Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 1:2

"When Jehovah spake at the first by Hosea, Jehovah said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom; for the land doth commit great whoredom, [departing] from Jehovah." — Hosea 1:2 (ASV)

The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea or in Hosea - God first revealed Himself and His mysteries to the prophet’s soul by His secret inspiration, and then declared through him to others what He had deposited in him. God enlightened him, and then others through the light in him.

And the Lord said to Hosea - For this thing was to be done by Hosea alone, because God had commanded it, not by others of their own mind. To Isaiah God first revealed Himself as sitting in the temple, adored by the Seraphim; to Ezekiel God first appeared as enthroned above the cherubim in the holy of holies; to Jeremiah God announced that, before he was born, He had sanctified him for this office; to Hosea He enjoined, as the beginning of his prophetic office, an act contrary to man’s natural feelings, yet one by which he became an image of the Redeemer, uniting to Himself what was unholy, in order to make it holy.

Go take to yourself - Since Hosea prophesied some eighty years, he must now have been in early youth, holy, pure, as befitted a prophet of God. Being called so early, he had doubtless been formed by God as a chosen instrument of His will and had, like Samuel, from his first childhood, been trained in true piety and holiness.

Yet he was to unite to himself, as long as she lived, one greatly defiled, in order to win her by this to purity and holiness. In this, he was a little likeness of our Blessed Lord, who, in the Virgin’s womb, to save us, espoused our flesh (in us sinful, in Him all-holy, without motion to sin) and, further, espoused the Church, formed of us who, whether Jews or Gentiles, were all under sin, aliens from God and gone away from Him, serving divers lusts and passions, to make it a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27).

A wife of whoredoms - That is, take as a wife one who up to that time had again and again been guilty of that sin. So men of bloods (Psalms 5:6) are “men given up to bloodshedding”; and our Lord was a Man of Sorrows (Isaiah 53:3), not occasional only, but manifold and continual, throughout His whole life. She must, then, amid the manifold corruption of Israel, have been repeatedly guilty of that sin, perhaps as an idolatress, thinking it to be in honor of their foul gods (see notes on Hosea 4:13 and Hosea 4:14).

She was not like those degraded ones who cease to bear children; still, she must have sinned in many ways. So much the greater was the obedience of the prophet. Nor could any other woman so shadow forth the manifold defilements of the human race, whose nature our incarnate Lord vouchsafed to unite in His own person to the perfect holiness of the divine nature.

And children of whoredoms - For they shared the disgrace of their mother, although born in lawful marriage. The sins of parents also descend, in a mysterious way, on their children; sin is contagious and, unless the entail is cut off by grace, hereditary. The mother in this respect portrays man’s revolts before his union with God; the children, our forsaking of God after we have been made His children.

The forefathers of Israel, God tells them, served other gods, on the other side of the flood (Joshua 24:14)—that is, in Ur of the Chaldees, from where God called Abraham—and in Egypt. It was out of such defilement that God took her (Ezekiel 23:3, Ezekiel 23:8), and He says, Thou becamest Mine (Ezekiel 16:8). Whom He makes His, He makes pure; and of her, not such as she was in herself by nature, but as He made her, He says, I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals when thou wentest after Me, in the wilderness (Jeremiah 2:2).

But she soon fell away; and from then on there were among them (as there are now among Christians) the children of God, the children of the promise, and the children of whoredoms, or of the devil.

For the land ... - This is the reason why God commands Hosea to do this thing, in order to shadow out their foulness and God’s mercy. What no man would dare to do (Jeremiah 3:1), except at God’s bidding, God in a manner does, restoring to union with Himself those who had gone away from Him. The land, that is, Israel, and indirectly, Judah also, and, more widely yet, the whole earth.

Departing from - Literally, “from after the Lord.” Our whole life should be, forgetting the things which are behind (Philippians 3:13), to follow after Him, whom here we can never fully attain, God in His Infinite Perfection, yet so as, with our whole heart, fully to follow after Him.

To depart from the Creator and to serve the creature is adultery; as the Psalmist says, Thou hast destroyed all them, that go a whoring from Thee (Psalms 73:27). He who seeks anything outside of God, turns from following Him, and takes to himself something else as his god, is unfaithful, and spiritually an adulterer and idolater. For he is an adulterer who becomes another’s rather than God’s.