Marriage, Rejection, and Reconciliation (chs. 1–3)

The first three chapters of Hosea gather material about Hosea's marriage and children, following the editorial heading in 1:1. This section provides the only information available about who Hosea was, when he lived, and a few details about his marriage and children. Any other understanding of Hosea must be inferred from the message that he proclaims. Hosea's own relationship with his wife becomes a metaphor for God's relationship with God's covenant people.

Literary Analysis

The only narrative passages in the book are in 1:2-9 and 3:1-5. The latter is the only autobiographical statement. Chapter 2 is a long poetic section. Poetry is the usual vehicle for prophetic speech. It comes between the narrative passages and draws a parallel between Hosea's marital difficulties and the relationship between God and Israel.

The verse numbering in English Bibles is different from the numbering in the Hebrew Bible. In Hebrew, chapter 1 ends with verse 9 and chapter 2 begins with verse 10. Chapter 2, verse 1 in English is actually 2:3 in Hebrew. As a result, chapter 2 in Hebrew has twenty-five verses rather than twenty-three. This commentary will use the verse numbers of the English Bible, but if one wishes to refer to the Hebrew Bible, this differential needs to be noted.

At the beginning of chapter 2, the reader may be uncertain who is speaking. Since chapter 1 tells about Hosea's marriage to Gomer, one might assume that Hosea is the speaker who will reject and shame his wife. At least by 2:8, it is clear that the speaker is actually God. What began as an account of Hosea and his wife has now become a statement about the Lord and his adulterous wife, Israel. The feelings and thoughts of God and the prophet are parallel. What Hosea has experienced, God has also endured. The prophets of the Bible were so deeply involved with God and their message that sometimes it is hard to know if the prophet or God is speaking. In some cases there is a gradual, even subtle, transition from the prophet's words to God's. A good example of this is in Jer 8:18–9:3 and possibly in Amos 5:1-3.

A swing back and forth from doom to hope, rejection to redemption, occurs in both chapters 1 and 2. Words of doom in 1:2-9 are followed by promises of restoration in 1:10–2:1. Proclamation of rejection and shaming in 2:2-13 is quickly alleviated by assurance that God has not given up and will renew the relationship in 2:14-23. Chapter 3 ends with the promise of a good future, but not before a time of punishment has run its course (vv. 3-4).

This movement back and forth is a little confusing. Though Hosea is unrelenting in his condemnation of Israel's idolatry, he never wants to say that the relationship is over, that all is hopeless between God and the people. The rest of the book, after chapters 1–3, is mostly accusations (indictments) and proclamations of doom. Only two times, in chapters 11 and 14, does Hosea speak hopefully. The last word of each section of the book (chs. 1–3, 4–11, 12–14) is to reassure that God will again restore Israel. Perhaps some words of promise and hope are the addition of editors from Judah, updating Hosea's words to their own time. The words of Hosea were preserved by persons in Judah after the Northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by Assyria. In the process, they probably added promises to make the book more relevant to Judah's situation, especially in Judah's own time of exile. Nevertheless, the overall structure of Hosea is consistent with the inclusion of hope even in the midst of terrible calamity.

God sometimes gave commands to prophets, telling them to perform certain symbolic acts. The demand may be for a very significant life-altering action (like being told to marry a "wife of whoredom," 1:2) or it could be a one-time act to dramatize a preaching point (like the breaking of a jug in Jer 19:10-13). Along with the directive, God would provide an interpretation. The prophet's life became a living parable, a visual symbol of the message that he was called to proclaim. Such was the case of the marriage of Hosea to Gomer and the names God gave to their children. Other examples of this kind of prophetic symbolic action commanded by God are: Isaiah walked naked for three years in Isa 20:1-6; Jeremiah was told not to marry or have children in Jer 16:1-4; Ezekiel was told to lie on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for forty days in Ezek 4:4-8.

Exegetical Analysis

The Lord Tells Hosea to Take a Wife and Have Children (1:1-9)

The book opens with an editorial heading that places Hosea in a certain period of history by locating him within the reign of several kings. Such notations are common at the beginning of prophetic books. His father's name is given, but no mention of his hometown or occupation (cf. Amos 1:1). Most assume that Hosea was from the Northern Kingdom of Israel because he speaks primarily of place-names in Israel and most of his message is directed to that nation. The name Hosea means "salvation" or "deliverance." The name appears only in 1:1-2.

At the very beginning, the reader is told that "the word of the LORD came to Hosea." Several other prophetic books begin this way (e.g., Joel, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah). From the outset, it is clear that Hosea is recognized as a legitimate prophet, one who speaks for God and does not simply express his own observations and opinions. As seen by what immediately follows, the "word of the Lord" is not only an oral presentation but was also conveyed by Hosea's life and symbolic actions.

Hosea likely began his ministry before the death of Jeroboam since he prophesied against the house of Jehu (1:4), a dynasty that ended within months after Jeroboam's death (in 746). It is not certain when to date his latest prophecies, though there seem to be none after the fall of Samaria in 722. (See the discussion of Hosea's historical context in the introduction.) Since Hosea was from the north and prophesied there, it is curious that four kings of Judah are listed, only one from Israel, and the ones from Judah are listed first. This could show the bias of the final editing in Judah. Possibly the confusion at the end of the northern kingdom, with several bloody insurrections and rapid turnover of kings, made it difficult to get an accurate historical accounting of this tumultuous time. Or maybe the kings following Jeroboam were not mentioned because they were held in contempt by the editors, who considered them unworthy of recognition.

The first thing the Lord tells Hosea to do is to marry a woman "of whoredom and have children of whoredom" (v. 2). Immediately following this strange assignment, God gives an interpretation of what this symbolic act means. "For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord" (v. 2). As mentioned above, prophets were often commanded by God to do strange and unpleasant things to dramatize their message. This directive by God has been particularly troubling because God asks Hosea to do an immoral thing. Further, Hosea then actually does it. In the past many interpreters tried to get around their feeling of discomfort about all this by understanding the marriage of Hosea as allegorical, a device used to illustrate the message of God's dealing with an unfaithful covenant partner, but not something that Hosea actually did. So chapters 1–3 would not describe real events but only symbols for what God was doing. Almost all modern studies would reject that view. As described above, prophets often acted out their message at God's instruction. Such accounts would lose their significance for the prophet and his audience if they were not actions seen and interpreted.

Gomer is identified as a "wife of whoredom" (1:2-3). There have been many efforts to further identify what this designation means. Was she only a symbolic representation of a faithless people and not a real person, as discussed above? Perhaps she was not yet a person of ill repute but would become so later after Hosea married her. Was she a professional prostitute, either a woman of the streets who sells her body for money or a temple prostitute who is engaged in Canaanite fertility rituals? Maybe she was just an adulterous, promiscuous wife seeking sexual pleasure with someone besides her husband. (See listing of these possibilities in Mays 1969b, 23, and Birch 1997, 20.) One could even hypothesize that Hosea's understanding of God's command to marry a wife of whoredom came to him after the fact. If he already had a bad marriage, coupled with a strong belief that God was directing his life, maybe he struggled to make sense out of his marital mess and wondered if God intended for him to find some greater meaning in his personal suffering.

Speculation becomes even more fanciful if one tries to get inside of Gomer's mind to imagine what Hosea's behavior meant to her. What would it be like to be taken as a wife only because God demanded it? How would she react to the weird, negative sounding names Hosea insisted on giving to their children? How would it feel to be set up by God and Hosea in order to illustrate a point in Hosea's preaching, her whole life now a kind of object lesson open to the scrutiny of even those with prurient interests? Such speculation might be interesting and intriguing, but it will not lead to any definitive conclusions about Hosea and Gomer.

Because of the limited available data about Gomer, uncertainties of interpretation will remain. A few things can be said with some confidence. The text likely relates actual experiences in Hosea's life. This is not a symbolic, allegorical story, created out of the mind of Hosea or a disciple as a rhetorical gimmick. Further, there is a high probability that Gomer was actually a cult prostitute, one who was publicly known for her activity and whose profession embodied exactly the idolatrous (read also: adulterous) practices condemned by God in Hosea's prophecies. Hosea's own marriage became a metaphor for God's relationship to an unfaithful people. God is the husband; Israel is the wife. What God thinks and feels about being betrayed by those he had loved is like that experienced by Hosea.

The language of sexual promiscuity that is dominant in Hosea was particularly appropriate for the religious situation in Israel. Reality and metaphor almost merged into one. Israel's sin was to turn away from the Lord to the fertility cult of Canaanite religion. At various shrines, sexual practices were enacted, by both men and women, in which the god Baal supposedly gave fertility to the land. Very little is known about what actually took place at these shrines. Israel was guilty of sexual promiscuity in two ways—by their actual participation in fertility rituals and as a metaphor for giving oneself to gods other than the Lord God of Israel.

God directed Hosea to have "children of whoredom" (v. 2). Apparently, they would be given that designation because of the status and reputation of their mother since it is assumed that Hosea and Gomer were married and Hosea was indeed the father (v. 3 says "she conceived and bore him a son," emphasis added). Three children, two boys and a girl, were born to them (unless there were more who are not listed). It was God who provided the names for them because each child was to symbolize, through his or her name, a message about the consequences of Israel's sins. Hosea is not unique in giving symbolic names to his children. Isaiah is the best example of this practice (Isa 7:3; 8:3-4; note also the name "Immanuel" in Isa 7:14). It is not only the prophet whose life becomes an acted out presentation of the message. Even the children become participants in the proclamation of the prophetic word. Though the text tells us nothing about these offspring of this strange marriage, one can only imagine the burden of going through life with names like "Not Pitied" and "Not My People." "Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me." The Bible provides ample evidence that it was very difficult to be a prophet and speak a word from God to an indifferent or even hostile audience (Jeremiah, sometimes called the "weeping prophet" is the classic example of this). Hosea's children cause one to imagine how hard it must have been to be part of the prophet's family.

God names the first child Jezreel (v. 4), which means "God plants or sows." That sounds harmless enough. Standing by itself it could represent good news about what God does. The meaning turns ominous, however, when one reflects on the history of what happened at Jezreel and its association with the dynasty of Jehu, of whom Jeroboam was a descendant. Jezreel is a beautiful valley in a strategic location between the mountains of Galilee and Samaria. The Jehu dynasty began with the bloody overthrow of the house of Omri, with several events occurring at Jezreel (2 Kgs 9–10), including the slaying of the hated Jezebel (the widow of King Ahab), the public display of the heads of Ahab's sons, and a mass extermination of Baal worshipers. Earlier, Jezebel had plotted the murder of Naboth in order to possess his property in Jezreel for a summer palace (1 Kgs 21). It would be strange, indeed, to give a child the name of a place that had such a violent history.

Omri, Ahab, and Jezebel were considered to be evil leaders who led Israel away from the true God. Jehu's rebellion and usurpation of the throne would surely have been welcomed by many as a necessary cleansing of Israel from alien religions. Even so, the violence of the revolution seemed excessive and would finally come back on Jehu's house. More immediately, the problem with Jeroboam (and the Jehu line of kings) was that they had now become as disloyal to the Lord as had the house of Omri, Ahab, and Jezebel. The revolutionaries, the reformers, had now become as bad as those they had driven out of office. They will also be destroyed as had happened to Omri's house at the beginning of the dynasty at Jezreel. The boy's name was connected to the sin of the past and, through God's pronouncement, a prediction of impending doom. Not only will the Jehu dynasty be removed (as happened when Jeroboam's son was murdered after only a few months as king) but the kingdom itself will come to an end. God says, "I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel" (v. 4b ). This came to pass in 722 with the conquest of Samaria by the Assyrians.

The name Jezreel appears again in 1:11, where the defeat at Jezreel is replaced by restoration and a new beginning. At that time, "great shall be the day of Jezreel."

The second child, a daughter, also received a symbolic name. The Lord commanded to give her the name Lo-ruhamah. The basic root of the Hebrew word has a variety of meanings such as "compassion," "mercy," "sympathy," "tenderness," "pity." It contains the same root letters as the word for "womb." It is an emotional word, usually having a very positive meaning that could well describe the way parents ordinarily feel about their children. But the name given to Hosea's children is a negation of those feelings. The children of Hosea and Gomer are not loved or pitied. The daughter's name suggests a parent who was once loving and compassionate but now has withdrawn support and affection, no longer cares what happens to the child, and, in effect, has disowned the one who at one time was loved. As the daughter goes through life carrying such a name, she will be a constant reminder of a lost relationship, God's once-loving concern that has now been withdrawn. That is a terrible thought and an awful name.

The anxiety raised by the idea of God's total rejection is already seen in verse 7. The Northern Kingdom of Israel cannot be saved. It is too late for that. But God still has compassion (pity) on the Southern Kingdom of Judah. God promises to save them, not by their own military weapons or skill, but by direct intervention by God himself. God's compassion has not disappeared completely. Judah, if not Israel, can still live in hope as they carry forward the covenant relationship with God. It seems a little strange that Hosea would concern himself with these hopes for Judah since he is addressing the kingdom of Israel. Most scholars assume that this reference to the salvation of the nation of Judah was added later. Perhaps it reflects the miraculous escape of Jerusalem from the Assyrian invasion led by Sennacherib in 701 (see 2 Kgs 19:32-37). Probably it was included in the Hosea book before the actual fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586.