The Wife He Went and Bought Back

Up in the north there was a kingdom called Israel, with its own king and its own capital city, Samaria. And in the days of King Jeroboam there lived in that kingdom a man named Hosea, the son of Beeri. The word of the Lord came to him. It was not the sort of word a man could write down and hand to somebody. It was something he had to go and do. God said: “Go and marry a woman who will not stay true to you, and have children with her — because this whole land has gone off after other gods and left me.” So Hosea went and married a woman called Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim.

They had a son, and God said what he was to be called. “Name him Jezreel. In a little while I will call this house to account for the blood that was spilled at Jezreel, and I will bring the kingdom of Israel to an end. On that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.” Jezreel was a valley in the north, and a great many people had been killed there, and God had not forgotten it. So there was a small boy running about Hosea’s house with that name on him. Then Gomer had a daughter, and God said: “Name her Not Pitied — because I am not going to have mercy on the house of Israel any more. I am going to set myself against them. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them; and I will not save them with bow or sword or war, or with chariots or horses or horsemen, but by the Lord their God.” And when the little girl was old enough to eat bread, Gomer had another son, and God said: “Name him Not My People — because you are not my people, and I do not belong to you.” There were three children in that house, and one of them was called Not Pitied, and one of them was called Not My People, and every time their mother stood in the doorway and called them in for supper, the whole street heard her do it.

And then, straight after the worst name of the three, God said the other thing. “The children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which nobody can measure and nobody can count. And in the very place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called the children of the living God.” “Say to your brother: My People. And say to your sister: Pitied.” So even the names could be changed.

Then Gomer went away. Hosea put what happened next into a song, and in the song it is God who is talking, about a wife who has gone — and the wife is the whole country. “She said, ‘I will go after my lovers. They are the ones who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil, everything I need.’” “And she never knew that I was the one giving her the grain and the wine and the oil. I piled up silver for her. She took the silver and the gold and made things for Baal out of them.” “So I will block her road with thorns and wall up her paths, and she will not find her way through. She will chase her lovers and not catch them. She will look for them and not find them. And then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband. I was better off then than I am now.’” And God said he would put a stop to all her glad days — her feasts and her new moons and her rest days — and let her vines and her fig trees, the ones she called her wages, go wild until the birds and the wild animals ate them.

And then the song turns over and it never really turns back. “So I will lead her out into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart. I will give her back her fields, and I will give her the Valley of Achor to open her eyes.” “On that day she will call me My husband, and she will not call me Baalim any more. I will take the names of the Baals out of her mouth, and nobody will ever say them again.” “On that day I will make a promise for them with the wild animals and the birds of the sky and the crawling things of the earth. I will break the bow and the sword and the war out of the land, and let them all lie down safe.” “I will promise myself to you for ever. I will promise myself to you in fair judging, and in mercy, and in pity. I will promise myself to you and keep it, and you will know the Lord.” “I will have mercy on Not Pitied. And I will say to Not My People: You are my people. And he will say: You are the Lord my God.”

And then God said to Hosea: “Go again, and love a woman who loves the wrong things and has not been true to you — just as the Lord loves the children of Israel, when they turn to other gods and love their cakes of dried grapes.” So Hosea went and got her. And he had to pay for her. Fifteen pieces of silver, and six bushels of barley, and a jar of wine. That is what it cost him to bring his own wife home. And he said to her: “You are going to stay with me a long time now. You must not go away to anybody else. And I will be with you.” And Hosea said that Israel would be like that too: a long time with no king and no ruler, no sacrifice and no altar, no priests and no clear sign from God. And after all that they would come back, and go looking for the Lord their God and for David their king, and in the last days they would stand and stare at the Lord and at his good things.

Hosea said a great deal out loud to that country in those years, and it was hard to hear. “There is no truth in this land, and no mercy, and nobody who knows God. Cursing and lying and killing and stealing have flooded the place, and blood runs into blood.” He told them that their goodness was like a cloud in the morning, and like the dew that is gone by breakfast. He told them what God actually wanted: “I want mercy, not sacrifice. I would rather people knew God than brought me whole burnt offerings.” He told Samaria to throw its golden calf away — a workman made that, he said; it is not God. He said they had chosen kings for themselves without ever asking. He said they were like a silly dove with nothing in its head, calling to Egypt one day and running off to Assyria the next. He said they had sown spoiled seed, and what came up was ruin. Nobody stopped.

And then, in the middle of all that, God stops arguing and starts remembering. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called his children. The more I called them, the further off they went.” “I held Ephraim’s feet and taught them to walk. I lifted him up onto my arm. And they never knew that it was me healing them. When they were being destroyed, I drew them to me with cords of love.” Ephraim was another name for that northern kingdom. And then God asked himself a question, out loud, three times over. “What am I going to do with you, Ephraim? Am I going to hand you over, Israel? What am I going to do with you?” And in the middle of his own question he answered it. “My heart turned over inside me. All of it was stirred up. I am not going to do what my hot anger says. I am not going to let Ephraim be wiped out — because I am God and not a man, the Holy One right here among you.” He said he would roar like a lion, and they would come; they would come fluttering home like a bird out of Egypt, like a dove out of Assyria, and he would put them back in their own houses.

It did not save Samaria. Hosea said so himself, in plain words: the city would be knocked flat and the people in it killed, the smallest ones along with the rest, because she had set herself against her God. And then Hosea said this. “Come back, Israel, to the Lord your God. You have gone weak with all the wrong you have done. Take words with you and come back to him, and say:” “We will pay you with the fruit of our lips. Assyria is never going to save us. We will not ride out on horses any more, and we will never again call the things our own hands made ‘Our gods.’ You are the one who has mercy on the child with no father.” “I will heal their houses and love them out in the open, because my anger has turned away from them. I will be like dew to Israel. He will flower like a lily and put his roots down like the cedars of Lebanon. His branches will spread out. He will be an olive tree with fruit on it, and he will smell like Lebanon.” “They will come back and sit down in his shade. They will live, and they will have grain, and they will flower like a vine. What has Ephraim to do with idols any more? I brought him low, and I am the one who will make him strong. I am like a green juniper tree, and your fruit is found in me.” And last of all Hosea asked a question. Who is wise, and will understand these things? The roads of the Lord are straight.

But there was still the silver and the barley. God did not send Hosea out with a message about it. He sent him out to do it, where everybody could see. So the whole country got to stand in the road and watch a man walk to the place his wife had got to, and count out silver and barley into somebody’s hand, and bring her home. She went away. He went and got her.