Hosea 1 Study Notes

1:1 See the Introduction on authorship.

1:2-3 Hosea’s initial call to the prophetic ministry began with perplexing instructions to find a wife among the promiscuous women of Israel (of which there were apparently many; 4:14). This was no mere parable or vision but an actual command to enter a literal marriage that would vividly portray God’s perspective on Israel. A woman of promiscuity describes her behavior and character when Hosea married her. She is not called a prostitute, but she almost certainly used her sexuality for her livelihood (2:5). Hosea, like the Lord, had a wayward wife and a broken heart. Children of promiscuity indicates that the paternity of Gomer’s children would be questioned. They would bear the shame of their mother’s behavior and at the same time represent the shameful behavior and divine condemnation of the children of Israel. The reason the prophet had to invite such pain into his life was the flagrancy with which Israel, the Lord’s wife, had been selling herself to other gods and abandoning the Lord. Each idolatrous act had driven them further from him. The Hebrew verb zanah (“be a harlot, act promiscuously”) occurs far more in Hosea (13 times; 60 times in the OT) than in any other book but Ezekiel (17 times). These two books also account for about fifty percent of the uses of the root word in the OT (22 times in Hosea, 28 times in Ezekiel, 115 times in the OT), which includes words for “promiscuity” and “prostitute.”

1:4-5 Jehu had carried out God’s judgment (2Kg 9:7) by putting the last of Omri’s dynasty to the sword at the city of Jezreel (2Kg 9:24-10:11). God commended him for this (2Kg 10:30). Hosea named his first child Jezreel, symbolizing that Jehu’s dynasty, which had proved to be just as wicked as Omri’s (2Kg 10:31), would likewise suffer annihilation at Jezreel. Jehu’s dynasty began in violence and would end in the same, but as the recipient rather than the instrument of divine judgment. Zechariah, Jehu’s last royal descendant, was assassinated by Shallum in 752 BC, probably at Ibleam in Jezreel (2Kg 15:10).

1:6-7 Hosea’s second child, a daughter, was given the pathetic Hebrew name Lo-ruhamah, meaning “No Compassion,” symbolic of the fact that by her continual unfaithfulness Israel had forfeited God’s love. Take them away could also be rendered “forgive them,” although the context favors the present translation.

1:8-9 The Hebrew name of Hosea’s third child, Lo-ammi, meaning “Not My People,” was a symbolic proclamation that Israel had broken covenant with God (Ex 6:7; Lv 26:12). I will not be your God is literally “and I will not be to you.” This could also be rendered “and I am not ‘I AM’ to you” (Ex 3:14-15). God’s statement amounted to a decree of divorce.

1:10-11 Allusion to the Abrahamic covenant in the phrase like the sand of the sea (cp. Gn 22:17) indicates that God’s “divorce” of Israel was not final but applied only to that generation—the nation or leadership of that time. Eternal promise is placed profoundly beside final judgment, reconcilable only because the living God could bring life out of death. This is affirmed by the name Jezreel, which symbolized not only judgment but also life insomuch as the name meant “God plants” (cp. Ezk 36:9-11). The division between Israel and Judah was temporary, a theme to be repeated later (Ezk 37:18-25; Hs 3:5).