For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Hosea 3 :1-5

1 The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3 Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.”

4 For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. 5 Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.

A. Find Out:

1. What did the Lord tell Hosea to do? v.1a
2. Of what was this to be a picture? v.1b
3. So what did he do? v.2
4. What did he tell her? v.3
5. What will initially happen to Israel ? v.4
6. When will it eventually happen? v.5

B. Think:

1. What was Hosea to do?
2. Did he have to wait for his wife to do anything?
3. How was this a picture of what was happening to Israel?

C. Comment:

There are two parts to this brief chapter: first the prophetic picture and then the practical application.

First the prophetic picture acted out by Hosea. He was to go and find his ex-wife and buy her back from slavery and love her in a practical way. There is nothing to say she regretted her present plight but the application would make us think that this was probably so. This must have been a very real challenge to Hosea who must have felt badly about his wife leaving him for another, but now he must put aside all those hurts and love her again. What a picture.

Yes, says the Lord, Israel will be in captivity without their own king, without their own religious practices and without a sense of being loved. In that state they will come to their senses and will seek God again and look for a deliverer, in the last days. That last phrase suggests there may be more than one prophetic fulfilment to this prophecy.

Yes in the near future they will seek God and be returned to their land, but in the long-term history of God there will also come a time when Israel, as a nation, will seek after God and will find their deliverer.  Last days, in New Testament language at least, means the days after the coming of Jesus and sometimes the end of the last times, yet to come.

D. Application:

1. God’s love will receive His departed people when they return.
2. Yet He waits to see repentance and returning.