Week 30 Hosea
The story about Gomer & Hosea getting married is pretty absorbing because the whole idea seems so weird – the Lord told Hosea to marry a sex worker. There’s a couple of ways to look at this: a) maybe the Lord told Hosea to marry a girl who wasn’t a sex worker but started having sexual intercourse with guys; or b) maybe she was a sex worker when Hosea married her. It’s hard to know for sure.
But the Lord spells out the point right away: go and marry a prostitute, so some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, openly committing adultery against the Lord by worshipping other gods. So there it is – the sexual treachery is a picture of a bigger infidelity.
Hosea & Gomer would have mostly been just a point of lurid neighbourhood gossip. Only a perceptive person would understand that Gomer’s faithlessness was a tip-off that Israel was cheating on the Lord.
I’ve read the story before and figured that Hosea did what he was told because he was told. Not willingly; not happily; maybe like Jonah going to Nineveh – either the dogs in Nineveh or a big fish in the Mediterranean.
Now I’m not so sure. Maybe Hosea really & truly loved Gomer. Maybe it broke his heart when she started sleeping around. Which might be the point the Lord’s making.
Note: quote from Hosea 1:2 (NLT).