Hosea 1:2-9
Three children, three sentences
Jezreel for the blood of a dynasty, Lo-ruhamah because mercy is running out, and Lo-ammi, not my people, which reverses the oldest promise in the covenant.
People of the Bible
Hosea
Was told to marry a woman who would leave him, and then told to go and buy her back.
Hosea prophesies in the last decades of the northern kingdom, and the message is delivered through his own household before it is ever preached. He is told to take a wife of whoredoms, and the three children are named as sentences: Jezreel, then Lo-ruhamah, not pitied, then Lo-ammi, not my people. Later he is told to love her again, and he buys her for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley, which is roughly the price of a slave, and tells her to wait for him.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Hosea
- 01
- 02
Hosea 2:14-23
A door of hope
He will allure her into the wilderness and speak comfortably to her, and the valley of Achor, which was where Achan died, becomes a door of hope.
- 03
Hosea 3:1-5
Fifteen pieces of silver
Go again, love a woman beloved of her friend yet an adulteress. He buys her, names the price in silver and barley, and tells her to abide for him many days.
- 04
Hosea 11:1-9
How shall I give you up
I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms. The judgment is real and then it breaks off mid sentence: my heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.
Why it matters
Hosea is where the covenant stops being described as a contract and starts being described as a marriage, and the book never lets the reader off the hook about which party is which. Its most quoted line, I desired mercy and not sacrifice, is used twice by Jesus against people who were technically correct. And its turning point is not a threat but a question: how shall I give you up, how shall I hand you over, my heart is turned within me.
9 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
