{"id":4710,"date":"2024-11-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/reading-plan\/november-1\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T15:09:07","slug":"november-1","status":"publish","type":"reading-plan","link":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/om\/reading-plan\/november-1\/","title":{"rendered":"November 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insight from Hosea 1:<\/span><\/p>\n

While most of Hosea is poetry, the first chapter is narrative (i.e., a story). The story in this chapter is of Hosea\u2019s marriage to a woman named Gomer and of the birth and naming of the children born to Hosea and Gomer. This story of Hosea and his \u201cwife of whoredom\u201d is a picture of faithful Yahweh\u2019s marriage to unfaithful Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are not many details given about Gomer either before or after her marriage. Therefore, as it pertains to Gomer, it is difficult to know exactly what \u201ca wife of whoredom\u201d means. This is an instance where the preacher needs to pay attention to the main point of a passage (the spiritual unfaithfulness of Israel) and not be distracted by details that do not ultimately impact the meaning of the passage. The preacher can remain ignorant of many details about Gomer and still clearly and correctly teach the main point from the book of Hosea. If the preacher or teacher needed more information about Gomer in order to make the point, it would have been given!<\/span><\/p>\n

Hosea had three children with Gomer. All three children were given symbolic names. For as much as the reader might like to know more about the children and the things they did, we are told nothing. The significance of the children lies in the names they were given. The names of the children were intended to send powerful messages to the nation.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the reader is not told about the exact nature of Gomer\u2019s whoredom, readers of the Old Testament are told many, many things about the nature of Israel\u2019s whoredom. That is what matters, because the marriage between Hosea and Gomer is intended to be a small picture of the \u201cmarriage\u201d between Yahweh and Israel. In the same way that Hosea and Gomer were married, Yahweh and Israel were joined together by a covenant. In this sense, they were \u201cmarried\u201d to each other. The covenant given at Mt. Sinai (outlined in Exodus\u2013Deuteronomy) was their \u201cmarriage contract\u201d. Yahweh kept his part of the covenant. He provided Israel with love, food, shelter, and care. From the very beginning, however, Israel broke the marriage covenant. Many, many passages detail how Israel was unfaithful to Yahweh (see, for instance, 1 Samuel 7:3\u20136). To borrow Hosea\u2019s strong language, Israel was a spiritual whore. The nation loved other gods instead of her true husband Yahweh. It is significant to note that the word translated \u201cwhoredom\u201d in verse two is plural. Thus, Gomer\u2019s \u201cwhoredom\u201d isn\u2019t presented as a one-time event. It is presented as a way of life. While the reader is not told any details about how this was true in Gomer\u2019s life, the reader is told a great deal about the pattern of \u201cwhoredom\u201d in Israel. Israel\u2019s \u201cwhoredom\u201d was not a one-time event. Israel was consistently unfaithful in its relationship with Yahweh.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s spiritual whoredom resulted in the people of Israel committing great sexual sin. Fornication was a major aspect of the religious festivals to the Baals, because the Israelites believed that sexual relations between humans would cause the gods to also have sexual relations with one another which would cause the land to be fertile. These actions, aside from being forbidden, were a denial of Yahweh\u2019s husbandly role as Israel\u2019s provider. The wife\u2014 Israel\u2014did not trust her husband\u2014Yahweh\u2014to provide for her. By her actions she was demonstrating she did not love him and she did not trust him. Tom Kelby, <\/span>The Book of Hosea with Study Notes: A Preacher\u2019s Guide to the Book of Hosea<\/span><\/i> (Webster, WI: Hands to the Plow, 2019), 24.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hosea\u2019s three children are not the only ones receiving names in this chapter. Yahweh also gives himself a name in this chapter. Immediately after Yahweh tells Hosea to name his third child \u201cNot My People\u201d, Yahweh declares \u201cand I am not your God\u201d. \u201cNot your God\u201d is a name! It is the counterpart to \u201cNot My People\u201d. However, the words used in the ESV (see also NIV 2011, NLT, CSB) do not capture the full sense of the Hebrew (MT) or the Greek (LXX). The Hebrew (MT), when translated into English, reads, \u201cCall his name Not My People (Lo-ammi) because you are not my people and I am Not I Am (Lo-ehyeh) to you\u201d. The name \u201cI Am\u201d (eyheh) is Yahweh\u2019s covenant name. It was the name Yahweh called himself when he spoke to Moses at the burning bush (see Exodus 3:14). When Moses asked Yahweh what his name was, Yahweh said his name was \u201cI Am who I Am\u201d (ehyeh asher ehyeh). In the book of Exodus, Yahweh progressively unfolds the meaning of this name for the Israelites. For instance, in Exodus 6:2-8 Yahweh describes what his covenant name means in far more detail. Yahweh makes himself known in the following ways: he loves his people, redeems his people, rescues his people, and provides for his people. He is, as ehyeh, everything his people need. In this verse in Hosea, however, he takes his name back. He is Lo-ehyeh (Not I Am). No longer is Yahweh Israel\u2019s \u201cI Am\u201d. No longer will he be \u201cwith them\u201d. They would now be, like the rest of the nations, without God and without hope in this world (see Ephesians 2:12). They are not his people and he is not their I Am. The Greek (LXX) mirrors the Hebrew. It reads, when translated into English, \u201cCall his name \u2018Not my people\u2019 because you are not my people, and I am not your \u2018I Am\u2019\u201d (NETS).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_crdt_document":""},"class_list":["post-4710","reading-plan","type-reading-plan","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/om\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reading-plan\/4710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/om\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reading-plan"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/om\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/reading-plan"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handstotheplow.org\/om\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}