The book of Hosea

Main theme

Israel has betrayed its God like an adulterous wife; the LORD judges it, but his faithful love pursues it, redeems it and brings it back to himself.

Outline

1. Hosea 1-3 — Hosea’s marriage, a living parable

   Gomer, the three children with prophetic names, and the wife bought back.

2. Hosea 4-7 — The trial of a people without knowledge of God

   Guilty priests, idolatry, superficial repentance and incoherent politics.

3. Hosea 8-10 — Sowing the wind, reaping the whirlwind

   Golden calves, kings set up without God, exile foretold.

4. Hosea 11-14 — God’s invincible love

   The Father who called his son out of Egypt, death defeated and the call to return.

Key points

• Hosea’s marriage to Gomer is a lived parable: his wife’s unfaithfulness mirrors Israel’s toward the LORD (1:2; 3:1).
• The children’s names are prophecies: Jezreel (the judgment on the house of Jehu), Lo-Ruhamah (“no mercy”), Lo-Ammi (“not my people”) (1:4-9); God promises to turn them around into “my people” and “sons of the living God” (1:10; 2:23).
• God leads his bride back into the wilderness to speak tenderly to her, and makes the valley of Achor “a door of hope” (2:14-15).
• Hosea buys back his wife for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley: a picture of redemption (3:2).
• The great charge of the book: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (4:6).
• God desires mercy and the knowledge of himself more than sacrifices (6:6), words Jesus quotes twice (Matt 9:13; 12:7).
• The law of the harvest: “they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (8:7).
• God’s heart, torn between justice and compassion, chooses mercy: “I am God, and not man” (11:8-9).

Jesus in Hosea

Hosea shows a God who loves the unfaithful and pays the price to redeem them (3:2), a picture of Christ, who gave himself for his church. Matthew applies to Jesus the words “I called my son out of Egypt” (11:1; Matt 2:15): he is the true Israel, the faithful Son. Paul and Peter see in “Lo-Ammi” becoming “my people” the entry of the nations into the people of God (2:23; Rom 9:25-26; 1 Pet 2:10), and Paul sings of victory over death with 13:14 (1 Cor 15:55). Many also see in it a shadow of the resurrection “in the third day” (6:2) and of the King descended from David (3:5).

Did you know?

• “Hosea” (Hoshea) means “salvation”; it was also the first name of Joshua, “Oshea” in the KJV (Num 13:16), and it shares the same root as the name of Jesus.
• The last king of Israel bore the same name as the prophet: Hoshea, son of Elah, under whom Samaria fell in 722 BC (2 Kgs 17:1-6).
• Hosea renames Bethel, “house of God,” as Beth-aven, “house of nothingness” (4:15; 10:5): a biting play on words against the sanctuary of the golden calf (1 Kgs 12:29).