Hosea 2 Footnotes

2:2 By contemporary Western standards the rough language of vv. 2-7 might seem abusive, casting the prophet, as the Lord’s spokesman, in an unfavorable light. However, Hosea’s marriage was a prophetic dramatization of the Lord’s relationship with Israel, and the language of this section reflects that relationship, not the prophet’s domestic situation. The Lord spoke with the voice of a husband whose wife has been consorting with other men. Whether Hosea ever said anything like this to his own wife and children is impossible to determine. That Hosea did not physically abuse Gomer seems clear from the fact that he later rescued her from the abuse of her lovers (3:1-2). Hosea’s description concerned Israel’s violation of her covenant with the Lord.

Adultery and prostitution were serious violations of God’s law and were treated as such by the judicial system. The penalty for adultery was death for both the offending woman and the man (Lv 20:10). Therefore, it would be an act of grace on Hosea’s part to receive Gomer back as his wife (Hs 3:2-3), and in the same way the Lord would mercifully receive Israel because of his hesed (2:19), his “love” or faithfulness to the covenant.

2:3 The sufferings that Israel would have to endure were punishment for sin, and the Lord’s warning was intended to turn Israel back to him. When the Lord said “I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day of her birth,” he was referring to the Assyrians who would destroy the land and exile its inhabitants before not many years had passed. Israel would be “exposed” to all that the enemy would want to do to her with no protection from the Lord. She might think that her prosperity had come from other gods, but it was the Lord who had supplied her abundance (vv. 8-9).

2:4 The Lord not only directed Hosea to marry “a woman of promiscuity,” but he also told him to acquire “children of promiscuity.” Characterizing the children this way, in effect as “bastards,” seems unfair to them since they had no say in the circumstances of their birth. But vv. 8-13 make it clear that the speaker here is the Lord, not the prophet speaking about his personal family situation. The language of the passage moves beyond the literal circumstances to a metaphorical application. Additionally, it is not clear whether all the children were Hosea’s. The text indicates that Jezreel was Hosea’s child (1:3), but the text is more ambiguous about the others. They were called “children of promiscuity” not because of anything they did but because of the character and behavior of their mother (vv. 4-5). The children of the unfaithful wife, Israel, were thereby children of Israel’s false gods, not children of the Lord.