Hosea

In Hosea 1:2, the Lord directly ordered Hosea to find and marry a loose woman. This marriage was symbolic of God's love for Israel despite Israel's unfaithfulness by practicing idolatry. God often compared idolatry by His people to the adultery of an unfaithful wife.


But God had Hosea prophesy that one day God would establish a nation of Israel that would be faithful to Him. One day, God would create an Israel that would no longer practice idolatry.

In Hosea 3:1-3, God ordered Hosea to go to the slave market and buy his wife back for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Apparently, she had left Hosea and finally wound up on the slave market. Hosea gladly obeyed the Lord because he loved his wife so much. This part of the story amounts to a remarkable prophecy of how one day Jesus the Messiah would lay down His life in love for lost sinners enslaved in the market of sin. Jesus would purchase them from slavery to sin and the Devil by His agony and shed blood on a cruel cross.

Hosea 3:4-5 records an amazingly accurate prophecy of how God would one day scatter the people of Israel over the whole world but they would be completely cured of idolatry, and they would have no king and they would no longer practice animal sacrifice. All of this has happened exactly as Hosea prophesied. In verse five, Hosea prophesied that the people of Israel would one day return to their land and be a nation again. This prophecy was fulfilled on May 15, 1948. The rest of the prophecy that one day Israel will seek the Lord and David their king who is actually Jesus their Messiah, will assuredly be fulfilled at some time in the future.