Albert Barnes Commentary Hosea 1:3

"So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bare him a son." — Hosea 1:3 (ASV)

So he went - He did not hesitate, nor excuse himself, as did Moses (Exodus 4:18), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:6), or Peter (Acts 10:4), who were rebuked for it, although mercifully by the All-Merciful. Hosea, accustomed from childhood to obey God and every indication of God's will, immediately did what he was commanded, however repulsive to natural feeling. By this, he became all the more an image of the obedience of Christ Jesus, and a pattern for us to both believe and obey God’s commands, however little they appeal to our own understanding.

Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim - “Gomer” is completion; “Diblaim” is a double lump of figs, which are a symbol of sweetness. These names may mean that “the sweetness of sins is the parent of destruction,” or that Israel, or mankind, had completely forsaken God and were children of corrupting pleasure.

Holy Scripture records that all this was done, and tells us the births and names of the children, as real history. Therefore, we must receive it as such. We must not imagine things to be unworthy of God because they do not appeal to us. God does not dispense with the moral law, because the moral law has its source in the mind of God Himself. To dispense with it would be to contradict Himself.

But God, who is the absolute Lord of all things that He made, may, at His sovereign will, dispose of the lives or things that He created. Thus, as Sovereign Judge, He commanded the lives of the Canaanites to be taken away by Israel, just as, in His ordinary providence, He has ordained that the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain, but has made him His minister, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil (Romans 13:4). So, again, He to whom all things belong, willed to repay the Israelites for their hard and unjust servitude by commanding them to spoil the Egyptian (Exodus 3:22).

He who created marriage commanded Hosea whom he should marry. The prophet was not defiled by taking as his lawful wife, at God’s command, one who was defiled, however hard this was. “He who remains good is not defiled by coming in contact with one evil; but the evil, following his example, is turned into good.” But through his simple obedience, he foreshadowed Him, God the Word, who was called the friend of publicans and sinners (Matthew 11:19); who warned the Pharisees that the publicans and harlots should enter unto the kingdom of God before them (Matthew 21:31); and who now graciously condescends to espouse, dwell in, and unite Himself with, and so to sanctify, our sinful souls.

The acts that God commanded the prophets, and which seem strange to us, must have had an impressiveness for the people in proportion to their strangeness. The life of the prophet became a sermon to the people. Sight impresses more than words.

The prophet, being in his own person a mirror of obedience, also, by his way of life, reflected to the people some likeness of the future and of things unseen. The expectation of the people was heightened when they saw their prophets do things at God’s command which they themselves could not have done.

For example, when Ezekiel was commanded to show no sign of mourning on the sudden death of the desire of his eyes, his wife (Ezekiel 24:16–18); or when he dug through the wall of his house and carried out his belongings in the twilight with his face covered (Ezekiel 12:3–7); the people asked, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so? (Ezekiel 24:19).

No words could so express a grief beyond all power of grieving as Ezekiel’s mute grief for one who was known to be the desire of his eyes, yet for whom he was forbidden to show the natural expressions of grief or to use the customary tokens of mourning.

God Himself declares that the reason for such acts was that, rebellious as the house of Israel was (Ezekiel 12:2), with eyes which saw not, and ears which heard not, they might yet consider such acts as these.