The prophet Hosea prophesied in the 8th century B.C.E., during the reign of Kings Jeroboam II and Hoseah.  King Jeroboam II (787-747 BCE) was the 13th king of Israel and King Hoseah (731-722 BCE) was the 19th and last king of Israel. Hosea had a very long prophetic ministry, probably from about 750 to 722 BCE.  He prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel in the 30 years before they were carried into Assyrian captivity in 722 BC as punishment for idolatry. We don’t know how or where he died. Jereboam I (931-910 BC), the 1st king of Israel,

had began the idol worship by making the two golden calves at Dan and Bethel, but the worship of Baal and Asherah persisted throughout the history of the northern kingdom (from 931-722 BC). Especially King Ahab (874-853 BC), the 7th king of Israel, who built a temple for Baal in Samaria. His wicked wife Jezebel had 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah who “ate at her table”. Elijah had the test at Mt Carmel and then they killed all those prophets of Baal and Aserah. Jehu (841-814 BC), the 10th king of Israel, was anointed king by Elijah for the purpose of killing all of Ahab’s descendants and killing Jezebel. He did just that, beheading 70 of Ahab’s sons and killing Ahab’s son, Ahaziah (853-852 BC), the 8th king of Israel, and all his relatives. He pretended to host a banquet for the followers of Baal, only to trap and kill them. He tracked Jezebel down and some men cast her down from an upper story as she put on her makeup. The dogs ate all of her except her hands, feet, and skull. The dogs licked her blood in the same place that Jezebel had Naboth killed to get his vineyard for Ahab. Unfortunately, Jehu eliminated Baal worship from Israel but he continue to worship the golden calves of Jereboam I.

Hosea 1:1The word of the Lord that came to 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.” That would be Jereboam II (793-753 BC), the 13th king of Israel (no kin to Ahab). From https://www.julianspriggs.co.uk/pages/KingsOfIsrael “Jeroboam restored the land to the same boundaries as in the days of David and Solomon (14:25). He also had control over Damascus, as ordained by God and spoken through the prophet Jonah (14:27). During Jeroboam’s reign, Assyria had a succession of weak leaders. The peace brought economic prosperity and trade with Phoenicia.Hosea and Amos condemned the north for abandoning God and oppressing the poor. Ivory was used to build mansions. Some administrative documents have been found. Great quantities of oil was bought at low price from the farmers (Amos 6:6). These economic as well as the moral iniquities caused the decline of Israel.” During the reign of Mehahem (752-742 BC), the 16th king of Israel, Tiglath-pileser III (called Pul – 15:17) became one of the strongest rulers of Assyria. 

During the reign of Pekah (740-732 BC), the 18th king of Israel, “Tiglath-pileser’s campaign of 734-732 took him to Philistia, which he subdued, then on to Israel by 733, destroying cities in Galilee and Naphtali. People were deported to Assyria, as was his custom. After Israel, the Assyrians continued up to Damascus, which they took in 732. Rezin was killed, thus ending the nation which was often used by God to judge Israel. Damascus became an Assyrian province (2 Kg 16:9-10). Pekah was spared by Tiglath-pileser.” Again, from https://www.julianspriggs.co.uk/pages/KingsOfIsrael During the reign of Hoshea (732-722 BC), the 19th and last king of Israel: “By this time, Israel had become a small vassal state paying regular tribute to Assyria, who had occupied the whole of Galilee and the Transjordan.Hoshea rebelled and made an alliance with So, the weak king of Egypt. When Assyria came to suppress the revolt, Hoshea tried to give them tribute again. It did not work and he was put in prison, the land was invaded and Samaria was besieged for three years (17:1-5). Unable to withstand, Samaria fell and its inhabitants were deported to Assyria and further east in the land of Media (17:6).”

All that history of the northern kingdom to tell you what things were like in Israel when Hosea prophesied. Israel’s doom of Assyrian captivity was sealed and we think Hosea lived to see it happen. But his book is not just more condemning of Israel. It is a stange love story. From AI: “In the Bible, Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, a woman described as a prostitute, served as a symbolic representation of God’s covenant with Israel, where God, like Hosea, remained faithful despite Israel’s repeated unfaithfulness and idolatry, illustrating God’s enduring love for his people even when they stray away from him; essentially, Hosea was commanded by God to marry Gomer, who then committed adultery, mirroring Israel’s betrayal of God through worshipping false idols.” Their 3 sons had names symbolizing the punishment about to come on Israel. Chapter 3 is a key chapter. Apparently Gomer left Hosea and her sons and went back into prostitution, ending up on the auction block. Hosea 3:1 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” ² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. ³ And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” ⁴ For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. ⁵ Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.”

So, even though Hosea condemns Israel, he gives Messianic hope for at least some of them. We know this is a Messianic chapter b/c “David will be their king in the latter days”. Ezekiel 37 had made this same prophecy: 37:²⁴ “My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd.” So that is figurative language fulfilled in Jesus as the future Messianic king. Isaiah and Jeremiah both said that a “root (or descendant) of Jesse” would arise in the Messianic age (again that was fulfilled in Jesus). David being king and Israel being restored would happen in the “latter days”, or the last days of the Jewish Age (from 30 AD to 70 AD). The northern kingdom would be without a king for many years until the Messiah would come. Benson Commentary: “And this prediction was remarkably fulfilled upon the ten tribes, when made captives by Shalmaneser, (compare Hosea 9:4,) and upon the two remaining tribes, after the destruction of their temple and commonwealth by Nebuchadnezzar, and during their captivity in Babylon.” I think Benson is correct in saying that this prediction would include Judah after her exile in Babylon. The exiles cured Israel and Judah of her idolatrous practices. There is no more mention of idolatry in Judah from the time of her return from Babylon in 536 BC until Jesus came.

I find this prediction amazing. God still loved the northern kingdom of Israel in spite of her idolatry. They were carried into Assyrian captivity to become known as the “lost 10 tribes of Israel’. “Once exiled, the tribes gradually integrated with other populations, losing their distinct identity and cultural practices.  Due to the lack of historical records after their exile, the exact location of the “Lost Tribes” remains unknown, leading to various theories and speculation about their descendants.” From gotquestions.org “Many of the Jews who remained in the land intermarried with people from Cutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim who had been sent by the Assyrian king to inhabit Samaria (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2–11).” They became the “Samaritans” of the New Testament. There are many mysteries, legends, and traditions as to what happened to the ten “lost” tribes of Israel. One legend says that the ten tribes migrated to Europe (the Danube River, they say, got its name from the tribe of Dan). Another legend says the tribes migrated all the way to England and that all Anglo-Saxons today are actually Jews—this is a teaching of the heretical British Israelism (Herbert W. Armstrong who claimed that the United States is descended from the tribe of Manasseh, while England and the British Commonwealth are descended from the tribe of Ephraim). A surprising number of groups around the world claim to have descended from the “lost” tribes: there are people in India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and North America who all claim such ancestry. Other theories equate the Japanese or the American Indians with the ten “lost” tribes of Israel (taught by the Mormons). The truth is that the “lost tribes of Israel” were never really lost. Many of the Jews who remained in the land after the Assyrian conquest re-united with Judah in the south (2 Chronicles 34:6–9). Assyria was later conquered by Babylon, who went on to invade the Southern Kingdom of Israel, deporting the two remaining tribes: Judah and Benjamin (2 Kings 25:21). Remnants of the northern tribes would have thus been part of the Babylonian deportations. Seventy years later, when King Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return to Israel (Ezra 1), many (from all twelve tribes) returned to Israel to rebuild their homeland. In the Gospels, the prophetess Anna (Luke 2:36) was from the tribe of Asher (one of the ten supposedly lost tribes). Anna wasn’t lost at all. Both Zechariah and Elisabeth—and therefore John the Baptist—are from the tribe of Levi (Luke 1:5). Jesus promises the disciples that they will “sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30). Paul, who knows he is from the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1), speaks of “the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night” (Acts 26:7)—note the present tense. James addresses his epistle “to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations” (James 1:1). In short, there is ample evidence in Scripture that all twelve tribes of Israel are still in existence and will be in the Messianic kingdom.”

Thus the 10 tribes dispersed and no longer existed as distinct tribes after the Assyrian captivity, but they still claim to know which tribe they descended from. The amazing thing is that God still had a remnant from among the 10 tribes who would become part of the Jewish remnant church of the book of Acts, which would have included Jewish Christians from all 12 tribes.

Worshipping other gods is spiritual adultery, or “whoredom (spiritual prostitution)”.

Hosea 4:12 “They ask a piece of wood for advice! They think a stick can tell them the future! Longing after idols has made them foolish. They have played the prostitute, serving other gods and deserting their God.”

Hosea 9:1 “O Israel, do not rejoice as other nations do. For you have been unfaithful to your God, hiring yourselves out like prostitutes, worshiping other gods on every threshing floor.”

Ezekiel 6:9 “Then when they are exiled among the nations, they will remember me. They will recognize how hurt I am by their unfaithful hearts and lustful eyes that long for their idols.” NOTICE THAT GOD IS HURT BY SPIRITUAL ADULTERY JUST AS A HUSBAND OR WIFE WOULD BE BY THE ADULTERY OF A MATE.

Ezekiel 16:32 “Yes, you are an adulterous wife who takes in strangers instead of her own husband.”

Jeremiah 3:1 “If a man divorces a woman and she goes and marries someone else, he will not take her back again, for that would surely corrupt the land. But you have prostituted yourself with many lovers, says the Lord. Yet I’m still calling you back to me.”

Isaiah 1:21 “See how Jerusalem, once so faithful, has become a prostitute. Once the home of justice and righteousness, she is now filled with murderers.”

Judges 2:17 “Yet Israel did not listen to the judges but prostituted themselves by worshiping other gods. How quickly they turned away from the path of their ancestors, who had obeyed the Lord’s commands.”

Leviticus 20:5“I myself will turn against them and cut them off from the community, because they have committed spiritual prostitution by worshiping Molech.”

God is a “jealous God”, just like a husband or wife would be jealous of an adulterous mate who gives their love to a stranger. Exodus 34:14 “You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.”

Jesus has a passionate love for us, his bride, but do we still have a passionate love for him? Zechariah 8:2 “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: ‘My love for Mount Zion is passionate and strong; I am consumed with passion for Jerusalem!’” You became the bride of Christ when you became a Christian. Your loyalty and devotion to God must be pure like that of a loyal husband or wife. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11:² For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. ³ But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

Maybe you are thinking, “I’m glad I don’t worship idols like Israel did”. But read what James said: James 4:4 “You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.” James says that friendship with the world is spiritual adultery. The solution: James 4:⁸ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” Greed is idolatry. Ephesians 5:⁵ For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.”

We have a Hindu temple right here in Huntsville, Al, which is hard to believe in the Bible belt. I have taken my Bible classes there on several occasions to walk around the temple and see all the Hindu god and goddess idols around the walls. They still practice idolatry in that temple. But how many of us Christains practice idolatry when we give our devotion to our idols of materialism, sports, hobbies, and greed? The Ephesian church in Revelation 2 had “lost their first love”.

God, please help me to restore that passion I had when I first became a Christian, when I was in my honeymoon stage of my spiritual marriage to Jesus. Help me to destroy or give up all my idols, things that I put ahead of God and Jesus in my life.

But the comforting thing comes from the book of Hosea. In spite of all the many times that I have committed spiritual adultery, God and Jesus still have a passionate love for me and will forgive me. I may find myself at the bottom of the barrel spiritually, like Gomer when she ended up on the auction block, but God still loves me and will buy me back (which is the meaning of the word “redemption). I don’t deserve that love any more than an unfaithful husband deserves a loving wife who forgives him after he has had an affair.