Interpreting the Book of Hosea!

 

I found the above interesting video by Alisa Childers in which she discusses the merits and demerits of watching a certain movie based on the story of Old Testament prophet Hosea, in which God commands him to marry a prostitute (Hosea 1:2–3; 3:1–3), to symbolically represent the relationship of Jehovah to Israel. My aim here is not to comment on the merits or demerits of the movie, or her opinion of it; but to comment exclusively on her understanding of the book of Hosea. At around 3:28 minutes into the video she says the following:

“The book of Hosea is about this prophet that God commands to marry an immoral woman ⋯ there is a little bit of debate about this, if she was a prostitute to begin with, and then he was supposed to marry a prostitute; or if she would then, if she wasn’t a prostitute to start with, but then she would cheat on him.”

There is no reason for “debate” about that. The text makes it clear that she was a prostitute to begin with. Then she continues:

“But either way you interpret it, the point is that after they were married, she would be committing adultery on him over and over again; ⋯”

There is no such “assumption” in the text either. The assumption is that she remained faithful to him after their marriage. In Hosea 3:3, he makes an agreement with her that he would remain faithful to her, and she to him; and the assumption is that she agrees, and remains faithful. His marriage to her was simply a symbolic gesture to the house of Israel. Such symbolic gestures are found in other places in the prophets (e.g. Isaiah 8:3–4; 20:1–3). She continues:

“⋯ and so in the story after some time, they have three children. She abandons him, she cheats on him. She leaves him for other lovers, and eventually falls into some kind of destitution, possibly even some type of slavery; and then again, at God’s direction, Hosea goes and finds her, redeems her, and brings her home.”

Where does it say any of that? No such thing is found anywhere in the book of Hosea. I don’t think she has even read the book of Hosea. She is going by something that somebody else must have told her about it. She doesn’t know what she is talking about. She continues:

“And so the question is, what is the larger point of the book of Hosea? I want to read to you from Hosea from the beginning, so that we will know what is the book of Hosea about. So starting in verse 2, it says this: ‘When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom (this is the ESV I am reading from) And have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.’ So the larger sign, the larger thing we are supposed to get out of this is that the reason God is telling Hosea to go marry a woman who is going to cheat on him over and over again, is to show how he feels about Israel’s willful, continual unrepentant rebellion against him.”

Where does it say that she is going to “cheat on him over and over again?” Nothing of the kind is taught anywhere in the book of Hosea. He married a prostitute at the commandment of the Lord as a symbolic gesture to Israel, in representation of the the relationship of Jehovah with them. The Israelites knew that he had married a prostitute for that purpose, and were therefore able to make the right inferences from it. She didn’t have to “cheat on him over and over again” in order to confirm that representation. And there is nothing in the text that implies that that is what she did.