Historical Background
“Hosea is symbolic. It comes from the same
Hebrew root as Joshua, which is the Hebrew
name for Jesus. Hosea’s name is appropriate
because his message can help us learn about and
feel more deeply the power of the atonement.”
Important Points to Look For:
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Violating sacred covenants brings forth God’s
Judgment
The Lord loves His children and will accept and
forgive those who repent and come unto Him
God’s justice and mercy are evidences of His
love for His children.
Why is marriage important?
What qualities would you
consider important in a
spouse?
What has the Lord revealed about the
importance of marriage?
D&C 131:1-4
D&C 133:1-4
“In the celestial glory there are three heavens or
degrees; And in order to obtain the highest, a
man must enter into this order of the
priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting
covenant of marriage]; And if he does not, he
cannot obtain it. He may enter into the other,
but that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot
have an increase.”
What promises has He made to
those who marry in the temple and
remain worthy?
D&C 132:19-20
D&C 132:19-20
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Come forth in the first resurrection
Inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and
powers, dominions, all heights and depths
Be gods because they have no end
Be above all because all things are subject unto
them.
They have all power and the angels are subject
unto them.
Hosea
Gomer
Hosea 1:1-2
“The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the
son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham,
Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the
days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of
Israel. 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.”
“Whether [Hosea’s marriage was literal or symbolic], the
religious significance of chapters 1-3 is quite clear.
Hosea’s wives represent Israel, the disloyal and
harlotrous consort of Jehovah, who stipulates that
unless Israel puts aside her harlotries and reforms she
will meet with stern action. For her gross sins she will
be checked and punished and thus learn in the crucible
of bitter experience that her husband means more to
her than she at first supposed.”
Sidney B. Sperry, The Voice of Israel’s Prophets [1952], 282
In a spiritual sense, to emphasize how
serious it is, the damning sin of
idolatry is called adultery. When the
Lord's people forsake him and
worship false gods, their infidelity
to Jehovah is described as
whoredoms and adultery.
(Jer. 3:8–9; Hos. 1:2; 3:1.) By forsaking
the Lord, his people are unfaithful
to their covenant vows, vows made
to him who symbolically is their
Husband.
Bruce R. McConkie (Mormon
Doctrine, p. 25)
Hosea’s and Gomer’s Children
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Jezreel – “God shall sow” or scatter abroad, since
anciently sowing was done by casting handfuls of seed.
It undoubtedly alludes to the overthrow and scattering
of Israel.
Lo-ruhamah – “not having obtained mercy” no amount
of mercy from God would set aside divine justice and
save northern Israel;
Lo-ammi –”Not my people” shows that by their
harlotry Israel could not be thought of as God’s people.
Hosea
Gomer
The Lord
Israel
How do these labels apply to Hosea and Gomer?
Hosea 2:1-5
“Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters,
Ruhanah. Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not
my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put
away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her
adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her
naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and
make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land,
and slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon
her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.
For their mother hath played the harlot: she that
conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I
will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my
water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.
Hosea 2 What are the Meanings of the Metaphors?
Verse 1
Ammi
“My people”
Verse 1
Ruhamah
“Having obtained mercy,” or “those who have obtained
mercy”
Verse 2
Your mother
The nation Israel
Verse 3
Wilderness
The captivity
Verse 5
Lovers
The priest, priestesses, and idols of the Canaanite temples
or, in the larger sense, any person one loves more than
God.
Verses 5-9, 13
Bread, corn, wool, and jewels
Worldly values and treasures
Verses 9-10
Her nakedness and her lewdness
Israel’s sin
Verses 11-14
Allure her
Jehovah still cares for her and will try to win her back.
Verse 15
Valley of Achor, a rich valley north of Jericho,
near Gilgal
The Lord will restore her to great blessings.
Verse 16
Ishi (Hebrew for “my husband”) and Baali
(Hebrew for “my master”)
Eventually Israel will accept God as her Lord and her true
husband.
Verses 19-20
Betroth thee unto me forever
The fulness of the new and everlasting covenant restored to
Israel in the latter days and the eternal blessings that will
result form Israel’s faithful marriage to Jehovah.
Verse 22
Jezreel (Hebrew for “God shall sow”
The downtrodden and poor Israel. Like the Jezreel Valley,
they have great potential and will be resown and made
fruitful by the Lord.
From those verses, how did the Lord
feel when Israel was unfaithful?
Do you think the Lord feels as sad if
we are unfaithful?
The image of a loving, forgiving God comes
through clearly to those who read and
understand the scriptures. Since he is our Father,
he naturally desires to raise us up, not to push us
down, to help us live, not to bring about our
spiritual death.
Spencer W. Kimball (The Miracle of Forgiveness
[1969], 344)
The growing permissiveness in modern society gravely concerns us. Certainly
our Heavenly Father is distressed with the increasing inroads among his
children of such insidious sins as adultery and fornication, homosexuality,
lesbianism, abortions, pornography, population control, alcoholism, cruelty
expressed in wife-beating and child-abuse, dishonesty, vandalism, violence,
and crime generally, including the sin of living together without marriage.
We call upon our Church members everywhere to renew their efforts to
strengthen the home and to honor their parents, and to build better
communications between parent and child.
Important as it is, building stronger homes is not enough in the fight against
rising permissiveness. We therefore urge Church members as citizens to lift
their voices, to join others in unceasingly combating, in their communities
and beyond, the inroads of pornography and the general flaunting of
permissiveness. Let us vigorously oppose the shocking developments
which encourage the old sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and which defile
the human body as the temple of God. …
God will not be mocked. His laws are immutable. True repentance is rewarded
by forgiveness, but sin brings the sting of death. …
As we think back upon the experiences of Nineveh, Babylon, Sodom and
Gomorrah, we wonder—will history repeat itself ? What of our world
today? Are we forgetting in our great nations the high and lofty principles
which can preserve the nations? …
… there are among us those same vices which we have seen wreck empires, and
we see them becoming flagrant in all nations. Shall we, like Belshazzar, sow
the wind and reap the whirlwind? Shall we permit the home to deteriorate
and marriage to become a mockery? Shall we continue to curse God, hate
our enemies, and defile our bodies in adulterous and sensuous practices?
And when the patience of the Lord with us is exhausted, shall we stand
trembling while destruction comes upon us? Or shall we wisely see the
handwriting on the wall and profit by the sad experience of the past and
return unto the Lord and serve him?
(Ensign, Nov. 1977, pp. 5–6)
“If I could go back again to that group of students
of mine, I would see every classroom day
throughout the year as the opportunity for them
to know a little better Jesus Christ as he is. He is
the God speaking through these verses in Hosea.
The exactness, the demand for perfect fidelity,
combined with the willingness to reach out with
mercy, apparently almost endlessly, are not in
conflict. They do not create a paradox. Jesus
Christ, the God of the Old Testament, shares
his Father’s desire that all of us might have
eternal life, to live the life that God lives. To do
that we must become like him—perfectly
faithful, clean without blemish. He knows that
standard is not reachable for us, unless we do all
that we can do and then rely on his mercy in
faith.”
Henry B Eyring,(CES Symposium on the Old
Testament • 15 August 1995 • Brigham Young
University)