I have decided to write about this topic as mis­ap­ply­ing Hosea has been caus­ing harm to many Chris­t­ian men. I will not give an expo­si­tion on the pas­sage, it is quite sim­ple. Read it for yourselves.

Many churches and bible col­leges teach that once a wife cheats and leaves the hus­band the man shall never remarry but wait for his wife to return to him. Even if she mar­ries another man, this poor guy must wait with the hope that she divorces him, or per­haps one day her hus­band dies, and she might return to her right­ful husband.

I am aware of a man who was indoc­tri­nated with this doc­trine, after divorce lived alone all his life and on his deathbed regret­ted it. There are many oth­ers who are in the same posi­tion, so please take note and help them if you meet them.

So what is the truth about Hosea? To draw the cor­rect con­clu­sion we need to keep in mind what the Law says:

Deut 24:1 “When a man takes a wife and mar­ries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some inde­cency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the lat­ter hus­band dis­likes her and writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the lat­ter hus­band dies, who took her to be his wife, 4 then her for­mer hus­band, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled; for that is an abom­i­na­tion before the LORD, and you shall not bring guilt upon the land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.”

Let me note that the term “inde­cency” was the cause of many debates in ancient times with Hil­lel allow­ing divorce for any rea­son (even for burn­ing the toast), while Sham­mai only per­mit­ting it in case of mar­i­tal unfaith­ful­ness. Jesus took the side of Sham­mai in this respect (how­ever, he sided with Hil­lel in many other areas).

So accord­ing to the Law it is for­bid­den to remarry your for­mer wife if in the mean­time she mar­ried another man. Then what does Hosea teach about mar­riage? Absolutely noth­ing in my opin­ion. The prophet Hosea is asked by God to marry a pros­ti­tute because He wanted to illus­trate His own rela­tion­ship with Israel through his mar­riage. It was not meant to be a model for mar­riage. The pros­ti­tute leaves Hosea and becomes impov­er­ished and being sold on a slave mar­ket Hosea pur­chases her. While she was ear­lier his wife by choice, now he owned her, she was the prop­erty of her husband.

Yet, many Chris­tians love to apply this book to mar­riage. They claim that this is the model Chris­t­ian men shall follow.

Well, if it was so, let’s con­sider what Chris­tians need to do to ful­fill the teach­ing of the book in their marriage.

1. They must marry a pros­ti­tute. Too bad you mar­ried guys, every one of you shall divorce and marry a sex worker. No excep­tion.

2. Don’t expect her to remain faith­ful to you. She will leave you sooner or later. That is OK.

3. If she does and mar­ries another you must wait until she is dumped, becomes impov­er­ished and is sold as a slave. Then you some­how must make the pur­chase, but since I am not aware of any oper­a­tional slave mar­ket in the West I don’t know how you will accom­plish this. Once you pur­chase her she will be your property.

Sounds silly? It is. Because the story of Hosea was never meant to be a model about mar­riage, but an illus­tra­tion of God’s rela­tion­ship with His unfaith­ful peo­ple, the Jew­ish nation.