Hosea Loves Again

A man walks into the marketplace with silver in his hand. He has come to bring someone home. Someone who left him. Someone who broke his heart. And he is paying whatever it takes to get her back.

Hosea lived in Israel, the northern kingdom, in the years before it fell to Assyria. The fields were full of grain, the vineyards heavy with grapes, the olive presses busy. But the people had a habit. When the harvest came in, many of them thanked Baal, the Canaanite god they believed sent the rain. They kept the Lord's name on their lips, but their hearts had wandered. God had a message for them. And this time the message would not only be spoken. It would be lived out in one man's family.

God told Hosea, Go, take a wife of prostitution, and have children of unfaithfulness, because the land has turned away from the Lord like an unfaithful wife. So Hosea married a woman named Gomer, daughter of Diblaim. Hosea's marriage would be a mirror held up to Israel. Children were born, and God gave each one a name that was a message. The first son was called Jezreel, after a valley where blood had been shed, a sign that judgment was coming. Then a daughter, Lo-ruhamah, which means “not shown mercy.” Then another son, Lo-ammi, “not my people.” Imagine calling your children in for dinner by those names. Every time Hosea spoke them, the whole town heard what God was saying.

Then the story turns from Hosea's house to God's own heart. God speaks like a husband whose wife has gone off after others. “She did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil.” He warns that he will take back the gifts she credited to someone else. But listen to what comes next. “I will win her back. I will lead her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” The valley of Achor, a name that means trouble, will become a door of hope. “You will call me, my husband,” says the Lord. “I will betroth you to me for ever, in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy.”

And then the names change. God says, “I will have mercy on the one called Not Shown Mercy. And I will say to those who were Not My People, You are my people.” And they will answer, “You are my God.” The names that sounded like a door slamming shut are opened again. Judgment is real in Hosea's message. But it is not the last word. Love is the last word.

Then God speaks to Hosea again. “Go, love a woman who is loved by another and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves Israel, though they turn to other gods and love their raisin cakes.” Most readers understand this woman to be Gomer, though some interpreters think it may be another woman. Either way, Hosea obeys. He buys her back for fifteen pieces of silver and some barley. He tells her that they will wait together for many days, faithful to each other. It is a quiet, costly kind of love. And Hosea says that one day Israel too will come home, and seek the Lord their God, and come trembling to his goodness.

Hosea's words travelled much further than he could have known. Hundreds of years later, two of the first followers of Jesus quoted them. Paul, writing to the church in Rome, used Hosea's promise that people called Not My People would be called children of the living God. And the first letter of Peter tells its readers: once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. The early Christians heard in Hosea the welcome of God.

Hosea loves again. You'll find it in Hosea chapters 1 to 3. A broken marriage became a picture of a love that will not give up. God named his people's unfaithfulness honestly, and then he went after them anyway. So here's the question to carry with you. Is there anywhere you have wandered, and can you hear God calling you home?