Hosea 1 Footnotes

1:2 The Lord ordered Hosea to marry “a woman of promiscuity,” but the exact nature of the command and how Hosea carried it out are not entirely clear. There are four common interpretations. (1) The marriage never took place; Hosea’s experience should be interpreted either allegorically or as part of the vision itself. (2) Gomer was guilty only of religious infidelity; she was not literally a prostitute. (3) Gomer was a prostitute or at least sexually experienced at the time Hosea married her. (4) Gomer was pure at the time of the marriage and only later became unfaithful to her husband.

The first two views would not involve any immoral action on Hosea’s part, but they are difficult to reconcile with a literal interpretation of the text. The third view would raise some problems for Hosea as a committed follower of God’s ways. First, God had commanded that a priest should not marry a prostitute (Lv 21:1-15). Second, God had high expectations of purity for the marriage covenant (Gn 24:16; Ac 15:19-20; Heb 13:4).

The fourth view is commonly held among evangelical scholars. It allows for a literal understanding of the marriage and the children while at the same time avoiding any moral difficulties. The most important support is provided by Hosea’s description of the time when the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt as a season of bliss (Hs 2:14-15). Israel’s initial purity at the exodus from Egypt required that Hosea’s wife was also pure at the start of the marriage. In this view “a woman of promiscuity” means a wife who would prove unfaithful to Hosea after she married him, because she had a predisposition to adultery.