Hosea’s Family - Hosea 1:1-3:5

June 15, 2026

by Kirk Irwin

An Unexpected “Phone call” (Command)

Your cell phone starts ringing and vibrating. It’s God.

You know it’s God because He sounds like Morgan Freeman (or maybe James Earl Jones, or Charlton Heston - Idris Elba? -  depending on your age and preference). He says ya have to drop everything you are doing and immediately go marry the person you know by reputation is the most notorious prostitute in town (or he tells you have to marry the most notorious pimp/gigolo in town*).

It gets better. You are to have children.

He has already named them. You will have three children. The first, a son, will be named Yorktown**. The second, a girl, will be named “No Mercy”. The third, another son, will be called “You are not mine any more”.

Then God hangs up.

If at any point you had a smidge of discomfort, light revulsion, astonishment, even disbelief as I described this scenario then perhaps you have an inkling of what Hosea experienced as he lived what is described in the first chapters of the book of Hosea. God called him and told him very similar things.

What can we learn from this section of Hosea? (because God doesn’t leave this section hopeless) Three things. God’s desire; God’s expectation; God’s faithfulness.

God’s Desire

Right away we see that God desires relationship. This may not be the kind of relationship that Hosea had in mind for his life (read understatement), but in this rather ugly requirement we see the deep desire of God to relate to Israel - to us. God’s wish for intimacy with His people started in the time of Adam and Eve walking in the Garden. In the moment He tells Hosea to marry the prostitute Gomer that same desire is still there.

How does this idea that God wishes to know you intimately make you feel? Maybe trepidation? Fear? Astonishment? Disbelief? These same feelings were also probably felt by Hosea - but the question stands - how does it make you respond, even in your gut? He wants to know you, to know us. He is aware of the ugliness in our lives but still wishes to know and love us.

Wow.

God’s Expectation

This one’s a little harder to face. It is related to how you might have felt about God’s desire above. We need to know that God does expect change - we could also call this obedience.

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”

I Samuel 15

Now before your “duty hackles” rise, remember the first point, God desires knowing you - intimately knowing you. A deep love. Is it a strange expectation to want the same in return? Love begetting love?

I don’t always love my wife Sarah the same as I did when we were first falling in love. That time was exultant. Ask me how much poetry I wrote during that season! Sarah laments that it has never risen again to that level since (that’s a confession but one I am trying to repent of). Regardless, that love was driven to commitment where it has been refined over the years to a place where the love is not only felt - as in its early days - but also now acted upon, especially when love is not as “feely” as before. You could say it is an obedient love, and I am the better man for it.

Perhaps you have experienced a similar thing? Life is rarely all love or all obedience, but is a complicated mix of both. God knows this which is why he has a desire for a relationship with us, but also expects response, even obedience.

God’s Faithfulness

As you read the first chapters of Hosea, you get horrified by God’s command, and then slammed by His repetitiveness about the unfaithfulness of Israel and His judgement. And just as you might get overwhelmed, you flip the page to a twist late in chapter 2:

Therefore, behold, I will allure her,   and bring her into the wilderness,   and speak tenderly to her.

God’s loving desire for relationship returns. The language of love is evident - He “allures” and “speaks tenderly” almost as if God is aware of the fright of His tone of judgement earlier in the chapter. He wants Israel - wants us - to return to Him. Later in verse 16 He says, “...in that day…you will call me ‘My Husband’.”

Nevertheless, we are still ever like Gomer who appeared to return to her life of prostitution even after birthing three children with Hosea (if they were even his, as some speculate) - this is evident in Chapter 3 where God tells Hosea, “Go again”. And in that action Hosea buys back his wife for what seems like a small sum - 30 shekels worth of silver and barley - the poor man’s grain. Where else have we heard about that amount in Scriptures?

And here we see Jesus. Hosea was the bridegroom, Gomer the bride. Jesus IS the bridegroom, and WE are His bride - the Church. Verse 9 tells us:

I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord.

Hosea’s story was a foreshadowing of our Lord’s act of buying us back through His death and resurrection.

In Michael Card’s Ancient Faith album series he wrote a song about the book of Hosea, only he chose a different perspective - that of Gomer’s - called “Gomer’s Song”. It is beautiful. In it Gomer sings, “Hosea, you’re a fool” because he loved someone like her. The Apostle Paul talked about God’s level of foolishness in I Corinthians:

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 

In Card’s song Gomer sings in the refrain:

A fool to love someone like me

A fool to suffer silently

Though sometimes through Your eyes I see

I'd rather be a fool 

May we all become fools like Hosea, fools like Christ.

—

NOTES:

*I know the image of Hosea - a man - and Gomer - a woman - is tightly related to God as the Bridegroom and Israel as the Bride, but I wanted to bring the visceral reality to my sisters in Christ regarding the feelings generated by such an unusual request from God.

** In Hosea 1 God tells Hosea to name his first son with Gomer, “Jezreel”. The Valley of Jezreel was the site of many Israelite military victories including the most recent one of King Jehu a century before - Jehu destroyed the House of King Ahab and became king of Israel. His descendent was in power as king at the time of this prophecy. By naming the son Jezreel God is telling Hosea that the site of Israel’s great victory will be the site of its final defeat. So naming your first son “Yorktown” in my scenario is similar in that the site of our nation’s final victory over the English would be the site of its final defeat.