Marry a What? The Story of Hosea

Hosea 1:2-10; Luke 11:1-13

          Have you ever noticed how creative God is, sometimes even whimsical?  Just look at some of the ways God communicated with the people of Israel in the Old Testament.  Do you remember the story about Jeremiah and his dirty underwear?  I’m not kidding.  It’s in chapter 13 if you want to read it for yourself.  God told Jeremiah to get a new pair of linen underwear.  God told him that he must never dip the underwear in water, which meant Jeremiah could not wash it.  After wearing this linen underwear for some period of time, God told Jeremiah to go to the Euphrates River and hide it in the cleft of a rock.  That’s not the end.  After “many days,” God told Jeremiah to go back to the Euphrates and retrieve his hidden, dirty underwear.  Jeremiah did as he was told and discovered that the underwear was ruined, “good for nothing,” the text says. 

          Here’s the message:  God was saying that the people of Israel were soiled, ruined, good for nothing.

          Now, you must admit that’s a pretty creative way to get your message across.

          Then there was the prophet Isaiah.  I don’t know who to feel sorry for the most, Isaiah or the people of Israel.  God commanded Isaiah to strip and preach to the people “naked and barefoot.”  For three years!  Here’s the backstory.  The nearby nation of Assyria was large and threatening.  For protection, Israel formed alliances with Egypt and Ethiopia.  Isaiah warned that those alliances would not protect them.  In due time, the mighty Assyrian army would destroy both Egypt and Ethiopia and lead the people away as exiles, “both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.”

          Pretty creative!

          One more.  Ezekiel.  Ezekiel did a lot of creative and whimsical things.  Some of it is so explicit, some rabbis advised that the book of Ezekiel shouldn’t be read by any Torah students under age thirty.  Ezekiel began his prophetic career by eating a scroll, so he could speak the words of God.  Then God told him to take a brick and envision it as the city of Jerusalem under seige.  God told him to build a little wall around the brick and little ramps against the wall to allow the invading army inside.  Then God told him to lie on his left side for 390 days and preach to the brick.  When the 390 days were complete, God told him to lie on his right side forty more days and preach to the brick.  That was a total of 430 days, which corresponded to the number of years, God said, the people of Israel would be punished.

          Here’s the thing.  You can’t miss those messages, right?  Their behavior was so over the top, so bizarre, you couldn’t turn a blind eye to them.  God’s messages to the people of Israel came through clearly.

          So did Hosea’s. “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom,” God instructed the prophet Hosea.  A prostitute.  Go and marry a prostitute, God told Hosea.  Have children with her.  I can only imagine Hosea’s initial response: “Marry a what?  And do what?  Are you serious?”

God was serious.  Hosea’s marriage, his children, his life were about to become a lived message for the people of Israel.  They were committing spiritual whoredom, God was saying.  Like an unfaithful spouse, they were being spiritually unfaithful to the covenant with God.

          Some people argue this was unfair of God, an inappropriate expectation.  But not Hosea.  Hosea obeyed.  He married a woman, a prostitute, named Gomer.  Notice the action of this text is rapid fire.  Right away she conceived and bore a son.  “Name him Jezreel,” God said.  Jezreel was the name of a valley in the northern hill country and the site of a bloody massacre.  You can read about it in I Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9-10.  Name your son Jezreel, God told Hosea, because God was going to punish the King of Israel for this bloody massacre.

          Gomer conceived again and bore a daughter.  “Name her Lo-ruhamah,” God told Hosea. It’s Hebrew and can be translated as “not pitied.”  God would no longer have pity on the house of Israel.

          Gomer conceived a third time and bore another son.  “Name him Lo-ammi,” God said.  It was an ominous message: “not my people.”  “You are not my people, and I am not your God,” God told the people of Israel.

          Notice in chapter one the prophet Hosea, unlike the other prophets of the Old Testament, never speaks a word.  The Hebrew word for “prophet” is nabi.  It literally means “speaker.”  Not this time.  The speaker Hosea never spoke.  Instead, he embodied the message of God.  He and his family were the message.

          After the children were born, Gomer left her husband Hosea and their three children.  She went back to the city, to the streets, to her old profession.  God told Hosea to go and get her.  Yes, she was unfaithful.  Yes, she had spurned his love and abandoned their children.  Yes, she had turned her attention to other lovers.  But God told Hosea to go and get her, and again Hosea obeyed.  He went to the city, to the streets, and found Gomer.  He had to buy back his wife.  Fifteen shekels of silver, some barley, and some wine, about the price of a slave. 

          Like Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, all this was part of Hosea’s message to the people of Israel.  The people of Israel were behaving like an unfaithful spouse.  They had lovers other than God.  From the king down to the common men and women, the people of Israel were unfaithful to the covenant with God.  So, God would cease having pity for them.  And finally, God would declare that they were not his people, and he was not their God.

          I had a Hebrew professor who challenged us to imagine a typical evening at Hosea’s home.  His children likely spent the day playing with other children in the village.  At the end of the day, Hosea would step outside to call his children in for dinner.  “Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi, come home,” he would call out.  The ominous message would reverberate through the village.  The day was coming when God would no longer have pity.  The day was coming when God would disown them.  All because, like Gomer, they were being unfaithful.

          It’s a strong message, isn’t it?  Unsettling.  Even a bit upsetting.  Especially when we realize it is now addressed to us.  We can’t miss it, can we?  We can’t turn a blind eye to it.  It challenges us to evaluate our loyalties, our faithfulness to God and our faith.  It challenges us to consider the unfaithfulness that has crept into our lives. 

          Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my favorite writers.  I’ve just finished her book Learning to Walk in the Dark.  In one chapter, she writes about Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk whose writings were a blend of eastern religion and Christianity.  Barbara Brown Taylor says she keeps this prayer of Merton on her bedside table.

My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will always lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. (p. 181)

          Merton touches something in that prayer that is central to living a faithful life.  I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.  That’s it, isn’t it?  The desire to please God does in fact please God.  Let us keep that desire alive in all we do, and we will live the faithful life.

Closing Prayer 

          Lord, our tendency is to grow complacent.  Spiritually sleepy.  Awaken us.  Awaken within every one of us a desire to please you in all we do.  Amen.