God’s Paternal Love for Israel

The book of Hosea is set in the eighth century BCE, when the Northern Kingdom of Israel reached its height and was then destroyed by Assyria in 722–720. The prophet chastised Israel, particularly the Northern Kingdom (Ephraim), for its religious and social offenses, including debauchery and worship of idols, and warned that God would destroy the kingdom because of these offenses. The imagery is graphic, and the metaphor of God the husband and Israel the unfaithful wife dominates chapters 1–3. Symbolic names make the message even clearer. The prophet reported that he was instructed to marry a prostitute, which he did, thereby playing out in his own life (if this is actual and not merely rhetorical) his message that Israel had prostituted itself with other gods. While most of the book envisions the punishment of destruction and exile, it also calls for repentance and ends with hope for the future. The book falls into two sections: chapters 1–3 and 4–14, which possibly derive from different periods.