Bible Questions and Answers

 Thank you for asking a question on This is your Bible.

 Several prophets were required by God to act out parables in their lives.

In seeing them doing that which was out of the ordinary their contemporaries would ask why (as you are doing) and the message was made more memorable.

Hosea 1:2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.

The answer to your question is given in this verse.

Israel whose maker was their husband(Isaiah 54:5) had committed spiritual adultery by worshipping idols.

So Hosea was to take a wife who was a whore to forcibly bring home Israel’s situation with their God.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel make the same point.

Jeremiah 3:20 Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.

Ezekiel 16:32 But as a wife that committeth adultery, which taketh strangers instead of her husband! (Read the whole chapter).

Israel broke the marriage covenant and God divorced her.

Isaiah 50:1 Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.

Under the Law of Moses a divorced wife could not return to her husband.

But God intends to take Israel back.

Hosea 2:7 And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.

Jeremiah 3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD. (Read the whole chapter).

In that day God will make a new covenant with Israel.

Jeremiah 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Hosea’s children would be named as signs for Israel.

Romans 9:25 As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.

26 And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.

For a comprehensive commentary on Hosea go here:

http://christadelphianbooks.org/agora/comm/28_hos/index.html

I hope this helps.

Glenn Smith