Deeper Commentary

Hos 3:1 Yahweh said to me, Go again- This could refer to God's relationship with Judah. But I take this to mean that God was telling Hosea to as it were re-marry Gomer, to try to start the marital relationship over again, just as some couples desire to have a ‘re-marriage’ after a period of difficulty between them. Notice how Hosea was commanded to “love” her. We may think that love is something spontaneous, that can’t be ‘commanded’. But the essence of love, even the love that binds a marriage together, is the love that is an act of the will rather than pure emotion. Hosea’s offer to Gomer to start over and as it were re-marry was made when she was “yet an adulteress”. He didn’t say ‘If you stop whoring around, then we can maybe have some sort of re-marriage’. His very offer of the re-marriage was made whilst she was still doing it, such was his love and hope for her, according to the principle that the grace of God leads to repentance. And God does the very same with us, day by day, if only we will perceive it. He reveals His amazing love and grace when we are furthest from Him, in order to bring us back to Him. And this must set the pattern for the way in which we deal with those who sin against us, in things great or small, in family life, in church life, in the workplace…

 

Note that when God tells Hosea to “go again” and marry this woman, He uses ‘Yahweh’ about Himself, rather than speaking in the first person: “Go yet, love a woman… according to the love of Yahweh toward the children of Israel” (Hos. 3:1). Perhaps this was in order to demonstrate the grace and passionate love so inherent within God’s very Name.

"Again" translates a Hebrew word elsewhere translated "all life long" (Gen. 48:15 "the God who fed me all my life long"), and can carry the idea of 'keep on repeatedly'. We noted on Hos. 1:1 that Hosea was married to Gomer over a long life time. His love for her "all life long", "again and again" forgiving and hoping for her to respond to his love... was reflective of God's amazing, abiding and enduring love for His people. The same word is used of how Yahweh and Hosea felt that "I will no more [not continually] have mercy" upon Gomer / Israel. But now they both vow to "more", more and more, again and again, love and have mercy on her.  

Hos. 2 has offered Gomer / Israel a remarriage under a new covenant. One option worth considering is that Hos. 3 describes what happened, as Hosea forced this through- despite Gomer not really wanting it. Just as God did with His people.  

Love a woman loved by another, and an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the children of Israel- It’s hard to understand what was happening in Hos. 3:1- it appears Hosea attempted to force through to realization his fantasy about re-marrying Gomer and starting over, and so he redeemed her again to himself for marriage. But still she went astray from him. Another suggestion is that Hos. 3:1 actually speaks of a second wife, who according to the analogy of Ez. 23, might have represented Judah. In this case we see the extreme love of Hosea, and God; having gone through all that heart break over Gomer, he was still so full of love that he was prepared to risk all yet again in another relationship. The reference to "Israel" rather than "Judah" could be problematic for this interpretation, but it was always God's intention that the community restored from Babylon would include both Judah and Israel.

Here for all time we see "love" portrayed as an act of the will and not the mere emotion of in-loveness. Hosea was commanded to go and love a woman, despite his deeply painful disappointment with Gomer. This challenge of "love" remains, no matter how we interpret the woman in view- as a second woman, or again Gomer. We note the contrast with Hos. 1:2: "Go and take a woman" now becomes "go again and love a woman". Hosea was being led further in his own understanding of love. We also see reflected here how God loves people as they are, not because of their loveliness or love worthiness. But, as with Hosea, in hope, desperate hope, that they will respond to that love and be transformed towards Him.

 "I know Ephraim" (Hos. 5:3), but Ephraim wouldn't know Yahweh, "they do not know Yahweh" (Hos. 5:4). It's just as Hosea was told to love a woman who was in love with another man (Hos. 3:1,2). God loved them, He wanted to know them, to experience intimate relationship- but they looked elsewhere for love and intimacy, just as Gomer did.

 

Though they turn to other gods- This is the amazing thing. As Hosea was eager to push through his fantasy of remarriage with Gomer even though she was impenitent, so God too had the same kind of love. Even though Israel were worshipping other gods, He wanted them to re-enter covenant with Him. Repentance and moral purity are of course critical to the human response to God. But His grace is such that He wishes to save His people and have relationship with them even whilst they are yet in their sins. This is the powerful lesson we take away from Hosea. Many troubled marriages feature an affair and then an agreement to start over- and yet the adulterer is still continuing their liasons even then. Truly God's love for Israel enables Him to enter into human situations so completely. The allusion is to "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Ex. 20:3). This was at the very core foundation of the covenant. The same term "look / turn to other gods" is used frequently in the law. To do so was to break the covenant: "They will turn unto other gods... and provoke Me and break My covenant" (Dt. 31:20). Yahweh and Hosea made the choice to love a woman / people who provoked Him, and who were breaking the marriage covenant even at the point of betrothal. Just as Hosea had been commanded to marry a prostitute. To love one who provokes you... again shows that "love" is an absolute act of the will.

 

And love cakes of raisins- This reflects Israel’s mixture of Yahweh worship with Baal worship. According to 2 Sam. 6:19 ("He distributed to all the people, even throughout the whole multitude of Israel, both to men and women, to each one a portion of bread, dates and raisins"), these cakes appear to have been part of the legitimate worship of Yahweh- and yet in Song 2:5  ("Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love") they are referred to as an aphrodisiac. There was a heady mix of Yahweh worship with participation in the sexual rituals of the Baal cult. It was this mixture which was so abhorrent to God- and time and again, in essence, we likewise mix flesh and spirit. A brother may express the most awful hatred and spite in ‘upholding the faith’ against one whom he perceives as apostate- and thus show the same mixture of flesh and spirit. A sister may indulge in gossip, kidding herself it’s all for the cause of Christian love and concern… and the examples multiply, hour by hour, in daily Christian experience. We see it again in Hos. 3:4. The word for "cakes" refers to the dibla, the raisin cakes used in the Baal cult, from which the word Diblaim comes, the father of Gomer. Hosea knowingly married a temple prostitute, just as God married Israel, in the hope that their intense love and covenant relationship would reform her and make her responsive to their love.

Raisin cakes can be understood also as simply delicacies. And so many commit prostitution against the Lord for the sake of seeking the luxury life now. We must note the contrast between the "love of Yahweh" and the way the object of that love was loving materialism and idols. Loving someone who loves someone else, who doesn't respond to your love... is love. This is God's love to us, to Israel, to the world. And we are asked to reflect that love, as Hosea was.

Hos 3:2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley- The way Hosea redeems his wife, partly in cash and partly in kind, suggests he now wasn’t wealthy. He had given her all his wealth (see on Hos. 2:8,9). Now he gave absolutely all he could scrape together for that worthless woman. And this was the cost to God, even His feelings, in redeeming His people- ultimately, through the blood of His own Son. And think of how Hosea accepts the children Gomer produced as his children- when they were the children of her whoredom. But it's also possible to argue that he redeemed her for the proposed second marriage from one of her lovers. But the price asked was very low, half the price of a slave (30 pieces of silver, Ex. 21:32), and he made up the rest with barley- the feed of animals, the cheapest grain. Or threw in just a bit extra. This could indeed reflect his poverty, having like God given his all for this worthless woman. Or it could be that she was now reduced to a sex slave, and not a very valuable one at that, worth only half the stipulated price for a slave, with some barley thrown in on top. Judah were redeemed from servitude in Babylon, and were weak, unattractive servants anyway. But it was God's intention, and potentially possible, for them to remarry Him and re-establish Israel's Kingdom, filling the face of the earth with the resultant fruit of that grace (Is. 27:6).

It has been suggested that "a homer and a half of barley" means '15 shekels of silver paid in barley'. This plus 15 shekels of silver would total 30 shekels, the price of a slave (Ex. 21:32). In this case, the woman to be loved, redeemed and married would be a slave. Hosea was prophesying as Israel were about to go into captivity in Assyria, and as Isaiah was threatening Judah with captivity in Babylon. The idea would then be that Hosea's desperate love for this unworthy woman / wife, giving all he had left, spoke of God's extreme love and grace in redeeming His people from the slavery of captivity. He bankrupted Himself... the God of the universe. Just as God as it were "died" in Israel's death. "A half-homer" is LXX "a bottle of wine". This would again speak of how hard pushed Hosea was to raise the price. And it would speak of our redemption through the wine / blood of the new covenant. For Hosea was offering her a new covenant, seeing she had broken the old marriage covenant.

"For fifteen pieces of silver" is the numerical equivalent of "Nissan". This was the day after Passover when Israel were redeemed from Egypt.

Hos 3:3 I said to her, You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the prostitute, and you shall not be with any other man. I will also be so toward you- The allusion is clearly to “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex. 20:3). After the second marriage, Hosea's idea was that they would both abstain from sexual relationships for a period. She was not to be a prostitute, nor [additionally] have relationships with men. He too would be focused solely upon her despite their lack of intimate relationship. But Gomer was still unfaithful. This period may speak of the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, where Judah were still God's people, but there was a period of abstaining from intimate relationship whilst they repented and reflected. But God's total focus was to be upon them, just as it is upon us. This amazing and unique, exclusive focus of God, king of the cosmos, upon a few mixed up people on this tiny planet... is love and grace indeed.

The idea is that Hosea purchased this woman to be his wife- but then she has to enter a period of isolation, to reflect on her sins and demonstrate her commitment and response to her redemption. And then the marriage can begin (:5). This in a way is what we are going through, redeemed but still in some kind of isolation from our redeemer, until the marriage begins at the Lord's return. In the context of Judah, this 'sitting down' in this strange isolation (:4) would refer to Judah's sitting down in exile in Babylon (Lam. 1:1; 2:10; Ps. 137:1). "You shall..." isn't so much prediction as command. But Judah and Israel went into captivity "many days" (:4) without the temple and with no king- but they didn't become faithful to Yahweh, they were not purged from their idolatry. Indeed they assimilated with the pagan world of their captors. Likewise, Hosea's plan for Gomer just didn't work either. Even God's choosing of the Gentiles as a faithful bride... didn't work much better. For Paul in Romans, Hebrews and 1 Corinthians is clear that the Gentile bride is not necessarily much better than the Israelite one had been. To the point that we cannot say "We are better than them". The church too were presented as a chaste virgin to the Lord, but prostituted themselves.  To the point that some interpretations conclude that the whore of Revelation is both Israel / Jerusalem, and the prostituted, unfaithful church / Zion. Or we could say that the defiled bride of Christ is presented in terms of unfaithful Israel- a whore. It's not that God as it were struck lucky in His second marriage. You only have to enquire how many Christian converts remain faithful to the end of their days... You only have to think back over all those you know who were once baptized into the Lord, who were His betrothed virgin, who are now long gone back into the world. The ministry of the prophets to Israel, Paul and Peter's desperate appeals to the corrupted church, our appeals... don't work, at least not on any mass level. Only a few respond, a remnant of the remnant. Just as Gomer never really repented and returned.

We see here the simple fact that we are to be only for God, and He is also only for us. He has no other people out there somewhere. We are uniquely His. That the King of the cosmos should have nobody else but us... in infinite space... is a marvel. If we go wrong or are unfaithful to Him, He has nobody else. This is why He is so passionate about our response to Him.

Hos 3:4 For the children of Israel shall live many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice- I suggested on :3 that the "many days" may refer to the 70 years of captivity. They had no princes, for they were slain and the line of Zedekiah brought to an end (Ez. 21:25-27); and they could not offer sacrifice as the temple was in ruins. "Live" is the usual word for 'sitting down', referring to Judah's sitting down in exile in Babylon (Lam. 1:1; 2:10; Ps. 137:1). However this didn't really work, as they became paganic in Babylon and most didn't want to return to the land and they rejected the new covenant offered (:5). Likewise Hosea's second woman it seems rejected this plan.

"Sacrifice" is LXX "altar". These are the pagan altars and pillars of Hos. 10:1, which Israel made in order to get fertility blessings from Baal. But this is a command, a hope, rather than a prediction. Because in captivity, both Judah and Israel still worshipped local pagan deities. LXX “Without a sacrifice, without an altar, without a priesthood, and without oracles”, i.e. the urim and thummim. This clearly describes how Israel and Judah would be in captivity, but the plan still didn't work. For they turned to the idols of their captors.

"King and princes" are seen as responsible for the state of Judah's downfall. God laments that He has given them a king and princes (Hos. 13:10); they were addicted to alcohol (Hos. 7:3). And so Yahweh says they are to abide many days without a king and princes, so that they might learn faithfulness to Him (Hos. 3:4). He gave them a king and princes, knowing what this would lead to. Unfaithfulness to Him. But we see here how in the end, God gives man what he wants, as He did to the prodigal son. The issue is desiring the right things- His Kingdom and His righteousness.

 

And without sacred stone, and without ephod or idols- As noted on :1, the people were using “cult pillars… ephods” in their Baal worship. The patriarchs set up pillars in faith; and an ephod was part of Yahweh worship. But yet again, the same external things were used in a wrong context with wrong motives. Excavations of the Elephantine community reveal that the Jews mixed Yahweh and Baal worship to such an extent that they believed that Yahweh , like Baal, had a consort called Anat. Inscriptions from Quntillet Ajrud show the names Yahweh and Baal mixed together, including one which appears to speak of “Yahweh and his asherah”.  Ez. 16:21 and Ez. 23:39 are quite specific about this anyway- Israel offered sacrifice to idols in Yahweh’s own temple. The lack of ephod may mean that Yahweh would not be in communication with them, just as Hosea was going to leave Gomer in silence but within His care, in order to reflect upon herself and her relationship with Him. We recall that Gideon's ephod became an idol for Israel, and they prostituted themselves to it. It could be that Yahweh's ephod had been turned into a pagan object, whereby Israel thought they could worship Yahweh through worshipping idols. And this is the age old temptation for God's people.

Hos 3:5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return, and seek Yahweh their God, and David their king, and shall come with trembling to Yahweh and to His blessings in the last days- This "return" referred initially to the potential for "Israel", Judah and the remnant of the ten tribes, to together return from captivity and re-establish God's Kingdom in Israel under a Messianic king in the line of David, trembling in repentance, and receiving Divine blessings. See on :3,4.  It reflected Hosea's plan that his lavishing of grace upon Gomer would lead her to return to him. But this didn't happen as intended. God has set objectives in history, but He doesn't force their fulfilment. Finally all this shall come true, in the coming of a new Israel to Zion in repentance and acceptance of the Lord Jesus, the Messianic seed of David- "in the last days".

Yahweh's hope was that His people would finally "seek Yahweh their God" with "trembling" (Hos. 3:5). This was Hosea's fantasy for Gomer; as in Hos. 2:7, his hope was that Gomer would "seek" her lovers and not find them, and return to him. This was God's hope for Israel too; "in their affliction they will seek Me early" (Hos. 5:15). But they didn't. But it can happen- people "seek" the wrong things and give up, and then "seek" Yahweh. But sadly, most people, like Gomer, like Israel, waste their lives "seeking" the end of a rainbow and never get there. 

"David their king" is the language of the Messianic ruler in the line of David who could have arisen had Judah really returned from exile, both to their God and to their land (Jer. 30:9; 33:15-21; Ez. 37:24-26). The hope was that the great effort to redeem Judah, as shown by Hosea loving his second unfaithful wife and giving all he had for her, would elicit a "return" to God and His land. But it didn't, overall. All so tragic.

For those who really 'got it', the marvel of God's grace would lead them to come trembling to Him (Hos. 3:5). He has this hope in view also in Hos. 11:11 "They shall come trembling out of Egypt". Jer. 33:9 hopes that at the restoration, they "shall fear and tremble for all the good and for all the peace that I procure to [Zion]". The awesome grace would make men tremble as they accepted it, and so it should be with us. Likewise Is. 60:5 "Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall thrill [s.w. "tremble"] and be enlarged". Then we will have the opening of mind to perceive how great is His grace, something which we sense but only see from far in this life. Truly "I see from far / They beauteous light". But we will only appreciate that grace to the extent of trembling, if we first accept our deep guilt and whoredom against the God of all grace and love.