Hosea lived during the tumult of the eighth century B.C. His
period of activity was between 750 and 730 BC. He was a contemporary with
Isaiah and Micah. Hosea watched uneasily as Assyria's star rose to a place of
power among the nations of the ancient Near Eastern world. The disastrous
alliance Israel jury-rigged with Assyria proved very well the worst of Hosea's
fears and forecasts. As Hosea watched his beloved nation disintegrate before
his very eyes -- politically, economically and most heart-wrenching of all,
spiritually -- this prophet received a weird word from the Lord, a word that
imbued his message with unique accessibility. He was largely a critic of the
religious life of Israel.
The date of the writing would have to be before the
captivity Samaria in 721. He is the only "writing prophet" of the
Northern Kingdom. He gives longer
statements than his contemporaries, who often spoke in short oracles. We have a narrative in chapters 1-3 and oracles
in chapters 4-14. Strong feelings and
emotions, like love, anger, and disappointment govern his preaching. His preaching occurs within a raving history
rooted in the Exodus. He aligned himself
closely to the Levites, for the general movement toward becoming increasingly
Canaanite necessarily pushed them aside.
Barth[1]
will stress the love of God as an act. In Hosea, throughout the book we see the
action of the Lord in covenant with Israel as an expression of love. We will
find the striking connection between the love of God and the knowledge of God.
In Hosea 1:1-2:3 we have the title and the wife of Hosea,
the naming and renaming of the children. At least five years elapse during this
period. He begins by saying that the word of the Lord came to Hosea, son of
Beeri, during the reigns of Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, all of Judah,
and the reign of Jeroboam II.
The uniquely painful
ministry and personal message of the prophet Hosea manages to bring the fate of
an ancient country and the facts of our own struggles into a sharp double
focus. Despite Hosea's extreme distance from us in days, the metaphor that
defined both his personal life and his preached message continues to transfix
us. The powers of his predicament as well as his predictions remain
undiminished.
1:2-3, the first divine word
sounds strange to us. "Go, take for
yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits
great whoredom by forsaking the LORD." He took for a wife Gomer, daughter
of Diblaim, and she bore him a son. Hosea did what the Lord told him to do.
That fact alone reveals volumes about Hosea's faith and faithfulness to the God
of Israel. What obedience to such a heart-wrenching, heartbreaking divine
command must have cost him! Scholars have noted that through this divine dictum
Yahweh transformed Hosea from a parochial prophet into a
"homeopathic" prophet.[2]
Of
all the symbolic actions that God commanded Israelite prophets to perform, none
has generated more surprise and speculation than Hosea's marriage to the
prostitute Gomer. What the story sets up for the audience in Hosea and Gomer's
marriage is a situation where adultery is the wife's expected behavior. In this
analogy, the prophet stands in relation to his adulterous wife in the same way
God stands in relation to unfaithful Israel.
The two most popular metaphors for God's covenant with
Israel are those of parent and child, and husband and wife. Other covenant
language in Israel and the ancient Near East also borrows its terminology from family
relationships. Essentially, a covenant is a social contract between two parties
that, like a marriage or an adoption, takes two people who are not kin to one
another, who have no legal rights or responsibilities toward each other, and
legally creates a family relationship between them. This means that when God
commands Hosea to marry a prostitute, he is commanding him to make a dramatic
demonstration that any Israelite could understand concerning how Israel has
failed to be a faithful covenant partner.
Israel
was suffering from a plague of infidelity. The local, licentious religiosity of
Canaanite ba'alism continually attracted the Israelites. They still claimed to
be God's chosen covenant people while at the same time they carefully attended
to the seasonal worship demands and sacrifices of the Canaanite cults. They
were concerned about pleasing Yahweh, but they also attempted to curry favor
with the ba'alist gods and goddesses.
The allure of Canaanite religion was powerful. It insinuated itself into
every aspect of the Hebrews' lives. By taking a prostitute as his wife, Hosea
uses the Canaanite myth against itself. Monotheistic Yahwism was different from
ba'alism precisely because Yahweh was not infused with sexuality, was not tied
to the seasonal, cyclical fertility rites that kept the practice of cultic
prostitution alive. Hosea's marriage to the prostitute Gomer transformed the
ground on which these pagan rites were practiced. With their being husband and
wife, the focus on the relationship was no longer mere fertility, but
fidelity.
Gomer herself is a powerful
image of Israel's wrongheaded, wrong-hearted attitude. Instead of seeing Gomer
simply as a cultic prostitute, many scholars have concluded that she had ties
to temple prostitution before her marriage.
Then, in keeping with common Canaanite practices, after her marriage she
continued to give herself in cultic prostitution in order to ensure her
fertility. Nevertheless, Gomer is Hosea's wife. Her participation in this
ritualized prostitution ensuring fertility instead becomes a symbol of the
spiritual barrenness that now exists in Israel's heart. The genuine pain in
this out-of-sync relationship poignantly depicts the anguish suffered by Yahweh
at Israel's betrayal.
In 1:4-5, where the Lord tells
Hosea tells Hosea to call his first child Jezreel (El sows), for the Lord will
put the house (dynasty) of Jehu to an end for the blood of Jezreel and put an
end to the kingdom of Israel. The Lord will “break the bow (end the covenant) of
Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” This sentiment is quite different from what
we find in II Kings 10:30, in which the Lord commends Jehu for bring about
judgment upon the house of Ahab, and that therefore, his children would reign
until the fourth generation. "Dynasty of Jehu," probably
refers to Jeroboam II. The Jehu line
will end violently, as it began. Jehu
overstepped his bounds in carrying out Yahweh's judgment. The point is that just as Ahab's line must
end, so must Jehu's line. The name
serves to remind Israel of Jehu's infidelity on the plain of Jezreel (see 2
Kings 10). A name that had once meant fertility will now mean destruction and
woe. II Kings 9-10 recounts the "Purge of Jehu." Jehu was anointed by
Elisha to put an end to the house of Ahab as punishment for the original crime
committed at Jezreel, namely the unjust execution of Naboth and the
confiscation of his ancestral property (1 Kings 21). However, in the
overzealous execution of his commission, Jehu himself commits a second crime at
Jezreel. In addition to the house of Ahab, Jehu also kills Ahaziah, king of
Judah - a cousin of Ahab's heir, King Joram - who was at Jezreel at the time of
Jehu's attack. If this were not enough, Jehu also slaughtered more of the
southern kingdom's royalty after the initial battle when he came across more of
Ahaziah's kinsmen the following day and killed, them too (2 Kings 10:12-14). It
is likely that Jehu's killing of Judean royal sons is what has angered Hosea.
1:6-7 informs us that she
conceived a daughter, and the Lord tells her to name the daughter Lo-ruhamah,
for the Lord will no longer have pity on or forgive the house of Israel. It suggests
pity is needed but not forthcoming. The
most basic relationships between Yahweh and Israel have been severed. She has been expelled from a relationship of
love. The gender of the child is important here as well. It is through the
feminine -- through Gomer, Israel and this daughter who carries this name --
that God proclaims a loss of love for Israel. The image of a husband/father
rejecting a wife/daughter, cutting them off from his protection, is a shocking
family image of rejection. However, as the prophet continues, in what may be an addition, the Lord
will have pity on the house of Judah. Yahweh shows contempt for military
armaments, showing Israel's confidence in it to be misplaced. Redemption in Hosea does not begin until
rejection is complete. Restoration comes
only by resurrection. It could be a
message of affirmation about King Uzziah's piety from Hosea himself.
1:8-9, after the weaning
Lo-ruhamah, Gomer conceived a son, the Lord told him to name him Lo-ammi, for
Israel is not the people of God, and the Lord is not their God. It
constitutes the annulling of Israel's covenant with God stated in Exodus 6:7,
"I will take you as my people, and I will be your God." Hosea 1:9
also alludes to Exodus 3:14. By saying "I am not your 'Ehyeh,'" in
1:9, Hosea seems to make a direct reference to this crucial passage where God's
true name is revealed, making Israel's altered name, Lo Ammi, all the more
tragic. In this case, the name refers to a break between God and the people
Israel. That relationship is undone; dissolved.
God annihilates the relationship with Israel. The three name oracles become more
comprehensive, severe, and direct.
1:10-11, the promise is that
people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea. Where they are not the
people of God, the promise is that they shall be children of the living God.
The Lord shall gather Judah and Israel and appoint themselves one had. They
shall take possession of the land, for the day of Jezreel shall be great. We
have the beginning of the oracle of salvation that ends at 2:1. echoing the
covenantal promise God made to Abraham (Genesis 15:5) about the future
numerical greatness of Israel, Hosea insists that new faithful generations will
be so great that they "can be neither measured nor numbered." Unlike
the misbegotten, miserably named offspring of Hosea and Gomer, these children
of the restoration shall be called the "Children of the living God."
The prophet states that eventually God will again consider Israel to be a true
child of God and that God will one day reunite the northern and southern
kingdoms. In true prophetic fashion, Hosea holds out the possibility for
redemption.
In 2:1-4, Hosea is to say to
his brother Ammi and sister Ruhamah to plead with their mother, for she is not
his wife and Hosea is not her husband. They should plead that she put away her
whoring and adultery. If she does not, he will strip her naked and expose her
as on the day of her birth. He will make her like a wilderness and parched
land, killing her with thirst. It suggests a
day coming when God will reverse everything described chapter 1. The
horror of devastation is bound together with a word of hope. Hosea does not intercede for them. There is no change of heart. Hosea's view is redemption by
recapitulation. Renaming could occur at
circumcision. In verse 2, Judah and
Israel will be re-united under one head, possibly Moses is envisioned. The suggested is a united country after
exile. "Jezreel," ;now
reversed to "Let God sow."
Family and nation are joined through the children.
2:4-25
relate defection and retribution, reconciliation and renewal. Verses 4-15 make
sense at a personal level, making a threat if she does not change. The oracle
begins by saying that the Lord have no pity on her children of whoredom. Their
mother has been a whore and acted shamefully. She decided to go after her
lovers, and they gave her bread and water, wool and flax. One could view verses
6-15 as soliloquy, Yahweh struggling within, contemplating possible courses of
action, but rejecting all in favor of the redemption described in verses 16-17.
The Lord will place thorns along the path and build a wall against her so that
she cannot find her path. She shall pursue her lovers, but not find them. Then,
she will decide to return to her first husband, for it was better with him. Though
the language is legal, the father takes the law into his own hands. The way is open for forgiveness, which is
beyond the law. God can mend the broken
covenant because Yahweh's love is stronger than wrath. The penalty for adultery is death. Why does the father not speak directly to the
mother? From wife's perspective, there was a divorce, but from the husband's
perspective, punishment meant continued authority within the covenant. As the
prophet continues, she did not know that the Lord gave her grain, wine, and
oil, lavishing her with silver and gold. The Lord will take it all back,
uncovering her nakedness and shame in the sight of her lovers. No one shall
rescue her. The Lord shall end her happiness, festivals, new moons, Sabbaths,
and lay her to waste. Wild animals will devour the lovers. Verses 16-25 make
greater sense at a national level. The promises here have no relationship to
any change in Israel. The Lord will punish her for the festival days of the
Baals, offering incense to them, wearing jewelry, and went after lovers, while
forgetting the Lord. Therefore, the Lord will lure her out to the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her. This speaks of restored relationships. The leading
of Israel into the wilderness could mean either the enterprise of making a
special people had failed or that there will be a new beginning. The idea of speaking intimately is that of
courtship. The Lord will give her
vineyards, making the valley of Achor a valley of hope. She shall respond as in
the days of her youth, when she came out of Egypt. “On that day,” Israel will
call the Lord “Husband” and no longer “Baal.” The Lord will remove the names of
the Baals from her mouth. The Lord will make a covenant “on that day” with the
wild animals, birds, and creeping things. The Lord will make them lie down in
safety. All of this suggests an eschatological formula. The transformation of nature and achievement
is for universal harmony. The Lord will take her as a wife forever and make her
a wife in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy. The Lord will
take Israel as a wife in faithfulness. They will know the Lord. The prophet speaks
of the covenant of peace. The beneficiaries of the covenant are the
children. A covenant like this has its
nearest account in Gen 9:8-11. Pannenberg[3]
noes that Paul refers to the verse in Romans 9:24ff, appealing to the election
concept of the people of God as he finds this prophetic promised fulfilled in
the emergence of the Gentile Christian missionary churches. “On that day” the
Lord will answer heaven and earth. The Lord will have pity on Lo-ruhamah and
say to Lo-ammi, that they are the people of God, and he shall say the Lord is
his God. "Have pity," cancels 1:6 and 2:6, fulfilling v. 23. "You are my people" cancels 1:9 and
fulfills 2:3. Pannenberg[4]
takes this passage as reflecting the tension between the unity and plurality of
deity. It offers a starting point for the possibility of a development of
divine figures and especially for the tendency to associate additional spheres
of operation with them. He points out that to a historically developed deity
adherents usually assigned a whole complex of more or less sharply emphasized
functions, many of which might impinge upon those of others or overlap them.
The power that was at work in it was found to be at work in other spheres that
were not at first associated with it. Therefore, as we see in this passage, the
God of Israel, when the desert wandering was over and Canaan had been occupied,
was found to be also the author of the fertility of the land, as adherents
formerly regarded Baal.
Hosea
3:1-5 discuss Hosea and the woman. The Lord speaks to Hosea, telling him to
love a woman who has a lover and is an adulterer. We might assume that “the
woman” is Gomer. Yet, we do not find a name in this chapter. The lack of
reference to the feelings of Gomer is significant. We see no sign of a return
of affection. Reclaiming the girl is like starting the marriage over, treating
her as pure. The command is to love, not
take, for she is already his wife. God
asks him to reaffirm the marriage. Hosea
is to do this to act out the fact that the Lord loves the people of Israel,
even though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes. Thus, Yahweh loves
Israel in spite of fact that Israel loves other gods. Hosea says he bought her
for 15 shekels of silver and a homer of barley and a measure of wine. Hosea then
tells her that she must remain as his for many days. She shall not be a whore. She
hall not have intercourse with anyone, including himself. This action serves as
an example to Israel that it shall remain many days without a king or prince,
without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward, in what some
think of as a later addition, but may also be the hopes of the prophet for a
restoration of the Davidic kingdom, the Israelites shall return, seek the Lord,
and seek David as their king. They shall come in awe to the Lord and to the
goodness of the Lord in the latter days.
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