7.31.2026 - Matt Hekman

July 31

This is one of those uncomfortable stories in the Bible. Admittedly, there are several stories that, if you read them and stop to think, “that really happened,” it might make you feel a little shocked, woozy, or disgusted. Those stories that put the human condition fully on display serve to remind us of our depravity and sinful brokenness, and to illuminate some contrasting characteristic of God. In our study of God’s patience, today we turn to the book of Hosea.

God’s people had not kept their covenant with God. While he had said, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” they had gone after other gods as an unfaithful wife would cheat on her husband. God’s people were unfaithful to him and had taken idols to worship, holding the Lord their God as just one god among many. Where God had called them into an exclusive relationship, they had gone astray.

God made a real life parable out of Hosea in commanding him to take a prostitute for a wife. God told his prophet Hosea, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” Some commentators hold that the marriage of Hosea to an actual prostitute was figurative or symbolic to varying degrees, but let’s assume the literal reading. Given the “realness” and incredible nature of countless other stories in the Bible, we can safely take it at face value.

It is shocking to think that the prophet of God would take a woman to be his wife who was already known to be an “unfaithful woman”. But that is exactly the point – to be a shocking example to the people of Israel. This isn’t just some sham marriage, either. We see three children named in the text. Each of the names are prophetic judgements on Israel. I won’t go into detail here but to sum up, God says he will judge Israel, that he will not show mercy, and that Israel is not his people. It is a harsh but just judgement.

As shocking as the marriage is in the first place, God commands Hosea to remain faithful to Gomer, even when she continues on in her unfaithfulness. It even gets to a point where it costs Hosea more than his dignity. He has to buy Gomer back as though she’s a slave.

“The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3 Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” (Hosea 3:1-2)

In all this we see that Hosea was incredible patient with his wife, taking her back, reminding her to be faithful again and again, and even buying her back at great cost. But what the Israelites were to see, and we can see too, is that God is incredible patient – taking back unfaithful people, even buying them out of the bondage of sin.  

Ultimately, God uses Hosea’s relationship to Gomer as a picture of his relationship with the people Israel. Though they are unfaithful repeatedly, God continues to call them his own and bring them back into relationship. Even when the cost is high, God redeems and reconciles.

“I will heal their waywardness

    and love them freely,

    for my anger has turned away from them. (14:4)

The story of Hosea anticipates the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The faithful husband to his bride the church redeems a people who were not his people. It cost him his life to do so. And we, as his church are called into a covenant, to be faithful to him.

God’s faithfulness to his covenants ultimately causes him to be patient with Israel and not to disown them. In the same way God is patient with us and remains faithful to us even in our failings. 2 Tim 2:13 tells us, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”