake by Hosea was this, “This people are an adulterous race, all are born, as it were, of a harlot, the kingdom of Israel is the filthiest brothel; and I now repudiate and reject them, I no longer own them as my children.” This was no common vehemence. We hence see that the word beginning was not set down without reason, but advisedly, that we may know that the Prophet, as soon as he undertook the office of teaching, was vehement and severe, and, as it were, fulminated against the kingdom of Israel.

Now, if it be asked, why was God so greatly displeased? why did he not first recall the wretched men to himself, since the usual method seems to have been, that the Prophet tried, by a kind and paternal address, to restore those to a sound mind who had departed from the pure worship of God, — why, then, did not God adopt this ordinary course? But we hence gather that the diseases of the people were incurable. The Prophet, no doubt, intimates here distinctly, that he was sent by God, when the state of things was almost past recovery. We indeed know that God is not wont to deal so severely with men, but when he has tried all other remedies; and this may doubtless be easily learned from the records of Scripture. The ten tribes, immediately after their revolt from the family of David, having renounced the worship of God, embraced idolatry and ungodly superstitions. They ought to have retained in their minds the recollection of this oracle,

‘The Lord has chosen mount Zion, where he has desired to be worshipped; this,’ he said ‘is my rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen it,’ (Psa 132:13.)

And this prediction, we know, had not been once or ten times repeated, but a hundred times, that it might be more firmly fixed in the hearts of men. Since, then, they ought to have had this truth fully impressed on their hearts, that the Lord would have himself worshipped nowhere except on mount Zion, it was monstrous stupidity in them to erect a new temple and to make the calves. That the people, then, had so quickly fallen away from God was an instance of the most perverse madness. But, as I have said, they had reached the highest point of impiety. When God punished so great sins by Jehu, the people ought then to have returned to the pure worship of God, and there was some reformation in the land; but they ever reverted to their own nature, yea, the event proved that they only dissembled for a short time; so blinded they were by a diabolical perverseness, that they ever continued in their superstitions. It is not, then, to be wondered at, that the Lord made this beginning by Hosea, “ Ye are all born of fornication, your kingdom is the filthiest brothel; ye are not my people, ye are not beloved.” Who, then, will not allow, that God, by fulminating in so dreadful a manner against this people, dealt justly with them, and for the best reason? The contumacy of the people was so indomitable that it could be overcome in no other way. We now understand why the Prophet used this expression, The beginning of speaking which God made

Then it follows, in Hosea. He had said in the first verse, The word of Jehovah which was to Hosea; he now says, נהושע , beusho, in Hosea; and he adds God spake and said to Hosea, repeating the preposition used in the first verse. The word of the Lord is said to have been to Hosea, not simply because God addressed the Prophet, but because he sent him forth with certain commissions, for in this sense is the word of God said to have been to the Prophets. God addresses his word also indiscriminately to others whomsoever he is pleased to teach by his word, but he speaks to and addresses his Prophets in a peculiar way, for he makes them the ministers and heralds of his word, and puts, as it were, into their mouth what they afterwards bring forth to the people. So Christ says, that the word of God came to kings, because he constitutes and appoints them to govern mankind. “If he calls them gods,” he says, “to whom the word of God came;” and that psalm, we know, was written with a special reference to kings. We now perceive what this sentence in the first verse contains. The word of God came to Hosea; for the Lord did not simply address the Prophet in a common way, but furnished him with instructions, that he might afterwards teach the people, as it were, in the person of God himself.

It is now added in the second verse, The beginning of speaking, such as the Lord made by Hosea. They who give this rendering, “with Hosea,” seem to explain the Prophet’s meaning frigidly. The letter ב , beth, I know, has this sense often in Scripture; but the Prophet, no doubt, in this place represents himself as the instrument of the Holy Spirit. God then spake in Hosea, or by Hosea, for he brought forth nothing from his own brain, but God spake by him; this is a form of speaking with which we shall often meet. On this, indeed, depends the whole authority of God’s servants that they give not themselves loose reins, but faithfully deliver, as it were, from hand to hand, what the Lord has commanded them, without adding any thing whatever of their own. God then spake in Hosea. It afterwards follows, The Lord said to Hosea. Now this, which is said the third time, or three times repeated, is nothing else than the commission in different forms. He first said in general, “The word of the Lord which was to Hosea;” now he says, The Lord spake thus, and he expresses distinctly what the word was which he referred to in the first verse.

Go, he says, take to thee a wife of wantonness, and the children of wantonness; and the reason is added, for by fornicating, or wantoning, has the land grown wanton. He doubtless speaks here of the vices which the Lord had long endured with inexpressible forbearance. By wantoning then has the land grown wanton, that it should not follow Jehovah.

Here interpreters labour much, because it seems very strange that the Prophet should take a harlot for a wife. Some say that this was an extraordinary case. ³ Certainly such a license could not have been borne in a teacher. We see what Paul requires in a bishop, and no doubt the same was required formerly in the Prophets, that their families should be chaste and free from every stain and reproach. It would have then exposed the Prophet to the scorn of all, if he had entered a brothel and taken to himself a harlot; for he speaks not here of an unchaste woman only, but of a woman of wantonness, which means a common harlot, for a woman of wantonness is she called, who has long habituated herself to wantonness, who has exposed herself to all, to gratify the wish of all, who has prostituted herself, not once nor twice, nor to few men, but to all. That this was done by the Prophet seems very improbable. But some reply as I have said, that this ought not to be regarded as a common rule, for it was an extraordinary command of God. And yet it seems not consistent with reason, that the Lord should thus gratuitously render his Prophet contemptible; for how could he expect to be received on coming abroad before the public, after having brought on himself such a disgrace? If he had married a wife such as is here described, he ought to have concealed himself for life rather than to undertake the Prophetic office. Their opinion, therefore, is not probable, who think that the Prophet had taken such a wife as is here described.

Then another reason, utterly unresolvable, militates against them; for the Prophet is not only bidden to take a wife of wantonness, but also children of wantonness, begotten by whoredom. It is, therefore, the same as if he himself had committed whoredom. ⁴ For if we say that he married a wife who had previously conducted herself with some indecency and want of chastity, (as Jerome at length argues in order to excuse the Prophet,) the excuse is frivolous, for he speaks not only of the wife, but also of the children, inasmuch as God would have the whole offspring to be adulterous, and this could not be the case in a lawful marriage. Hence almost all the Hebrews agree in this opinion, that the Prophet did not actually marry a wife, but that he was bidden to do this in a vision. And we shall see in the third chapter (Hos 3:1) almost the same thing described; and yet what is narrated there could not have been actually done, for the Prophet is bidden to marry a wife who had violated her conjugal fidelity, and after having bought her, to retain her at home for a time. This, we know, was not done. It then follows that this was a representation exhibited to the people.

Some object and say, that the whole passage, as given by the Prophet, cannot be understood as relating a vision. Why not? For the vision, they say, was given to him alone, and God had a regard to the whole people rather than to the Prophet. But it may be, and it is probable, that no vision was presented to the Prophet, but that God only ordered him to proclaim what had been given him in charge. When, therefore, the Prophet began to teach, he commenced somewhat in this way: “The Lord places me here as on a stage, to make known to you that I have married a wife, a wife habituated to adulteries and whoredoms, and that I have begotten children by her.” The whole people knew that he had done no such thing; but the Prophet spake thus in order to set before their eyes a vivid representation. Such then, was the vision, a figurative exhibition, not that the Prophet knew this by a vision, but the Lord had bidden him to relate this parable, (so to speak,) or this similitude, that the people might see, as in a living portraiture, their turpitude and perfidiousness. It is, in short, an exhibition, in which the thing itself is not only set forth in words, but is also placed, as it were, before their eyes in a visible form. The reason is added, for by wantoning has the land grown wanton

We now then see how the words of the Prophet ought to be understood; for he assumed a character, when going forth before the public, and in this character he said to the people, that God had bidden him to take a harlot for his wife, and to beget adulterous children by her. His ministry was not on this account made contemptible, for they all knew that he had ever lived virtuously and temperately; they all knew that his household was exempt from every reproach; but here he exhibited in his assumed character, as it were, a living image of the baseness of the people. This is the meaning, and I see nothing strained in this explanation; and we, at the same time, see the meaning of this clause, By wantoning has the land grown wanton. Hosea might have said this in one word, but he had to address the deaf, and we know how great and how stupid is the madness of those who delight themselves in their own superstitions, they cannot bear any reproof. The Prophet then would not have been attended to, unless he had exhibited, as in a mirror before their eyes, what he wished to be understood by them, as though he had said, “If none of you can so know himself as to own his public baseness, if ye are all so obstinate against God, at least know now by my assumed character, that you are all adulterous, and derive your origin from a filthy brothel, for God declares thus concerning you; and as you are not willing to receive such a declaration, it is now set before you in my assumed character.”

That it should not follow Jehovah, literally, From after Jehovah, מאחרי , meachri. We here see what is the spiritual chastity of God’s people, and what also is the signification of the word wantoning. Then the spiritual chastity of God’s people is to follow the Lord; and what else is this to follow, but to suffer ourselves to be ruled by his word, and willingly to obey him, to be ready and prepared for any work to which he may call us? When then the Lord goes before us with his instruction and shows the way, and we become teachable and obedient, and look up to him, and turn not aside, either to the right or to the left hand, but bring our whole life to the obedience of faith, — this is really to follow the Lord; and it is a most beautiful definition of the spiritual chastity of God’s people.

And we may also, from the opposite of this, learn what it is to grow wanton; we do so when we depart from the word of the Lord, when we give ear to false doctrines, when we abandon ourselves to superstitions; when we, in short, wander after our own devices, and keep not our thoughts under the authority of the word of the Lord. But as to the word wantoning, more will be said in chapter 2; but I only wished now briefly to touch on what the Prophet means when he chides the Israelites for having all become wanton. Now follows —

Defender: Hos 1:2

Hosea (meaning "salvation," essentially the same name as that of Joshua, or Jesus) is, in his prophetic actions, to be made essentially a living type of Christ, especially in His nature as Jehovah, the spiritual "husband" of Israel. Hosea's prophecy was directed especially toward unfaithful Israel, the ten-tribe northern kingdom, but it continued even after Israel was carried into captivity, warning Judah as well.

Defender: Hos 1:2

In his real-life portrayal of the relation of Jehovah to Israel, Hosea was led by God to love and marry Gomer, who was a harlot both before and after the marriage. Gomer thus typifies the spiritual harlotry of Israel, serving other gods instead of the true God. As always, spiritual adultery first countenances, then promotes, physical immorality. God's chosen people had descended into the same moral morass as the pagan nations whose gods they had begun to follow."

TSK: Hos 1:2

beginning : Mar 1:1

Go : Hos 3:1; Isa 20:2, Isa 20:3; Jer 13:1-11; Ezek. 4:1-5:17

a wife : That is, says Apb. Newcome, a wife from among the Israelites, who were a people remarkable for spiritual fornication or idolatry.

children : Hos 2:4; 2Pe 2:14 *marg.

for : Exo 34:15, Exo 34:16; Deu 31:16; 2Ch 21:13; Psa 73:27, Psa 106:39; Jer 2:13; Jer 3:1-4, Jer 3:9; Eze 6:9, 16:1-63, 23:1-49; Rev 17:1, Rev 17:2, Rev 17:5

Commentary -- Word/Phrase Notes (per Verse)

Barnes: Hos 1:2

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea or in Hosea - God first revealed Himself and His mysteries to the prophet’ s soul, by His secret inspiration, and then declared, through him, to others, what He had deposited in him. God enlightened him, and then others through the light in him.

And the Lord said unto Hosea - For this thing was to be done by Hosea alone, because God had commanded it, not by others of their own mind. To Isaiah God first revealed Himself, as sitting in the temple, adored by the Seraphim: to Ezekiel God first appeared, as enthroned above the cherubim in the holy of holies; to Jeremiah God announced that, ere yet he was born, He had sanctified him for this office: to Hosea He enjoined, as the beginning of his prophetic office, an act contrary to man’ s natural feelings, yet one, by which he became an image of the Redeemer, uniting to Himself what was unholy, in order to make it holy.

Go take unto thee - Since Hosea prophesied some eighty years, he must now have been in early youth, holy, pure, as became a prophet of God. Being called thus early, he had doubtless been formed by God as a chosen instrument of His will, and had, like Samuel, from his first childhood, been trained in true piety and holiness. Yet he was to unite unto him, so long as she lived, one greatly defiled, in order to win her thereby to purity and holiness; herein, a little likeness of our Blessed Lord, who, in the Virgin’ s womb, to save us, espoused our flesh, in us sinful, in Him all-holy, without motion to sin; and, further, espoused the Church, formed of us who, "whether Jews or Gentiles,"were all under sin, aliens from God and gone away from Him, "serving divers lusts and passions Eph 5:27, to make it a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle."

A wife of whoredoms - i. e., take as a wife, one who up to that time had again and again been guilty of that sin. So "men of bloods"Psa 5:6 are "men given up to bloodshedding;"and our Lord was "a Man of Sorrows Isa 53:3, not occasional only, but manifold and continual, throughout His whole life. She must, then, amid the manifold corruption of Israel, have been repeatedly guilty of that sin, perhaps as an idolatress, thinking of it to be in honor of their foul gods (see the Hos 4:13, note; Hos 4:14, note). She was not like those degraded ones, who cease to bear children; still she must have manifoldly sinned. So much the greater was the obedience of the prophet. Nor could any other woman so shadow forth the manifold defilements of the human race, whose nature our incarnate Lord vouchsafed to unite in His own person to the perfect holiness of the divine nature.

And children of whoredoms - For they shared the disgrace of their mother, although born in lawful marriage. The sins of parents descend also, in a mysterious way, on their children, Sin is contagious, and, unless the entail is cut off by grace, hereditary. The mother thus far portrays man’ s revolts, before his union with God; the children, our forsaking of God, after we have been made His children. The forefathers of Israel, God tells them, "served other gods, on the other side of the flood"Jos 24:14, (i. e., in Ur of the Chaldees, from where God called Abraham) "and in Egypt."It was out of such defilement, that God took her Eze 23:3, Eze 23:8, and He says, "Thou becamest Mine"Eze 16:8. whom He maketh His, He maketh pure; and of her, not such as she was in herself by nature, but as such as He made her, He says, "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals when thou wentest after Me, in the wilderness"Jer 2:2. But she soon fell away; and thenceforth there were among them (as there are now among Christians,) "the children of God, the children of the promise, and the children of whoredoms, or of the devil."

For the land ... - This is the reason why God commands Hosea to do this thing, in order to shadow out their foulness and God’ s mercy. What no man would dare to do Jer 3:1, except at God’ s bidding, God in a manner doth, restoring to union with Himself those who had gone away from Him. "The land,"i. e., Israel, and indirectly, Judah also, and, more widely yet, the whole earth.

Departing from - Literally, "from after the Lord."Our whole life should be Phi 3:13, forgetting the things which are behind, to follow after Him, whom here we can never fully attain unto, God in His Infinite Perfection, yet so as, with our whole heart, "fully to follow after Him."To depart from the Creator and to serve the creature, is adultery; as the Psalmist says, "Thou hast destroyed all them, that go a whoring from Thee"Psa 73:27. He who seeks anything out of God, turns from following Him, and takes to him something else as his god, is unfaithful, and spiritually an adulterer and idolater. For he is an adulterer, who becomes another’ s than God’ s.

Poole: Hos 1:2

The beginning of the word of the Lord: this, say some, gives Hosea the precedence of all the prophets, which perhaps may be allowed to him among all the prophets that have written distinct books of their prophecies, but simply first of all the prophets he was not; in David’ s and Solomon’ s times we meet with Nathan and Ahijah the Shilonite. Or this

beginning may be, as our ordinary phrase, so soon as God spake, or at the very first of God’ s speaking, to Hosea, he commanded him to take such a wife, &c.

The Lord: see Hos 2:1 .

By Hosea in Hosea; denoting the impulse of the Spirit of prophecy, the internal motions and influence of the Spirit in the prophet: see Hos 1:1 .

The Lord said directed and commanded him: this was warrant to him, doing which otherwise was unseemly for a prophet to have done. Go,

take unto thee: this was, say some, done in vision, and was to be told to the people as other visions were: it was parabolically proposed to them, and this might be sufficient to convince the Jews, would they have considered it well, as David considered Nathan’ s parable. Others say it was really acted, and that the prophet did, as commanded, marry one who had been a strumpet, or that proved to be so after she was married. And though this would have been unseemly in the prophet, had he done it without this particular direction, now the scandal ceaseth, and it is very fit God be obeyed, and the prophet may with credit enough do what God had by his command made a necessary duty to him, and marry one known to be a lewd whore.

A wife of whoredoms an openly noted whore, a notorious one, so the Hebrew phrase,

wife of whoredoms as, a man of bloods, or man of sorrows; a woman of many whoredoms, and very lively emblem of idolatrous Israel.

Children of whoredoms either that, born of such a mother, are. as she, addicted to lewdness; or else, with the mother made his wife, he is to receive and maintain the children she had by her adulterers. And thus understood, it may lead our thoughts to God’ s rich mercy towards their ancestors, who were (Abraham himself not excepted) idolaters, when they dwelt on the other side the river, Jos 24:2,3 : yet God took them, and married them to himself, and did show wonderful kindness to them and theirs; all which is slighted and forgotten by their posterity, by you, O idolatrous Israelites! Or it may refer more expressly to what God did for Israel, when he brought them out of Egypt, and made covenant with them in Horeb, which was as a solemn espousing them to God. The Lord found them tainted with Egyptian idolatries, yet, as the prophet here, married them to himself, and covenanted with them to be faithful to him, but they broke the covenant.

The land i.e. the people of the land, intimating the universal spreading of this sin, all, or most of all, so infected.

Hath committed great whoredom: the phrase, Heb. playing the harlot hath played the harlot , speaks the continuance of this idolatry among them, as well as the greatness of the whoredom. From their forefathers they had been idolaters; while God was giving them his law (from the nuptial day to Hosea’ s time) they committed spiritual whoredom, and first made, next worshipped, the golden calf.

Departing from the Lord so they left their first Husband, and doted on adulterers, on idols, as Hos 2:5 .

PBC: Hos 1:2

In the book of Hosea we see the heart of God, but we see the heart of God broken and crushed by the sin and the rebellion, the infidelity and the adultery of His wife. " Hosea, you’re my man, you’ve got the message but you can’t deliver the message with the passion and the conviction that I feel until you have experienced a parallel in the finite of what I have experienced in the infinite." That’s what God is saying.

The biography, the life of this man is to live out in literal experience a mirror image of what God is doing with His people and how God feels with His people. We don’t always follow a consistent pattern -here’s the life of Hosea and here’s the heartbreak of God. It’s mixed back and forth. Sometimes Hosea speaks as God concerning Israel -even in the first three chapters and sometimes he speaks as Hosea, heartbroken over Gomer.

I think in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia recording it’s comments on this book says that the words of Hosea drip from his pen as the sobs of a heartbroken man and in fact of a heartbroken God over the sin of His people. That’s the setting of the book.

E. K. Bailey made a powerful comment, " Hosea, you have the right message but you don’t have the right heart. Until you have suffered heartbreak by one you love dearly you will not be equipped to deliver My message unto My people. So, Hosea here’s what I need you to do -marry a prostitute." But, there’s a message here- it’s a powerful message. The man of God must understand the broken heart of God before he can preach to people who have broken the heart of God. That’s the point of the message. In the message Bailey makes a powerful comment, " Hosea must learn to trust the heart of God even when he cannot trace the hand of God." That’s what Hosea had to learn. That’s what faith is about. That’s what this lesson -this whole chapter in Heb 11:1-40 is about. You may think today that everything in your whole world is coming up roses. Everything is just right. Sooner or later there will be a cloud in your life and your parade will be rained on. Can you then in the middle of the rainstorm trust the heart of God? That’s what this is about- evidence that will stand up under cross examination. ***********************************************************************

The prophet must, as it were in a looking-glass, show them their sin, and show it to be exceedingly sinful, exceedingly hateful. The prophet is ordered to take unto him a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, Ho 1:2. And he did so, Ho 1:3. He married a woman of ill fame, Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, not one that had been married and had committed adultery, for then she must have been put to death, but one that had lived scandalously in the single state. To marry such a one was not malum in se-evil in itself, but only malum per accidens-incidentally an evil, not prudent, decent, or expedient, and therefore forbidden to the priests, and which, if it were really done, would be an affliction to the prophet (it is threatened as a curse on Amaziah that his wife should be a harlot, Am 7:17), but not a sin when God commanded it for a holy end; nay, if commanded, it was his duty, and he must trust God with his reputation. But most commentators think that it was done in vision, or that it is no more than a parable; and that was a way of teaching commonly used among the ancients, particularly prophets; what they meant of others they transferred to themselves in a figure, as St. Paul speaks, 1Co 4:6. He must take a wife of whoredoms, and have such children by her as every one would suspect, though born in wedlock, to be children of whoredoms, begotten in adultery, because it is too common for those who have lived lewdly in the single state to live no better in the married state.

" Now" (saith God) " Hosea, this people is to me such a dishonour, and such a grief and vexation, as a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms would be to thee. For the land has committed great whoredoms."

In all instances of wickedness they had departed from the Lord; but their idolatry especially is the whoredom they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone is such an injury and affront to God as for a wife to embrace the bosom of a stranger is to her husband. It is especially so in those that have made a profession of religion, and have been taken into covenant with God; it is breaking the marriage-bond; it is a heinous odious sin, and, as much as any thing, besots the mind and takes away the heart. Idolatry is great whoredom, worse than any other; it is departing from the Lord, to whom we lie under greater obligations than any wife does or can do to her husband. The land has committed whoredom; it is not here and there a particular person that is guilty of idolatry, but the whole land is polluted with it; the sin has become national, the disease epidemical. What an odious thing would it be for the prophet, a holy man, to have a whorish wife, and children whorish like her! What an exercise would it be of his patience, and, if she persisted in it, what could be expected but that he should give her a bill of divorce! And is it not then much more offensive to the holy God to have such a people as this to be called by his name and have a place in his house? How great is his patience with them! And how justly may he cast them off! It was as if he should have married Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, who probably was at that time a noted harlot. The land of Israel was like Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. Gomer signifies corruption; Diblaim signifies two cakes, or lumps of figs; this denotes that Israel was near to ruin, and that their luxury and sensuality were the cause of it. They were as the evil figs {Jer 24:8} that could not be eaten, they were so evil. It intimates sin to be the daughter of plenty and destruction the daughter of the abuse of plenty. Some give this sense of the command here given to the prophet:

" Go, take thee a wife of whoredoms, for, if thou shouldest go to seek for an honest modest woman, thou wouldst not find any such, for the whole land, and all the people of it, are given to whoredom, the usual concomitant of idolatry." from Matthew Henry commentary

Haydock: Hos 1:2

Fornications. That is, a wife that hath been given to fornication. This was to represent the Lord's proceedings with his people Israel, who, by spiritual fornication, were continually offending him. (Challoner) ---

The prophet reclaimed her. (St. Jerome) ---

She denoted Samaria, abandoned to idolatry, Ezechiel xvi. 15. Several such actions were prophetical. Many have supposed that this was only a parable; but the sequel proves the contrary. (Calmet) ---

Of fornications. So called from the character of the mother, if not also from their own wicked dispositions. (Challoner) ---

He is ordered to marry a woman who had been of a loose character, and to have children who would resemble her; (Worthington) or he takes her children to his house; (Grotius) unless the children of the prophet were so styled because the mother had been given to fornication. So the rod of Aaron retains its name when it was become a serpent, Exodus vii. 12. ---

Shall, or rather, "has departed;" and therefore he denounces future chastisements.

Gill: Hos 1:2

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,.... Or "in Hosea" ⁱ; which was internally revealed to him, and was inspired into him, by the Holy Ghost, who first spoke in him, and then by him; not that Hosea was the first of the prophets to whom the word of the Lord came; for there were Moses, Samuel, David, and others, before him; nor the first of the minor prophets, for Jonah, Joel, and Amos; are by some thought to be before him; nor the first of those contemporary with him, as the Jewish writers interpret it, which is not certain, at least not all of them; but the meaning is, that what follows is the first part of his prophecy, or what it began with; by which it appears he was put upon hard service at first, to prophesy against Israel, an idolatrous people, and to do it in such a manner as must be disagreeable to a young man:

and the Lord said to Hosea, go, take thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms; a woman given to whoredom, a notorious strumpet, one taken out of the stews, and children that were spurious and illegitimate, not born in lawful wedlock. Some think this was really done; that the prophet took a whore, and cohabited with her, or married her which, though forbidden a high priest, was not forbid to a prophet; and had it been against a law, yet the Lord commanding it made it lawful, as in the cases of Abraham's slaying his son, and the Israelites borrowing jewels of the Egyptians; but this seems not likely, since it would not only look like countenancing whoredom, which is contrary to the holy law of God; but must be very dishonourable to the prophet, and render him contemptible to the people; and, besides, would not answer the end proposed, to reprove the spiritual adultery or idolatry of Israel, but rather serve to confirm in it; for how should that appear criminal and abominable to them, which was commanded the prophet by the Lord? others think that the woman he is bid to marry, though before marriage a harlot, was afterwards reformed; but this is directly contrary to Hos 3:1 and besides, the children born of her, whether reformed or not, yet in lawful wedlock could not be called children of whoredom; nor would the above end be answered by it, since such a person would be no fit representative of Israel committing spiritual adultery or idolatry, and continuing in it; and moreover, whether this or the former was the case, the prophecy must be many years delivering; it must be near a year before the first child was born, and the same space must be between the birth of each; so that here must be a long and frequent interruption of the prophecy, which does not seem likely: nor is it probable that he took his own wife, which is the opinion of others, and gave her the character of a whore, and his children with her, and called them children of whoredom, in order to represent and reprove the idolatry of Israel: what Maimonides ^k, and the Jewish writers in general, give into, is more agreeable, that this was all done in the vision of prophecy; that it so seemed to the prophet in vision to be really done, and so he related it to the people; but this is liable to objection, that such an impure scene of things should be represented to the mind of the prophet by the Holy Spirit of God; nor can the relation of it be thought to have any good effect upon the people, who would be ready to mock at him, and reproach him for it. It seems best therefore to understand the whole as a parable, and that the prophet, in a parabolical way, is bid to represent the treachery, unfaithfulness, and spiritual adultery of the people of Israel, under the feigned name of an unchaste woman, and of children begotten in fornication; and to show unto them that their case was as if he had taken a woman out of the stews, and her bastards with her; or as if a wife married by him had defiled his bed, and brought him a spurious brood of children. So the Targum interprets it,

"go, prophesy a prophecy against the inhabitants of the idolatrous city, who add to sin:''

for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord; or

"for the inhabitants of the land erring, erred from the worship of the Lord,''

as the Targum; that is, the inhabitants of the land of Israel have committed idolatry, which is often in Scripture signified by adultery and whoredom; as an adulterous woman deals treacherously with her husband, so these people had dealt with God, who stood in such a relation to them; see Jer 3:1, this interprets the parable, and shows the reason of using the following symbols and emblems.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Hos 1:2

¹ tn The construct noun תְּחִלַּת (tékhillat, “beginning of”) displays a wider use of the construct state here, preceding a perfect verb דִּבֶּר (dibber, “he spoke”; Piel perfect 3rd person masculine singular) rather than a genitive noun. This is an unusual temporal construction (GKC 422 §130.d). It may be rendered, “When he (= the Lord) began to speak” (cf. ASV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, TEV, and most other modern English versions, all of which are similar). This time-determinative was not correctly understood by the LXX or by the KJV: “The beginning of the word of the Lord.”

² tn The preposition בְּ (bet) on בְּהוֹשֵׁעַ (bÿhoshea’) is an instrumental use of the preposition (BDB 89 s.v. בְּ III.2.b): “by, with, through Hosea” rather than a directional “to Hosea.” This focuses on the entire prophetic revelation through Hosea to Israel.

³ tn Heb “the Lord.” This is redundant in English, so the pronoun has been used in the translation (cf. TEV, NLT).

⁴ tn Heb “to Hosea.” The proper name is replaced by the pronoun here to avoid redundancy in English (cf. NIV, NCV, NLT).

⁵ tn Heb “Go, take for yourself” (so NRSV; NASB, NIV “to yourself”). In conjunction with the following phrase this means “marry.”

⁶ tn Heb “a wife of harlotries.” The noun זְנוּנִים (zÿnunim) means “prostitute; harlot” (HALOT 275-76 s.v. זְנוּנִים). The term does not refer to mere adultery (cf. NIV; also NCV, TEV, CEV “unfaithful”) which is expressed by the root נַאַף (na’af, “adultery”; HALOT 658 s.v. נאף). The plural noun זְנוּנִים (zénunim, literally, “harlotries”) is an example of the plural of character or plural of repeated behavior. The phrase “wife of harlotries” (אֵשֶׁת זְנוּנִים, ’eshet zénunim) probably refers to a prostitute, possibly a temple prostitute serving at a Baal temple.

⁷ tn Heb “and children of harlotries.” However, TEV takes the phrase to mean the children will behave like their mother (“your children will be just like her”).

⁸ tn Heb “the land.” The term “the land” is frequently used as a synecdoche of container (the land of Israel) for the contained (the people of Israel).

⁹ tn Heb “prostitution.” The adjective “spiritual” is supplied in the translation to clarify that apostasy is meant here. The construction זָנֹה תִזְנֶה (zanoh tizneh, infinitive absolute + imperfect of the same root) repeats the root זָנַה (zanah, “harlotry”) for rhetorical emphasis. Israel was guilty of gross spiritual prostitution by apostatizing from Yahweh. The verb זָנַה is used in a concrete sense to refer to a spouse being unfaithful in a marriage relationship (HALOT 275 s.v. זנה 1), and figuratively meaning “to be unfaithful” in a relationship with God by prostituting oneself with other gods and worshiping idols (Exod 34:15; Lev 17:7; 20:5, 6; Deut 31:16; Judg 8:27, 33; 21:17; 1 Chr 5:25; Ezek 6:9; 20:30; 23:30; Hos 4:15; Ps 106:39; see HALOT 275 s.v. 2).

¹⁰ tn Heb “from after.”

Geneva Bible: Hos 1:2

The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife ^{( c )} of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, [departing] from the LORD.

^{( c )} That is, one that has been a harlot for a long time: not that the Prophet did this thing in effect, but he saw this in a vision, or else was commanded by God to set forth under this parable or figure the idolatry of the Synagogue, and of the people her children.

Commentary -- Verse Range Notes

TSK Synopsis: Hos 1:1-11

1 Hosea, to shew God's judgment for spiritual whoredom, takes Gomer,

4 and has by her Jezreel;

6 Loruhamah;

8 and Lo-ammi.

10 The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head.

MHCC: Hos 1:1-7

Israel was prosperous, yet then Hosea boldly tells them of their sins, and foretells their destruction. Men are not to be flattered in sinful ways because they prosper in the world; nor will it last long if they go on still in their trespasses. The prophet must show Israel their sin; show it to be exceedingly hateful. Their idolatry is the sin they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone, is an injury and affront to God; such as for a wife to take a stranger, is to her husband. The Lord, doubtless, had good reasons for giving such a command to the prophet; it would form an affecting picture of the Lord's unmerited goodness and unwearied patience, and of the perverseness and ingratitude of Israel. We should be broken and wearied with half that perverseness from others, with which we try the patience and grieve the Spirit of our God. Let us also be ready to bear any cross the Lord appoints. The prophet must show the ruin of the people, in the names given to his children. He foretells the fall of the royal family in the name of his first child: call his name Jezreel, which signifies " dispersion." He foretells God's abandoning the nation in the name of the second child; Lo-ruhamah, " not beloved," or " not having obtained mercy." God showed great mercy, but Israel abused his favours. Sin turns away the mercy of God, even from Israel, his own professing people. If pardoning mercy is denied, no other mercy can be expected. Though some, through unbelief, are broken off, yet God will have a church in this world till the end of time. Our salvation is owing to God's mercy, not to any merit of our own. That salvation is sure, of which he is the Author; and if he will work, none shall hinder.

Matthew Henry: Hos 1:2-7

These words, The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea, may refer either, 1. To that glorious set of prophets which was raised up about this time. About this time there lived and prophesied Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah, Obadiah, and Isaiah; but Hosea was the first of them that foretold the destruction of Israel; the beginning of this word of the Lord was by him. We read in the history of this Jeroboam here named (2Ki 14:27) that the Lord had not yet said he would blot out the name of Israel, but soon after he said he would, and Hosea was the man that began to say it, which made it so much the harder task to him, to be the first that should carry an unpleasing message and some time before any were raised up to second him. Or, rather, 2. To Hosea's own prophecies. This was the first message God sent him upon to this people, to tell them that they were an evil and an adulterous generation. He might have desired to be excused from dealing so roughly with them till he had gained authority and reputation, and some interest in their affections. No; he must begin with this, that they might know what to expect from a prophet of the Lord. Nay, he must not only preach this to them, but he must write it, and publish it, and leave it upon record as a witness against them. Now here,

I. The prophet must, as it were in a looking-glass, show them their sin, and show it to be exceedingly sinful, exceedingly hateful. The prophet is ordered to take unto him a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, Hos 1:2. And he did so, Hos 1:3. He married a woman of ill fame, Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, not one that had been married and had committed adultery, for then she must have been put to death, but one that had lived scandalously in the single state. To marry such a one was not malum in se - evil in itself, but only malum per accidens - incidentally an evil, not prudent, decent, or expedient, and therefore forbidden to the priests, and which, if it were really done, would be an affliction to the prophet (it is threatened as a curse on Amaziah that his wife should be a harlot, Amo 7:17), but not a sin when God commanded it for a holy end; nay, if commanded, it was his duty, and he must trust God with his reputation. But most commentators think that it was done in vision, or that it is no more than a parable; and that was a way of teaching commonly used among the ancients, particularly prophets; what they meant of others they transferred to themselves in a figure, as St. Paul speaks, 1Co 4:6. He must take a wife of whoredoms, and have such children by her as every one would suspect, though born in wedlock, to be children of whoredoms, begotten in adultery, because it is too common for those who have lived lewdly in the single state to live no better in the married state. "Now"(saith God) "Hosea, this people is to me such a dishonour, and such a grief and vexation, as a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms would be to thee. For the land has committed great whoredoms. "In all instances of wickedness they had departed from the Lord; but their idolatry especially is the whoredom they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone is such an injury and affront to God as for a wife to embrace the bosom of a stranger is to her husband. It is especially so in those that have made a profession of religion, and have been taken into covenant with God; it is breaking the marriage-bond; it is a heinous odious sin, and, as much as any thing, besots the mind and takes away the heart. Idolatry is great whoredom, worse than any other; it is departing from the Lord, to whom we lie under greater obligations than any wife does or can do to her husband. The land has committed whoredom; it is not here and there a particular person that is guilty of idolatry, but the whole land is polluted with it; the sin has become national, the disease epidemical. What an odious thing would it be for the prophet, a holy man, to have a whorish wife, and children whorish like her! What an exercise would it be of his patience, and, if she persisted in it, what could be expected but that he should give her a bill of divorce! And is it not then much more offensive to the holy God to have such a people as this to be called by his name and have a place in his house? How great is his patience with them! And how justly may he cast them off! It was as if he should have married Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, who probably was at that time a noted harlot. The land of Israel was like Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. Gomer signifies corruption; Diblaim signifies two cakes, or lumps of figs; this denotes that Israel was near to ruin, and that their luxury and sensuality were the cause of it. They were as the evil figs that could not be eaten, they were so evil. It intimates sin to be the daughter of plenty and destruction the daughter of the abuse of plenty. Some give this sense of the command here given to the prophet: "Go, take thee a wife of whoredoms, for, if thou shouldst go to seek for an honest modest woman, thou wouldst not find any such, for the whole land, and all the people of it, are given to whoredom, the usual concomitant of idolatry."

II. The prophet must, as it were through a perspective glass, show them their ruin; and this he does in the names given to the children born of this adulteress; for as lust, when it has conceived, brings forth sin, so sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.

1. He foretels the fall of the royal family in the name he is appointed to give to his first child, which was a son: Call his name Jezreel, Hos 1:4. We find that the prophet Isaiah gave prophetical names to his children (Isa 7:3; Isa 7:3), so this prophet here. Jezreel signifies the seed of God (so they should have been); but it signifies also the scattered of God; they shall be as sheep on the mountains that have no shepherds. Call them not Israel, which signifies dominion, they have lost all the honour of that name; but call them Jezreel, which signifies dispersion, for those that have departed from the Lord will wander endlessly. Hitherto they have been scattered as seek; let them now be scattered as chaff. Jezreel was the name of one of the royal seats of the kings of Israel; it was a beautiful city, seated in a pleasant valley, and it is with allusion to that city that this child is called Jezreel, for yet a little while and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, from whom the present king, Jeroboam, was lineally descended. The house of Jehu smarted for the sins of Jehu, for God often lays up men's iniquity for their children and visits it upon them. It is the kingdom of the house of Israel, which may be meant either of the present royal family, that of Jehu, which God did quickly cause to cease (for the son of this Jeroboam, Zechariah, reigned but six months, and he was the last of Jehu's race), or of the whole kingdom in general, which continued corrupt and wicked, and which was made to cease in the reign of Hoshea, about seventy years after; and with God that is but a little while. Note, Note, Neither the pomp of kings nor the power of kingdoms can secure them from God's destroying judgments, if they continue to rebel against him. (2.) What is the ground of this controversy: I will revenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, the blood which Jehu shed at Jezreel, when by commission from God and in obedience to his command, he utterly destroyed the house of Ahab, and all that were in alliance with it, with all the worshippers of Baal. God approved of what he did (2Ki 10:30): Thou has done well in executing that which is right in my eyes; and yet here God will avenge that blood upon the house of Jehu, when the time has expired during which it was promised that his family should reign, even to the fourth generation. But how comes the same action to be both rewarded and punished? Very justly; the matter of it was good; it was the execution of a righteous sentence passed upon the house of Ahab, and, as such, it was rewarded; but Jehu did it not in a right manner; he aimed at his own advancement, not at the glory of God, and mingled his own resentments with the execution of God's justice. He did it with a malice against the sinners, but not with any antipathy to the sin; for he kept up the worship of the golden calves, and took no heed to walk in the law of God, 2Ki 10:31. And therefore when the measure of the iniquity of his house was full, and God came to reckon with them, the first article in the account is (and, being first, it is put for all the rest) for the blood of the house of Ahab, here called the blood of Jezreel. Thus when the house of Baasha was rooted out it was because he did like the house of Jeroboam, and because he killed him, 1Ki 16:7. Note, Those that are entrusted with the administration of justice are concerned to see to it that they do it from a right principle and with a right intention, and that they do not themselves live in those sins which they punish in others, lest even their just executions should be reckoned for, another day, as little less than murders. (3.) How far the controversy shall proceed; it shall be not a correction, but a destruction. Some make those words, I will visit, or appoint, the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, to signify, not as we read it the revenging of that bloodshed, but the repeating of that bloodshed: "I will punish the house of Jehu, as I punished the house of Ahab, because Jehu did not take warning by the punishment of his predecessors, but trod in the steps of their idolatry. And after the house of Jehu is destroyed I will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel; I will begin to bring it down, though now it flourish."After the death of Zechariah, the last of the house of Jehu, the kingdom of the ten tribes went to decay, and dwindled sensibly. And, in order to the ruin of it, it is threatened (Hos 1:5), I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel; the strength of the warriors of Israel, so the Chaldee. God will disable them either to defend themselves or to resist their enemies. And the bow abiding in strength, and being renewed in the hand, intimates a growing power, so the breaking of the bow intimates a sinking ruined power. The bow shall be broken in the valley of Jezreel, where, probably, the armoury was; or, it may be, in that valley some battle was fought, wherein the kingdom of Israel was very much weakened. Note, There is no fence against God's controversy; when he comes forth against a people their strong bows are soon broken and their strong-holds broken down. In the valley of Jezreel they shed that blood which the righteous God would in that very place avenge upon them; as some notorious malefactors are hanged in chains just where the villainy they suffer for was perpetrated, that the punishment may answer the sin.

2. He foretels God's abandoning the whole nation in the name he gives to the second child. This was a daughter, as the former was a son, to intimate that both sons and daughters had corrupted their way. Some make to signify that Israel grew effeminate, and was thereby enfeebled and made weak. Call the name of this daughter Lo-ruhamah - not beloved (so it is translated Rom 9:25), or not having obtained mercy, so it is translated 1Pe 2:10. It comes all to one. This reads the doom of the house of Israel: I will no more have mercy upon them. It intimates that God had shown them great mercy, but they had abused his favours, and forfeited them, and now he would show them favour no more. Note, Those that forsake their own mercies for lying vanities have reason to expect that their own mercies should forsake them, and that they should be left to their lying vanities, Jon 2:8. Sin turns away the mercy of God even from the house of Israel, his own professing people, whose case is sad indeed when God says that he will no more have mercy upon them. And then it follows, I will utterly take them away, will utterly remove them (so some), will utterly pluck them up, so others. Note, When the streams of mercy are stopped we can expect no other than that the vials of wrath should be opened. Those whom God will no more have mercy upon shall be utterly taken away, as dross and dung. The word for taking away sometimes signifies to forgive sin; and some take it in that sense here: I will no more have mercy upon them, though in pardoning I have pardoned them heretofore. Though God has borne long, he will not bear always, with a people that hate to be reformed. Or, I will no more have mercy upon them, that I should in any wise pardon them, or (as our margin reads it) that I should altogether pardon them. If pardoning mercy is denied, no other mercy can be expected, for that opens the door to all the rest. Some make this to speak comfort: I will no more have mercy upon them till in pardoning I shall pardon them, that is, till the Redeemer comes to Zion to turn away ungodliness from Jacob. The Chaldee reads it, But, if they repent, in pardoning I will pardon them. Even the greatest sinners, if in time they bethink themselves and return, will find that there is forgiveness with God.

III. He must show them what mercy God had in store for the house of Judah, at the same time that he was thus contending with the house of Israel (Hos 1:7): But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah. Note, Though some are justly cast off for their disobedience, yet God will always secure to himself a remnant that shall be the vessels and monuments of mercy. When divine justice is glorified in some, yet there are others in whom free grace is glorified. And, though some through unbelief are broken off, yet God will have a church in this world till the end of time. It aggravates the rejection of Israel that God will have mercy on Judah, and not on them, and magnifies God's mercy to Judah that, though they also have done wickedly, yet God did not reject them, as he rejected Israel: I will have mercy upon them and will save them. Note, Our salvation is owing purely to God's mercy, and not to any merit of our own. Now,

1. This, without doubt, refers to the temporal salvations which God wrought for Judah in a distinguishing way, the favours shown to them and not to Israel. When the Assyrian armies had destroyed Samaria, and carried the ten tribes away into captivity, they proceeded to besiege Jerusalem; but God had mercy on the house of Judah, and saved them by the vast slaughter which an angel made, in one night, in the camp of the Assyrians; then they were saved by the Lord their God immediately, and not by sword or bow. When the ten tribes were continued in their captivity, and their land was possessed by others, they being utterly taken away, God had mercy on the house of Judah and saved them, and, after seventy years, brought them back, not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, Zec 4:6. I will save them by the Lord their God, that is, by myself. God will be exalted in his own strength, will take the work into his own hands. That salvation is sure which he undertakes to be the author of; for, if he will work, none shall hinder. And that salvation is most acceptable which he does by himself. So the Lord alone did lead him. The less there is of man in any salvation, and the more of God, the brighter it shines and the sweeter it tastes. I will save them in the word of the Lord (so the Chaldee), for the sake of Christ, the eternal word, and by his power. I will save them not by bow nor by sword, that is, (1.) They shall be saved when they are reduced to so low an ebb that they have neither bow nor sword to defend themselves with, Jdg 5:8; 1Sa 13:22. (2.) They shall be saved by the Lord when they are brought off from trusting to their own strength and their weapons of war, Psa 44:6. (3.) They shall be saved easily, without the trouble of sword and bow, Hos 1:7. Isa 9:5, I will save them by the Lord their God. In the calling him their God, he upbraids the ten tribes who had cast him off from being theirs, for which reason he had cast them off, and intimates what was the true reason why he had mercy, distinguishing mercy, for the house of Judah, and saved them: it was in pursuance of his covenant with them as the Lord their God, and in recompence for their faithful adherence to him and to his word and worship. But,

2. This may refer also to the salvation of Judah from idolatry, which qualified and prepared them for their other salvations. And this is indeed a salvation by the Lord their God; it is wrought only by the power of his grace, and can never be wrought by sword or bow. Just at the time that the kingdom of Israel was utterly taken away, under Hoshea, the kingdom of Judah was gloriously reformed, under Hezekiah, and was therefore preserved; and in Babylon God saved them from their idolatry first, and then from their captivity.

3. Some make this promise to look forward to the great salvation which, in the fulness of time, was to be wrought out by the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save his people from their sins.

Keil-Delitzsch: Hos 1:2

For the purpose of depicting before the eyes of the sinful people the judgment to which Israel has exposed itself through its apostasy from the Lord, Hosea is to marry a prostitute, and beget children by her, whose names are so appointed by Jehovah as to point out the evil fruits of the departure from God. Hos 1:2. "At first, when Jehovah spake to Hosea, Jehovah said to him, God, take thee a wife of whoredom, and children of whoredom; for whoring the land whoreth away from Jehovah." The marriage which the prophet is commanded to contract, is to set forth the fact that the kingdom of Israel has fallen away from the Lord its God, and is sunken in idolatry. Hosea is to commence his prophetic labours by exhibiting this fact. תּחלּת דּבּר יי : literally, "at the commencement of 'Jehovah spake,'"i.e., at the commencement of Jehovah's speaking ( dibber is not an infinitive, but a perfect, and t^e chillath an accusative of time (Ges. §118, 2); and through the constructive the following clause is subordinated to techillath as a substantive idea: see Ges. §123, 3, Anm. 1; Ewald, §332, c.). דּבּר with ב , not to speak to a person, or through any one ( ב is not = אל ), but to speak with (lit., in) a person, expressive of the inwardness or urgency of the speaking (cf. Num 12:6, Num 12:8; Hab 2:1; Zec 1:9, etc.). "Take to thyself:"i.e., marry (a wife). אשׁת זנוּנים is stronger than זונה . A woman of whoredom, is a woman whose business or means of livelihood consists in prostitution. Along with the woman, Hosea is to take children of prostitution as well. The meaning of this is, of course, not that he is first of all to take the woman, and then beget children of prostitution by her, which would require that the two objects should be connected with קח per zeugma , in the sense of " accipe uxorem et suscipe ex ea liberos "(Drus.), or "sume tibi uxorem forn. et fac tibi filios forn ." (Vulg.). The children begotten by the prophet from a married harlot-wife, could not be called yaldē z^e nūnı̄m , since they were not illegitimate children, but legitimate children of the prophet himself; nor is the assumption, that the three children born by the woman, according to Hos 1:3, Hos 1:6, Hos 1:8, were born in adultery, and that the prophet was not their father, in harmony with Hos 1:3, "he took Gomer, and she conceived and bare him a son."Nor can this mode of escaping from the difficulty, which is quite at variance with the text, be vindicated by an appeal to the connection between the figure and the fact. For though this connection "necessarily requires that both the children and the mother should stand in the same relation of estrangement from the lawful husband and father,"as Hengstenberg argues; it neither requires that we should assume that the mother had been a chaste virgin before her marriage to the prophet, nor that the children whom she bare to her husband were begotten in adultery, and merely palmed off upon the prophet as his own. The marriage which the prophet was to contract, was simply intended to symbolize the relation already existing between Jehovah and Israel, and not the way in which it had come into existence. The "wife of whoredoms"does not represent the nation of Israel in its virgin state at the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, but the nation of the ten tribes in its relation to Jehovah at the time of the prophet himself, when the nation, considered as a whole, had become a wife of whoredom, and in its several members resembled children of whoredom. The reference to the children of whoredom, along with the wife of whoredom, indicates unquestionably à priori , that the divine command did not contemplate an actual and outward marriage, but simply a symbolical representation of the relation in which the idolatrous Israelites were then standing to the Lord their God. The explanatory clause, "for the land whoreth,"etc., clearly points to this. הארץ , "the land,"for the population of the land (cf. Hos 4:1). זנה מאחרי יי , to whore from Jehovah, i.e., to fall away from Him (see at Hos 4:12).

Constable: Hos 1:2--2:2

II. The first series of messages of judgment and restoration: Hosea's family 1:2--2:1

Though we know nothing of Hosea's personal life before he began prophesying, we do know about a crisis that arose in his family while he ministered. This personal tragedy and its happy ending proved to be a lesson to the people of Israel. This lesson corresponds to and illustrated the other messages of judgment and restoration that follow. Other prophets also experienced personal problems that the Lord used to teach His people (e.g., Isa. 20:1-4; Ezek. 4:1-5:4).

The major themes of the book come into view in this opening section: Israel's unfaithfulness to Yahweh, His judgment of her, and His later restoration of her.

Constable: Hos 1:2-9

A. Signs of coming judgment 1:2-9

The Lord used Hosea's family members as signs to communicate His message of coming judgment on Israel.

1:2 At the beginning of Hosea's ministry, Yahweh commanded him to take a wife of harlotry and to have children of harlotry. The reason the Lord gave for this unusual command was that the land of Israel (i.e., the people of the Northern Kingdom, cf. 4:1) were committing flagrant harlotry in the sense that they had departed from the Lord. The Lord used personification to picture the land as a woman acting as a prostitute.

Students of this book have understood the phrase "a wife of harlotry" (Heb. esheth zenunim) to mean one of four things. These major views fall into two groups: non-literal and literal interpretations.

First, some believe the text means that God gave Hosea a vision or that He told him an allegory in which his wife was or would become a harlot.⁹ This view avoids the moral problem of God commanding His prophet to marry a woman who was already or who would become a harlot. However, there is no indication in the text that this was a visionary experience or an allegorical tale, and there are many details that point to it being a real experience. For example, Hosea recorded the name of his wife and her father's name (1:3). He also named the exact amount that he paid for her (3:2).

Second, some interpreters believe that Hosea's wife became "a wife of harlotry" because she was already or became a worshipper of a false god; her harlotry was spiritual rather than physical. A related view is that she was a spiritual harlot merely by being an Israelite since the Israelites had been unfaithful to Yahweh.¹⁰ Again the details of the story as it unfolds argue for literal sexual unfaithfulness.

Third, it is possible that Hosea's wife was sexually promiscuous before he married her.¹¹ Some have even suggested that she may have been a temple prostitute.¹² If this is what the Lord meant, it would have been more natural for Him to say "take to yourself a harlot" (Heb. zonah) or "prostitute." The biggest problem with this view is ethical. It seems very unlikely that God would command His prophet to marry a woman who was already a harlot.

Fourth, the best view seems to be that Hosea's wife became unfaithful to him after they got married, and that Yahweh told him that she would do this before they got married. This view posits a situation that was most similar to the relationship that existed between Yahweh and Israel, which Hosea's marital relations illustrated (cf. 2:2, 4; 4:12; 5:4). Israel became unfaithful to Yahweh after previous faithfulness; Israel was not unfaithful when Yahweh married her (at Sinai). She was a brand new bride freshly redeemed out of Egyptian slavery (cf. Jer. 2:2-3).¹³

Another difficulty is the meaning of "children of harlotry." Were these children that Gomer already had?¹⁴ Were they children that Hosea would have by Gomer that would prove unfaithful like their mother?¹⁵ Or were they born to Hosea and Gomer after she became unfaithful? Probably the phrase means "children of a wife who is marked by harlotry."¹⁶ It seems to me that the children in view were the children born to Hosea and Gomer, and they became known as children of harlotry when their mother became a harlot.

1:3-4 Hosea obediently married Gomer (probably "completion"), the daughter of Diblaim ("fig cakes"). She bore Hosea a son whom the Lord told the prophet to name "Jezreel."¹⁷ The name "Jezreel" means "God sows," but it was not the meaning of the name that was significant in this case but the associations with the town in Israel that bore that name.

Each section on Hosea's children (vv. 3-5, 6-7, 8-9) contains a birth notice, a word of instruction from the Lord about the child's name, and an explanation of the meaning of the name. The names of Hosea's children all reminded everyone who heard them of the broken relationship that existed between Yahweh and Israel, and each one anticipated judgment.

It was at Jezreel that King Jehu of Israel (841-814 B.C.) had massacred many enemies of Israel, including King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel, King Jehoram of Israel, and many prophets of Baal, which was good (cf. 2 Kings 9:6-10, 24; 10:18-28, 30). But he also killed King Ahaziah of Judah and 42 of his relatives, which was bad (2 Kings 9:27-28; 10:12-14).¹⁸ Jehu went too far and thereby demonstrated disrespect for the Lord's commands (cf. 2 Kings 10:29-31).

Because of Jehu's atrocities that overstepped his authority to judge Israel's enemies, God promised to punish his house (dynasty). The fulfillment came when Shallum assassinated King Zechariah, Jeroboam II's son and the fourth king of Jehu's dynasty in 753-752 B.C. This ended Jehu's kingdom (dynasty) forever (2 Kings 15:10). Another view is that the reference to putting an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel refers to the demise of the Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C.¹⁹ It is very difficult to determine if the word rendered "kingdom" should be translated "kingdom" (Heb. mamlekat) or "kingship" (mamlekut).

1:5 This name of Hosea's first son would also point to a future judgment that would also take place in the valley near Jezreel. It would happen on "that day," namely, a future unspecified day. Yahweh promised to break Israel's military strength, symbolized by an archer's bow, there then. The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pilesar III fulfilled this prophecy when he invaded and defeated Israel there in 733 B.C. (2 Kings 15:29; cf. 2 Kings 17:3-5).²⁰

1:6 After some time Gomer bore Hosea a daughter.²¹ The Lord told Hosea to name this girl "Lo-ruhamah," meaning "she is not loved," because He would not have compassion on Israel to forgive her for her sins. This was an outrageous name for a daughter. Yahweh had been very compassionate toward Israel in the past, but her persistent unfaithfulness to Him and His covenant with her made continuing compassion impossible.

1:7 In contrast, the Lord would have compassion on the Southern Kingdom of Judah and deliver her from such a fate. He said He would do this by Yahweh their God, perhaps using His own name this way to impress on the Israelites who their true God was. He said He would not do this in battle, however. The Israelites relied on human arms and alliances, but the Judahites trusted in the Lord, so He delivered the Judahites supernaturally. He did it in 701 B.C. by killing 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night as they lay camped around Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:32-36; Isa. 37). Jerusalem was the only great city that did not fall to the Assyrians during this invasion of Syria-Palestine. Judah's sins were not as great as Israel's at this time. Judah enjoyed a succession of four "good" kings (Joash, Amaziah, Uzziah, and Jotham), and Hosea may have received this prophecy when Uzziah or Jotham was reigning.

1:8-9 Two or three years later, after Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah (cf. 1 Sam. 1:23; 2 Macc. 7:27), she bore Hosea another son.²² This time the Lord told Hosea to name the boy "Lo-ammi," meaning "not my people." The Lord no longer regarded the kingdom of Israel as His people or Himself as their God. He did not mean, of course, that He would break His unconditional promises to His people (e.g., Exod. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Deut. 26:17-18), but that the relationship that they had enjoyed so far would come to an end. The last phrase of verse 9 literally is "I [am] not I AM [ehyeh] to you" (cf. Exod. 3:14). He would withdraw the covenant He had so dramatically made with the revelation of this same name. He would remove protection that He had formerly provided and allow another nation to invade and discipline His people.

This passage contains four symbolic names: the names of Hosea's three children and Yahweh's new name, "not your I AM," indicating His rejection of Israel. Positive names were the rule in the ancient Near East, yet the last three of these names are bluntly negative. The collective impact of these four names is the message of this pericope: Israel's unfaithfulness had become so obnoxious to Yahweh that He would not tolerate her any longer.

Hosea's Children
Name	Meaning	Purpose
Jezreel	God scatters	God would scatter His people.
Lo-Ruhamah	No compassion	God would no longer show compassion by rescuing Israel from destruction.
Lo-Ammi	Not my people	God would sever His relationship because of Israel's disobedience.

"Hos 1:2-9 functions as a summarizing preface to the entire book. It presents an overview, in stark and moving terms, of the prophet's proportionately dominant message: God has given up his people. The theme of restoration after this judgment then follows immediately in 2:1-3 [in the Hebrew Bible, 1:10-2:1 in the English versions]."²³

Guzik: Hos 1:1-11

Hosea 1 - The Prophet and the Prostitute

A. The life and times of the Prophet Hosea.

1. (1a) Hosea the man.

The word of the LORD that came to Hosea the son of Beeri,

a. The word of the LORD: Plainly said, Hosea was a prophet. He spoke forth the word of the LORD, and applied that word to his life, and to the people and circumstances around him. Hosea was a man, but he was a man God used to speak through.

b. Hosea the son of Beeri: The name Hosea means "salvation." It comes from the same Hebrew root (hoshea) as the names Joshua and Jesus. Throughout the book, Hosea will show us that salvation is found in turning to the LORD and away from our sin.

c. Son of Beeri: This tells us the name of Hosea's father. We also know that he had a wife named Gomer (Hosea 1:3), and two sons and a daughter (Hosea 1:4, 1:6, 1:9). Nowhere else in the Bible is Hosea mentioned.

2. (1b) The times Hosea lived in.

In the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

a. Kings of Judah . . . king of Israel: Hosea's ministry spanned the years 760 to 720 B.C. during the days of the divided monarchy. This was after days of David and Solomon, when the people of God divided in a civil war, creating two nations: Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. This is some 250 years after the time of King David, and some 650 years after Israel came into the Promised Land.

b. Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah: Hosea's ministry was in the northern kingdom of Israel. We know this because in Hosea 7:5 he calls the king of Israel our king, and because his ministry is focused towards the northern kingdom of Israel and its capital city Samaria. But for the benefit of his readers in the southern kingdom of Judah, Hosea gives them a reference point for the days of his ministry according to the kings of Judah.

c. Jeroboam . . . king of Israel: Hosea began his ministry in the days of Jeroboam II. From a political and economic standpoint Jeroboam II was a successful and good king (2 Kings 14:23-29). Israel prospered politically and materially under his reign, but it was a time of significant spiritual and moral decay. The terrible result of this decay wouldn't become evident until the days of Jeroboam II were finished.

i. A dramatic example of this is seen in the lives of the six kings that followed Jeroboam II during the time of Hosea's ministry. Of those six kings, four were violently overthrown and one died as a conquered exile in Assyria.

Kings of Israel during the Ministry of Hosea, 760 to 720 B.C.

Dynasty of Jehu

Jeroboam II	793-752 B.C.	Gave throne to his son
Zechariah	753-752 B.C.	Assassinated

Dynasty of Shallum

Shallum

752 B.C. (one month)

Assassinated

Dynasty of Menahem

Menahem	752-742 B.C.	Gave throne to his son
Pekahiah	724-740 B.C.	Overthrown in coup d'etat

Dynasty of Pekah

Pekah

752-732 B.C.

Assassinated

Dynasty of Hoshea

Hoshea

732-722 B.C.

Died in exile

ii. Hosea began his ministry at a time when things were so politically successful and economically prosperous that people just didn't look to the Lord the way that they should. The seeds of idolatry, spiritual failure, and moral corruption sown in days of Jeroboam II produced a tragic harvest in the following years.

iii. Significantly, Jeroboam I was the first king of a divided Israel, leading a popular revolt against the high taxation of Rehoboam, son of Solomon (1 Kings 12). Jeroboam II followed in the wicked footsteps of Jeroboam I.

B. Israel's unfaithfulness and a promise of restoration.

1. (2) The command to take a prostitute as a wife.

When the LORD began to speak by Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: "Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD."

a. The LORD said to Hosea: God's first word to Hosea was something for his own life. This is how God almost always works. Hosea probably would have preferred it if God gave him a word for someone else. But before the prophet can speak to the nation, he first has to hear from God for himself.

b. Go take yourself a wife of harlotry: The word God had for Hosea wasn't easy. Hosea was told to take a prostitute for a wife. Why? Because the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD.

i. Through His command to Hosea, God brings to life a consistent picture used throughout the Old Testament. In this picture, the LORD is the husband of Israel, and their passionate, chronic attraction for idols was like the lust of an adulterer. His people were as unfaithful as a prostitute was.

ii. In this vivid picture, we see how our idolatry and rejection of the LORD feels to God. When we put anything in front of the LORD, it hurts Him like unfaithfulness hurts the victim of an adulterous marriage. By commanding Hosea to take . . . a wife of harlotry, God will put Hosea in the place where he feels what God feels - and it won't feel good.

iii. "We cannot say that God grieves exactly as we grieve, if only because He controls all things and always works them out in accordance with His own good pleasure. Nevertheless, there is a parallel between God's feelings and ours." (Boice)

iv. Many commentators press the idea that Gomer was not a prostitute when Hosea first met and married her, she only became that later and Hosea knew from the LORD that she would become that. This may be the case, but we don't know this from the text. It could go either way.

2. (3-5) Hosea's marriage to Gomer and their first son.

So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Then the LORD said to him: "Call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. It shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel."

a. So he went and took Gomer: We can assume that Hosea would never marry a prostitute except by the commandment of the LORD. It showed a lot of obedience for him to actually carry out this difficult command.

i. As will be made clear, when Hosea married Gomer, she did not give up her career as a prostitute. It wasn't that Hosea found a fallen woman and through love and kindness restored her to virtue. He married a prostitute - no doubt hoping she would give up her sin and be devoted only to him - and she stayed a prostitute.

ii. No doubt, this happened after the pattern of human nature. When Hosea and Gomer first married, she probably promised eternal love and devotion. She probably showed every sign of being committed to Hosea. But after a while, and in difficult circumstances, she fell back into prostitution. Perhaps it was out of boredom. Perhaps it was out of a feeling of neglect. Perhaps it was out of a sense of need. Sadly, we share the same inexcusable reasons for our idolatry, when we prefer another god to the LORD God.

iii. Some commentators believe this never really happened, and that Hosea is only telling a vivid story. They think it could never have happened because God would never have a prophet marry a prostitute. But Boice rightly observes, "If Hosea's story cannot be real (because 'God could not ask a man to marry an unfaithful woman'), then neither is the story of salvation real, because that is precisely what Christ has done for us."

b. Call his name Jezreel: The first son born to Hosea and Gomer was "Jezreel" and the name spoke of two things. First, Jezreel means "Scattered," and Israel would soon be scattered in exile by an conquering Assyrian army. Second, Jezreel refers to the Valley of Jezreel, where Jehu - the founder of the dynasty that put Jeroboam II on the throne - massacred all the descendants of Ahab, thus establishing his throne (2 Kings 10:11). God directed Hosea to name his son Jezreel to confirm His promise to avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel by judging the house of Jehu.

i. Obviously, this was not good news to Jeroboam II. It said that his dynasty, the dynasty of Jehu, was coming to an end. In fact, after the death of Jeroboam II in 752 B.C. his son Zechariah barely reigned only six months before being assassinated (2 Kings 15:8-10), and that was the end of the house of Jehu.

c. And bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel: Just as the house of Jehu would fall, so would the whole kingdom of Israel. Before the prophetic ministry of Hosea was finished, Israel was defeated, destroyed, and taken captive by the mighty Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 17:20-23).

d. Break the bow of Israel: "The bow was a symbol of power in a day when it was the principle instrument of warfare. Thus a broken bow symbolized the loss of power." (Hubbard)

3. (6-7) A daughter born to Hosea and Gomer.

And she conceived again and bore a daughter. Then God said to him: "Call her name Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword or battle, by horses or horsemen."

a. Call her name Lo-Ruhamah: The name Lo-Ruhamah means "No Mercy." Every call to this child with the unfortunate name would remind Hosea and everyone else of coming judgment and exile.

b. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah: The army of Assyria that destroyed Israel also attacked Judah, but they did not conquer them. Instead, God miraculously fought on behalf of Judah against Assyria when the angel of the LORD killed 185,000 soldiers in the camp of Assyria in one night (2 Kings 19:35).

i. The fact that God had no mercy to Israel and had mercy towards Judah shows two things. First, it is true that Judah and her kings were more faithful unto the Lord during these years, as exemplified by King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:1-8). Second, it does not really matter if Judah was more worthy of mercy than Israel was, because by its very nature mercy is mercy. If one deserves leniency, then leniency is a matter of justice, not mercy. Mercy is only shown to the guilty. Therefore it is within the wise and loving heart of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy (Romans 9:15). But no one is ever unfair for not showing mercy.

4. (8-9) A second son born to Hosea and Gomer.

Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said: "Call his name Lo-Ammi, For you are not My people, And I will not be your God.

a. Call his name Lo-Ammi: The name Lo-Ammi means "Not My People." Every call to this unfortunately named child reminded Hosea and everyone else that the people of Israel had pushed away the Lord God, and should no longer be considered His people.

i. Since Gomer did not give up her prostitution, there may have been a cruel irony in the name Lo-Ammi. Perhaps this son really was not the son of Hosea, but of another man. Perhaps the appearance of the child made this evident. The message God had to deliver to Israel through Hosea was hard enough, but God also made Hosea have to live it.

b. For you are not My people, and I will not be your God: This is not so much of a sentence or a penalty, as it is a simple stating of fact. It isn't as if the people really wanted to be the people of God, yet God will not have them. Instead, the people of Israel rejected God, and here the LORD simply recognizes that fact. He won't play "let's pretend": "You pretend to be My people and I will pretend to be your God." The time for those games is over.

5. (1:10-2:1) A promise of future restoration.

"Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' there it shall be said to them, 'You are sons of the living God.' Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and appoint for themselves one head; and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel! Say to your brethren, 'My people,' and to your sisters, 'Mercy is shown.'"

a. Yet the number of the children of Israel: Though God has promised judgment, the days of judgment won't last forever. After judgment, there will come a day of prosperity, increase, and blessing.

b. Not My people . . . You are sons of the living God: God would fulfill the promise of Lo-Ammi (Hosea 1:9), but the judgment would not last forever. One day Israel will return to the LORD, and once again be called sons of the living God.

c. Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together: God promised a restoration so complete that the division caused by the civil war of Rehoboam and Jeroboam I - a division that stood for 170 years - would one day be erased.

i. We can say that one way this promise is fulfilled is in the church, where God brings together Israel, Judah - and even Gentiles - into one body (Ephesians 2:14-16).

d. For great will be the day of Jezreel! The first child of Hosea and Gomer was named Jezreel as a sign of judgment. But God promises a restoration so complete that Jezreel will once again be a name of greatness, not judgment.

e. Say to your brethren, "My people," and to your sisters, "Mercy is shown": This shows that the redemption is complete. The child named Jezreel has his name redeemed, and now the next two children (Lo-Ruhamah, "No Mercy" and Lo-Ammi, "Not My People") have their name redeemed as Israel is once again regarded as "My People" unto the LORD and "Mercy is shown" unto them. What was a sign of judgment is now evidence of redemption.

© 2001 David Guzik - No distribution beyond personal use without permission

Commentary -- Other

Critics Ask: Hos 1:2

HOSEA 1:2 —How could a holy God who condemns harlotry command Hosea to marry    a harlot?

PROBLEM: God commanded Hosea to “take yourself a wife of harlotry.” However,    according to Exodus 20:14 , adultery is a sin; and according to 1 Corinthians 6:15-18 , to have    sexual relations with a harlot is immoral (cf. Lev. 19:29 ). How could a holy God command    Hosea to take a harlot as his wife?

SOLUTION: Some scholars have attempted to avoid the difficulty by claiming this is an    allegory. However, while God obviously intended this as a dramatic illustration to Israel of their    unfaithfulness to Him (cf. 1:2 ), there is no indication in the text that it is anything but a literal    event. How else could it have been such a forceful example to the wayward people of Israel.    Taken literally, there is no real contradiction with any other Scripture for several reasons.

First of all, when God commanded Hosea to take Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, to be his wife, Gomer    may not yet have actually committed adultery. However, God knew what was in her heart, and    He knew that she would ultimately be unfaithful to Hosea. This is similar to the angel of the    Lord calling Gideon a “mighty man of valor” before he had fought a single battle ( Jud. 6:11-12    ). God knew that Gideon would become a great leader in Israel even though he was not yet. God    commanded Hosea to take a woman whom He knew would become a harlot. God commanded    this as a picture of how Israel had committed spiritual adultery against Him. When God brought    Israel out of Egypt, she was a brand new nation. She had not yet broken the covenant which God    would establish with her in the wilderness. Just like Israel had committed spiritual adultery by    worshiping other gods, so Gomer would commit physical adultery by having relations with other    men. The relationship between Hosea and Gomer was an object lesson for all Israel.

Second, the passage does not condone harlotry. In fact it is a strong condemnation of harlotry, of    both the physical and spiritual (idolatry) kind (cf. 4:11-19 ). The fact that the grave sin of    idolatry is depicted as spiritual harlotry reveals God’s disapproval of harlotry.

Third, Hosea was commanded to marry a harlot, not to commit adultery with her. God said, “Go,    take yourself a wife. ” God did not say go in and commit fornication with her. Rather, He said    marry her and be faithful to her, even though she will be unfaithful to you. Not only does this not    violate the commitment of marriage, it actually intensifies it. Hosea was to be faithful to his    marriage vows even though his wife would become unfaithful to hers.

Fourth, the command in Leviticus 21:14 to not marry a harlot was given to the levitical priests,    not to everyone. Salmon apparently married Rahab the harlot ( Matt. 1:5 ) from whose legal    genealogy Christ eventually came. At any rate, Hosea was a prophet, not a levitical priest, hence,    the prohibition to not marry a harlot did not apply to him.

Finally, the command in 1 Corinthians 6:16 not to be joined to a harlot is not a command never    to marry a woman who was a harlot. Rather, the command is directed against those who were    having sexual relations outside of the marriage relationship. But, Hosea did not have sexual    relations outside of marriage. God commanded Hosea to marry Gomer and always be faithful to    her.

Introduction / Outline

JFB: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE first of the twelve minor prophets in the order of the canon (called "minor," not as less in point of inspired authority, but simply in point of size). The twelve are first mentioned by Jesus, the son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus 49:10). St. Stephen, in Act 7:42 (in referring to Amo 5:27), quotes them as forming one collective body of writings, "the book of the prophets." So JEROME and MELITO, the first Greek father who has left us a catalogue of these books. The collection of the sacred books is by Jewish tradition attributed to the great synagogue of learned scribes formed by Ezra. Many think Nehemiah completed this collection by adding to the books already in the canon those of his own times. Malachi, the last in the series, probably aided him in determining with infallible authority what books were entitled to be ranked in the inspired canon. The chronological order differs from the canonical. Joel, about 810 B.C.; Jonah, about 810 B.C., or, as others, first, 862 B.C.; Amos, about 790 B.C.; Hosea, about 784 B.C. Hosea, the contemporary of Isaiah, Micah, and Amos, seems to have entered on his prophetical office in the last years of Jeroboam (contemporary in part with Uzziah), and to have ended it in the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, 722 B.C., that is, about sixty years in all, from 784 B.C. to 722 B.C. The prophets, however, were not uninterruptedly engaged in prophesying. Considerable intervals elapsed, though their office as divinely commissioned public teachers was never wholly laid aside. The Book of Hosea which we have constitutes only that portion of his public teachings which the Holy Spirit saw fit to preserve for the benefit of the Church. The cause of his being placed first of the twelve was, probably, the length, the vivid earnestness, and patriotism of his prophecies, as well as their closer resemblance to those of the greater prophets. His style is abrupt, sententious, and unrounded; the connecting particles are few; there are changes of person, and anomalies of gender, number, and construction. His name means Salvation. He was son of Beeri, of the tribe of Issachar, born in Beth-shemesh [JEROME]. His mention, in the inscription, of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, is no proof that he belonged to Judah: for the prophets in Israel regarded its separation from Judah, civil as well as religious, as an apostasy from God, who promised the dominion of the theocracy to the line of David. Hence Elijah in Israel took twelve stones to represent Judah, as well as Israel (1Ki 18:31). Hence Hosea dates from Judah's kings, as well as from Jeroboam of Israel, though he belonged to Israel, with whose sins and fate his book is chiefly occupied. He, however, makes incidental references to Judah. His first prophecy foretells the overthrow of Jehu's house, fulfilled on the death of Jeroboam, Jehu's great-grandson (2Ki 15:12), in Zachariah, Jeroboam's son, the fourth and last from Jehu, conspired against by Shallum. This first prediction was doubtless in Jeroboam's life, as Zachariah, his son, was only suffered to reign six months; thus the inscription is verified that "the word of the Lord came unto him in the days of Jeroboam" (Hos 1:1). Again, in Hos 10:14, Shalmaneser's expedition against Israel is alluded to as past, that is, the first inroad against King Hoshea, who began to reign in the twelfth year of Ahaz; so that as Ahaz' whole reign was sixteen years, the prophecy seems to have been given about the beginning of Hezekiah's reign. Thus the inscription is confirmed that the exercise of his prophetical functions was of such a protracted duration.

Hosea (Hos 11:1) is quoted in Mat 2:15; also Hos 6:6 in Mat 9:13; Mat 12:7; compare Rom 9:25-26, quoting Hos 1:10; Hos 2:1, Hos 2:23; 1Co 15:55, quoting Hos 13:14; 1Pe 2:10, quoting Hos 1:9-10; Hos 2:23. Messianic references are not frequent; but the predictions of the future conversion of Israel to the Lord their God, and David their king, and of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham that his spiritual seed should be as the sand of the sea (Hos 1:10; Hos 3:5), clearly refer to the New Testament dispensation.

The first and third chapters are in prose, the rest of the book is rhythmical.

JFB: Hosea (Outline)

• INSCRIPTION. (Hos 1:1-11) Spiritual whoredom of Israel set forth by symbolical acts; Gomer taken to wife at God's command: Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-Ammi, the children. Yet a promise of Judah and Israel's restoration.
• APPLICATION OF THE SYMBOLS IN THE FIRST CHAPTER. (Hos. 2:1-23) Israel's spiritual fornication, and her threatened punishment: yet a promise of God's restored favor, when chastisements have produced their designed effect.
• ISRAEL'S CONDITION IN THEIR PRESENT DISPERSION, SUBSEQUENT TO THEIR RETURN FROM BABYLON, SYMBOLIZED. (Hos 3:1-5) The prophet is to take back his wife, though unfaithful, as foretold in Hos 1:2. He purchases her from her paramour, stipulating she should wait for a long period before she should be restored to her conjugal rights. So Israel is to live for a long period without her ancient rites of religion, and yet be free from idolatry; then at last she shall acknowledge Messiah, and know Jehovah's goodness restored to her.
• HENCEFORTH THE PROPHET SPEAKS PLAINLY AND WITHOUT SYMBOL, IN TERSE, SENTENTIOUS PROPOSITIONS. (Hos. 4:1-19) In this chapter he reproves the people and priests for their sins in the interregnum which followed Jeroboam's death; hence there is no mention of the king or his family; and in Hos 4:2 bloodshed and other evils usual in a civil war are specified.
• GOD'S JUDGMENTS ON THE PRIESTS, PEOPLE, AND PRINCES OF ISRAEL FOR THEIR SINS. (Hos 5:1-5) Judah, too, being guilty shall be punished; nor shall Assyria, whose aid they both sought, save them; judgments shall at last lead them to repentance.
• THE ISRAELITES' EXHORTATION TO ONE ANOTHER TO SEEK THE LORD. (Hos 6:1-11) At Hos 6:4 a new discourse, complaining of them, begins; for Hos 6:1-3 evidently belong to Hos 5:15, and form the happy termination of Israel's punishment: primarily, the return from Babylon; ultimately, the return from their present long dispersion. Hos 6:8 perhaps refers to the murder of Pekahiah; the discourse cannot be later than Pekah's reign, for it was under it that Gilead was carried into captivity (2Ki 15:29).
• REPROOF OF ISRAEL. (Hos. 7:1-16) Probably delivered in the interreign and civil war at Pekah's death; for Hos 7:7, "all their kings . . . fallen," refers to the murder of Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, and Pekah. In Hos 7:8 the reference seems to be to Menahem's payment of tribute to Pul, in order to secure himself in the usurped throne, also to Pekah's league with Rezin of Syria, and to Hoshea's connection with Assyria during the interregnum at Pekah's death [MAURER].
• PROPHECY OF THE IRRUPTION OF THE ASSYRIANS, IN PUNISHMENT FOR ISRAEL'S APOSTASY, IDOLATRY, AND SETTING UP OF KINGS WITHOUT GOD'S SANCTION. (Hos 8:1-14) In Hos 8:14, Judah is said to multiply fenced cities; and in Hos 8:7-9, Israel, to its great hurt, is said to have gone up to Assyria for help. This answers best to the reign of Menahem. For it was then that Uzziah of Judah, his contemporary, built fenced cities (2Ch 26:6, 2Ch 26:9-10). Then also Israel turned to Assyria and had to pay for their sinful folly a thousand talents of silver (2Ki 15:19) [MAURER].
• WARNING AGAINST ISRAEL'S JOY AT PARTIAL RELIEF FROM THEIR TROUBLES: THEIR CROPS SHALL FAIL, AND THE PEOPLE LEAVE THE LORD'S LAND FOR EGYPT AND ASSYRIA, WHERE THEY CANNOT, IF SO INCLINED, SERVE GOD ACCORDING TO THE ANCIENT RITUAL: FOLLY OF THEIR FALSE PROPHETS. (Hos. 9:1-17)
• ISRAEL'S IDOLATRY, THE SOURCE OF PERJURIES AND UNLAWFUL LEAGUES, SOON DESTINED TO BE THE RUIN OF THE STATE, THEIR KING AND THEIR IMAGES BEING ABOUT TO BE CARRIED OFF; A JUST CHASTISEMENT, THE REAPING CORRESPONDING TO THE SOWING. (Hos 10:1-15) The prophecy was uttered between Shalmaneser's first and second invasions of Israel. Compare Hos 10:14; also Hos 10:6, referring to Hoshea's calling So of Egypt to his aid; also Hos 10:4, Hos 10:13.
• REPROOF OF EPHRAIM AND JUDAH: THEIR FATHER JACOB OUGHT TO BE A PATTERN TO THEM. (Hos 12:1-14) This prophecy was delivered about the time of Israel's seeking the aid of the Egyptian king So, in violation of their covenant with Assyria (see Hos 12:1). He exhorts them to follow their father Jacob's persevering prayerfulness, which brought God's favor upon him. As God is unchangeable, He will show the same favor to Jacob's posterity as He did to Jacob, if, like him, they seek God.
• EPHRAIM'S SINFUL INGRATITUDE TO GOD, AND ITS FATAL CONSEQUENCE; GOD'S PROMISE AT LAST. (Hos. 13:1-16) This chapter and the fourteenth chapter probably belong to the troubled times that followed Pekah's murder by Hoshea (compare Hos 13:11; 2Ki 15:30). The subject is the idolatry of Ephraim, notwithstanding God's past benefits, destined to be his ruin.
• GOD'S PROMISE OF BLESSING, ON THEIR REPENTANCE: THEIR ABANDONMENT OF IDOLATRY FORETOLD: THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE, THE JUST SHALL WALK IN GOD'S WAYS, BUT THE TRANSGRESSOR SHALL FALL THEREIN. (Hos 14:1-9)

TSK: Hosea 1 (Chapter Introduction)

Overview

Hos 1:1, Hosea, to shew God’s judgment for spiritual whoredom, takes Gomer, Hos 1:4, and has by her Jezreel; Hos 1:6, Loruhamah; Hos 1:8, and Lo-ammi; Hos 1:10, The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head.

Poole: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE ARGUMENT

Without dispute our prophet is one of the obscurest and most difficult to unfold clearly and fully. Though he come not, as Isaiah and Amos do sometimes, nor as Ezekiel and Zechariah do frequently, with visions; yet his sententious and concise style, peculiar to himself, renders it many times difficult to find out first, and to declare next the genuine and undoubted sense of his words. In expounding this prophet, the expositor needs the candour of his reader, and the reader owes his expositor thanks if he make some darker passages fairly intelligible, though he do not demonstrate his exposition to be the only sense of the place. This latter is not pretended to; the former it is hoped the reader will find in the most, if not in every obscure passage. It was a very debauched age our prophet did live in, and you will find him very sharp against the vices of the ten tribes, and very plain and open in his threats for their sins, which he saw punished; for he lived to see Samaria taken, and Hoshea made a prisoner, and the people carried captives. As it is not agreed when he began, so nor is it agreed how long he continued to prophesy.

The kings of Judah and of Israel, in whose time he first appeared a prophet, were of long reigns; the one forty-one, the other fifty-two; in which long space of time very different beginnings may be conjectured. All agree that he continued a prophet very long, seventy years at least, and some add more years, and make them up ninety. The sum of what he prophesied is here given us in short heads, rather than in a continued discourse. And as it was preached in Israel. (though we read not of the places where Hosea either lived, or died, or did preach, it is most likely within the hearing of the court,) so it doth more particularly refer to Israel or the ten tribes: declaring to them what were their sins; advising them to repent; promising them mercy upon sincere repentance; threatening grievous judgments on their impenitence; foretelling their rejection if they did not amend; and, for the comfort of the godly, predicting mercy to them; intermixing many promises of the future kingdom and coming of the Messiah, to whom many should be converted, and by him be saved, and especially many of the two tribes, who hear from our prophet a more comfortable message (viz. of returning to their own land) than Israel, which must not expect any such return, i.e. for the whole body of the people. And he closeth his whole prophecy either with a form of confession and supplication for the remnant returned, or a prediction in what manner they would return, confess, supplicate, and rely upon God alone; to which duty performed, he adjoineth sweet and excellent promises, containing both temporal and spiritual blessings, Ho 14 .

Poole: Hosea 1 (Chapter Introduction)

HOSEA CHAPTER 1

The times in which Hosea prophesied, Hos 1:1 . To show the idolatrous whoredoms of the land, he marrieth a wife of whoredom, and hath by her Jezreel, Hos 1:2-5 , Lo-ruhamah, Hos 1:6,7 , and Lo-ammi, Hos 1:8,9 . The restoration of Judah and Israel under one head, Hos 1:10,11 .

MHCC: Hosea (Book Introduction)

Hosea is supposed to have been of the kingdom of Israel. He lived and prophesied during a long period. The scope of his predictions appears to be, to detect, reprove, and convince the Jewish nation in general, and the Israelites in particular, of their many sins, particularly their idolatry: the corrupt state of the kingdom is also noticed. But he invites them to repentance, with promises of mercy, and gospel predictions of the future restoration of the Israelites and of the Jews, and their final conversion to Christianity.

MHCC: Hosea 1 (Chapter Introduction)

(Hos 1:1-7) Under a figure, is represented the shameful idolatry of the ten tribes.

(Hos 1:8-11) The calling of the Gentiles, and the uniting Israel and Judah under the Messiah.

Matthew Henry: Hosea (Book Introduction)

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Book of the Prophet Hosea

I. We have now before us the twelve minor prophets, which some of the ancients, in reckoning up the books of the Old Testament, put all together, and reckon but as one book. They are called the minor prophets, not because their writings are of any less authority or usefulness than those of the greater prophets, or as if these prophets were less in God's account or might be so in ours than the other, but only because they are shorter, and less in bulk, than the other. We have reason to think that these prophets preached as much as the others, but that they did not write so much, nor is so much of their preaching kept upon record. Many excellent prophets wrote nothing, and others but little, who yet were very useful in their day. And so in the Christian church there have been many burning and shining lights, who are not known to posterity by their writings, and yet were no way inferior in gifts, and graces, and serviceableness to their own generation, than those who are; and some who have left but little behind them, and make no great figure among authors, were yet as valuable men as the more voluminous writers. These twelve small prophets, Josephus says, were put into one volume by the men of the great synagogue in Ezra's time, of which learned and pious body of men the last three of these twelve prophets are supposed to have been themselves members. These are what remained of the scattered pieces of inspired writing. Antiquaries value the fragmenta veterum - the fragments of antiquity; these are the fragments of prophecy, which are carefully gathered up by the divine Providence and the care of the church, that nothing might be lost, as St. Paul's short epistles after his long ones. The son of Sirach speaks of these twelve prophets with honour, as men that strengthened Jacob, Ecclus. 49:10. Nine of these prophets prophesied before the captivity, and the last three after the return of the Jews to their own land. Some difference there is in the order of these books. We place them as the ancient Hebrew did; and all agree to put Hosea first; but the ancient thing is not material. And, if we covet to place them according to their seniority, as to some of them we shall find no certainty.

II. We have before us the prophecy of Hosea, who was the first of all the writing prophets, being raised up somewhat before the time of Isaiah. The ancients say, He was of Bethshemesh, and of the tribe of Issachar. He continued very long a prophet; the Jews reckoned that he prophesied nearly fourscore and ten years; so that, as Jerome observes, he prophesied of the destruction of the kingdom of the ten tribes when it was at a great distance, and lived himself to see and lament it, and to improve it when it was over, for warning to its sister kingdom. The scope of his prophecy is to discover sin, and to denounce the judgments of God against a people that would not be reformed. The style is very concise and sententious, above any of the prophets; and in some places it seems to be like the book of Proverbs, without connexion, and rather to be called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons. And a weighty adage may sometimes do more service than a laboured discourse. Huetius observes that many passages in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel seem to refer to, and to be borrowed from, the prophet Hosea, who wrote a good while before them. As Jer 7:34; Jer 16:9; Jer 25:10; and Eze 26:13, speak the same with Hos 2:11; so Eze 16:16, etc., is taken from Hos 2:8. And that promise of serving the Lord their God, and David their king, Jer 30:8, Jer 30:9. Eze 34:23, Hosea had before, Hos 3:5. And Eze 19:12 is taken from Hos 13:15. Thus one prophet confirms and corroborates another; and all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.

Matthew Henry: Hosea 1 (Chapter Introduction)

The mind of God is revealed to this prophet, and by him to the people, in the first three chapters, by signs and types, but afterwards only by discourse. In this chapter we have, I. The general title of the whole book (Hos 1:1). II. Some particular instructions which he was ordered to give to the people of God. 1. He must convince them of their sin in going a whoring from God, by marrying a wife of whoredoms (Hos 1:2, Hos 1:3). 2. He must foretel the ruin coming upon them for their sin, in the names of his sons, which signified God's disowning and abandoning them (Hos 1:4-6, Hos 1:8, Hos 1:9). 3. He must speak comfortable to the kingdom of Judah, which still retained the pure worship of God, and assure them of the salvation of the Lord (Hos 1:7). 4. He must give an intimation of the great mercy God had in store both for Israel and Judah, in the latter days (Hos 1:10, Hos 1:11), for in this prophecy many precious promises of mercy are mixed with the threatenings of wrath.

Constable: Hosea (Book Introduction)

Introduction

Title and Writer

The prophet's name is the title of the book. The book claims to be the word of the Lord that Hosea received (1:1). Thus he appears to have been the writer.

Unity

Historically almost all Jewish and Christian scholars have regarded the whole book as the product of Hosea. Some critics, however, believe later editors (redactors) added the prophecies concerning Judah (e.g., 4:15; 5:5, 10, 12-14; 6:4, 11; et al.), since most of the book contains prophecies against Israel, the Northern Kingdom.¹ Yet there is no good reason to deny Hosea the Judean prophecies.² All the other eighth-century prophets also spoke about Judah, including Amos, who ministered to the Northern Kingdom at this time. Some critics say the salvation passages in Hosea (e.g., 11:8-11; 14:2-9) are so different from the judgment passages that someone else must have written them. However, the mixing of judgment and salvation messages is very common in all the prophets.

Date

Hosea's ministry spanned the reigns of four Judean kings (Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; cf. Isa. 1:1) and one Israelite king (Jeroboam II; 1:1). King Uzziah (Azariah) of Judah began reigning in 792 B.C., and King Hezekiah of Judah stopped reigning in 686 B.C., spanning a period of 107 years. Probably Hosea's ministry began near the end of Jeroboam II's (793-753 B.C.) and Uzziah's (792-740 B.C.) reigns and ended in the early years of Hezekiah's reign (715-686 B.C.). This would mean that the prophet's ministry lasted perhaps 45 years (ca. 760-715 B.C.).³ It also means that Hosea's ministry extended beyond the fall of Samaria in 722 B.C. since Hezekiah began ruling in 715 B.C. Hosea did not date any of his prophecies.

There were six other kings of Israel who followed Jeroboam II that Hosea did not mention in 1:1 that ruled during the reigns of the four Judean kings he named. They were Zechariah (753 B.C.), Shallum (752 B.C.), Menahem (752-742 B.C.), Pekah (752-732 B.C.), Pekahiah (742-740 B.C.), and Hoshea (732-723 B.C.). Hosea evidently prophesied during the reigns of more kings of Israel and Judah than any other prophet, probably eleven. It seems unusual that Hosea would mention four Judean kings and only one Israelite king, especially since he ministered primarily to the Northern Kingdom. He may have done this because the six Israelite kings named above were less significant in Israel's history than the other kings Hosea did mention. Another possibility is that Hosea did this because he regarded the Judean kings as Israel's legitimate kings in contrast to those of the North. He may have mentioned Jeroboam II because he was the primary king of the Northern Kingdom during his ministry or because he was the strongest king of that kingdom during that period.

Historical Background

Hosea began ministering near the end of an era of great material prosperity and military success for both Israel and Judah (cf. 2 Kings 14:25-28; 2 Chron. 26:2, 6-15). In the first half of the eighth-century B.C. Assyrian influence in the West had declined temporarily allowing both Jeroboam II and Uzziah to flourish. However, under Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C) Assyria began to grow stronger and to expand westward again. In 734 B.C. the Northern Kingdom became a puppet nation within the Assyrian Empire (2 Kings 15:29). After Israel tried to revolt, Assyria defeated Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom, in 722 B.C. and deported the people of Israel into captivity (2 Kings 17:1-6; 18:10-12). Judah also became a vassal state in the Assyrian Empire during Hosea's ministry (2 Kings 16:5-10).

Hosea's prophecy reflects conditions of economic prosperity, religious formalism and apostasy, and political stability that marked Jeroboam II's reign. The historical background of the Book of Amos is almost identical.

Place of Composition

Beside the fact that Hosea ministered to the Northern Kingdom, his reference to the king of Samaria as "our king" (7:5) seems to make his residence in Israel certain. The book never states the location of any of his preaching, however.

Audience and Purpose

Hosea, like Amos, addressed the Northern Kingdom of Israel primarily.⁴ His purpose was to announce that because the nation had broken Yahweh's covenant (the Mosaic Covenant) judgment was coming (cf. Deut. 28:15-68). The people needed to repent and to return to the Lord and to His covenant. If they did, they might avoid His judgment. However, the prophet announced that the nation as a whole would not repent, though individuals could, so judgment was coming. Hosea also reaffirmed God's promise to bless His people Israel eventually, in the distant future (cf. Deut. 30:1-10).

"Understanding the message of the book of Hosea depends upon understanding the Sinai covenant. The book contains a series of blessings and curses announced for Israel by God through Hosea. Each blessing or curse is based upon a corresponding type in the Mosaic law."⁵

Theology

The major biblical doctrines that Hosea stressed were sin, judgment, salvation, and the loyal love of God.

Regarding sin, the prophet stressed the idolatry of the Israelites, which he compared to spiritual adultery. Israel had turned from Yahweh to worship Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility. The Lord told Hosea to marry a woman who would prove to be unfaithful to him so he could appreciate and communicate how the Lord felt about His wife's (Israel's) unfaithfulness to Him. Hosea also pointed out other sins that the Israelites needed to forsake: violent crimes (4:2; 6:9; 12:1), political revolt (7:3-7), foreign alliances (7:11; 8:9), spiritual ingratitude (7:15), social injustice (12:7), and selfish arrogance (13:6).

Hosea called for repentance, but he was not hopeful of a positive response because most of the people did not want to change. God's judgment would, therefore, descend in the form of infertility, military invasion, and exile. Hosea stressed the fact that God was just in sending judgment on the Israelites. He would do it by making their punishments match their crimes.

The prophet assured the Israelites that God would not abandon them completely. After judgment would come salvation. Eventually the people would return to Yahweh, as Hosea's wayward wife returned to him. In Hosea passages on salvation follow sections announcing judgment, though there are more predictions of punishment than promises of deliverance.

Judgment	Restoration
1:2-9	1:10-2:1
2:2-13	2:14-3:5
4:1-5:14	5:15-6:3
6:4-11:7	11:8-11
11:12-13:16	ch. 14

The outstanding revelation concerning God that this book contributes is the loyal love of Yahweh for His own. The great illustration of how committed God is to His people is how He instructed Hosea to relate to his unfaithful wife. The Lord will not forsake those with whom He has joined in covenant commitment even if they become unfaithful to Him repeatedly. He will be patient with them and will eventually save them (cf. 11:1-4; 14).⁶

"The Lord's covenantal relationship with His people Israel is central to the messages of the eighth-century prophets Hosea, Amos, and Micah. Each of these prophets accused God's people of violating the obligations of the Mosaic Covenant and warned that judgment was impending. Despite painting such a bleak picture of the immediate future, these prophets also saw a bright light at the end of the dark tunnel of punishment and exile. Each anticipated a time when the Lord, on the basis of His eternal covenantal promises to Abraham and David, would restore Israel to a position of favor and blessing. In fact, the coming judgment would purify God's people and thus prepare the way for a glorious new era in Israel's history."⁷

Message⁸

The book of Hosea is an unusually powerful book because the prophet ministered out of his deep personal emotions. His intellectual appeals to the Israelites in his day, and to us in ours, arose out of great personal tragedy in his own life. We might say that he cried out as he bled. Hosea appreciated the pain that God felt over His people's apostasy, as no other prophet did, because he felt the intense pain of his wife's unfaithfulness. Hosea could speak of the deepest things in the economy of God because he entered into fellowship with God in God's sufferings (cf. Phil. 3:10). That is the reason this book is so appealing and so powerful.

The permanent values of this book are its revelations of sin, judgment, and love. Hosea reveals what sin is at its worst. It also reveals the nature of judgment. Third, it reveals the unconquerable force of true love.

With regard to sin, Hosea reveals the very nature of sin, what makes it so appalling, not just the various forms of sin. Hosea was able to penetrate to the very heart of sin.

What made the sin of the Israelites so great was the fact that they had sinned against light and love.

The more light (revelation from God) that people have, the greater is their responsibility (cf. Rom. 1-3). What made Israel's sin so bad was that they were the Chosen People of God, the people of all peoples on earth who enjoyed the most revelation of the gracious person and the loving plans of Yahweh for their blessing. They had the Law, they had God's presence among them, and they had God's covenant promises (cf. Rom. 9). Yet they rebelled against Him and chose to walk in darkness rather than light.

Furthermore, they had sinned against God's love. They had experienced Yahweh's election, His provisions, His protection, and more of His blessings than any other people on the earth, but they walked away from Him and spent His gifts to them to satisfy their lewd desires. They had not only committed spiritual adultery, but they had become spiritual prostitutes. They had sinned against His love as well as against His light.

In some respects all sins are equally bad in that they are all offenses against God. But in another sense some sins are worse than others because people who have experienced much of the light and love of God have greater responsibility to respond to that light and love than people who have fewer of these blessings. In Romans 2 Paul explained that God will judge people according to the light that they had. The Israelites had much light and they had experienced much love. This made their sin especially heinous.

Hosea declared that the human marriage relationship symbolized the relationship that existed between Yahweh and His people. Israel had become unfaithful to God. God taught Hosea the seriousness of this unfaithfulness and how He felt about it through the prophet's own marriage relationship. Hosea experienced the tragedy and heartbreak of an unfaithful wife, not just an adulteress, which is bad enough, but an adulteress turned prostitute, which enabled him to enter into the fellowship of God's sufferings over the behavior of His wife, Israel. Hosea's heart was broken, and he felt the most unutterable sorrow that a man can feel when he feels his wife abandon him. He learned how God felt, and he denounced kings, priests, and people out of that broken heart that mirrored the broken heart of God. Hosea, then, revealed the deepest nature of sin, namely infidelity to the elective grace of God. The worst thing in the realm of sin is apathy to the love of God.

Hosea also revealed the nature of judgment. In view of the essential nature of sin, namely violation of covenant love, judgment will inevitably fall, unless there is genuine repentance. In view of their sin, the Israelites had no basis for hoping that God would pardon them. Hosea referred to the past love of God for Israel, His present love, and His future love for His Chosen People. Interspersed between these reminders of God's love through the book we have Hosea's tracing of Israel's history downward to the place where judgment was inevitable. Such great sinners against God's light and love had no reason to expect divine mercy. No one can see this as clearly or feel it so intensely as the man who has been sinned against so long and persistently as Hosea had been. Hosea felt the divine justice in God's action, and so he could announce it in the clearest and most forceful terms, as this book shows.

Nevertheless, in spite of the great revelations of sin and judgment that this book contains, its greatest revelation is that of love, divine love. In the midst of Hosea's personal overwhelming sorrow because of Gomer's actions, God told him to seek out his sinning wife, to go after her and bring her back, first into a wilderness seclusion for a while, but then back into a place of love and privilege at his own side. Through his wife's unfaithfulness Hosea learned the awfulness of sin, and in obedience to God's command to seek out and accept his traitorous wife, he learned God's love in spite of sin.

These three great revelations, sin, judgment, and love, constitute the living message of the Book of Hosea. These are the great lessons that we must apply to ourselves and to those to whom we minister. We need a constant reemphasis of each of these truths because we tend to get away from them individually and corporately, as the church. We fail to appreciate the love of God because we fail to appreciate the essential nature of our sin and that it makes judgment inevitable.

Hosea teaches that the most heinous and damnable sin of which people are capable is infidelity to love. This is the sin that damns unbelievers; they fail to respond to the love of God in reaching out to them. It is also the sin that will bring judgment on believers who are apathetic to the love of their Savior. Apathy toward divine love will inevitably lead to spiritual adultery. Compared to this the animalism and violence of the heathen are as nothing. It would be better not to have the light or to have known divine love than to have them and then to be unfaithful to them (cf. 2 Pet. 2:21).

Hosea also teaches that divine judgment is the fruit of sin. Infidelity to love can lead only to degradation. Israel thought she was repenting, but this prophet pointed out that her repentance was only superficial (6:4; 13:3). Just as faithfulness to the covenant brought blessing, so unfaithfulness brought discipline, and discipline in proportion to the light and love violated.

Hosea teaches too that true love will triumph over unfaithfulness. Though unfaithfulness inevitably results in chastening, and unfaithfulness to divine light and love leads unquestionably to the worst kind of misery, true love does not forsake the one loved. In fact, true love bears the judgment, the heartache and suffering, that the unfaithful lover causes. It takes this judgment on itself so that final restoration can be possible. This book closes with the Lord saying at last, "I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely" (14:4). God will not cast off those who sin against Him even in the most heinous way. He will disciple them, but He will not cast them away from His presence but will give them a new heart of faithfulness to Himself (Jer. 32:39).

The application of the message of Hosea to our generation touches the church and the Christian. It is a message to God's people, not to unbelievers, primarily. It is a message to those who walk in great light and enjoy great love, to those who are married to God.

Like Israel of old, the modern church has become apathetic to the love of God and has wandered away from Him, has become unfaithful to Him, and has even prostituted herself to the world to find satisfaction and approval. The evidence of spiritual adultery in our time is worldliness, the paganism of our day that is part of church life. The church is going after the things that the world values at the expense of faithfulness to the Word and will of God. This is due ultimately to our dissatisfaction with the love of God. We take the resources that God has given us and spend them to satisfy unworthy ambitions and pleasures. We are enflaming ourselves with carnality under every green tree as Israel did. Consequently, we are failing to bear the testimony to the light and love of God that we should be proclaiming, and unbelievers are not taking God seriously.

Hosea spoke of God's judgment coming on His people in three figures.

He said He would weaken His people's strength, as a moth and rottenness weakens clothing (5:12). That judgment is evident in the church today. We see it in the church's lack of influence in the world, the lack of conversions as the gospel is preached, and the world's indifference to the church's testimony, for example. This is because the church has turned to other sources of strength beside the Lord, as Israel did to Egypt and Assyria. The church, like Israel, has only repented superficially. This judgment is already in effect.

Second, Hosea said judgment would come like a young lion and a bear (11:10; 13:7-8). This is a manifestation of the fiercer anger of the Lord. This form of judgment is also evident in some churches. They have lost their testimony completely. They have no spiritual impact because they have abandoned the Lord. They have rejected His Word and His will and pursue other interests, like a prostitute.

The third form of judgment is God's withdrawal from His own people (5:6). When they call on Him, He does not answer them because they have refused to listen to Him for so long. His presence and blessing have departed from them so there is no more indication that they even belong to Him. Of course, God will not fully abandon His own, but He will remove His presence from them to such an extent that they are without His help. God did this to Israel when He allowed them to go into captivity.

Nevertheless, after all the failure, heartbreak, and desolation caused by the unfaithfulness of God's people, He will gather them to Himself. As He promised to restore and revive Israel's love for Himself, so He has promised to take the church to abide forever with Himself one day. What God will do for Israel at the Second Coming, He will do for the church at the Rapture. These restorations are in spite of, not because of, His people's responses to His light and love. They are due to the love of God, a love that remains committed to those whom He has chosen regardless of their faithful commitment to Him. May His love for us move us to remain faithful to Him and to practice that kind of love with those who have been unfaithful to us as well.

Constable: Hosea (Outline)

Outline

I. Introduction 1:1

II. The first series of messages of judgment and restoration: Hosea's family 1:2-2:1

A. Signs of coming judgment 1:2-9

B. A promise of restoration 1:10-2:1

III. The second series of messages of judgment and restoration: marital unfaithfulness 2:2-3:5

A. Oracles of judgment 2:2-13

1. Judgment on Gomer as a figure of Israel 2:2-7

2. Judgment on Israel 2:8-13

B. Promises of restoration 2:14-3:5

1. Renewed love and restored marriage 2:14-20

2. Renewed fertility and restored favor 2:21-23

3. The restoration of Hosea's and Yahweh's wives ch. 3

IV. The third series of messages on judgment and restoration: widespread guilt 4:1-6:3

A. The judgment oracles chs. 4-5

1. Yahweh's case against Israel ch. 4

2. The guilt of both Israel and Judah ch. 5

B. The restoration promises 6:1-3

V. The fourth series of messages on judgment and restoration: Israel's ingratitude 6:4-11:11

A. More messages on coming judgment 6:4-11:7

1. Israel's ingratitude and rebellion 6:4-8:14

2. Israel's inevitable judgment 9:1-11:7

B. Another assurance of restoration 11:8-11

VI. The fifth series of messages on judgment and restoration: historical unfaithfulness 11:12-14:9

A. Judgment for unfaithfulness 11:12-13:16

1. The deceitfulness of Israel 11:12-12:14

2. Israel's impending doom ch. 13

B. Restoration in spite of unfaithfulness 14:1-8

VII. Conclusion 14:9

Constable: Hosea

Hosea

Bibliography

Andersen, Francis I., and David Noel Freedman. Hosea: A New Translation, Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible commentary series. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1980.

Chisholm, Robert B., Jr. "Hosea." In The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament, pp. 1377-1407. Edited by John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck. Wheaton: Scripture Press Publications, Victor Books, 1985.

_____. "A Theology of the Minor Prophets." In A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 397-433. Edited by Roy B. Zuck. Chicago: Moody Press, 1991.

Dyer, Charles H., and Eugene H. Merrill. The Old Testament Explorer. Nashville: Word Publishing, 2001.

Harper, William Rainey. A Critical and Exegetical Commentery on Amos and Hosea. International Critical Commentaries series. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1905.

Harrison, R. K. Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1969.

Hillers, D. Treaty Curses and the Old Testament Prophets. Biblica et orientalia 16. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964.

Keil, Carl Friedrich. The Twelve Minor Prophets. 2 vols. Translated by James Martin. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Reprint ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1949.

Kidner, Derek. Love to the Loveless: The Message of Hosea. The Bible Speaks Today series. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1981.

Mays, James Luther. Hosea: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library series. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969.

Stuart, Douglas. Hosea-Jonah. Word Biblical Commentary series. Waco: Word Books, 1987.

Wolff, Hans Walter. Hosea. Translated by Gary Stansell. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

Wood, Leon J. "Hosea." In Daniel-Minor Prophets. Vol. 7 of The Expositor's Bible Commentary. 12 vols. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein and Richard P. Polcyn. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1985.

Young, Edward J. An Introduction to the Old Testament. Revised ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1960.

Copyright 2003 by Thomas L. Constable

Haydock: Hosea (Book Introduction)

THE PROPHECY OF OSEE.

INTRODUCTION.

Osee , or Hosea, whose name signifies a saviour, was the first in the order of time among those who are commonly called lesser prophets, because their prophecies are short. He prophesied in the kingdom of Israel, (that is, of the ten tribes) about the same time that Isaias prophesied in the kingdom of Juda. (Challoner) --- The chronological order is not observed in any edition. The Septuagint very from the rest. They place the less before the greater prophets, and read some of the names rather differently, as Protestants do also, though they have nothing but novelty to recommend the change. We shall here specify the Protestant names, (Haydock) in the order in which these prophets appeared: (Calmet) 1. Hosea, 2. Amos, 3. Jonah, 4. Micah, 5. Nahum, 6. Joel, 7. Zephaniah, 8. Habakkuk, 9. Obadiah, 10. Haggai, 11. Zechariah, 12. Malachi. (Haydock) --- It is not known who collected them into one volume. but the book of Ecclesiasticus (xlix. 12.) speaks of the twelve; and 4 Esdras i. 39., specifies them as they are found in the Septuagint: Osee, Amos, Micheas, Joel, Abdias, Jonas, Nahum, &c., as in the Vulgate. (Calmet) --- Many other prophets appeared before these, (Worthington) but Osee is the first of the sixteen whose works are extant. He must have continued his ministry about eighty-five years, and lived above one hundred and ten, if the first verse speaks of him alone. But some take it to regard the whole collection, and may be added by another hand. (Calmet) --- The style of Osee is sententious and very hard to be understood, (St. Jerome) as but little is known of the last kings of Israel, in whose dominions he lived, and to whom he chiefly refers, though he speaks sometimes of Juda, &c. (Calmet) --- By taking a wife, and other parables, he shews their criminal conduct and chastisment, and foretells their future deliverance and the benefits to be conferred by Christ. We must observe that the prophets often style the kingdom of the two tribes, Juda, Benjamin, Jerusalem, or the house of David; and that of the ten tribes, Ephraim, Joseph, Samaria, Jezrahel, Bethel, or Bethaven; and often Israel or Jacob till after the captivity of these tribes, when the latter titles refer to Juda, who imitated the virtues of Jacob better than the other kingdom. (Worthington) --- Then all distinction of this nature was at an end. (Haydock)

Gill: Hosea (Book Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA

This book, in the Hebrew Bibles, at least in some copies, is called "Sopher Hosea", the Book of Hoses; and, in the Vulgate Latin and Arabic versions, "the Prophecy of Hoses": and, in the Syriac version, "the Prophecy of Hoses the Prophet". It is the first of the twelve lesser prophets, so called, not because they were of less value, credit, and authority, than the other prophets; but because of their smallness in bulk; and which, as Kimchi says, upon the authority of their Rabbins, were put together in one book, that no one of them might be lost, because of their smallness; and Josephus ^a reckons them but as one book; and they are quoted in the New Testament under the name of the Book of the Prophets ^b. This prophet was one of them, and therefore placed here; though, as Kimchi, in his preface to this book, and R. David Ganz ^c, observe, his prophecy was before the prophecy of Isaiah; and yet he was not the first of these minor prophets, as to order of time; not only Jonah, but Joel and Amos, were before him; and so they are placed by some writers; according to Mr. Whiston ^d, he began to prophesy about the year of the world 3196 A.M. and 808 B.C. Mr. Bedford ^e places him in 804 B.C. His name is the same with Joshua and Jesus, and signifies a saviour; and he was not only, as all the true prophets of the Lord and faithful ministers of the word are, the means and instruments in the hand of God of saving people; but he was a type of Christ the Saviour, as well as prophesied concerning him, and salvation by him. Of his parentage, and the time of his prophesying, see Hos 1:1, by which it appears that he lived in several reigns, and to a very great age. He chiefly prophesied against the ten tribes of Israel; reproved them for their sins; exhorted them to repentance; threatened them with destruction in case of impenitence; and comforted the truly godly with the promise of the Messiah, and of the happy state of the church in the latter day. His style, is short and concise; in some places sententious, and without connection, obscure and difficult of interpretation; and in others very pathetic and moving. Of the divine inspiration and authority of this book there is no room to doubt; since passages out of it are quoted and referred to by Christ and his apostles; by Christ himself, Mat 9:13 1Pe 2:10 There are some things said of the descent, death, and burial of this prophet, not to be depended on. Pseudo Epiphanius ^f and Isidorus ^g say he was of the tribe of Issachar, and born in Belomoth or Bethlemoth; and that he died in peace, and was buried in his own country; but, according to a tradition of the Jews ^h, he died in Babylon, and was buried in Tzapheth, a city in upper Galilee; but all this is uncertain, and not very probable, and is of no importance to be known.

Gill: Hosea 1 (Chapter Introduction)

INTRODUCTION TO HOSEA 1

After the general inscription of the book, in which the author, penman, and time of this prophecy, are expressed, Hos 1:1, the people of Israel are reproved for their idolatry, under the representation of a harlot the prophet is bid to marry, which he is said to do, Hos 1:2, and their ruin and destruction are foretold in the names of the children he had by her, and by what is said on the occasion of the birth of each, Hos 1:4, but mercy and salvation are promised to Judah, Hos 1:7 and the chapter is concluded with a glorious prophecy of the conversion of the Gentiles, and the calling of the Jews in the latter day; and of the union of Judah and Israel under one Head and Saviour, Christ; and of the greatness and glory of that day, Hos 1:10.