A Wife of Harlotries

The book of Hosea opens with a date. It tells us that the word of the LORD came to Hosea son of Beeri “in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel.” Hosea spoke mainly to the northern kingdom, the house of Israel, which he often calls Ephraim, in the final decades before it fell to Assyria. The Song of Songs had shown a love strong as death, a love that will not share its beloved. Hosea would show what that love does when it is betrayed, and the first thing the LORD told him to do was not to preach a sermon but to take a wife. The prophet was to live the message before he spoke it.

The Command

Hosea 1:2-3 The beginning of the LORD's speaking by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea: "Go, take to yourself a wife (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw') of harlotries and children of harlotries, for the land surely commits harlotry away from after the LORD." And he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

The root is zanah (זָנָה), to commit harlotry, and its forms run through the whole verse: a wife of harlotries, children of harlotries, a land that “surely commits harlotry.” That last phrase repeats the verb in Hebrew, zanoh tizneh, the way Hebrew does when it wants to press a point home. And the harlotry is described by where it goes: “away from after the LORD.” The land had stopped walking after Him and had gone after others.

This is how God names the sin of His people. In the picture He gives Hosea, the LORD is the Husband and the people are the unfaithful wife. Walking away from Him is not a change of opinion or a difference of style in worship, and it is not like breaking a small rule and paying a fine. He feels it as the deepest betrayal a marriage can suffer, and He calls it adultery, because to Him that is what it is. A covenant like marriage had bound them to Him, and they had broken it.

Hosea obeyed. He took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she bore him a son. The children who followed were given names that carried the LORD’s message to Israel. The first was Jezreel, for the LORD would visit the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu. Then came a daughter.

Hosea 1:6 And she conceived again and bore a daughter. And he said to him: "Call her name Lo-ruhamah, for I will no more again have compassion on the house of Israel, for I will utterly take them away.

Lo-ruhamah means “not pitied,” or “no compassion.” And then another son:

Hosea 1:9 And he said: "Call his name Lo-ammi, for you are not my people, and I will not be yours."

Lo-ammi means “not my people.” The covenant sentence of the Torah was “I will be to you for God, and you shall be to Me for a people” (Leviticus 26:12). Here that sentence is turned inside out: “you are not my people, and I will not be yours.” The belonging that went both ways is broken from both sides.

What the Harlotry Was

Hosea does not leave us to guess what Israel had done. The book names it plainly. They went after the Baals, burned incense to carved images, and gave to Baal the silver and gold that the LORD had given them. And at the root of it, the prophet puts two charges side by side. We have already heard the first, alongside his promise of knowing: “you have forgotten the Torah of your God” (Hosea 4:6). The second comes later in the book.

Hosea 8:1 To your mouth, a trumpet! Like the eagle against the house of the LORD; because they have transgressed my covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth'), and against my Torah they have rebelled.

In Hosea, the unfaithfulness of the bride is not described as a lack of warm feeling toward God. It is described as forgetting His Torah and rebelling against it.

That is the same line Part One drew from the other side. There we read that love toward God is keeping His commandments. Here we see the opposite: the bride who leaves her Husband is the people who forget His Torah. Hosea’s marriage puts a human face on both. A wife who keeps her covenant loves her husband in deed; a wife who goes after other lovers has broken faith, whatever she may still say with her lips.

Not the Last Word

If the book stopped at the names of the children, it would be a book of judgment and nothing more. But it does not stop there. Right after the names comes a promise.

Hosea 2:1 And the number of the sons of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which is not measured and not counted; and it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Sons of the living (chai חַי khah'-ee) God."

(YLV Hosea 2:1, Masoretic verse order)

The people once called “not my people” will be called sons of the living God. And at the end of the same chapter, the names of the children are turned around:

Hosea 2:25 And I will sow her for myself in the land, and I will have compassion on Lo-ruhamah, and I will say to Lo-ammi, "You are my people," and he shall say, "My God."

The one called “no compassion” receives compassion, and the one called “not my people” hears, “You are my people.” The covenant sentence that was broken from both sides is spoken again from both sides. God says “my people,” and the people answer “my God.”

Go Yet Again

Then the LORD gives Hosea a second command, and it is harder than the first.

Hosea 3:1 And the LORD said to me: "Go yet again, love a woman (ishah) beloved of a friend and an adulteress, like the love of the LORD for the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins."

Four times in this one verse forms of the root ahav, love, appear: “love a woman,” “beloved of a friend,” “like the love of the LORD,” and the people who “love cakes of raisins.” The woman is “beloved of a friend” and an adulteress, and Hosea is told to love her anyway. And the measure of that love is given in the same breath: “like the love of the LORD for the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods.”

This is the love the whole book of Hosea is about. It is not a love that waits until the beloved deserves it. It goes after her while she is still going after others.

Hosea 3:2-3 And I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver, and a homer of barley and a lethech of barley. And I said to her: "Many days you shall remain for me; you shall not play the harlot, and you shall not be to a man (ish אִישׁ eesh); and also I will be toward you."

Hosea had to pay to bring her back: fifteen pieces of silver, and a homer and a lethech of barley. The word for “bought” here is karah, a word for acquiring by payment, not gaal גָּאַל gaw-al'. Yet the shape of what Hosea did is the shape Book 5 traced: a price paid to bring home someone who had been lost. And when she is home, he does not simply take up where they left off. The love that bought her back asks her to remain his alone for many days, and with the words “also I will be toward you” he binds himself to her in the same way.

His own house was a picture of what would happen to Israel.

Hosea 3:4-5 For many days the sons of Israel shall remain without king and without prince, and without sacrifice and without pillar, and without ephod and teraphim. Afterward the sons of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king, and they shall come trembling to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

The many days without king and without sacrifice are not the end of the marriage. After them the sons of Israel “shall return and seek the LORD their God,” and the waiting time becomes the way home.

A husband who pays to bring back an unfaithful wife still has to win her heart, for silver can bring her into the house but cannot make her love him. Hosea had already shown, in the middle of his second chapter, how the LORD Himself sets out to do that: He leads her into the wilderness and speaks to her heart.