Hosea. The Prophet Of The Merciful And Loving God. Series

Hosea. Prophet of the merciful and loving God.

1. Historical Context

The Book of Hosea is one of the books of twelve minor prophets in the Old Testament. It is traditionally attributed to Hosea, a prophet active in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Last week Rhys mentioned that Amos, who lived at roughly the same time travelled from the southern Kingdom of Judea into Israel to bring his prophetic massage. Hosea lived during the 8th century BC, roughly between 750 BC. His ministry was for a period of 60 years making him a significant figure in the nation of Israels history. He is often referred to as being the prophet of DOOM! The time he lived in was a period of:

Political instability: After the death of Jeroboam II, Israel experienced a rapid succession of kings and internal turmoil.

Economic prosperity and moral decline: Wealth led to complacency, idolatry, and social injustice. I’m sure that that wouldn’t occur now days.

Assyrian threat: The Assyrian Empire was expanding westward, eventually leading to Israel’s fall in 722 BC.

2. Purpose and Themes

Hosea’s message centres on covenant faithfulness and divine love. Key themes include:

Spiritual adultery: Israel’s worship of Baal, a fertility god, instead of the one true God, and foreign alliances, instead of reliance on God are portrayed as marital infidelity. The books second verse highlights this unfaithfulness of the nation; Listen to this “When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, take yourself and adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is full of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord.” (Chapter 1:2).

Judgment and hope is another theme: Hosea warns of impending judgment, DOOM was to come through Assyrian conquest, but God promises restoration through Hosea’s prophetic message.

The theme of God’s steadfast love remains: Despite Israel’s betrayal, God’s love remains constant, offering redemption.

3. Structure of the Book

The book is divided into two main sections:

Chapters 1–3: Hosea’s marriage to Gomer serves as a symbolic act. Their troubled relationship mirrors Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.

Chapters 4–14: Oracles of judgment and salvation, addressing idolatry, social corruption, and the call to repentance.

4. Literary Features

Symbolism: Hosea’s family names (e.g., His daughters name, means “Not Loved” his second son’s name Lo-Ammi, means “Not My People”) these names represent Israel’s broken covenant. Interestingly the name Hosea is derived from the Hebrew verb meaning “Salvation.”

Poetic language: In the book there are rich metaphors of marriage, agriculture, and parenting that convey the divine-human relationship.

Covenantal framework: Hosea recalls the Sinai covenant and gives Israel a good slapping for abandoning it.

5. Historical Impact

Hosea influenced later prophetic writings, especially Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in their use of marital imagery for covenant. If we look at the books as written historically Hosea while a minor prophet, Hosea was an early prophet, alive at the same time as Isaiah and Micah who were doing their work in Judah and roughly at the same time as Amos. All of them were preceded by Jonah who spoke to the city of Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrian Empire at that time, but we will get to Jonah on another Sunday.

In Christian tradition, Hosea is seen as revealing themes of grace and redemption.

What is it about wayward people? Israel was at the time of Hosea, sick, not right in the head, in the words of Major Malcolm Herring they need a check-up for the neck up, or in my words the top eight inches, that’s roughly 200mm young metric people, was not functioning with proper spiritual effectiveness. How could this be addressed, how were they to be healed and what was their future forecast, if they accepted the treatment?

1) Healing of the Nation of Israel. We have determined as we have studied our way through the Old Testament that that God longs to redeem or rescue his people, so much so that he will pay the price of their rescue we, hear about this through Hosea’s prophecy.

We now understand this thing about God and that is he longs to rescue people. What I’m keen to do today is look at another characteristic of God which comes through in relation to how the people of Israel, this soon to be doomed ‘at the time of Hosea’ kingdom treat one another.

Let’s have a look at chapter five and six of Hosea. Read 5:1-7

The reading from chapter 5 was forth telling Hosea is telling Isael that they can’t find God because their actions have separated them from him, and frankly at that time they didn’t care.

But in Chapter 6. Read 6:1-3.

As we read our way through this chapter we come across what looks like Israel turning from their ways of wandering away from and turning away from God and coming back to Him with repentant hearts, but this is not the case. What the prophet Hosea has foretold here is something that will one day happen. It is yet to occur. This word in Chapter 6:1-3 is future stuff this is the type of prophecy that is foretelling, that kind of sometime in the future this will occur! Words that appear to be carried on the wind, rustling in the leaves of time, one day this will happen, maybe lilting heavenly harp music in the background, words soon forgotten if not written down a kind of forecast of future days.