Hosea 1:2 - Meaning and Application

The words, “the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,” can point in two directions. They may refer to the group of prophets raised up around this time, including Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah, Obadiah, and Isaiah. Hosea was the first of them to warn that Israel would be destroyed, so the beginning of this warning came through him.

Or the phrase may mean Hosea’s own messages. This was the first message God gave him to deliver to this people, to tell them they were an evil, unfaithful generation. Hosea might have wished to start with a softer word until he had earned their trust and respect. But no, he had to begin here, so they would know what to expect from a prophet of the Lord.

He also had to write it down and leave it as a witness against them. In this opening message, the prophet was to hold up their sin like a mirror and show how sinful and hateful it was. God told him to take a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms (Hosea 1:2), and he did so (Hosea 1:3). He married a woman of bad reputation, Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. She was not a divorced woman guilty of adultery, for that would have brought death under the law, but a woman who had lived shamefully while unmarried.

In itself, such a marriage was not morally good, decent, or wise. It was the kind of thing forbidden to priests, and if done apart from God’s command, it would have been a grief to the prophet. Yet when God commanded it for a holy purpose, it was no sin, and Hosea had to trust God with his reputation. Many commentators think the whole thing happened in a vision, or that it was a parable. That kind of teaching was common among the prophets, who often spoke of others by speaking of themselves in a figure.

God said Hosea must take such a wife and have children by her, children whom everyone would likely suspect of being illegitimate, even if born in marriage. This was because people who have lived badly before marriage often live no better after marriage. In this, God was saying, “Hosea, this people is to me what such a wife and children would be to you, a deep shame and grief. The land has committed great whoredoms.”

Here the Lord especially means idolatry, which is spiritual unfaithfulness. In every kind of wickedness they had turned away from the Lord, but idolatry was their chief sin. Giving to any creature the honor that belongs to God alone is as offensive to him as a wife giving herself to a stranger instead of her husband. It is especially serious in people who have professed religion and entered into covenant with God. It breaks the marriage bond, and it is one of the most hateful sins because it weakens the mind and steals the heart.

The land has committed whoredom, meaning this was not just a few people’s sin. The whole nation was polluted by it, and the disease had spread everywhere. How painful it would be for a holy prophet to have an unfaithful wife and children like her. His patience would be tested, and if she kept on in that way, he could only send her away. So how much more offensive must it be to the holy God to have a people like this, called by his name and given a place in his house? His patience with them is great, and his right to cast them off is just.

The names themselves also carried a message. Gomer probably was, at that time, a known harlot. Israel was like Gomer the daughter of Diblaim. Gomer means corruption, and Diblaim means two cakes or lumps of figs. That picture suggests that Israel was near ruin, and that their comfort-seeking and sensual living were helping bring it on. They were like bad figs that could not be eaten because they were so bad. Sin often grows out of plenty, and destruction grows out of the abuse of plenty.

Some take the command this way: if Hosea were to look for an honest and modest woman, he would not find one, because the whole land was given over to whoredom, which often goes with idolatry. In either case, the point is clear. God was showing the prophet, and through him the people, how deeply the nation had fallen.

The prophet was also to show them their ruin, as if through a perspective glass, by the names given to the children born of this unfaithful woman. As lust, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, so sin, when it is finished, gives birth to death. The first child, a son, was to be called Jezreel (Hosea 1:4). Isaiah also gave prophetic names to his children (Isaiah 7:3), and Hosea does the same here.

Jezreel can mean “the seed of God,” which is what they should have been. But it can also mean “scattered by God,” which is what they would become, like sheep on the mountains without a shepherd. They must no longer be called Israel, which means ruling with God, because they had lost the honor of that name. Instead, they must be called Jezreel, for those who turn from the Lord will wander without rest. They had been scattered like seed; now they would be scattered like chaff.

Jezreel was also the name of a royal city of Israel, set in a pleasant valley. The child’s name pointed to that city and to a coming judgment. “Yet a little while,” God says, “and I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel.” The present king, Jeroboam, was descended from Jehu, and Jehu’s house would suffer for Jehu’s own sins. God often keeps a man’s guilt in store and visits it on his children. This judgment could mean the downfall of Jehu’s royal line, which ended quickly, or the later end of the whole kingdom, which continued in corruption until Hoshea’s reign, about seventy years later. With God, even that is only a little while.

Note that neither the splendor of kings nor the power of kingdoms can keep them safe from God’s destroying judgments if they keep rebelling against him.

The next question is the reason for this lawsuit: “I will punish the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu.” This points to the blood Jehu, one of Israel’s kings, shed at Jezreel, when he destroyed Ahab’s family and all who were tied to it, including the worshipers of Baal, under God’s command. God approved of that work, saying, “You have done well” in carrying out what was right in his eyes (2 Kings 10:30). Yet here God says he will punish that bloodshed when the promise about Jehu’s family rule has run out, even to the fourth generation.

How can the same act be both rewarded and punished? Very fairly. The act itself was good, because it carried out a righteous sentence on Ahab’s house, and so it was rewarded. But Jehu did it in the wrong spirit. He wanted his own rise, not God’s glory, and he mixed his private anger with God’s justice. He showed hatred for sinners, but not a hatred for sin, because he kept the worship of the golden calves and did not carefully walk in God’s law (2 Kings 10:31).

So when his house had filled up its guilt, God began to settle accounts, and the first charge was the blood of Ahab’s house, here called the blood of Jezreel. In the same way, when Baasha’s house was cut off, it was because he acted like Jeroboam’s house and killed him (1 Kings 16:7). Those who are given authority to carry out justice must make sure they do it from the right heart and for the right purpose. They must also avoid the sins they punish in others, or else their just actions may one day be counted as little better than murder.

This judgment would not stop at correction. It would end in destruction. Some understand the words “I will visit” or “I will punish” the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu to mean that God would repeat that bloodshed against them, because Jehu did not learn from the punishment of earlier sinners, but followed their idolatry. After Jehu’s house was destroyed, God would also make the kingdom of Israel come to an end. He would begin to bring it down, even though it seemed strong at the time.

After the death of Zechariah, the last king from Jehu’s line, the ten tribes’ kingdom steadily declined and weakened. To finish that ruin, God says, “I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel” (Hosea 1:5). The bow stands for the strength of Israel’s soldiers, and the Chaldee understands it that way. If the bow keeps its strength and is used again and again, it shows growing power. If it is broken, that shows a power that is falling apart. The bow would be broken in the valley of Jezreel, where, likely, their armory was, or where a battle had already greatly weakened the kingdom.

There is no safe defense against God’s controversy. When he rises against a people, their strongest bows are soon broken and their strongholds fall. In the valley of Jezreel they had shed the blood that the righteous God would avenge in that very place. It is like how notorious criminals are sometimes executed right where their crime was committed, so the punishment fits the sin.

Next, God foretells his abandoning the whole nation in the name he gives to the second child. This child was a daughter, while the first was a son, showing that both sons and daughters had gone astray. Some say this also suggests that Israel had become weak and soft, and so was made feeble. Her name was Lo-ruhamah, meaning “not loved” or “not shown mercy” (Romans 9:25; 1 Peter 2:10). The meaning is the same either way. It states the doom of the house of Israel: “I will no longer have mercy on them.”

This does not mean God had not been merciful before. He had shown them great mercy, but they abused his kindness and lost it. Now he would show them mercy no more. Those who turn away from their own mercy and chase empty idols have reason to fear that mercy will turn away from them too, leaving them to those idols (Jonah 2:8). Sin turns away God’s mercy even from Israel, his own professing people, and that is a terrible condition when God says he will no longer have mercy.

The line continues: “I will utterly take them away,” or “I will utterly pluck them up.” The picture is of complete removal. When the streams of mercy are stopped, nothing remains but the open bowls of wrath. Those on whom God will no longer have mercy will be taken away as worthless refuse.

The word for “take away” can also mean “forgive sin,” and some read it that way here: I will no longer have mercy on them, even though I have forgiven them before. God has been patient for a long time, but he will not always bear with a people who hate reform. It can also mean, “I will no longer have mercy on them so as to pardon them at all.” If pardoning mercy is refused, no other mercy can be expected, because forgiveness opens the door to every other blessing.

Some take this as a word of hope: “I will no longer have mercy on them until I pardon them,” that is, until the Redeemer comes to Zion and turns ungodliness away from Jacob. The Chaldee reads it this way: if they repent, then in pardoning I will pardon them. Even the greatest sinners, if they come to their senses in time and turn back, will find that there is forgiveness with God.

He must also show them what mercy God had prepared for the house of Judah, at the same time he was dealing with the house of Israel (Hosea 1:7): “But I will have mercy on the house of Judah.” Though some are rightly cast off because of disobedience, God always preserves a remnant for himself, people who will display his mercy and stand as living signs of it. Even when divine justice is shown in some, free grace is shown in others. And though some are broken off because of unbelief, God will still have a church in the world until the end of time.

This makes Israel’s rejection even worse, because God will show mercy to Judah and not to them. At the same time, it makes God’s mercy to Judah more glorious, because Judah also did evil, yet God did not reject them as he rejected Israel. “I will have mercy on them and save them.” Our salvation rests completely on God’s mercy, not on any merit in us.

This clearly refers to the outward deliverances God gave Judah in a special way, the blessings shown to them and not to Israel.

When the Assyrian army destroyed Samaria and carried the ten tribes into captivity, it next came against Jerusalem. But God showed mercy to the house of Judah and saved them by the great slaughter the angel made in one night in the Assyrian camp. In that way, the Lord their God saved them at once, not by sword or bow.

While the ten tribes remained in captivity and their land was taken over by others, God had mercy on Judah. After seventy years, he brought them back, not by human strength or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6). “I will save them by the Lord their God” means, in effect, “I will save them by myself.” God will be honored in his own strength, taking the work into his own hands. Salvation is sure when he is the one who begins it, because if he acts, no one can stop him.

This kind of salvation is also the most pleasing, because it comes from him alone. “The Lord alone did lead him” means that the less man contributes to salvation, and the more God does, the brighter it shines and the sweeter it is. “I will save them in the word of the Lord,” as the Chaldee renders it, points to Christ, the eternal Word, and to the power that comes through him.

“I will save them not by bow or by sword” means several things. First, they would be saved when they were brought so low that they had no bow or sword left to defend themselves with (Judges 5:8; 1 Samuel 13:22). Second, they would be saved when they stopped trusting in their own strength and weapons of war (Psalm 44:6). Third, they would be saved easily, without the trouble of battle, as Hosea 1:7 and Isaiah 9:5 show.

In calling him “their God,” the Lord reminds the ten tribes that they had rejected him as theirs, and for that reason he had cast them off. At the same time, he shows the true reason he showed special mercy to Judah and saved them. It was because of his covenant with them as the Lord their God, and also because they stayed faithful to him and to his word and worship.

This promise may also point to Judah’s rescue from idolatry, which prepared them for every other rescue. That too was a salvation from the Lord their God, worked only by the power of his grace and never by sword or bow. When the kingdom of Israel was completely taken away under Hoshea, king of Israel, the kingdom of Judah was beautifully reformed under Hezekiah and therefore preserved. In Babylon, God first saved them from idolatry and then from captivity.

Some also understand this promise as looking ahead to the great salvation that would come in the fullness of time through the Lord our God, Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save his people from their sins.