Did Hosea really marry a prostitute?
Hosea 1 opens with the LORD telling the prophet to take 'a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms.' Chapter 3 opens with what reads like a second command: 'Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress.' Hosea then buys a woman for fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Four readings have stood across the centuries on what is actually happening in these chapters, and which one a reader takes shapes the whole book.
Hosea 1:2 is one of the most discussed sentences in the prophetic literature. 'The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.' The prophet marries Gomer daughter of Diblaim. Three children are born and given symbolic names. Then chapter 3 opens with what looks like a second command and the purchase of a woman for fifteen shekels of silver and barley. Is this one marriage or two? Was Gomer a prostitute before the marriage or only after? Is any of it actual marriage, or is the whole sequence a visionary parable? Four positions have been on the table since at least the medieval period, and which one a reader holds shapes how the prophet's whole message is understood.
What the text says
Hosea 1:2-3 reports the command and the marriage. 'Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms... So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim.' Three children are then born: Jezreel (1:4, named after the valley where Jehu massacred the house of Ahab); Lo-Ruhama, 'not pitied' (1:6); and Lo-Ammi, 'not my people' (1:9). Each child's name carries a prophetic oracle about Israel.
Chapter 2 then turns to a long oracle addressed to 'your mother,' indicting Israel's unfaithfulness in the language of marriage. The mother is taken to be Gomer at the surface level and Israel at the prophetic level. The oracle closes with promises of restoration: a new betrothal, the reversal of the children's names, and a renewed covenant.
Chapter 3 opens with what reads as a second command. 'Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine. So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley' (Hos 3:1-2). The prophet then tells the woman she will sit 'many days' without sexual relations, and the prophet himself will do the same. The chapter closes with an oracle that Israel will sit 'many days' without king, sacrifice, or ephod, and afterward seek the LORD and David their king.
The four positions
Each position has its own defenders, its own way of handling the chapter 1-chapter 3 relationship, and its own unresolved problems.
- Rashi, Commentary on Hosea (c. 1080s)
- John Calvin, Commentary on Hosea (1559)
- Matthew Henry, Exposition (1710)
- C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Minor Prophets (1869)
- Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia, 1974)
- Andrew A. Macintosh, Hosea (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997)
- Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC, 1987)
- Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible, 1980)
- • The text reads as third-person biographical narrative with named persons (Gomer daughter of Diblaim) and a sequence of birth scenes. The form is the form Israelite prophetic biography elsewhere takes (Isaiah and Hosea both record specific marriages and children with covenant-symbolic names)
- • The command at 1:2 is unambiguous in its Hebrew: 'eshet zenunim, 'wife of whoredoms.' The phrase functions as a description of the woman to be taken, not as a future-tense prophetic prediction about her
- • Other prophets enact God's word through bodily sign-acts. Isaiah walks naked and barefoot for three years (Isa 20). Jeremiah carries a yoke (Jer 27-28). Ezekiel lies on his side, bakes bread over dung, and is forbidden to mourn his wife's death (Ezek 4-5; 24). Costly literal obedience is the prophetic norm, not the exception
- • Chapter 3's purchase price of fifteen shekels plus a homer and a half of barley is precise economic detail. The total value approximates a slave-price for a woman in the eighth century, suggesting an actual transaction rather than a vision element. Lev 27:4 gives the redemption price for a female between twenty and sixty as thirty shekels; the half-and-barley arrangement reads as Gomer being purchased back from a situation of indebted servitude
- • The chapter 1-3 relationship is a single marriage in two phases. Wolff, Macintosh, and others read chapter 3 as the prophet retrieving the same wife after she has left him, with the 'many days without' as the period of separation that mirrors Israel's coming exile
- • The children's names function as living oracles. Jezreel (named for the valley of Jehu's coup in 2 Kgs 9-10), Lo-Ruhama, and Lo-Ammi are the oracles in flesh, and the form requires actual children
- • Raises the moral question of God commanding a prophet into a marriage with a sexually compromised woman. Maimonides' principled objection, that God does not command morally compromising actions, has weight in both Jewish and Christian traditions
- • Chapter 3's purchase scene is hard to reconcile with chapter 1 if Gomer is already Hosea's wife. Why does he have to buy her? Defenders argue she has fallen into indebted servitude (or back into prostitution) and is bought back, but the text does not explicitly identify the woman of chapter 3 as Gomer
- • The phrase 'wife of whoredoms' could equally describe a woman participating in the cultic prostitution attached to fertility-cult worship (qedeshah practice), rather than a common prostitute. The text does not specify which
- • The position has to choose between 'sexually unfaithful' and 'cult-prostitute' as the meaning of zenunim, and the choice changes what the sign means
How each position handles the four pressure points
The four readings can be evaluated against the same four pressure points the chapters create. Setting the positions next to each other on the same details surfaces where each one has to do interpretive work and where each one rests.
How each reading handles the chapter 1-chapter 3 relationship, the children's names, Gomer's status, and the chapter 3 purchase price.
Why fifteen shekels and a homer and a half of barley
The chapter 3 purchase price is the only specific economic detail in the chapters and one of the few in the book of Hosea. The price is fifteen shekels of silver plus a homer and a half of barley. The standard explanation, going back to the medieval Jewish commentators and developed by Wolff and Macintosh in modern scholarship, is that the total reaches the slave-price for an adult female.
Leviticus 27:4 gives the redemption value for a female between twenty and sixty years old as thirty shekels of silver. A homer of barley is a standard volume measure. A homer and a half of barley in the eighth century would have approximated the price-equivalent of the remaining fifteen shekels, making the total payment thirty shekels in mixed currency. The half-and-half (silver and grain) is unusual and is read as signaling either Hosea's limited resources, or the kind of part-payment arrangement that recovered a person from indebted servitude in the period.
The literal positions take the precision as evidence the transaction actually happened. The visionary position takes the precision as the kind of concrete detail prophetic vision regularly carries (Ezekiel's visions are full of measurements). The two-women position takes the price as the purchase cost for the second woman from her current household. Each reading accounts for the detail differently, but the detail itself is part of the data.
The weaning between Lo-Ruhama and Lo-Ammi
Hosea 1:8 contains a small detail that affects the chapter 1-chapter 3 relationship. 'Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhama, she conceived, and bore a son.' The note that Lo-Ruhama was weaned before Lo-Ammi was conceived gives the second-to-third-child interval as roughly two to three years (the standard weaning age in the period). The chronological hinge matters because the literal-marriage readings have to fit chapter 2's oracle and chapter 3's purchase into the gaps the chapter 1 chronology allows.
On the literal-already-unfaithful reading, Gomer is married, bears three children over perhaps four to six years, leaves Hosea (or is taken by someone) sometime after, and is retrieved in chapter 3. The chapter 2 oracle is delivered at some point during the leaving. The total span fits a single marriage in two phases. On the literal-became-unfaithful reading, Gomer becomes unfaithful sometime after the children's births, and chapter 3 is the retrieval. On the visionary reading, the chronology is internal to the vision rather than to lived time. On the two-women reading, chapter 3's sign-act happens at some point after chapter 1's marriage, with the chapter 2 oracle as the connecting theological reflection.
Each position fits the weaning detail. None resolves on its account alone. The detail is a chronological anchor but not a position-decider.
What the children's names do
The three children are named in order. Jezreel (1:4) is named after the valley where Jehu massacred the house of Ahab in 2 Kings 9-10. The oracle attached to the name is that the LORD will 'visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu' and end the kingdom of Israel. The name reaches back to the founding violence of the northern dynasty's last century and forward to its dissolution.
Lo-Ruhama (1:6) is 'not pitied' or 'not compassioned.' The name reverses the LORD's covenant compassion ('I will have mercy on the house of Judah' is the contrast). The oracle attached to the name is that the LORD will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel. Lo-Ammi (1:9) is 'not my people,' the explicit reversal of the Sinai covenant formula ('you shall be my people, and I will be your God'). The name reverses the covenant itself.
Chapter 2:23 then reverses the reversal: 'I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.' The children's names become the structure of the restoration oracle. The names are not incidental; they are the chapters' theological architecture. Romans 9:25-26 and 1 Peter 2:10 then quote the reversal as the gospel pattern of Gentile inclusion. The literal-marriage readings take the children as actual children whose names carry the oracle. The visionary reading takes them as oracle-figures within the vision. Either way, the names are doing the same theological work.
Where the disagreement actually sits
Stepping back, the disagreement clusters around two questions. First, does God command morally compromising actions for prophetic-sign purposes. The literal readings (both versions) answer yes, on the basis that the command is given and the prophet obeys; costly literal obedience is what prophets do. The visionary reading answers no, on Maimonides' principle that the divine character precludes commanded violations of moral law. The two-women reading is internally divided: it can be paired with either answer depending on what the chapter 3 sign-act is taken to involve.
Second, what is the form of the chapter 1 material. The literal readings treat it as prophetic biography. The visionary reading treats it as prophetic vision reported in biographical form. The two-women reading treats it as biography but disagrees about how chapter 3 relates. The two questions track but do not reduce to each other. A reader can hold a literal marriage in chapter 1 and a visionary or symbolic reading in chapter 3, or any of several mixed positions.
Reading Hosea with the question open
Most readers who have stayed with Hosea 1-3 end up holding a position with borrowed pieces. Few literal-marriage defenders ignore the moral weight of the command. Few visionary readers dismiss the biographical surface of the text. The literal-already-unfaithful reading takes the surface seriously and accepts the moral weight. The literal-became-unfaithful reading takes the surface seriously and softens the moral question. The visionary reading takes the moral principle seriously and reads the surface as oracular form. The two-women reading takes the surface seriously and reads the chapters as two distinct sign-acts.
Whichever reading a reader holds, the chapters are doing the same work. The LORD is shown loving an unfaithful Israel, indicting Israel's unfaithfulness, suffering the indictment, and committing to a restoration that reverses the indictment. The reader's position on the form of the prophetic material decides how the oracle was delivered to the prophet's own life. It does not decide what the oracle says. The oracle remains: 'I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies' (Hos 2:19).
Sources
- Hosea 1:1-3:5 (Masoretic Hebrew Text, Leningrad Codex B19a; KJV cited above for familiarity)
- Septuagint Hosea (Rahlfs-Hanhart; the OG of Hosea often diverges from MT in key verses)
- Targum Jonathan on the Prophets (Sperber, Brill 1959-1973)
- Leviticus 27:4 (the redemption price for adult females)
- 2 Kings 9-10 (the Jehu coup at Jezreel)
- Jeremiah 3 (parallel marriage-allegory)
- Ezekiel 16 and 23 (extended marriage-allegory)
- Romans 9:25-26 (Paul's citation of Hosea on Lo-Ammi and Lo-Ruhama)
- 1 Peter 2:10 (Peter's citation of the Lo-Ammi reversal)
- Jerome, Commentary on Hosea (PL 25, c. 406 CE)
- Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Minor Prophets (c. 400 CE)
- Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (PG 81, c. 433 CE)
- Rashi, Commentary on Hosea (c. 1080s)
- Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Hosea (12th c.)
- Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed 2.46 (1190; Pines translation, University of Chicago 1963)
- David Kimhi (Radak), Commentary on Hosea (c. 1200)
- Pusey, The Minor Prophets, vol. 1 (1860)
- C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Minor Prophets (1869)
- John Calvin, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets (1559)
- Edward J. Young, My Servants the Prophets (Eerdmans, 1952)
- G. A. F. Knight, Hosea (Torch Bible Commentary; SCM, 1960)
- James L. Mays, Hosea (OTL; Westminster, 1969)
- Hans Walter Wolff, Hosea (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1974)
- Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1980)
- Leon J. Wood, Hosea, in The Expositor's Bible Commentary, vol. 7 (Zondervan, 1985)
- Douglas Stuart, Hosea-Jonah (WBC; Word, 1987)
- Gale Yee, Composition and Tradition in the Book of Hosea (Scholars Press, 1987)
- Phyllis Bird, 'To Play the Harlot: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,' in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (1989)
- David A. Hubbard, Hosea (Tyndale; IVP, 1989)
- Thomas E. McComiskey, ed., The Minor Prophets, vol. 1 (Baker, 1992)
- Gale Yee, 'Hosea,' in The Women's Bible Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 1992)
- Renita J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Fortress, 1995)
- Walter A. Maier, Hosea (Concordia, 1996)
- Andrew A. Macintosh, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997)
- Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel (NAC; B&H, 1997)
- Marvin A. Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets, vol. 1 (Berit Olam; Liturgical Press, 2000)
- Ehud Ben Zvi, Hosea (FOTL; Eerdmans, 2005)