Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

From massive armies, murder, scandal, poetry, worshipping false gods and idols, betrayal, alliances and hypocrisy, Hosea has it all yet is one of those “fly-over” books at the end of the Old Testament that many people simply ignore as they conclude the major prophets and skip ahead to the Gospel of Matthew.

Hosea is a book that displays God’s love for His people and illustrates that love time and time again even when His people stray away and are unfaithful towards Him.

One of the things that Hosea does throughout this book is refer back to the Pentateuch (first 5 books of Bible) - scholars note that he does this for a couple of interesting reasons.

First, Hosea is a prophet to the northern nation (Israel or as he calls them, Ephraim).

As we know from Bible study, the northern kingdom was wicked and fell away from the law quickly.

Because of this, they were the first kingdom to fall into exile.

Hosea’s audience was a wicked and evil one that was primarily against Yahweh, God.

Even though the “Bible-belt” if you will was just a couple miles to the south, Israel was hostile towards Hosea and his message.

Many years had passed from the time of the Mosaic Covenant and Hosea’s day, because of this portions of the law were probably known by most of the Israelites however they lacked a lot of the specifics.

As one commentator put it, the familiarity of the Mosaic Covenant and the Israelites during Hosea’s time is similar to the familiarity of the Sermon on the Mount and the average American.

Most people can name a couple of phrases from Christ during His famous “Sermon on the Mount” sermon, however the average American cannot describe its contents accurately.

This is the situation that Hosea is ministering in.

He is calling these people to repent and come back to God, yet the people lack a good understanding of the law.

How can Hosea do this?

He does so by going to the common ground.

By referring to the things that were generally known by the people.

Hosea did not have to list all 613 Pentateuchal commandments to show the people that they had disobeyed the law, he could do so by simply focusing his time and message on the major violations - which is exactly what Hosea and many other prophets do.

Before diving into the text, I have to be honest here and say that this book is one of the most difficult for experts to understand.

There are a high proportion of textual “problems” in this book if you will and no Old Testament book comes close to matching it with the exception of Job.

The Hebrew in the book is extremely difficult to understand.

We also see that Hosea uses several striking images that can be difficult for us to fully understand thousands of years removed from his context.

What we will look at tonight is the call by God to Hosea to remarry his unfaithful wife, Gomer.

This is a very strange way to start out a book, but as we will see, Hosea is a strange but rich book full of theological truths.

Command to Marry Gomer

Command to Marry Gomer

There are 8 major interpretations of that warrant discussion as we begin our unpacking this text in order to be on the same page:

1. Chapters 1–3 are a parable or allegory with no historical basis.

Or the whole story is a vision and has no relationship to Hosea’s actual marriage and family life.

The latter, that it is a vision, was the view of Ibn Ezra and of Calvin.

One could equally well claim that it was a parable that Hosea devised in order to illustrate his message, as though he had said, “Now suppose I had a wife—we’ll call her Gomer—who did this to me …” or the like.

In this interpretation chaps. 1 and 3 are either variant versions of the same parable or two parts of one parable.

2. Gomer was Hosea’s real but faithful wife.

Chapter 1 is only a metaphor of Israel’s sin.

In chap. 3 Hosea shows kindness to a wretched prostitute (not his wife) as a prophetic symbol of God’s compassion on Israel, but this had nothing to do with his real married life.

This view is obviously similar to the first except that it regards Gomer and the prostitute of chap. 3 as historical people.

The story of Gomer’s infidelity, on the other hand, is regarded as a fabrication to make a point.

3. Chapters 1 and 3 are historical but refer to two different women.

Hosea first married the prostitute Gomer, at the beginning of his prophetic ministry, to illustrate Israel’s sin against God.

Later in his ministry he married a second woman, also a prostitute, to illustrate God’s compassion and the hope of salvation.

This interpretation is similar to the second except that it asserts that Gomer actually committed adultery against Hosea.

4. God commanded Hosea to marry Gomer, who was already an immoral woman.

He did so, and she gave him one son but soon returned to her old ways and bore two additional children, possibly of doubtful paternity (1:2–9).

Hosea then separated from her or was abandoned by her (2:2a).

She fell into poverty and disgrace and eventually into slavery.

Hosea bought her out of slavery and restored her to the family (3:1–3).

This interpretation is like the third except that it treats Gomer and the unnamed immoral woman of chap. 3 as one and the same.

It also interprets chaps. 1 and 3 sequentially.

That is, the events of chap. 3 took place some time after the events of chap. 1.

5. A variant interpretation of the fourth seeks to avoid the scandal of God commanding Hosea to marry a flagrantly immoral woman.

It asserts that the reference to Gomer’s immorality in 1:2 is proleptic, or that when he married her she had “tendencies” to immorality but had not yet actually engaged in extramarital sex.13

Alternatively, one may argue that Hosea did not deliberately marry a wanton woman but only retrospectively realized that his unhappy marriage was actually, in the providence of God, a portrayal of God’s relationship to Israel.

This interpretation agrees with the fourth, that Hosea did actually marry Gomer, that she was an adulteress, that Gomer was also the woman of chap.

3, and that chaps. 1 and 3 should be read sequentially.

6. Chapters 1 and 3 are historical and not parabolic, but they are variant accounts of the same event; no sequence is intended.

One could argue that Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute (1:2), he purchased Gomer from a slave market (1:3; 3:1–3), and then had children by her before she returned to her immorality (1:3–9).

This interpretation differs from 4 and 5 in that they see a sequence of events from chap. 1 through chap.

3, whereas this regards chaps. 1 and 3 as giving two versions of one story.

7. Chapter 3 is from a later hand—that is, it is an interpolation—and should not be taken into account when reconstructing Hosea’s life or interpreting chap. 1.

On this view one could still explain chap. 1 as allegory or history.

8. Gomer was truly Hosea’s wife, but her sin was not literal adultery against Hosea but spiritual adultery against God.

That is, she was an idol worshiper like the people to whom Hosea preached.

Hence the account of her adultery was both allegorical, in that she was not a true adulteress, and historical, in that she was guilty of abandoning Yahweh.

There are major holes in many of these views that we can automatically discount without much discussion.

View #7 is easily discounted because there is no evidence that was added from a later date (this view seems to try to dodge what we find in ).

View #8 is an interesting idea, but also unlikely.

Why would Gomer be faithfully involved in a cult (that went against Hosea’s God) while also being faithful to Hosea?

View #3 is also interesting, but unlikely.

View #6 is a view that falls short as well because Hosea sought to redeem Gomer, and we see a sequence of events transpiring rather than chapters 1 and 3 retelling the same story.

This leaves us with interpretation 4 and 5.

The idea in #5 might sound promising in our day and age because it sounds very questionable and odd for God to command his prophet to marry a woman who would be a prostitute.

This idea sounds interesting at the very least, but it does not hold weight because Hoesa 1:2-3 tells us that God commanded Hosea to marry an immoral woman - and he did.

Not to marry a woman who *could* become immoral later.

This leaves us with interpretation #4 as how we will go about studying this story.

This interpretation asserts that Hosea was commanded to marry an immoral woman and married Gomer.

After some time, they had 3 children, then she abandoned him for other lovers.

Then she fell into hard times and at God’s direction, Hosea went after her, found her and redeemed her while taking her home.

As we will look at in the coming chapters, God has divorced Israel just as Hosea had divorced Gomer, but in both cases grace triumphs over righteous jealousy and the demands of the law (see, both Hosea and God are justified in divorcing their spouse).

Like the cross itself, Hosea’s action is a stumbling block of sorts.

A man does not normally take back a woman who has behaved the way Gomer did.

But we must acknowledge this as a revelation of grace through suffering.

From the very get go, Hosea is commanded to marry Gomer.

He was to be bound to this immoral woman in covenantal union.

For better or for worse, their paths would join.

He would be like Yahweh who also bound Himself in covenant with a willful and wayward people.

It can be difficult for us to properly understand prophetic texts like this, and it can be difficult for us to understand why God would call Hosea to do this.

Why on earth would a holy God call a prophet to marry an immoral, promiscuous woman?

We must properly understand what Gomer was and what she was not.

In the Hebrew text we see the word zenunim, not zona (as we see with Rahab in Joshua).

Zenunim means promiscuity.

Zona means prostitute.

We automatically assume that Gomer was a prostitute, however the literal Hebrew word means that she was an immoral woman.

Certainly, she did things that were immoral and sexual, however what we see Hosea convey is her behavior and character instead of her profession.

This is significant because we can get caught up in what a prostitute is in modern terms, but we must see Gomer as an immoral woman who was dependent upon gifts from others.

Her problem was deeper than simply an action or struggling with one thing - she was an immoral person!

Some scholars note that this could stem from the fact that she was a devoted follower of the Canaanite god, Ba’al.

This was the case for the majority of the people in Israel at this point in time.

Ba’al was the Canaanite storm and fertility god which means “lord.”

We see many references to Ba’al, and we might wonder why this is a common problem for the people of Israel who have seen the power of Yahweh in the past.

What we see is that this cult is the greatest threat to the development and worship of Yahweh in Israel.