Hosea (“[the Lord] is salvation”)

Take for yourself a wife of prostitution

In the present post we start to read the Book of the Twelve Prophets. The first of them is Hosea; he operates in the northern kingdom (Israel) in the VIII century BC. «The word of the LORD that came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel» (Hos 1,1). This prophet is well-known for his troubled matrimonial story, that the Lord uses as a symbol of His Covenant with the people. It is so paradigmatic to substitute the moment of his call: there are no visions (do you remember Isaiah and Ezekiel?), nor particular words (do you remember Jeremiah?) to qualify the beginning of Hosea’s ministry. As other prophets and more than them, his very life becomes an announcement. «When the LORD spoke at the first by Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery, forsaking the LORD.” So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bore him a son. The LORD said to him, “Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and will cause the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. It will happen in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.”» (Hos 1,2-5). Jehu was a captain of the army who exterminated the royal family of the time in Jezreel to get the throne (see 2Kgs 9-10). «She conceived again, and bore a daughter. Then he said to him, “Call her name Lo-Ruhamah [Not Loved]; for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, that I should in any way pardon them […].” Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived, and bore a son. He said, “Call his name Lo-Ammi [Not My People]; for you are not my people, and I will not be yours”» (Hos 1,6-9).
Here is in detail the rîb (see Jeremiah - episode 2), that the Lord institutes against His people (Hos 2,4-25): «Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked, and make her bare as in the day that she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and kill her with thirst. Indeed, on her children I will have no mercy; for they are children of unfaithfulness; For their mother has played the prostitute. She who conceived them has done shamefully; for she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’». The Lord says it: if the people-wife will not desist from her prostitution, He will repudiate her as they did in that time with the adulteresses (double symbol: the people is like a woman who is made bare in sign of shame and it is like the land that is made bare of all its fruits). The unfaithful people-wife wrongly believes that those fruits are from her «lovers»: the baals, the Canaanites gods of fertility and of the season cycle. The Lord, as a jealous husband, intervenes with the first punishment: «Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, that she can’t find her way. She will follow after her lovers, but she won’t overtake them; and she will seek them, but won’t find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.’ For she did not know that I gave her the grain, the new wine, and the oil, and multiplied to her silver and gold, which they used for Baal». The Lord intervenes for the second time, taking back the gifts that His people uses for the idols: «Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my new wine in its season, and will pluck away my wool and my flax which should have covered her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will deliver her out of my hand. I will also cause all her celebrations to cease: her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies. I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, about which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me; and I will make them a forest,’ and the animals of the field shall eat them. I will visit on her the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense, when she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgot me,” says the LORD». The third «therefore» marks an unexpected turning point; instead of heavier punishments there is the free mercy of God, who tries to renew the relationship with Israel in a new beginning. The «wilderness» is the place where for the first time the Covenant between the Lord and the people (by Moses mediation) was established. «“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.



I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor [desolation] for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. It will be in that day,” says the LORD, “that you will call me ‘my husband,’ and no longer call me ‘my master.’ For I will take away the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and they will no longer be mentioned by name». The renewal of the Covenant of peace between the Lord and the people will even bring peace between the whole creation and mankind, similar to the condition they had before the first sin (Gen 3). «In that day I will make a covenant for them with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground. I will break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land, and will make them lie down safely». The Hebrew verb that describes the new marriage is, surprisingly, the same that it was used to appoint the first marriage of a virgin woman. The Lord gives the people-prostitute her former purity; she now can “know” the Lord who she previously “forgot”. «I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD». The names of Hosea’s children are cited in positive. Jezreel means “God sows”: now between him and the fruits of the land are no more present the baals, but only the Lord; furthermore, “Not Loved” will have mercy and “Not My People” will become “My People”. The oracle ends with the typical Covenant wording, in which the Lord acknowledges “His people” and the people “his God”. «It will happen in that day, I will respond,” says the LORD, “I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth; and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine, and the oil; and they will respond to Jezreel. I will sow her to me in the earth; and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, ‘You are my people;’ and they will say, ‘My God!’”».
I leave to your personal reading the remaining chapters of the Book; in the next post we will write about Prophet Joel and Prophet Amos.