In interpreting God's relationship with Israel in terms of a marriage relationship, Hosea presents his message in a very daring and even shocking way. From Hosea's book a picture emerges of the strength of the religious syncretism that had continued to flourish in Israel. Jehu's attempt in the previous century to destroy the worship of the Phoenician Baal had been superficially successful, but the roots of Baal worship had not been destroyed and many practices of Baalism had been accepted into the worship offered to Israel's God. Yet Hosea uses language and imagery to describe God's relationship with Israel which could have been used in describing the relationship of Baal with his worshippers, particularly with reference to Baal as the god of the powers of fertility. Only by doing this could Hosea hope to shock Israel into understanding how perverted and wrong her worship of Yahweh had become, and how broken her relationship with him. Yahweh, not Baal, met all her needs (2:8). Yahweh was Israel's husband, not Baal (2:16). Israel was Yahweh's wife, not the wife of Baal (2:19). Yahweh was Israel's lover, who must take her back into the desert (i.e. into exile, away from Baal) where he would win her back with words of love (2: 14).

Against this idea of Yahweh as the husband of Israel, his wife, we look at what is one of the most spectacular prophetic actions, the marriage of Hosea.

Hosea 1: 2. The prophet is commanded to marry a woman about whom he is told that she will be unfaithful to him. The children of the marriage will follow their mother's unfaithfulness. Hosea's marriage symbolizes what has happened between God and Israel. What follows in chapters 2 and 3 suggests that Hosea's wife, Gomer, became involved in the cult prostitution and fertility rites of Baal worship.

It has been asked whether the prophet could be commanded by God to enter into a marriage which would break up because of unfaithfulness, but anything less disastrous would not reflect Israel's real state. Hosea suffered intensely because of what followed in his marriage, and his human suffering reflected the divine sorrow of God.

1: 3-5. The first child of Hosea and Gomer was given a symbolic name at the command of God. Jezreel was the name of a small town thirty kilometres to the north-east of Samaria, and the name was also given to the whole fertile valley in which the town was located. At Jezreel, Naboth had been killed (1 Kings 21) and later, Ahab's family had been destroyed by Jehu (2 Kings 9, 10). The name of Jezreel was therefore associated with bloodshed and violent deeds on which God's judgement would come. The name meant 'God sows'. Jezreel therefore symbolized the coming judgement of God on the sinful violence of Israel's rulers. Zechariah, son of Jeroboam II, was the last king of the dynasty of Jehu and he met a violent death in the year he succeeded his father. Verse 4 is a prophecy of this and verse 5 can be understood as meaning that Zechariah's death will mark the beginning of Israel’s decline.

1:6. The second child was given the symbolic name 'Unloved', to signify the alienation of Israel from their God. The RSV Bible translation is 'Not Pitied’.

1:8-9. The third child was given the symbolic name 'Not-My-People' which shows the completeness of the people's rejection of their relation-ship to God and the terms of the covenant.

In the three symbolic names of the children we see a progression in Israel's rejection of the covenant relationship. J ezreel represents the turning away from God that was seen in the rulers, 'Unloved' stands for the alienation of the people from God, and 'Not-My-People' represents the point of their complete rejection of God. In the names of Hosea's children there is 'acted preaching'. Verse 7 is an oracle about Judah, not Israel, and is out of place in the account of Hosea's marriage.

1: 10-2: 1. In contrast to the statement of the rejection of God by Israel which has been shown in the names of the three children, these words speak of a dramatic change. The day is coming when the Israelites will be reunited and restored to be the true people of God. The name Jezreel will stand for growth and prosperity. The names 'God's People' and 'Loved-by-the-Lord' will be used (in contrast to 'Not-My-People' and 'Unloved').

This sharp change from rejection and judgement to acceptance and salvation is characteristic of the book of Hosea. The aim of the prophet's preaching was to call his people back to repentance by every means open to him. God still calls his erring people to come back to him and be restored to the blessing and joy of a loving relationship with him. But this restoration of loving fellowship is not to be separated from the destruction of the sin which prevents this fellowship. Without the destruction of sin there cannot be a restoration of loving fellowship. Hosea sees most clearly how very serious Israel's sin is, and he knows that it must be judged and destroyed, but he still hopes, because of his understanding of God's loving kindness, that after the judgement and destruction, a new relationship between a cleansed and forgiven Israel and their loving God will be possible. His prophetic task has two approaches; he must present Israel with an absolutely honest assessment of the seriousness of their sin and separation from God (which he does through the acted preaching of his marriage and the naming of his children after their birth), but he must also hold out hope to them of the possibility of being cleansed from that sin and restored to a loving relationship with their God.

Chapters 2 and 3 help us to understand these two approaches in the preaching of Hosea.

2:2-13. In this section, the words of the prophet speak simultaneously of his wife and of Israel. The prophet speaks for himself and for God, at the same time. Disloyalty to the covenant is compared to adultery. In verse 2, the plea to Gomer to leave the adultery and prostitution into which she has fallen is also a plea to Israel to leave syncretism and apostasy in the worship of Yahweh. In verse 3 the punishment that will fall on an unrepentant adulteress who is evicted from the house of her husband with nothing at all, represents what will happen to unrepentant Israel. In verses 4-5 Gomer's intentions to be a prostitute so that she would become prosperous reflect Israel's continued Baal-worship, intended to guarantee good crops and the fertility of the land and people.

In verses 6-7 the prophet's intentions to bring an end to Gomer's promiscuity represent God's intentions to bring an end to Israel's apostasy. The aim of the intended restriction is to make Gomer aware of the goodness of her true husband, and Israel aware of her true God.

In verse 8 the prophet affirms his generosity to his wife, in words which affirm the generosity of God to Israel. Yahweh alone upholds life because he is the sole creator and sustainer of the universe. The Baal-worship of Israel is totally useless and brings Israel nothing good in return. All the blessings Israel has known come from Yahweh alone.

In verses 8-13 the total loss of all these blessings is prophesied.

2: 14-17 shows the aim of removing all these blessings. In the bare desert, separated from all prosperity and blessing, the wife will learn again who her true lover is and husband. She will never again speak of the false lover. Applied to Israel, this represents a time for Israel when the people will find themselves with nothing, in exile, lacking everything that had made life good and pleasing before. In this state they will remember again the goodness of their God and understand his true love for them. There will be a restoration of the loving relationship with God which they first knew in the wilderness when they were brought out of Egypt. The name of the false god Baal will never be spoken again.

2: 18-23 describes the restoration of the loving relationship with the blessings and joy it will bring.

3: 1-3 describes, in the first person as compared to the third person narrative in chapter 1, how the prophet was commanded by God to restore the adulteress to be his honourable wife. The cost was a very high one. In material terms, the prophet had to buy Gomer back from the master who then owned her. In spiritual terms the cost was also very high; Hosea had to show true loving kindness to her and hold nothing against her. Gomer was given a long period of time in which to prove that she could live honourably again before she was acknowledged as the prophet's wife.

3: 4-5 applies the prophet's action to Israel, and relates the period in which Gomer has to prove that she can wait honourably for her husband, to the period of exile which Israel must accept. It will be a period of purification, but when it ends, Israel will be the restored people of God ruled over by a descendant of David.

In trying to understand the meaning of Hosea's marriage and family life, as it is set out in chapters 1 to 3, we should see the whole episode as an extended prophetic action through which Hosea presents his understanding of Israel's sin, her broken relationship with God, and the relationship which God desires her to have with him. Although the theme does not recur again in the book of Hosea, the understanding of Israel and her relationship with God which Hosea expresses through his marriage and family life, continues in the rest of the book. Hosea's condemnation of Israel's sin and apostasy is the subject of many oracles. Covenant loyalty involved all areas of Israel's life-social, economic and political, as well as religious.