Hosea 3:1-5
Never Too Much

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

So I bought her for fifteen shekels (~6 ounces) of silver and about a homer and a lethek (~10 bushels) of barley. 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 live with you."

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. 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.

New International Version

The first part of the book of Hosea is an "adult Bible story". When we receive the story the way God intended it to be understood, we are shocked by the depravity, and humbled by the message. When we recognize ourselves in this story, we learn more about how God loves us.

In chapter one, the prophet Hosea is instructed to marry an "adulterous" wife. From the beginning, Hosea has no reason to expect anything but heartache and trouble, but he brings this woman, Gomer, into his home to be his wife. She gave birth to two sons and a daughter, but by the names God told Hosea to give these children, it was clear that Gomer was unfaithful. The meaning of the name for the last child, Lo-Ammi, means, bluntly, "not my child".

Gomer then runs away. God never tells Hosea to throw Gomer out of the house; instead, in chapter 2, God gives Hosea a message for the Israelites of repentence to be restored in relationship to God. Gomer, however, has other plans. By chapter 3, these plans must have failed her, for she winds up being sold as a slave.

Our passage picks up where God tells Hosea to go buy back his wife. This would feel so different if Gomer, like the younger son in the parable of the prodigal son, was repentent and turning back to Hosea for restoration, but she was not. God was clear that she was still involved with many other men. That didn't change the Grace of God, and Hosea bought her back anyway.

"Enough is enough!", we would say. As Tevye, the indecisive father in the play "Fiddler on the Roof" finally, painfully, concluded, "On the other hand... there is no other hand!" Why would we, in Hosea's shoes, consider staying in a relationship with one who so blatantly and repeatedly betrayed our marriage? Once she ran away and fell into poverty, wouldn't we want to show up at the slave market to taunt her for the pain she had caused us?

But God never says "enough." We can't do anything so insulting and hurtful to God that God would not be willing to forgive us. Even when the Israelites are to be conquered and led into captivity, it is one more attempt to get them to repent, not a rejection.

This is an adult-strength story about God-strength forgiveness. God's love is ours to accept, to share, and to live out.