Hosea 1 KJV
Hosea's Wife and Children
Hosea Chapter 1: Hosea's Wife and Children
The naming of the first son Jezreel invokes the specific site of Jehu's massacre (2 Kings 9-10) to announce the termination of the entire Jehu dynasty, tying Hosea's sign-act to a precise eighth-century political event rather than generic judgment.
1he word of the LORD that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.
3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son.
4 And the LORD said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.
5 And it shall come to pass at that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
6 And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Loruhamah: for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will utterly take them away.
7 But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the LORD their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen.
8 Now when she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived, and bare a son.
9 Then said God, Call his name Loammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God.
10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.
11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
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Did You Know?
The naming of the first son Jezreel invokes the specific site of Jehu's massacre (2 Kings 9-10) to announce the termination of the entire Jehu dynasty, tying Hosea's sign-act to a precise eighth-century political event rather than generic judgment.
By commanding Hosea to marry a 'wife of whoredoms,' the chapter makes the prophet's domestic life an enacted covenant lawsuit in which YHWH assumes the role of the betrayed husband, a metaphor that later prophets (Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16) expand but never replicate in literal obedience.
The second child's name Lo-ruhamah withholds the maternal epithet 'compassion' that ancient Near Eastern treaties used for a suzerain's protection, thereby reversing the standard covenant formula before any explicit statement of divorce.
Verse 11's promise that Judah and Israel will appoint 'one head' uses the rare term ro'sh rather than the expected melek, subtly pointing to a future unified ruler whose identity is left open for messianic reading while remaining within the eighth-century horizon of Assyrian threat.
The abrupt shift from judgment names to the future reversal formula in 1:10 ('Ye are the sons of the living God') imports the exact covenant language of Exodus 19:5-6 into a northern Israelite context, creating an intertextual bridge between Sinai and the coming restoration that bypasses the Mosaic institutions of the divided monarchy.
Commentary & Study Notes Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871) ยท Public Domain The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea โ See Introduction. Jeroboam โ the second; who died in the fifteenth year of Uzziah's forty-one years' reign. From his time forth all Israโฆ
Classic verse-by-verse commentary on Hosea 1 from Jamieson, Fausset & Brown (1871). Covers: Inscription.
- 1
- The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea โ See Introduction. Jeroboam โ the second; who died in the fifteenth year of Uzziah's forty-one years' reign. From his time forth all Israel's kings worshipped false gods: Zachariah (2Ki 15:9), Menahem (2Ki 15:18), Pekahiah (2Ki 15:24), Pekah (2Ki 15:28), Hoshea (2Ki 17:2). As Israel was most flourishing externally under Jeroboam II, who recovered the possessions seized on by Syria, Hosea's prophecy of its downfall at that time was the more striking as it could not have been foreseen by mere human sagacity. Jonah the prophet had promised success to Jeroboam II from God, not for the king's merit, but from God's mercy to Israel; so the coast of Israel was restored by Jeroboam II from the entering of Hamath to the sea of the plain (2Ki 14:23-27).
- 2
- beginning โ not of the prophet's predictions generally, but of those spoken by Hosea. take... wife of whoredoms โ not externally acted, but internally and in vision, as a pictorial illustration of Israel's unfaithfulness [HENGSTENBERG]. Compare Eze 16:8, 15, &c. Besides the loathsomeness of such a marriage, if an external act, it would require years for the birth of three children, which would weaken the symbol (compare Eze 4:4). HENDERSON objects that there is no hint of the transaction being fictitious: Gomer fell into lewdness after her union with Hosea, not before; for thus only she was a fit symbol of Israel, who lapsed into spiritual whoredom after the marriage contract with God on Sinai, and made even before at the call of the patriarchs of Israel. Gomer is called "a wife of whoredoms," anticipatively. children of whoredoms โ The kingdom collectively is viewed as a mother; the individual subjects of it are spoken of as her children. "Take" being applied to both implies that they refer to the same thing viewed under different aspects. The "children" were not the prophet's own, but born of adultery, and presented to him as his [KITTO, Biblical Cyclopรฆdia]. Rather, "children of whoredoms" means that the children, like their mother, fell into spiritual fornication. Compare "bare him a son" (see Ho 2:4, 5). Being children of a spiritual whore, they naturally fell into her whorish ways.
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