Hosea begins with a love story - a painful, personal love story, the prophet's very own. Hosea had married a woman who acted like a prostitute. Yet the more she went out on him, the more Hosea loved her. He gave her everything a good wife deserved: his love, his home, his name, his reputation. She responded by shacking up with other men. He warned her, he pleaded with her, he punished her. She humiliated him until he wanted to cry, yet still he clung to her.
Why did Hosea begin with his personal llife? Because God had expressly told him to relate it to another, more tragic love story: the painful love of God for his people. God could have simply declared, "Israel is like a wife to me - an adulterous wife," Instead, he used Hosea to act out the treachery in real life - and to show in living color God's fury, his jealousy, and above all else, his love for his people.
Winding Down to a Bitter End
Virtually every chapter of Hosea talks about the "prostitution" or "adultery" of God's people (1:2; 2:2, 4; 3:1; 4:2, 10-15, 18; 5:3, 4; 6:10; 7:4; 8:9; 9:1). Underlying some hard words is a remarkably tender revelation: God doesn't want to be only "master" to his people. He wants to be a husband, giving all of himself in intimate love.
Hosea spoke and acted these messages to the Northern part of God's divided country - Israel or "Ephraim," as Hosea called it. King Jeroboam II's reign was a time of prosperity; the prophet Amos blasted the rich for their greedy injustices toward the poor. But soon after Jeroboam's death the national fabric began to unravel. In just over 20 years six kings took |
