When Yahweh spoke at the first by Hosea, Yahweh said to Hosea, "Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery against from Yahweh."
Fourth, the preferred view seems to be that Hosea’s wife became unfaithful to him after they got married, and that Yahweh told him that she would do this before they got married. [Note: Andersen and Freedman, p. 162; Harper, p. 207; Wood, "Hosea," p. 166; idem, The Prophets . . ., p. 279; Robert B. Chisholm Jr., Handbook on the Prophets, p. 337; Freeman, pp. 181-82; and Kaiser, p. 197.] Similarly, God told Moses that Pharaoh would harden his heart and not allow the Israelites to leave Egypt before Moses first went into Pharaoh’s presence (Exodus 3:19). This view posits a situation that was most similar to the relationship that existed between Yahweh and Israel, which Hosea’s marital relations illustrated (cf. Hosea 2:2; Hosea 2:4; Hosea 4:12; Hosea 5:4). Israel became unfaithful to Yahweh after previous faithfulness; Israel was not unfaithful when Yahweh married her (at Sinai). She was a brand new bride freshly redeemed out of Egyptian slavery (cf. Jeremiah 2:2-3). This parallelism suggests that the woman whom Hosea loved again (ch. 3) was Gomer, his original wife. Another view is that two wives are involved, one in chapter 1 and a different one in chapter 3. Discussion of this issue follows under chapter 3.