In fact, Gomer was clearly not a prostitute before Hosea married her. The book of Hosea itself makes this fact very clear for these reasons:
1) They, who make the claim that Gomer was a prostitute when Hosea married her, read Hosea 1:2-3 in error. It is not saying to go take a wife that is already in the sin of whoredom, but to go take a wife who will become a prostitute and have illegitimate children, as Israel had prostituted itself and produced illegitimate (idolatrous, lawless) children. For Israel "hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord."
This makes no sense of the text. There is no use of the future tense in those verses, there is precisely nothing in the text to suggest that Gomer WILL become a prostitute, and even then, it doesn't seem to do away with the imagined problem you argue for - how is God telling Hosea to marry someone he has told in advance will DEFINITELY be a prostitute in the future any better than telling him to marry a current prostitute? Again, this goes back to earlier arguments about the meaning of whoredom in the usage of the Bible, and the relationship of Israel to Gomer/God to Hosea as types. See my earlier post
here.
2) Verse three says, "So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim..." When one understands Biblical marriage, it is understood that if Gomer had had other men, she would not have been referred to as "the daughter of" her father, but as a man's wife or a harlot. To identify her as "the daughter of" was to indicate that she was still a virgin under her father's authority within his house. She had not yet known a man. It is this virgin that Hosea covenanted for and married (sexual intimacy).
No, this is simply untrue, and has nothing to do with "Biblical marriage". I frankly can't see what actual facts this argument is even supposed to be based on. Women who are already married are still often identified by their fathers in the Scriptures, particularly in places where genealogy is of a concern. It is not only a designation for women who are unmarried and are still virgins. Cf Genesis 36:14, 29, 38:12, 41:50, 46:20, Leviticus 24:11, 1 Samuel 14:50, 2 Samuel 3:3, 7, 2 Samuel 11:3, 1 Kings 4:11, just for starters.
3) Verse three is also backed up by
Hosea 2:7 saying, "...I will go and return to my first husband..." Her first husband was Hosea to whom she would go back to. Otherwise, if Hosea wasn't her first husband who would be? Who was her second, third, fourth... husbands? It's a similar situation as when Jesus encountered the woman at the well and said to her, "For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband..." (
John 4:18). Just as God was the first for Israel and Israel the first for God, so was Hosea the first for Gomer and Gomer the first for Hosea.
It should be clear to all that it is, in fact, God speaking in chapter 2, not Hosea. See verses 15-17 in particular. Therefore, the persona speaking in verse 7 is in fact Israel speaking, and remembering her 'first love', the Lord, before her promiscuity after the Baals. Indeed, it is clearly the Lord speaking from as far back as Hosea 1:9. At this point, the actual persons of Gomer and Hosea have been left behind in the narrative.
4) Israel was not defiled when God chose and formed a nation of Him, "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" (
Hosea 11:1).
Keep reading...
Hosea 11 said:
2 As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images. 3 I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.
Israel was a young innocent child when God called (married) him out of Egypt, not a defiled fornicated one. Israel was unformed in Egypt and, then, formed and nurtured by God when called out and given His law. Israel, the nation, fornicated itself afterward; just as Gomer did. "I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at her first time: but they went to Baal-peor, and separated themselves unto that shame; and their abominations were according as they loved" (
Hosea 9:10).
Then Israel very quickly turned away, obviously. The months in the wilderness were themselves a judgement on Israel's unbelief, almost mere moments after they responded to the call out of Egypt.
But, again, the question is this, even if we can definitely say there was a time when Israel actually was sinless (because that's what you're arguing), why not say Gomer was also not an adulteress before a certain point in time? Is it a mistake for God to pursue Israel even after she's clearly become unfaithful? If not, why is it a mistake for Hosea, if she was at some stage in the past innocent, and had not slept with a man?
5) The first child Jezreel was Hosea's son. He represented the righteous seed that was and would be sown in Israel. The other children Lo-ruhamah and Lo-ammi were children from her fornications. This is seen in
Hosea 2:1-5, where he says, "Say ye [Jezreel] unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah. Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband...for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot; she that conceived them hath done shamefully..."
This point is entirely reliant on the earlier ones in order to stand - if we conclude the text says Gomer was a promiscuous woman/adulteress before God told Hosea to marry her, this point is moot. Even then, at best it's circumstantial - there's nothing in the actual text to suggest the other two children were not his, except an argument from silence. Even then, it's clear that chapter 2 is applying the motifs developed in chapter 1 in the life of Hosea allegorically to the position of Israel - the fact that Ammi and Ruhamah are referred to as plural is signal enough of that. It's a long bow to argue it is primarily about the literal children that Gomer bore.
I appreciate you taking the time to actually copy out the text of another website, instead of just linking a page like others have done.
