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.
So, it’s a good thing that Hosea wrote it down then! It was going to occur but when? Israel had never prayed like this before as a nation, they had never cried out “Come let us return to the Lord…’ but it would one day occur.
Not only would the return to God occur, and the nation be restored, it would happen quickly, and God’s people would acknowledge Him just as they did the restoring rains that fell on dry and weary lands.
As I read this, I get this vision of an entire nation returning to its God, to ‘The One’ who had previously sustained His people but rather than grumbling about Him, rather than turning from Him and crying out to other gods [small g] they live in His presence, the place to where God has restored them! God is to be seen as sustainer and restorer of his people, he would bind their wounds, and they would live in his presence all they needed to do was put him first.
But,
The following verses after the first three verses of chapter six, the prophet Hosea addresses the problem that is Israel’s or more to the point is Israel at the time of Hosea.
Verses 4 and 5 really get down to the nitty gritty of how God is feeling about these bod’s, this once great nation. “What can I do with you Ephraim? [Read Israel for Ephraim] What can I do with you Judah [Judah is the southern kingdom]. Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew it disappears”
That’s verse 4 and it comes across as a real condemnation of these two kingdoms that were previously one kingdom. This sounds very much like unrequited love, that’s love that is all one sided, poured out one lover but going down the drain of the other, never impacting the heart of the one to whom it is given, poured out with arms wide open but never held in a warm embrace, it is never to be returned. Love that is one sided love is not a relationship. there is no relationship. It is like an overlooked ……….. fan or a ………..behind a barricade trembling with excitement as they see their favourite team the best team in the history of Super Rugby or the great Star herself, but they are one of many and go un-noticed, no recognition, no autograph and only a glimpse of possibility.
Just as faith without works is dead, love in one direction never truly lived. But in the case of Israel and Judah, there was mist of love that disappeared the heat came on and whoo, it evaporated.
God spoke and the prophets proclaimed, the nation would be ended – there had been too much blood shed, the city of Gilead was full of wicked men, a city that was blood stained, a rebellion that had taken many lives, there had been murder committed, the people engaged in prostitution. Israel was defiled. This nation was polluted with evil; it was given to the worship of lesser god’s, and they now had a lesser king who was himself under the authority of a foreign king, when the nation should have been responding to the King of Kings, to God himself. This is meaty stuff.
Through the nations own actions it was out of sorts with God and as such it was coming under his wrath, wrath that always has a natural or is that supernatural consequence of their turning away from God. It’s as if living outside of God’s will brings with it self-harm.
The nation continued to give sacrifice but without faithfulness to God, empty sacrifice, like showering praise of someone so that you can manipulate that person. Like telling someone you love them to get your own way, flowery words, sweet actions but unfaithful in intent. Dad, I love you so much, can I borrow the car. From this we see what God desired from His people.
2) “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and an acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.’ (Hosea 6:6). God’s desire is for a concrete heart to heart connection.
2) Within these verses we see this characteristic of God, His desire for ‘mercy’, for the Hebrew word hesed, for unfailing love, covenantal love, loyal love, loyalty, kindness, devotion. For in this case the word translates this way. What God wanted from His people was loving kindness towards Him. God wanted them to keep their covenant with Him.
What the people of Israel failed to do was to be merciful and loving towards God, what they also failed to do was to be merciful and loving towards one another. They murdered; they used one another’s bodies for money; they cheated one another with incorrect measures. At that time, they were on the brink of the abyss, lost in the dark on the edge and about to tumble into the dark hole that is oblivion.
Not only did God want his people to be merciful, unfailingly merciful He deeply desired it; this is about His finding pleasure in the people’s loving actions. We often find it easy to relegate God to a cloud, to a place of some kind of remote bigness out in the depths of space, untouchable and unfeeling but here he is, saying he desires mercy. He delights in unfailing love; he gives unfailing love. Jesus was the human and divine expression of Gods unfailing sacrificial love. This is any relationship at its best. We continue to see God through his prophets as close, the near God.
How is it with our love for God? How is it with our love for one another, those we have committed to be closest to?
This from Matthew 9:10-13 is Jesus’ echo of the words of Hosea; this ‘desire for mercy’ is still the voice of God.
“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus echo’s the words spoken by the prophet. God, the triune God Father, Son and Holy Spirit had spoken them through Hosea. God delights in our unfailing love, he gives unfailing love. This is relationship at its best. Not one sided, not selfish but alive and vibrant love, love that is life giving like the spring rains that water the earth.
How is your love for God, how is your love for your fellow human? Has it all become a bit of a ritual, is it not where it was? The Spirit of God awaits those who would to be filled with his power, with life giving love, with God’s love, this might require turning back, walking towards rather than away from God - for what God requires of you is not a hard thing to do. It is your love; it is your devotion to Him, for you to live in a way that is loyal to His ways to be merciful to those you come into contact with.
So, what does this mean for us today? Hosea’s message is not just ancient history—it’s a mirror held up to our own hearts. God is not looking for empty rituals or surface-level devotion. He desires mercy, loyalty, and love that flows from a heart truly committed to Him. Just as Israel was called to return, we too are called to examine our spiritual condition, how is that top 200mm responding? Are we living in a way that reflects God’s unfailing love? Or have we allowed our faith to become mist-like—visible for a moment, then gone with the heat of distraction and self-interest?
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Reference: First time ever in regard to AI.
Portions of this sermon were developed with the assistance of AI-based tools, including Microsoft Copilot, to support research, structure, and clarity.
