Hos. 1:2-10; Taking a Strange Wife

"2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.’ 3 So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

4 And the Lord said to him, ‘Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5 On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.’

6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. Then the Lord said to him, ‘Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. 7 But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.’

8 When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. 9 Then the Lord said, ‘Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not my people and I am not your God.’

10 Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’, it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God.’"

Introduction

The readings for the week are full of "problem" passages. Oh, there may not be a problem from the perspective of ascertaining what the words actually mean or what they referred to when they were written, but there is what I call a "21st century problem." That problem is how we understand the concepts in a way that speaks credibly to our day. For example, in my Col. 2 essay, I try to speak of the ways that "powers and authorities" still maintain thir grip in our lives today, even though the original powers and authorities may have had more to do with proto-Gnostic theory than powers we would recognized. Or, to take the issue of prayer (Luke 11), I ask the question of what prayer means in our world of the 21st century.

The passage from Hosea poses another such difficult concept for us today. It is the notion of God's giving Hosea a seemingly cruel and nearly impossible demand in order that Hosea, in his life, might be an "illustration" of a point that God is trying to make to the people of Israel. The modern (i.e., 19th century) theologian who tried most faithfully to wrestle with the probelm of God's impossible demand was the Dane Soren Kierkegaard. His subject was not the prophet Hosea, however, but was the patriarch Abraham. Kierkegaard used the spare narrative of Gen. 22 to try to "imagine" the anguish Abraham must have felt when he received the command from God to go into the mountains and offer up his only son, whom he loved, to be a sacrifice. How could God demand the giving up of the special gift that Abraham had waited all of his adult life to receive? Was it some kind of cruel hoax? How did Abraham know that he had actually "heard" the voice of God telling him to do this? Why wan't this an example of self-deception, a feature that is omni-present in our lives?

No one, to my knowledge, has tried to write a similar account of the story of Hosea. That is, how must be have felt when he received the word of the Lord in 1:2? The text says, " Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.’" As in the case of Gen. 22, the narrative is spare. It doesn't tell us how Hosea reacted to the command in his soul. All it says is that he complied. But I think the example of Kierkegaard's wrestling with the story of Abraham encourages us to ask similar questions about how Hosea might have heard the word of God.

Hearing the God of the Impossible Demand

How could Hosea have heard this? First, how would he have confirmed to himself that this was indeed the word of God? The text never really tells us how a prophet knows that God is speaking to him. I wouldn't know how to determine it. Maybe that is proof that I am no prophet; but I think it intensifies the problem for those of us who want to understand the Scriptures in the 21st century. Did Hosea want to object? Did he render a ready obedience? If I were Hosea, I would have argued that marrying a prostitute would do for my career what Jerry Lee Lewis' marrying an underage cousin did for him in the late 1950s. Doesn't it rather ruin your credibility? We are a people who think that preachers who have sexual peccadillos (or even big sins) have lost theiir credibility. I don't know if that is really true, but that is the way we approach "sexual sins" today. Is that the way they would have looked at it more than 2500 years ago? But then, there is another idea that came to mind. What if Hosea had a secret hankering for prostitutes and this "command" to marry one might have been something that he secretly welcomed? Men are strange creatures, even men of God (or maybe especially men of God).

What I am arguing for, then, if you preach or teach on this pasage, is an imaginative attempt to try to "get into" the mind of Hosea in this instance.

But another issue in reading this passage is why God would have chosen this kind of impossible demand in order to get across the message. Is this the way God also operates today, or is this something that we can safely limit to a "prophetic dispensation?" Are there such things as "impossible demands" that God places on us today? I am not referring to raising kids, even disabled or difficult-to-handle kids. I am talking about breaking laws, ruining one's reputation among one's peers, so standing against a popular consensus that one simply is a skandalon in one's own person. Finally, if we conclude that God still makes this kind of impossible demand on us today, what is our reaction to it? Is it something we embrace with "Mary-like" obedience (behold I am the handmade of the Lord) or is it something we do only after "kicking and screaming," so to speak?

The God of the Unexpected Hope

As you see, I am drawn to this passage by what it doesn't say--i.e., what Hosea must have felt when he was required by God to marry a prostitute and bring up children through her. Yet, there is something that the passage expressly says, and that is a word of hope that runs throughout it. It is that the message of gloom and doom which is certain to come is not the whole of the story. The "rest of the story" in fact is that the people of Judah will be spared, even though the people of Israel will face the judgment of God. Yet, the word of promise relates to Israel, the precise people who would be punished. They will, in the future, "be spared." And not only spared. The promise to them is reminiscent of the Gen. 15 promise to Abraham. They shall be as numerous as the sands on the sea shore. To repeat the words from Hos. 1:

"Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people’, it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God.’"

Just as the demand was more than "realitically" could have been demanded of a person, so the hope which Hosea represents and is to speak is more than anyone could legitimately expect.

Conclusion

The message from Hosea in this passage is really one of extremes. Hosea must undergo an "extreme" relationship in order to demonstrate the unexpected mercy of God. We really are in a strange and wondrous world. I hope you got that point...

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