hosea 1

Hosea 1:1:
The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the dayss of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

​The names Hosea, Joshua, and Jesus are all derived from the same Hebrew root word. The word "hosea" means "salvation." "Joshua" and "Jesus" include an additional idea: "Yahweh is salvation."

Hosea 1:2-4:
2 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.
3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; which conceived, and bare him a son.
4 And the Lord said unto him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel.

J. Blake Couey

Hosea’s wife is named only once in the text: “Gomer, daughter of Diblaim” (verse 3).

​The names of Gomer’s last two children, Lo-Ruhamah (“Not-Loved”) and Lo-Ammi (“Not-My-People”), articulate God’s rejection of Israel for worshiping other deities. But the name of her first child, Jezreel, has a different offense in view. It commemorates the place where a military official named Jehu usurped the throne of Israel by assassinating members of the previous ruling family and slaughtering their descendants (see 2 Kings 9-10). Set nearly a century later, during the reign of Jehu’s great-grandson Jeroboam II, Hosea 1:4 threatens that “the house of Jehu” will be held accountable for “the blood of Jezreel.” Later readers would have associated this prophecy both with the end of Jehu’s dynasty, when Jeroboam’s son Zechariah was assassinated, and with the conquest of Israel by Assyria a few decades later.
​                     --J Blake Couey Working Preacher

---