And imagine what you would think. Imagine the gossip. Imagine the conversations around the town. You would be shocked. Every day, the promiscuous actions of the prostitute would be right in your face. You would be forced to take notice.

And that’s just the situation of Hosea. Not only was he commanded to marry a prostitute to grab his nation’s attention, not only was he commanded to marry a prostitute as a very direct visual aid to God’s people, but the visual aid was reinforced time and again, with children resulting from the promiscuously and with names which were highly provocative.

The message of the visual aid

So what was this all about? Was it just a quick stunt to grab the people’s attention? No, it was no quick stunt. But it was a very direct reflection of the situation. It was a very direct illustration of the situation. For God was saying through this image, through this visual aid, that his people had prostituted themselves. V2. The GNB is very weak here. The Jerusalem Bible has it ‘Go, marry a whore, and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh (the Lord).’ And this message is reiterated time and again. Ch2:13 – ‘she went after her lovers and forgot me.’

A number of my friends have teenage children. It is in the nature of teenagers to push the boundaries, to rebel, to tell their parents that they hate them, and think they know better than their parents. It is in the nature of teenage children to imagine themselves independent, to treat the family home as a hotel, and generally give their parents cause for worry. Sometimes, parents are forced to have very strong words with their children, and there is no amount of heartache. And although teenage years can be a very trying and difficult time for parents, we know that for the greater part, our teenagers turn into wonderful young adults.

But imagine the situation where your teenagers wilfully ignore everything you say. Wilfully ignore your love. Wilfully and deliberately to everything that they know you would not like. Wilfully become prostitutes. Wilfully seek a path that can only lead to total destruction.

You may then begin to have some idea of how God felt. You may then begin to have some idea of God’s broken heart. You may then begin to have some idea of how desperate God felt. You may then begin to have some idea of the desperate measures that God was prepared to take to get his message across. You may then begin to have a glimpse of the depth of Gods feeling that caused him to call Hosea to marry a prostitute. This is the message, this is the visual aid that Hosea brought to the people and to the nation.

The situation that required the visual aid.

So what was the situation that caused God to act in such a dramatic way? What was the situation that caused God to call his people prostitutes? What was the situation that made God feel so desperate?

Corrupted covenant
One of the key concepts in understanding the relationship between the Jewish nation and God is the idea of the covenant, and the covenant relationship. Over the centuries of God’s dealings with his people, he had made various covenants or agreements with them. This goes right back to the time of Abraham, who was the founder of the Jewish nation. And there are several words that are repeated in these covenants