Hosea is asked: to do the unimaginable.

by Alejandro Roque Glez.

“Then said the Lord to me: Go yet, love a woman… yet an adulterous… Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek Yahweh their God and David their king; and shall fear the Lord Yahweh and his goodness in the latter days.”

(Hosea 2:14-23; 3:1-5)

Hosea is the first to top the list of the Minor Prophets in the Old Testament, in the canon of our Bibles. His name means Salvation, amid a time when Israel, already divided into Northern Kingdom and the Kingdom of Judah (South), sank into abominations copied from the people which they had been mixed. The point of their great departure and against the divine laws originated as a consequence of Jeroboam’s rebellion, the first king of the north, who stepped aside dividing the kingdom––two centuries before––when the son of Solomon, Rehoboam, refused to soften the yoke of his late father once he reached the throne; and pushing them ever since to an ominous spiritual race, accepting as their own false idolatries and superstitions as much as they were appearing in their ways.

The prophet Hosea exercised his ministry approximately between 760-720 BC, and even though in Christian churches they do not talk much about him, we will discuss here some of his predictions.

First we must understand that it were running the last thirty-forty years before God decided he could not deal anymore with the Northern Kingdom of Israel between injustices and impieties being committed every day without hesitation or any consideration; thus leaving the Assyrian Empire to eventually devastate and sweep them. It is in this atmosphere where it had developed the ministry of prophet Hosea.

Here then––and this is why more than anything he has not been often cited in Christian churches––is when God tells him to conjugally join an adulterous woman (3:1-3). Imagine the prophet when he heard the same God who rejects adultery, who tells him that he should be contaminated and choose a woman recognized as disloyal and unfaithful; that is, adulterous. Surely it took time convincing, when the most conservative (probably a small group that emigrated later to the Kingdom of Judah), had seen the man of God involving himself with the indecency of such society; but it happened that Yahweh already did not expect for the people to listen anything; using as a sign––and making here an exception––his own prophet and bearer of the judgment approaching them.

By joining an adulterous woman God showed him––with an unequivocal and visible fact––that Israel was an adulterous nation, and leaving behind the Word of God, they had given themselves to their own indecencies and therefore they would be purged at the hands of the most cruel and arrogants of the time: the Assyrian soldiers. That is why the prophet foretells: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you shall be no priest to me: seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children” (4:6).

Was it inconceivable that God commanded the prophet to love a whore, disloyal and treacherous one? I do not think so; it was actually the real image of the Northern Kingdom.

I do not argue with God, or try to hide the bitter things found in the Holy Scriptures to just show a pleasant story. There we see the reality confronted by humans, in the same way as in its annals there are not hidden the sins of a great king as it was David. The Word of God is not a book of political essays like the ones published today, where all individuals are wrapped in cellophane paper and displayed as nice as saints. No; God wants man to understand that sin consumes them bringing in physical and spiritual death; and he uses the means deemed necessary, because he is sovereign, omniscient, and knows what the future holds, and the worst consequences of not helping us so that we could understand.

The prophet fulfilled the instructions and did as Yahweh God commanded him, and perhaps his message did restrain some who later moved to the south, and thereby helping the Kingdom of Judea to not imminently suffer the same disastrous consequences. Once the woman joins the prophet he clearly tells her that she will never again be intimating with another man, but with him alone the day after he shall return to her. The prophet Hosea––here representing God––assures about he would not cheat on her. This showed Israel that God had loved them and formed as a nation, and once converted into adulterous, spiritually repugnant, God would shake ‘her’ and not falling in love with them as a nation, but only after a long period of time. This is where the prophet suddenly looks into the End Times and promises them that––even so adulterous––he will forgive ‘her’ one day and again walk together under the law and love of the Almighty God, for the benefit and prosperity of their children from generation to generation ahead.

Hosea first reveals salvation to his people from all the earth thanks to the future resurrection of the Messiah of God when he prophesies: “After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord Yahweh: his going forth is prepared as the morning… I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I will be your destruction” (6:1-2, 13:14).

That time, very close today, which the prophet Hosea foretold, is that when Jesus Christ comes in his glory with all his saints (1 Thess 3:13) and establishes his Millenarian Kingdom, making justice and peace reign in the planet saying: “I will abolish the bow and the sword and the battle from the earth, and will make them to lie down safely” (2:18). The Son of God will join––forgetting the nation’s adultery––in loving eternal marriage (2:19); in a wedding which will bring everlasting righteousness (Rev 19:7-9); and in right judgment, mercy and unlimited faith toward our God and Holy Father (2:20).

That time which is approaching––after being preceded by a big storm––will bring great prosperity to our planet, and the earth will be blessed from heavens, reason why it will produce overflowing fruits, which will benefit all inhabitants (2:21-22); forever banishing hunger and diseases. From Jerusalem the land of Israel will be the center of world government (Mt 19:28), and “his branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon… they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine” (14:5-7).

(If you are interested in reading a literary narrative where the promise of God is recreated, you can get the author's book entitled 'The King Victorino').

[These and other Old Testament prophecies are explicatively compiled in the author's book entitled: 'Minor Prophets of the Old Testament;' in print and digital editions]

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