Hosea

No. 232 Hosea 11:1-12
Hosea prophesied in the northern kingdom in the century before Assyria wiped it off the map. Chapter 11 is one of the tenderest passages in all the prophets, because in it God stops speaking like a judge and...
No. 257 Hosea 2:1-16
Hosea's own marriage is the engine of his book. God told him to marry a woman who would be unfaithful, so that his heartbreak could become a living picture of God and Israel. Chapter 2 is that picture drawn...
No. 568 Hosea 4:1-19
God brings a formal charge against his people through Hosea, and the indictment opens by naming what is missing from the land: no truth, no faithful love, and no knowledge of God. In its place there is...
No. 768 Hosea 12:1-14
Hosea is pleading with the northern kingdom in its last days, and he reaches back to the man they are named after. God has a case against Jacob, he says, and then he retells the ancestor's story: the baby...
No. 1526 Hosea 5:1-15
Hosea pronounces judgment on a people who have turned from God. Their deeds do not permit them to return, he says, for the spirit of unfaithfulness is within them, and they do not know the LORD. They will go...
No. 1872 Hosea 13:1-16
Hosea's word to Israel is heavy with judgment. Ephraim, once exalted, fell through idolatry; the people sin more and more, making idols of their silver. They were filled in their prosperity, and their hearts...
No. 1955 Hosea 6:1-11
Hosea calls the people to return to the LORD, who tears but heals, wounds but binds up; let us press on to know him, and he will come to us like the rain. But God laments their fickle devotion: your love is...
No. 3194 Hosea 1:6-11
Hosea is told to name his children as living signs of judgment: Lo-Ruhamah, no mercy, and Lo-Ammi, not my people. God will no longer pardon Israel; you are not my people, and I will not be your God. These are...
No. 3530 Hosea 2:17-23
After all of Israel's unfaithfulness, God speaks words of astonishing tenderness and commitment. I will betroth you to me forever, he says, in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy; I...
No. 3625 Hosea 9:1-17
This is a heavy chapter of judgment on Israel for persistent unfaithfulness, and much of its imagery is stark and painful; we read it soberly, not dwelling on the hardest lines. But underneath the severity...
No. 3704 Hosea 1:1-5
God gives Hosea an extraordinary, costly command: marry a wife who will prove unfaithful, and have children of unfaithfulness, as a living sign to a people who have committed great unfaithfulness by forsaking...
No. 3785 Hosea 10:1-15
Hosea describes a people who prospered but whose hearts were divided; as their wealth increased, so did their idolatry, their many altars and sacred stones. Prosperity had not drawn them closer to God but...
No. 3838 Hosea 14:1-9
After all its warnings, Hosea ends with one of the tender calls to repentance in Scripture: return, O Israel, to the LORD your God. And, remarkably, God tells them what words to bring: take words with you and...
No. 3934 Hosea 3:1-5
God gives Hosea a hard and beautiful command: go again, love a woman who is loved by another and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the people of Israel though they turn to other gods. Hosea's wife had...
No. 3939 Hosea 7:1-16
Hosea diagnoses the spiritual condition of Israel with a series of vivid images. They are like a cake left on the fire and not turned over, half-baked and spoiled. And more striking still: gray hairs are...
No. 3952 Hosea 8:1-14
Hosea describes a people who have broken covenant with God, set up kings and idols of their own choosing without regard for him, and now must face the consequences. And he captures the principle in a vivid...