Hosea 1:2–10
Edited 7/25: By a scheduling mixup, it turns out this was the correct post for 7/24, and the previous post was for the following week! Thanks for your understanding. —Hannah
I really would have preferred to skip over this reading, to ignore this dangerous metaphor Hosea uses to describe God’s wrath at the Israelite people. This is a story of a man denigrating a woman sex-worker, and then denigrating her children, all as some elaborate form of public theater. Hosea tells us that his actions should teach us about who God is. But part of being a living, breathing tradition means we get to interact with our sacred texts: They push us, we push them.
One faithful abolitionist response to this story could be to say, “No, Hosea, this violence is not the will of God.” We can choose instead the prophetic images of God as a caring mother hen, as the bringer of abundance so great that “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain.” Saying No to seemingly divinely-ordained systems of violence is a radical act, one that goes back to Hosea’s time. Today we can turn to theologians like postcolonial feminist Musa Dube to embrace this faithful reading.
Another response could be to listen with care and imagination to the real people impacted by Hosea’s elaborate performance here: Gomer, her daughter Lo-ruhamah, and her son Lo-ammi. What if they’re not just archetypes? Maybe, God willing, Gomer gave her children other names that spoke to her love and care for them, that reminded them they were more than just props in the twisted drama of their abusive father. Maybe, God willing, she had nothing to do with Hosea except when they had sex and at the naming ceremony after their birth. This tradition of creative and compassionate rereading, too, is ancient, and today we can embrace alongside womanist scholars like Wil Gafney.
A third option as Christian abolitionists is to sit in the uncomfortable familiarity of this story. Certainly, Hosea’s framework is common in situations of family violence: When I hurt you, I show you how the universe is ordered. Where, and who, are we in this story? What might we have to learn about ourselves by reading a prophetic text that has shaped how our society thinks about gendered violence and the will of God? Feminist theologians like Julia O’Brien invite us into the holy troubling in this text.
Whatever faithful readings we choose, this is sacred and difficult work. As abolitionist Christians, we must be willing to say “No,” to boldly imagine, and to tease out complexity all at the same time. Our freedom depends on it.
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.