What If God Asked You to Do Something That Made No Sense? (Hosea 1-6)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Have you ever had God ask you to do something that felt very strange?

Of all the books in Scripture, Hosea stands apart as one of the most surprising. Hosea, whose name means “salvation” or “he saves,” is one of the twelve minor prophets in the Old Testament. As a bit of background to this book, John Walton and Craig Keener note:

Hosea prophesied from as early as the time of the Israelite king Jeroboam II (786–745 BC) to as late as the reign of the Judahite king Hezekiah (725–686 BC; 715–687 BC as sole king). His prophetic ministry thus lasted 20–45 years. Most if not all of it took place before the conquest of Samaria by the Assyrians in 722 BC. It is odd that a book about a prophet from the northern kingdom of Israel ministering within the kingdom of Israel begins by mentioning the kings of Judah prior to the king of Israel. This suggests that the message of the book in its final form was directed primarily to the southern kingdom of Judah and at a later period when Hosea’s preaching had become famous for its divine authority and abiding relevancy.^[1]

The opening verses of this book are dramatic. In verse 2, God says to Hosea, “Go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord.” A quick caveat. “The Hebrew word rendered by the NIV as ‘promiscuous’ is not a technical term for a prostitute; it is rather a general term describing the promiscuous sexual behavior of a woman who is either betrothed or married. Its scope of meaning can nonetheless include the sexual behavior of a prostitute as well.”^[2] This promiscuous person is named Gomer, and her unfaithfulness to Hosea symbolizes Israel's spiritual adultery through idolatry and sin.

The average person reading this story today might ask themselves, why would God ask Hosea to do something so dramatic? It’s a tough question, but the intent behind this book is to demonstrate God’s intense love for his broken and sinful people. Gary Smith makes this lengthy yet profound observation:

Since it is difficult to comprehend God’s love and hard for people to know exactly what it means to love God, illustrations of divine love are powerful ways of demonstrating some of the characteristics of love. God’s redemption of the nation Israel from Egyptian bondage is one of the greatest Old Testament examples of God’s love, and Christ’s death on the cross is the prime New Testament illustration. Yet for many people, the most vital and only real definition of love is impersonated in the attitudes and actions of some person they know today, not some event that took place thousands of years ago. These living experiences communicate the concept of love with a reality that goes beyond textbook definitions, rational formulas, secondhand experience, or lists of things to do or not to do. Love is something that must be experienced because it includes feelings that cannot be expressed in a cold dictionary definition.

The life of the prophet Hosea is special because people can identify with him and sense the joy and frustration of this living illustration of God’s love. His tender and devastating experiences with his wife, Gomer, explicate the ins and outs of love in a more real way than a thousand definitions. He, like God, irrationally loved someone who was not very lovely (lit., “a woman of prostitution,” Hos. 1:2), stayed committed to that love relationship in spite of great unfaithfulness by his covenant partner, and out of deep love forgave and took back a lover who betrayed him (3:1–3).^[3]