Hosea 1

Hosea’s wife and children

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

2 At the beginning of the word of the LORD to Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take a prostitute as your wife, and have children by a prostitute; for the land has engaged in great prostitution, departing from the LORD”. 3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. She conceived and bore him a son.

1:3 Gomer means “perfection”, but she proved far from perfect. Perfection is also what God wants for His people (compare Matt 5:48), but Israel as a nation proved as bad as Gomer the individual.⚜

4 And the LORD said to him, “Call his name Jezreel; for in just a little while I will avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. 5 And on that day it will come about that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel”.

1:5 Israel’s military power was broken in the valley of Jezreel some months before Samaria fell to the Assyrians.⚜

6 And she conceived again, and bore a daughter. And God said to him, “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah; for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but will utterly take them away. 7 But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and will save them through the LORD their God, but will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by battle, by horses, or by horsemen”.

1:7 God showed love to Judah for another hundred and twenty years, until they too went the same way as Israel.⚜

8 Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. 9 Then God said, “Call his name Lo-Ammi; for you are not my people, and I will not be your God.

10 “Yet the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And this will happen: in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’, there it will be said to them, ‘You are the sons of the living God.’

1:10 In Rom 9:26 Paul applies this verse in a spiritual sense to the conversion of non-Jewish peoples. This does not mean that he was teaching there could be no literal fulfillment in the nation of Israel. See Rom 11:26-29. Here through Hosea God says that His rejection of Israel was only temporary.⚜

11 Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together, and appoint one head for themselves, and they will come up out of the land; for great will be the day of Jezreel.