AN ADULTERESS

Behind Hosea’s ministry lay the tragedy of a broken home and a shattered relationship. At the outset, the prophet had been com­manded by the Lord, ‘Go, take unto thee a wife’, 1. 2; now he is commanded, ‘Go yet, love a woman’. When, in obedience to the first command, Hosea had married ‘Gomer the daughter of Diblaim’, she was a chaste virgin. But the Lord made known to him prior to the marriage that she would prove unfaithful. And so she did. She broke her vows, and she broke his heart.

It could not have been easy for Hosea to take a wife when he knew she would commit adultery and leave him for another. But to obey the Lord’s second command, to ‘love’ her again, proved, if anything, more difficult still. Indeed, the Lord’s description of Gomer, not as Hosea’s wife, but simply as ‘a woman’ suggests the degree of estrangement there had been between them. Yet, in obedience to the divine command, the prophet ‘bought her’ back for himself - the implication being that, now deserted by her former illicit lover, she had fallen into slavery. Hosea evi­dently paid for Gomer the full price of a slave, 30 shekels of silver, Exod. 21. 32, but, seemingly because he did not have the price to hand in cash, he was compelled to make up the differ­ence from his supply of barley. He then stipulated to Gomer that, for an interim period, ‘many days’, she was debarred from sexual relationship, either with him or any other, but, by implica­tion, that following this period, she would be restored to her full marital status.

This ‘Story of the Prodigal Wife’, as it has been described, was a living parable of God’s feelings for His people Israel. When Israel had first bound herself to Him by covenant, they had loved Him and had been as a pure bride; cf. Jer. 2. 2, 3. But He knew that they would prove unfaithful and would turn to ‘other gods’. And so they did. Yet He loved them still. He therefore appointed a lengthy period of discipline, ‘many days’, reaching down indeed to our own days, during which His people would have neither legitimate nor illegitimate means of sacrificial wor­ship, and following which, ‘in the latter days’, they will be wholly restored to Himself and His good blessings.