Hosea [Chapter 1 - 14]

Hosea (785 BC)
Bible Commentary by Dan Bertran Griffey

Chapter 1 - 14

Hosea’s message was to the Northern Kingdom. He was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom where he lived for the last 40 years before it was destroyed.

He was a younger contemporary of the prophet Amos and an older one of Isaiah and Micah. He lived 200 years after Solomon’s Kingdom was split up because of what Rehoboam did.

Hosea marries a woman of whoredom as a sign to the nation (Northern Kingdom/House of Israel) who was in idolatry from God. He has three children by her who are also symbols to the fallen nation.

Their names are:
Jezreel = Retribution; the hour of punishment has come.
Lo-ruhamah = No more mercy.
Lo-ammi = No longer my people.

Hosea’s life, events, actions, and message were first given to his day and then to show us our day and how the nations of our modern world have fallen from God.

Hosea deals with the divorcement of God from the 10 tribes that made up the Northern Kingdom, which was done in the Valley of Jezreel. Hosea also reveals how the Lord takes back his wife, in our day, in that same valley.  We, as Christians, know this event as the marriage of the 5 wise virgins Jesus’ parable speaks of (Matthew Ch. 5).