Hosea: A Little History

I’m scheduled to start a Bible study for the women of my church this fall in the book of Hosea. If my back settles down, that will start in September. So it just makes sense to me to do the same study here, sort of a two -birds/one-stone approach.

Hosea is one of the Old Testament minor prophets. They are named such not because they are less important, but because the books named for them are generally much shorter than books like Isaiah and Jeremiah.

All of the minor prophets, from Hosea through Malachi, are overtly nationalistic, but not isolationist. God’s people had been unfaithful to Him, breaking His Law over and over again. They had married, against God’s instruction, people who worshiped other gods, and were led away from worship of the True God. All of the minor prophets denounced political and moral corruption, and warned against isolation from God. No man can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24).

Hosea lived during the time of the divided kingdom, with the tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. The kings under whom he prophesied were Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah of the southern kingdom of Judah; and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel (Hos. 1:1)

He was contemporary with Amos, Micah and Isaiah. He was active for over 50 years, and lived to see his prophecy of the captivity of Israel by Assyria being fulfilled.

The major theme of this book is a plea to return to the Lord. It is illustrated by a broken home, the home of the prophet himself. Hosea’s heart was broken by his wife’s infidelity, just as God’s heart is broken when His people are unfaithful to Him. Hosea was well-qualified to preach God’s Word!

God provided the home as the bedrock foundation of human society. When the home is broken, so is society. One of the safeguards of the home is now, and always has been, marriage. God created marriage, and designed it in such a way that a man and a woman were bound to one another and left their parents’ homes to build a home of their own. Matt. 19:6 makes it clear that God intended marriage to be a permanent protection and foundation for the home. We’ve really messed up in that area! Divorce rates today among believers are almost exactly the same as for non-believing couples. That, my friends, is tragic–on both counts.

Before we meet Hosea in his book, he was just an ordinary boy growing up in Ephraim. Along the way, he met a girl named Gomer, and he loved her. It seemed that she loved him, too, but somewhere along the way she chose a wrong path, and it destroyed the beauty of their new love. And so we are brought into the story, in Hosea 1:1-2, after Gomer has already become a prostitute.

Hosea could have demanded that the Mosaic law be fulfilled; he could have had her stoned to death. But God had a different plan, and so the story gets under way.