Hosea~ A prophet's whose marriage was an example of Israel's unfaithfulness.

Another prophet we see the picture of on  the wall of our long hallway is Hosea. Hosea was the son of Beeri. Hosea was called & served as a prophet during the time that Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah reigned in Judah & Jeroboam son of Joash reigned in Israel. His calling was to not only sound the alarm to the people about their spiritual adultery to other gods, but to show them a real live example of what they were doing. So God told Hosea to go and marry a prostitute. So he went and married one named Gomer. Gomer did not stay true to her marriage vows, but went back to being a prostitution time and time again. But Hosea kept taking her back. This was the perfect example of how God's people had repeatedly sold themselves to other gods, yet God kept bringing them back to himself. Then Hosea would tell the people how they were just like his unfaithful wife.

It is fitting that Hosea means deliverance, since that is the message that he was preaching to them about. he spoke of the judgement & take over that they would experience, yet he also comforts them with the promise that God would "deliver them and bring them back to their home some day. Though Hosea spoke of Judah in this sermons, he mostly referred to the kingdom of Israel and the northern kingdom. God has Hosea call the land where the capital Jerusalem was by it's old name, Ephraim. I believe that this was to remind them of his covenant to them and their respectability's to hold up their side of it. You see, Where Jerusalem is was the land gave to the tribe of Ephraim when the land was divided up between the 12 tribes after God gave them the land, fulling his promise to their Fathers generations before hand. 

The nice thing about the book that bears Hosea's name is that it ends on a note of encouragement   and promises that God promises to bring them back after He has punished them.