The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea or in Hosea - God first revealed Himself and His mysteries to the prophet's soul, by His secret inspiration, and then declared, through him, to others, what He had deposited in him. God enlightened him, and then others through the light in him.

And the Lord said unto Hosea - For this thing was to be done by Hosea alone, because God had commanded it, not by others of their own mind. To Isaiah God first revealed Himself, as sitting in the temple, adored by the Seraphim: to Ezekiel God first appeared, as enthroned above the cherubim in the holy of holies; to Jeremiah God announced that, ere yet he was born, He had sanctified him for this office: to Hosea He enjoined, as the beginning of his prophetic office, an act contrary to man's natural feelings, yet one, by which he became an image of the Redeemer, uniting to Himself what was unholy, in order to make it holy.

Go take unto thee - Since Hosea prophesied some eighty years, he must now have been in early youth, holy, pure, as became a prophet of God. Being called thus early, he had doubtless been formed by God as a chosen instrument of His will, and had, like Samuel, from his first childhood, been trained in true piety and holiness. Yet he was to unite unto him, so long as she lived, one greatly defiled, in order to win her thereby to purity and holiness; herein, a little likeness of our Blessed Lord, who, in the Virgin's womb, to save us, espoused our flesh, in us sinful, in Him all-holy, without motion to sin; and, further, espoused the Church, formed of us who, "whether Jews or Gentiles," were all under sin, aliens from God and gone away from Him, "serving divers lusts and passions Ephesians 5:27, to make it a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle."

A wife of whoredoms - i. e., take as a wife, one who up to that time had again and again been guilty of that sin. So "men of bloods" Psalm 5:6 are "men given up to bloodshedding;" and our Lord was "a Man of Sorrows Isaiah 53:3, not occasional only, but manifold and continual, throughout His whole life. She must, then, amid the manifold corruption of Israel, have been repeatedly guilty of that sin, perhaps as an idolatress, thinking of it to be in honor of their foul gods (see the Hosea 4:13, note; Hosea 4:14, note). She was not like those degraded ones, who cease to bear children; still she must have manifoldly sinned. So much the greater was the obedience of the prophet. Nor could any other woman so shadow forth the manifold defilements of the human race, whose nature our incarnate Lord vouchsafed to unite in His own person to the perfect holiness of the divine nature.

And children of whoredoms - For they shared the disgrace of their mother, although born in lawful marriage. The sins of parents descend also, in a mysterious way, on their children, Sin is contagious, and, unless the entail is cut off by grace, hereditary. The mother thus far portrays man's revolts, before his union with God; the children, our forsaking of God, after we have been made His children. The forefathers of Israel, God tells them, "served other gods, on the other side of the flood" Joshua 24:14, (i. e., in Ur of the Chaldees, from where God called Abraham) "and in Egypt." It was out of such defilement, that God took her Ezekiel 23:3, Ezekiel 23:8, and He says, "Thou becamest Mine" Ezekiel 16:8. whom He maketh His, He maketh pure; and of her, not such as she was in herself by nature, but as such as He made her, He says, "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals when thou wentest after Me, in the wilderness" Jeremiah 2:2. But she soon fell away; and thenceforth there were among them (as there are now among Christians,) "the children of God, the children of the promise, and the children of whoredoms, or of the devil."

For the land ... - This is the reason why God commands Hosea to do this thing, in order to shadow out their foulness and God's mercy. What no man would dare to do Jeremiah 3:1, except at God's bidding, God in a manner doth, restoring to union with Himself those who had gone away from Him. "The land," i. e., Israel, and indirectly, Judah also, and, more widely yet, the whole earth.

Departing from - Literally, "from after the Lord." Our whole life should be Philippians 3:13, forgetting the things which are behind, to follow after Him, whom here we can never fully attain unto, God in His Infinite Perfection, yet so as, with our whole heart, "fully to follow after Him." To depart from the Creator and to serve the creature, is adultery; as the Psalmist says, "Thou hast destroyed all them, that go a whoring from Thee" Psalm 73:27. He who seeks anything out of God, turns from following Him, and takes to him something else as his god, is unfaithful, and spiritually an adulterer and idolater. For he is an adulterer, who becomes another's than God's.

A wife of whoredoms - That is, says Newcome, a wife from among the Israelites, who were remarkable for spiritual fornication, or idolatry. God calls himself the husband of Israel; and this chosen nation owed him the fidelity of a wife. See Exodus 34:15; Deuteronomy 31:16; Judges 2:17; Isaiah 54:5; Jeremiah 3:14; Jeremiah 31:32, Ezekiel 16:17; Ezekiel 23:5, Ezekiel 23:27; Hosea 2, Hosea 5:1-15; Revelation 17:1, Revelation 17:2. He therefore says, with indignation, Go join thyself in marriage to one of those who have committed fornication against me, and raise up children who, by the power of example, will themselves swerve to idolatry. See Hosea 5:7. And thus show them that they are radically depraved.

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,.... Or "in Hosea" (i); which was internally revealed to him, and was inspired into him, by the Holy Ghost, who first spoke in him, and then by him; not that Hosea was the first of the prophets to whom the word of the Lord came; for there were Moses, Samuel, David, and others, before him; nor the first of the minor prophets, for Jonah, Joel, and Amos; are by some thought to be before him; nor the first of those contemporary with him, as the Jewish writers interpret it, which is not certain, at least not all of them; but the meaning is, that what follows is the first part of his prophecy, or what it began with; by which it appears he was put upon hard service at first, to prophesy against Israel, an idolatrous people, and to do it in such a manner as must be disagreeable to a young man:

and the Lord said to Hosea, go, take thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms; a woman given to whoredom, a notorious strumpet, one taken out of the stews, and children that were spurious and illegitimate, not born in lawful wedlock. Some think this was really done; that the prophet took a whore, and cohabited with her, or married her which, though forbidden a high priest, was not forbid to a prophet; and had it been against a law, yet the Lord commanding it made it lawful, as in the cases of Abraham's slaying his son, and the Israelites borrowing jewels of the Egyptians; but this seems not likely, since it would not only look like countenancing whoredom, which is contrary to the holy law of God; but must be very dishonourable to the prophet, and render him contemptible to the people; and, besides, would not answer the end proposed, to reprove the spiritual adultery or idolatry of Israel, but rather serve to confirm in it; for how should that appear criminal and abominable to them, which was commanded the prophet by the Lord? others think that the woman he is bid to marry, though before marriage a harlot, was afterwards reformed; but this is directly contrary to Hosea 3:1 and besides, the children born of her, whether reformed or not, yet in lawful wedlock could not be called children of whoredom; nor would the above end be answered by it, since such a person would be no fit representative of Israel committing spiritual adultery or idolatry, and continuing in it; and moreover, whether this or the former was the case, the prophecy must be many years delivering; it must be near a year before the first child was born, and the same space must be between the birth of each; so that here must be a long and frequent interruption of the prophecy, which does not seem likely: nor is it probable that he took his own wife, which is the opinion of others, and gave her the character of a whore, and his children with her, and called them children of whoredom, in order to represent and reprove the idolatry of Israel: what Maimonides (k), and the Jewish writers in general, give into, is more agreeable, that this was all done in the vision of prophecy; that it so seemed to the prophet in vision to be really done, and so he related it to the people; but this is liable to objection, that such an impure scene of things should be represented to the mind of the prophet by the Holy Spirit of God; nor can the relation of it be thought to have any good effect upon the people, who would be ready to mock at him, and reproach him for it. It seems best therefore to understand the whole as a parable, and that the prophet, in a parabolical way, is bid to represent the treachery, unfaithfulness, and spiritual adultery of the people of Israel, under the feigned name of an unchaste woman, and of children begotten in fornication; and to show unto them that their case was as if he had taken a woman out of the stews, and her bastards with her; or as if a wife married by him had defiled his bed, and brought him a spurious brood of children. So the Targum interprets it,

"go, prophesy a prophecy against the inhabitants of the idolatrous city, who add to sin:''

for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord; or

"for the inhabitants of the land erring, erred from the worship of the Lord,''

as the Targum; that is, the inhabitants of the land of Israel have committed idolatry, which is often in Scripture signified by adultery and whoredom; as an adulterous woman deals treacherously with her husband, so these people had dealt with God, who stood in such a relation to them; see Jeremiah 3:1, this interprets the parable, and shows the reason of using the following symbols and emblems.

(i) , Sept.; in Hosea, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius, Tarnovius. (k) Moreh Nevochim, par. 2. 46. Aben Ezra & Kimchi in loc.

For the purpose of depicting before the eyes of the sinful people the judgment to which Israel has exposed itself through its apostasy from the Lord, Hosea is to marry a prostitute, and beget children by her, whose names are so appointed by Jehovah as to point out the evil fruits of the departure from God. Hosea 1:2. "At first, when Jehovah spake to Hosea, Jehovah said to him, God, take thee a wife of whoredom, and children of whoredom; for whoring the land whoreth away from Jehovah." The marriage which the prophet is commanded to contract, is to set forth the fact that the kingdom of Israel has fallen away from the Lord its God, and is sunken in idolatry. Hosea is to commence his prophetic labours by exhibiting this fact. תּחלּת דּבּר יי: literally, "at the commencement of 'Jehovah spake,'" i.e., at the commencement of Jehovah's speaking (dibber is not an infinitive, but a perfect, and techillath an accusative of time (Ges. 118, 2); and through the constructive the following clause is subordinated to techillath as a substantive idea: see Ges. 123, 3, Anm. 1; Ewald, 332, c.). דּבּר with ב, not to speak to a person, or through any one (ב is not equals אל), but to speak with (lit., in) a person, expressive of the inwardness or urgency of the speaking (cf. Numbers 12:6, Numbers 12:8; Habakkuk 2:1; Zechariah 1:9, etc.). "Take to thyself:" i.e., marry (a wife). אשׁת זנוּנים is stronger than זונה. A woman of whoredom, is a woman whose business or means of livelihood consists in prostitution. Along with the woman, Hosea is to take children of prostitution as well. The meaning of this is, of course, not that he is first of all to take the woman, and then beget children of prostitution by her, which would require that the two objects should be connected with קח per zeugma, in the sense of "accipe uxorem et suscipe ex ea liberos" (Drus.), or "sume tibi uxorem forn. et fac tibi filios forn." (Vulg.). The children begotten by the prophet from a married harlot-wife, could not be called yaldē zenūnı̄m, since they were not illegitimate children, but legitimate children of the prophet himself; nor is the assumption, that the three children born by the woman, according to Hosea 1:3, Hosea 1:6, Hosea 1:8, were born in adultery, and that the prophet was not their father, in harmony with Hosea 1:3, "he took Gomer, and she conceived and bare him a son." Nor can this mode of escaping from the difficulty, which is quite at variance with the text, be vindicated by an appeal to the connection between the figure and the fact. For though this connection "necessarily requires that both the children and the mother should stand in the same relation of estrangement from the lawful husband and father," as Hengstenberg argues; it neither requires that we should assume that the mother had been a chaste virgin before her marriage to the prophet, nor that the children whom she bare to her husband were begotten in adultery, and merely palmed off upon the prophet as his own. The marriage which the prophet was to contract, was simply intended to symbolize the relation already existing between Jehovah and Israel, and not the way in which it had come into existence. The "wife of whoredoms" does not represent the nation of Israel in its virgin state at the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, but the nation of the ten tribes in its relation to Jehovah at the time of the prophet himself, when the nation, considered as a whole, had become a wife of whoredom, and in its several members resembled children of whoredom. The reference to the children of whoredom, along with the wife of whoredom, indicates unquestionably priori, that the divine command did not contemplate an actual and outward marriage, but simply a symbolical representation of the relation in which the idolatrous Israelites were then standing to the Lord their God. The explanatory clause, "for the land whoreth," etc., clearly points to this. הארץ, "the land," for the population of the land (cf. Hosea 4:1). זנה מאחרי יי, to whore from Jehovah, i.e., to fall away from Him (see at Hosea 4:12).

The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife {c} of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.

(c) That is, one that has been a harlot for a long time: not that the Prophet did this thing in effect, but he saw this in a vision, or else was commanded by God to set forth under this parable or figure the idolatry of the Synagogue, and of the people her children.

1:2 Go take - This was, probably, done in vision, and was to be told to the people, as other visions were: it was parabolically proposed to them, and might have been sufficient to convince the Jews, would they have considered it, as David considered Nathan's parable. A wife of whoredoms and children - Receive and maintain the children she had before.

2. beginning-not of the prophet's predictions generally, but of those spoken by Hosea.

take . wife of whoredoms-not externally acted, but internally and in vision, as a pictorial illustration of Israel's unfaithfulness [Hengstenberg]. Compare Eze 16:8, 15, &c. Besides the loathsomeness of such a marriage, if an external act, it would require years for the birth of three children, which would weaken the symbol (compare Eze 4:4). Henderson objects that there is no hint of the transaction being fictitious: Gomer fell into lewdness after her union with Hosea, not before; for thus only she was a fit symbol of Israel, who lapsed into spiritual whoredom after the marriage contract with God on Sinai, and made even before at the call of the patriarchs of Israel. Gomer is called "a wife of whoredoms," anticipatively.

children of whoredoms-The kingdom collectively is viewed as a mother; the individual subjects of it are spoken of as her children. "Take" being applied to both implies that they refer to the same thing viewed under different aspects. The "children" were not the prophet's own, but born of adultery, and presented to him as his [Kitto, Biblical Cyclopædia]. Rather, "children of whoredoms" means that the children, like their mother, fell into spiritual fornication. Compare "bare him a son" (see Ho 2:4, 5). Being children of a spiritual whore, they naturally fell into her whorish ways.

1:1-7 Israel was prosperous, yet then Hosea boldly tells them of their sins, and foretells their destruction. Men are not to be flattered in sinful ways because they prosper in the world; nor will it last long if they go on still in their trespasses. The prophet must show Israel their sin; show it to be exceedingly hateful. Their idolatry is the sin they are here charged with. Giving that glory to any creature which is due to God alone, is an injury and affront to God; such as for a wife to take a stranger, is to her husband. The Lord, doubtless, had good reasons for giving such a command to the prophet; it would form an affecting picture of the Lord's unmerited goodness and unwearied patience, and of the perverseness and ingratitude of Israel. We should be broken and wearied with half that perverseness from others, with which we try the patience and grieve the Spirit of our God. Let us also be ready to bear any cross the Lord appoints. The prophet must show the ruin of the people, in the names given to his children. He foretells the fall of the royal family in the name of his first child: call his name Jezreel, which signifies dispersion. He foretells God's abandoning the nation in the name of the second child; Lo-ruhamah, not beloved, or not having obtained mercy. God showed great mercy, but Israel abused his favours. Sin turns away the mercy of God, even from Israel, his own professing people. If pardoning mercy is denied, no other mercy can be expected. Though some, through unbelief, are broken off, yet God will have a church in this world till the end of time. Our salvation is owing to God's mercy, not to any merit of our own. That salvation is sure, of which he is the Author; and if he will work, none shall hinder.