Hosea: Mercy, Not Sacrifice

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Hosea son of Beeri, a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel. His words were later collected and edited in Judah.

When: About 750 to 725 BC, in the last years before Assyria destroyed the north.

Where it fits: Hosea preached in the northern kingdom in its last decades, from the end of Jeroboam II’s reign (2 Kings 14:23–29) through the short, violent reigns after it (2 Kings 15), until Assyria destroyed it in 722 BC.

Where I quote it: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” twice (Matthew 9:13; 12:7; Hosea 6:6). “Cover us,” on the road to the cross (Luke 23:30; Hosea 10:8). Matthew applies “out of Egypt I called my son” to me (Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1).

If you only read three chapters: Hosea 2, Hosea 6 and Hosea 11.

Words to Know

Mercy — in Hebrew hesed, loyal love that keeps faith. The Greek translation, which Matthew quotes, renders it mercy.

Baal — the Canaanite storm god. The word also means master, owner or husband.

Ephraim — the leading northern tribe, and Hosea’s name for the northern kingdom.

Jezreel — a valley and a town in the north where a king’s dynasty was founded with a massacre.

The Book in Brief

Hosea is a book, mostly of poetry, from a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel, which the book also calls Ephraim. It speaks to the north, with some words for Judah. It falls into two parts.

Chapters 1 to 3 tell of Hosea’s marriage. God tells him to marry a woman of prostitution, and he marries Gomer. They have three children, and God gives each a name that is a message: Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah, which means not shown mercy, and Lo-Ammi, which means not my people. In chapter 2, God accuses Israel of being an unfaithful wife who ran after other lovers. God threatens her, then promises to win her back and betroth her to himself forever, and the children’s names are turned around. In chapter 3, Hosea is told to love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress. He buys her for silver and barley and tells her to stay with him many days.

Chapters 4 to 14 are a collection of messages. God brings a charge against the people: no faithfulness, no kindness and no knowledge of God in the land, with lying, murder and stealing, and priests who lead the people astray. The prophet condemns the worship of Baal, the calf idol of Samaria, the kings who rise and fall by plots, and the leaders who run to Egypt and Assyria for help instead of to God. Judgment is coming, and Assyria will take the people into exile. Chapter 11 pictures God as a father who taught a child to walk and cannot give him up. Chapter 12 looks back to Jacob. The book ends in chapter 14 with a call to return to the LORD and a promise to heal the people.

The Pharisees saw me eating with tax collectors and sinners, and they asked my friends why I did it.

I answered them: Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick do. But you go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:12–13).

Later, when they attacked my friends for picking grain on the Sabbath, I said it again: If you had known what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,” you wouldn’t have condemned the guiltless (Matthew 12:7).

That line is Hosea 6:6. For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Of everything in this book, it is the line I told people to go and study.

The prophet’s marriage

Hosea’s book begins with a command that has disturbed readers ever since. God tells him to marry a wife of prostitution (Hosea 1:2). He marries a woman named Gomer, and she is unfaithful to him.

The marriage becomes the message. Israel is the unfaithful wife. God is the husband who keeps loving her.

Their children are given names that are prophecies. The first son is Jezreel. A daughter is Lo-Ruhamah, not shown mercy. Another son is Lo-Ammi, not my people (Hosea 1:4–9).

Then the names are turned around. I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; and I will tell those who were not my people, “You are my people;” and they will say, “My God!” (Hosea 2:23). My follower Paul used this verse to say that people who were once outsiders had become God’s people (Romans 9:25–26).

You should know that this marriage picture also contains words that are hard to read. In chapter 2, the husband threatens to strip his wife naked and shame her. Many readers today are troubled by a picture of God’s love that includes that, and they are right to be troubled.¹

Go deeperWas Gomer really a prostitute? Readers disagree

Readers have argued for centuries about what Hosea 1 to 3 describes. There are three main answers.

Some read it as a real marriage: Hosea married a woman who was a prostitute, or was inclined that way, or became unfaithful after the wedding. The Hebrew phrase in chapter 1, a wife of prostitution, is unusual, and scholars do not agree whether it means a woman who sold herself or one who was prone to unfaithfulness. Others read the story as a vision or a parable, told to make a point and never lived. A third group sits between them and treats it as a real marriage, told in symbols.

Two details add to the puzzle. Chapter 1 speaks of Hosea in the third person, and chapter 3 in the first. And chapter 3 never names the woman. It says only that Hosea is to love a woman loved by another man, an adulteress (Hosea 3:1). Some scholars think she is Gomer, and others think she is someone else.²

An older teaching needs care too. Many commentaries explained Hosea’s charges by “sacred prostitution,” women serving in the temples of Baal. They pointed to Hosea 4:14, which speaks of men who sacrifice with the shrine prostitutes. A study by Stephanie Budin in 2008 argued that there is no clear evidence for such an institution in the ancient Near East, and many scholars now treat the idea with caution. The question is still debated.³

A prophet who argued with the history books

The name of Hosea’s first son, Jezreel, points to a massacre. In 2 Kings, a commander named Jehu seized the throne of Israel by killing the king, the queen mother and the whole royal family, and piling the heads of seventy princes at the gate of Jezreel. The book of Kings says God praised him for it (2 Kings 10:30).

Hosea says the opposite. God says, I will avenge the blood of Jezreel on the house of Jehu (Hosea 1:4).

So one book of my scriptures praises a bloodbath, and another book says God will punish it. The prophets were allowed to argue with the history books, and both were kept.

Go deeperJehu in stone: what Assyria and Damascus recorded

Jehu is one of the few kings of Israel who appears in a picture from his own time. In 1846 the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard dug up at Nimrud, in what is now Iraq, a black stone pillar about six and a half feet tall, carved for the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. It shows foreign rulers bringing gifts. In one panel a man bows to the ground before the king, and the writing above it reads “The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri.” He may be Jehu himself or one of his envoys. The Assyrians called Israel the land of Omri, though Jehu had destroyed Omri’s family. The king’s records place the gift in 841 BC. It is the earliest known picture of an Israelite.⁴

The book of Kings never mentions this tribute. But another stone, found at Tel Dan in northern Israel in 1993 and 1994, carries an Aramaic inscription that most scholars think was set up by Hazael, the king of Damascus. The king who speaks boasts of killing a king of Israel and a king of the house of David. The names are broken, but they are usually read as Joram and Ahaziah. In 2 Kings 9 it is Jehu who kills them. Historians still debate how to fit the two stories together.⁵

Jehu’s bloody rise did not make his house safe. His family held the throne for less than a century, to the fourth generation, as the book of Kings says God promised, and then Shallum killed Zechariah, the last of them (2 Kings 10:30; 15:8–12). Israel had only a few decades left.

No knowledge of God in the land

Hosea’s charge against Israel is not only that they worshiped Baal. It is how they lived.

There is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land. There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells in it will waste away, with all living things in her, even the animals of the field and the birds of the sky, yes, the fish of the sea also die (Hosea 4:1–3).

When people stop keeping faith with each other, even the land and the animals suffer. Hosea saw that the earth itself pays for what people do.

My husband, not my master

There is a pun in Hosea 2 that you lose in translation. The word baal means master, owner, and also husband. A wife called her husband my baal.

God says that one day, you will call me “my husband,” and no longer call me “my master” (Hosea 2:16). The Hebrew for my master there is baali, my baal. The Hebrew for my husband is ishi, a word that means my man, without the sense of an owner.

God does not want to be Israel’s owner. God wants to be loved.

And in the same chapter God promises a covenant with the animals of the field, and with the birds of the sky, and with the creeping things of the ground, and to break the bow, the sword, and the battle out of the land (Hosea 2:18).

Out of Egypt

Hosea 11 opens with God remembering Israel as a little child.

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. They called to them, so they went from them (Hosea 11:1–2). God taught Ephraim to walk, took them up in his arms, lifted them like an infant to his cheek, and bent down to feed them.

Matthew tells how my family fled to Egypt from Herod and came back, and he says it fulfilled out of Egypt I called my son (Matthew 2:15). In Hosea, the son is Israel, and the very next verse says the son ran away. Matthew saw my life as Israel’s story lived again. You should know what the verse meant first.

How can I give you up?

Then comes the most moving passage in the prophets.

God has every reason to destroy Ephraim. And God cannot do it.

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? … My heart is turned within me, my compassion is aroused. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One among you; and I will not come in wrath (Hosea 11:8–9).

Notice the reason. For I am God, and not man. A human being would take revenge. God will not, because God is holy. In Hosea, God’s holiness is the reason for mercy, not the reason for anger.

Cover us

Hosea also saw the destruction coming. Assyria would sweep through, and the people would beg the earth to hide them: They will tell the mountains, “Cover us!” and the hills, “Fall on us!” (Hosea 10:8).

On the road to the cross, women followed me weeping. I turned and told them not to weep for me but for themselves and their children, because days were coming when people will begin to tell the mountains, “Fall on us!” and tell the hills, “Cover us” (Luke 23:30). Hosea’s words were what I had to give them.

Go deeperWhat became of the northern kingdom after Hosea

The Bible’s account of the end is short. The king of Assyria besieged Samaria for three years, took it, and carried Israel away to Assyria (2 Kings 17:5–6). Hosea had seen it coming. Ephraim was a dove that wandered between two powers: They call to Egypt. They go to Assyria (Hosea 7:11).

Assyrian records tell it from the other side. A Babylonian chronicle says that Shalmaneser V, who besieged Samaria, ravaged it. His successor Sargon II claims the city for himself and says he carried away just over 27,000 people.⁶ Scholars still debate which of the two kings finished the job, and whether the city fell in 722 BC or a year or two later.

That number answers a question many beginners ask: what became of the ten lost tribes? The Assyrians took only part of the people, and the rest stayed in the land. Some probably went south. Archaeologists find that Jerusalem spread onto a new hill and grew to several times its old size around 700 BC, and many scholars think refugees from the north helped fill it.⁷ That may be one way Hosea’s words came to Judah, where his book was collected. The story of ten tribes vanishing without a trace grew up later.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Hosea 6:6, then Matthew 9:10–13 and Matthew 12:1–8.

You will find: the line I told the Pharisees to go and learn, used twice.

Then read Hosea 11:1–9. See why God will not destroy Ephraim.

The Short Version

• Hosea preached in the northern kingdom before Assyria destroyed it.
• His marriage to an unfaithful wife became a picture of God’s faithful love. Parts of that picture are hard to read.
• He condemned a massacre that the book of Kings praised.
• “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” is the line I told the Pharisees to go and learn.
• God says, “How can I give you up?” and refuses to destroy, because God is God, and not man.