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Hosea’s Slutty Wife
Hosea 1-3
I’ve titled today’s message, “Hosea’s Slutty Wife.” To some of you, that may sound scandalous—inappropriate language for a church setting, improper for a pastor to say. But desperate times call for desperate measures. We have a tendency to whitewash the blatant reality of what the Bible speaks of, sometimes in our desire to be “proper” in church circles. But in doing so, we miss the shock value of what God is trying to say to us. Today, in the age when R-Rated movies easily entering our living rooms via cable or the video store, the Bible may seem quaint and even a little too prim and proper. But God breaks through, if we have ears to hear, to shock us—to wake us up!
Imagine the impropriety of hearing this story for the first time, some 2700 years ago. Imagine that you are an ancient Israelite, and you hear the opening lines of Hosea:
The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel:
When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” (Hosea 1:1-2)
The Hebrew word there describing Gomer would have made most good and proper Israelites make a double-take! For God did not pull any punches in identifying the kind of woman that Hosea was to marry!
She was an “ish-shet zenunim”—a woman of fornications, or in our language, a loose woman, having “done it” illicitly many times over, a slut. The Hebrew word is that ugly. There is no doubting what it means. She’s slept around, by her own choice, for her own pleasure, and with disregard for the consequences. For the next phrase is just as shocking: She has had “yaldi zenunim”—children of fornication, children of her sluttiness. Or as other translations put it: “take a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry” (NASB), “a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredom” (KJV). This is not a pretty picture. This is not a woman who has fallen on hard times and must sell her body to get by. This is not a woman we should try to feel sorry for. She has chosen her life—she wants to be what she is. She feels that she can find satisfaction in life with many lovers, and these lovers treat her well, showering her with gifts. She thinks she has figured the way to happiness. But God’s assessment of her is this: She is an
“ish-shet zenunim.” And no matter how beautiful she may be in her appearance, what she really is on the inside is quite ugly.
And the most amazing thing is this: God’s word comes to the prophet Hosea, and the word is not what we would expect God to say concerning such a woman. No, it is radically different. “Go, take to yourself wife of fornications and children of fornications, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.”
What? You’ve got to be kidding? Hosea must have thought. I am God’s prophet! I must not even associate with such impurity and filth!
But God is trying to make a point to His people through Hosea. God is going to show His heart through the drama that is about to unfold. He says, “Do this…“because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.”
Take a moment and ponder that! All throughout the Bible, God insists that He alone is the great source of satisfaction and pleasure in life. When you make God your “husband,” so to speak, you look to him for your comfort, your needs, your joy, your pleasure. You make him your lover, for you love Him above all else.
What does God feel like when his beloved people turn away from him? Instead of loving him and trusting him, they try to manipulate life on their own, they go after other things for their satisfaction in life, their joy, their pleasure—how does that make God feel? That is what this story reveals. It is God’s heart on display. And it shows what God will do in this situation. As we watch the story of Hosea and Gomer unfold, we begin to understand the lengths to which God will go to bring the people he loves back into relationship with Him.
So, the obedient Hosea marries Gomer, a woman of ill-repute, a woman who sleeps around so much she has kids from several different daddies, a woman who has fallen so far into her desires that she cannot even dream that a man like Hosea could enter her life and offer her a new life of upstanding purity.
The reason this story is in the Bible is this: This is the picture of God and His people. And what God has done for the sake of His people.
In this great drama, we watch a moving portrayal of what God has done for us. Hosea plays the part of God. Gomer plays the part of God’s People. And as we watch this drama unfold, we are asked in the depth of our hearts, as God’s New Testament People, are we
still playing the part of Gomer?
1. We are called to be God’s People—loved and firmly planted (Hosea 1:3-2:1)
So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 4Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”
6Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them. 7Yet I will show love to the house of Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God.”
8After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. 9Then the LORD said, “Call him Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.
(Hosea 1:3-9)
The names of these new children of Gomer tells the whole story of how far away from God the people had gone: “Jezreel” was known as the “Killing Fields,” it was associated with murder—for it was there that evil Israelite kings (like Ahab and Jehu after him) killed others for their own personal gain. To name your child Jezreel in Israel would be like naming your children “Auschwitz” in Germany.
The next child further describes the ugliness of the situation: “Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them.”
Ruhamah means “Loved;” but “Lo” means “NOT!” God is saying, I have called these people into a love relationship with me, but instead, they have not loved! Therefore, I will no longer show my love.
Does this sound strange? We have been taught that God is love and that his love is long-suffering, it “endures forever.” Yes, that is true. But there is something about this love that we must not forget: When we insist on our own way and persevere in our sin, the time comes when God’s love is no longer experienced as it once was. The daily mercies of the Lord can be withdrawn from us, and God will abandon us to our own folly so that when we get to the depths of our depravity, out of our sorrow we may turn back to him. That is what Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son teaches us (Luke 15:11-32). God will let us go our own way in sin, and the hardship that results is actually a form of His mercy! Discipline may be harsh, but it is for our own good.
Then a third child is born: “After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son.
Then the LORD said, “Call him Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”
This is perhaps the most telling of the names. For the very goal of God has been and will always be to have a people to be His own. He wants a people and He wants to be their God. But the child’s name is “Lo-Ammi,” which literally means “Not My People.”
Can you imagine what it must have been like when the children were called in from playing for dinner? “Killing Fields! Not Loved! Not My People! Time to Eat!” Every time these children’s names were spoken, God was communicating his heart about how sinful the nation of Israel had become. They had fallen very far from their lofty calling. God’s People must be marked by three things, according to Hosea 4:1. And these things were missing in the time of Hosea.
“Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: ‘There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.’”
(Hosea 4:1)
The People of God had lost the big three:
(1) Faithfulness—they are not living in daily trust in God. They talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. In other words, they know how to look like good followers of God, they know all the right things to say, but when push comes to shove, they really only trust in themselves. Their faith is really only in their own abilities to manipulate their lives. The age of Hosea was characterized this way by James Montgomery Boice:
“We might say, as Dickens did…it was ‘the best of times’ as well as ‘the worst of times.’…It was an age of luxurious materialism, apparent religious devotion and activity, freedom, and even an apparent national security in which politics, law, and religion all seemed to play into the favored people’s hands...it was also the worst of times, because the hearts of the people were empty, religion was shallow, and corruption was rampant on every hand. Law was manipulated to the advantage of the rich, and much if not most of the religious activity was merely show.”
That sounds awfully familiar to me, here in our 21st Century American Christianity.
The second mark of being the true people of God is…
(2) Love—but they are not living in covenant love with God. God showed hesed love to this small group of people, but they are not keeping up their end of the bargain. Love marks who God is! God is love! And God’s People, being the ones who represent God to the world (read that “re-present”), are not doing this.
(3) Knowledge of God—God says in 4:6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” This is a technical term for the knowledge that we gain when we learn who God is and what He has done for His people. This is taking the time to read and meditate on the God of the Word. He has revealed Himself to us, what He has done, what He is going to do, what He is doing now in our hearts if we yield to Him. But in Hosea’s day, as in ours, many people who call themselves the People of God are really just giving lip service to this, but in reality, they have not committed themselves in getting to know God!
2. When we fail to live up to our calling, God will do what He has to do in order to bring us back (Hosea 2:2-25)
In this section of Hosea, we read three stages of discipline that Gomer goes through—an indication of the three stages that God’s people Israel had to go through.
Stage One: She is deprived of access to what she credits for her well being.
She said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them. (Hosea 2:5b-7)
First, notice what Gomer calls these men—“my lovers.” These are not mere “tricks” for a prostitute, but more. They provide her with what she wants and needs, both materially (food, water, wool, linen, oil, drinks), but also emotionally—she has found what she believes fulfills her need for love!
We have a tendency (yes, even people who call themselves God’s People!) to seek after the most practical way to get what we need and want. And we even fall in love with the things of this world that give us what we think will give us happiness. We even make compromises along the way in order to get that which we really think is good. We may be tempted to take a shortcut at work that may not be exactly ethical, but it will accomplish what we feel God will want us to do. We may decide not to pay our full taxes so that (we tell ourselves) we can tithe more. We may manipulate a relationship so that we can get what we want. But our infatuation with what we want so much gets us to do these things!
And then we pat ourselves on the back—for we have figured out how to work the system.
But God is sovereign over all things. He can decide to block our paths so that we cannot manipulate our relationships like we used to.
Stage Two: She is deprived of the well-being itself.
Then she will say,
‘I will go back to my husband as at first,
for then I was better off than now.’
8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.
9 “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.
10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.
11 I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts.
12 I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.
13 I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,”
declares the LORD. (Hosea 2:7-13)
To add insult to injury, we think that all we need to do is tip our hat at God and say, “I know that you provide for me,” but not really, not in the depth of our hearts, truly believe that
“every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights” (as James 1:17 puts it). When we do not acknowledge that God is the great giver, and when we worship the things of this world more than the giver of those precious gifts, God may deprive us of those very gifts!
As John Piper wrote, “God will not be used as currency for the purchase of idols.” Christianity is not something to use in order to get what you want. Don’t call yourself a Christian if the reason you are a Christian is in order to find prosperity or health or freedom from troubles. God wants you to be one of His People, and that means that the only thing you want out of it is God Himself! Remember what the Bible is all about is this: God seeks a people to be
“My People” so that he can say “I am their God.”
The only reward that’s really worth it is if you gain God as your heavenly Father. Everything else is merely icing on the cake!
And that brings us to the third stage:
Stage Three: Her well-being is restored by the true source of the well-being!
14 “Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16 “In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
no longer will their names be invoked.
18 In that day I will make a covenant for them
with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the creatures that move along the ground.
Bow and sword and battle
I will abolish from the land,
so that all may lie down in safety.
19 I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD.
21 “In that day I will respond,”
declares the LORD—
“I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth;
22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and oil,
and they will respond to Jezreel.
23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’
I will say to those called ‘Not my people, ‘‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” (Hosea 2:14-23)
God says something that should really amaze us! He will take this slut, this whore, this adulterer, and he will woo her back to himself! The People of God has been loving other things more than God! But the scorned lover, instead of divorcing her, determines to win her back!
“In that day,” God says, “I will turn the word “Jezreel” from an ugly word connoting “the Killing Fields,” back to its
original meaning: “Firmly Planted,” for I will plant her in the land.
I will change her name from “Not my loved one,” to “Loved!” for I will change her heart toward me with my never-ending wooing of her.
The people who were once called “Not my people” will be called “You are my people!” And in that day, they will say, “You are my God!” God announces to the ancient Israelites that there is coming a day when things will all be changed!
When will that happen?
Well, we on this side of the first appearance of Christ know! Peter made it plain! Peter wrote to people who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, including both Jewish believers, and those who lived their entire lives as pagans! Look what he called Christians!
9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
(1 Peter 2:9-10)
How will that happen? That is what chapter 3 tells us!
3. In order to bring us back, God redeems us (Hosea 3:1-3)
1Then the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” 2So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” (Hosea 3:1-3 NAS)
Gomer has sunk very low at this stage of our drama. She now is actually owned by that which she sought for her comfort in life. She is enslaved by the very thing that she thought could bring her love and pleasure and comfort and sustenance!
Isn’t this the way for us all? We think we can go after other lovers instead of God: A new house, a new career, a new spouse; to close that big business deal, to get cosmetic surgery done, to drive the nicest car.
We far too easily place our trust in these things for our joy, our comfort, our satisfaction in life. But all they really do is enslave us. We become enslaved to the mortgage and the debt; we become enslaved to never quite having “enough;” we become enslaved to the
next big thing—the next big business deal, the next big shopping trip, our next boyfriend or girlfriend. Gomer has chosen her way—and in serving her lover instead of loving her husband, her lover has now become her master. Gomer is us—you and me.
We have sold ourselves into slavery—we love sin more than God; we love our own control and manipulation of our lives more than letting God be in control. Before we even realize it, we are caught in slavery—to our success, our looks, our materialism, our addictions, our need for escape through parties and vacations and purchases.
God sees this in us. He knows how easily we get enslaved to our desires. He is not going to sit there and let us suffer in our self-given enslavement to our sins. He is going to buy us out of slavery and bring us back to himself!
Here in Hosea 3, we are reading gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ—explained to the Israelites 700 years before the fact! Even when Gomer has proved herself
again and again to be unfaithful to her husband, Hosea goes after her and loves her! He
buys her from her lover at an exorbitant price! And he says to her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a whore any more or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.”
This is what we call “redemption.” It is a price paid to purchase somebody out of bondage.
God had Hosea do this for Gomer. We read Hosea’s words in verse 2: “So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley.” This is more than what the going rate was for a slave in those times. It was very costly to free Gomer.
God had Hosea do this so that we could look at this remarkable act and understand what Jesus Christ has done for us! Hosea represents God; Gomer represents sinners like you and me.
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
(Romans 5:8)
It is difficult to explain to people why Jesus died on the cross. It is somewhat of a mystery why God had to go about it that way. But this much is certain: The death of Jesus on the cross was the ultimate payment for you and me to be redeemed—to be bought out of slavery and brought back into relationship with God.
"For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers,
but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." (1 Peter 1:18-19)
And we also know that even though the prophecy of Hosea was written to the Israelites, the Jewish Messiah is not exclusively Jewish. What Jesus did in redemption was not exclusive but inclusive! It included even us Gentiles! All non-Jews who place their trust in the Jewish Christ are redeemed as well from our empty lives of slavery to sin!
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit." (Galatians
3:13-14)
Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, I urge you to place your faith in Christ Jesus TODAY! It is by faith, by
trusting in the redemption paid by Christ’s blood on the cross that you will receive the promise of being brought back into a deep relationship with God.
Your name will be changed from “Killing Fields” to “Firmly Planted.”
From “Not My People” to “My People.”
From “Not Loved” to “Loved!”
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